Bop ‘Till You Drop

Cambodia. Well I have been here for over a week now and have settled into the house quite nicely.

Hmm..I have just spied ants crawling over my computer... lovely.

I am living with Rodney and Cheryl Cope, an Australian couple who conduct a wide range of mission work in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In the house at the moment is also Christie (beautiful Christie from Oxley, who now lives full time with Rod and Cheryl), Shirley (a teacher from Melbourne), Poen (a young Cambodian woman who is being sponsored and trained by the Copes), Sam (Poen’s two year old son), Ooin (an orphan who just came yesterday and is staying here for a while) and whoever else happens to be in at the time. Various teams come and go for short periods of time and longer workers drop in from time to time (eg... me).

To be honest so far I haven’t had to do much. I’ve been following, observing and sitting a lot. Next week however I’ll start having to earn my keep and be put to work. I did do one class where we were talking about make-believe hotels – I amused myself with my dance themed hotel named “Bop ‘till You Drop”. Not sure that they appreciated it, Christie laughed.

At the moment, the various areas that we are involved in include:

- Running English classes for university students (I’ll be teaching two classes a day for this)

- Supporting a small orphanage of about twenty-five kids (I’ll sometimes be teaching English and bible there)

- Teaching a group of about 30 kids (can’t tell you where exactly, haven’t been there yet, but will be going once a week to do English and craft... yes craft – I know, I’m worried too)

- Making 1000 Christmas packs (like big versions of the shoe-boxes with hygiene stuff, clothes, toys, stationary etc) to be given out at a number of Christmas parties being thrown.

- Christmas parties, usually for over 200 kids (includes face-painting, a puppet show, games etc)

- Pastoral training (Can’t say I’ve had too much experience in this area, so not what my major contribution will be though)

- Feeding/rice runs to poor people of the community

- Etc etc etc

My Khmer (Cambodian language) is terrible. I’ve was hitting the books early in the week then got lazy. It’s haaarrrrdddddd. Stupid noises that don’t exist in English. It’s really frustrating, especially when you know that you’ve been able to say this another time and now you’ve forgotten it. I actually keep thinking everything in German- well it’s a foreign language so at least I’m partially there.

Any Curves ladies reading this, just letting you know that I’m pretty much getting everywhere by bike. And though there are no Curves franchises in Cambodia (note any budding business women) I am hoping that this exercise will suffice. However, I confess that I have been eating a heck of a lot of junk (a deep fried banana sounds disgusting but is actually great), drinking a lot of frappacinnos (in order to use their wifi) and may come back from a third world country having gained weight.

Over here however I’m finding that beauty is defined quite differently. I am constantly being told how beautiful my very white skin is... yes, thanks very much guys. They like when you are chubbier and move over corsets, there are underpants with extra padding to help make you look a little more like Beyonce.

I went to a Cambodian wedding which was a very interesting experience. Lots and lots of food and boy was it...big. Big band, big decorations, big crowd, very BIG bows on dresses. The bride was just seventeen and the groom was 39. She did not look all that happy to be there but when the dancing started she brightened up a little with her friends. It was great as a ‘berung’ (foreigner) to be one of the honoured guests, especially seeing as I didn’t know the people whose wedding it was.

Hopefully next time I update I will be able to tell you something productive, but this has pretty much been a ‘lay of the land’ week. I did buy some pants (not with extra bum padding)...which looked ugly when I tried them on at home.

Love you all. Missing your smiles. xx

Give me ideas for:
Ø Simple, cheap craft
Ø Creative ways to teach older students English
Ø Games for 200+ kids (preferably not language based)

- Pictures are of Sam, and Christie & I ready for a wedding

Malaysia- the land of monorails, tacky billboards and very sweet bread.

It has been almost a week since I left the sunny shores of Australia and arrived on the even sunnier grounds of Cambodia.

My budget flight (we build our planes from icy-pole sticks . com) caused me to have a brief stop over in Malaysia where I spent the night. Malaysia was good to see, I would have liked to spend more time there. I paid to go up the Tower of KL as I didn’t have enough time to go to the free one and line up- I have discovered that money can really be used to save you time. There were lots of things that this relatively expensive pass allowed you to do, but due to a slightly more important prior arrangement (aka a flight leaving) I had to rush/skip things. The cheap-skate in me cried out in pain while the logical voice in my head reminded me of the cost of a new flight should I miss the one already paid for.

Malaysian ponderings:

- Cheap airfares = tiny planes = bad. Pay extra money to avoid constant advertising announcements, lack of television and room to turn your head when trying to sleep. However, I ate my own cherry-ripe (no bringing of your own food). That showed them.

- Australian men are a lot more chivalrous than those I came in contact with. I discovered this having lugged 2 months worth of baggage up and down about 100 monorail steps.

- Having said that, Monorails are cool. Unless you permanently had to carry around a gigantic suitcase, then they would not be cool.

- You have to eat food extremes. Everything is either a dessert or a full meal, there is no middle ground. However I also discovered that lots of junk/dessert like food can act as the equivalent of a full meal.

- Don’t laugh at the advertising billboards- the overdone expressions are not a joke.

- Mimicking is the most effective way to not look stupid.

>If you are approaching some kind of machine that you are required to do something to, fumble through your bag as though you are looking for something, wait until someone goes in front of you (remember the lack of chivalry, consequently this is likely), then replicate.

>Note that you should replicate it exactly. Don’t apply the same principle to another machine, it does not necessarily work.

- One should plan what they are going to do after the travelling before putting on plane clothes, otherwise you end up in chanel getting funny looks.

- I think Mum plans everything so that you don’t have to sit in the hotel lobby for twenty minutes studying the assortment of maps you have acquired to determine how to find food.

- Once you get the hang of those funny machines, man tourists are annoying.

- I only open my map when sitting at someone’s table/cafe, too embarrassing otherwise. Subsequently I have had a lot of drinks.

- If you receive a random sms it is because I have thought of something witty and due to my lack of travelling partner, have found repressing it too hard.

- “Oh I didn’t know you had to go downstairs for change” translates to “keep all my change, it’s only about the equivalent of my meal”.

My country has ill-equipped me for tipping.