It's Monday today so I arrived in Cambodia 9 days ago, although it feels both much longer and much shorter than that!
I think that the first thing I learnt when I got here- before learning any Khmer even- was how to cross the road in Cambodia! It's much harder than it sounds, there's so much traffic all the time and the roads are so wide that you never get a gap big enough to get all the way across. Your best bet is to try and set off in a big enough gap that you're not going to get hit the moment you step off the pavement, then just walk through the traffic and hope that everything moves out of your way. Cars are good to avoid too, if you can. And so long as you bear in mind that driving on the right hand side is more of a loose guideline than a law it's fine! you get used to it pretty quickly, and all the Cambodians find it hilarious when you get freaked out, particularly if you're halfway across the road!
On the first Sunday here we had a tour of Phnom Penh, starting with Toul Sleng S21. Genocide Museum, the site of Security Prison 21 during the Khmer Rouge years. Over 20,000 people were tortured and executed there so it was a very difficult place to visit. In Block A, the "VIP" block (specifically for Cambodians who had worked for CIA, FBI or other foreign governments) there were still the iron bedframes that people had been on when they were tortured, with a picture of each room as it had been when the Vietnamese invaded, with bodies on the beds. In each of the other three blocks the first room had been left with the tiny 0.8mx1m cells there, and then all the other rooms were filled with "evidence". There were rooms and rooms full of photos of people who were killed there, and the last room had their clothes and some skulls that had been found there. One of the seven survivors did paintings of things he caught glimpses of while he was there and they were hung throughout. It was really hard to see, especially when we were all so tired but I think we needed to see it before starting our projects. The Khmer Rouge was toppled in 1979, so everyone over 35 has memories of it, and most of the younger people remember the aftermath too.
The rest of the day was less intense- we visited the National Museum and one of the local temples which was interesting, and it was good to go with a guide who could answer our questions.
The next day we started the language course! It's been 4 hours a day Monday-Sunday, plus homework for lunchtime and evening. Nim (our teacher) pushes us really hard but it will be good to know a bit of Khmer at least when we get to our projects. Each lesson we wrote out the vocab on little cards and practised with them until we knew everything by heart. We usually have between 1 and 3 words/phrases on each cards and I would guess I have way over 200 cards by now!! But it's nice, we can speak a little bit of Khmer with the people who work at the Guest House now.
The Guesthouse, is interesting... the food is very nice and pretty cheap, which is good, and all the rooms have fans and bathrooms. You do have to hold the bathroom door shut or it spontaneously opens, and hot water is a luxury we can manage without but you get over that quite quickly. There is a suspicion that we have bed bugs too, adding to the mosquito and ant bites, but at the end of the day it doesn't make that much difference to me which insect is making my legs itch!
At the moment we're in a 3 day mini holiday from the language course so we had a nice long lie in this morning. It's helping me get over my cold which is useful!! It's currently the Festival of the Dead in Cambodia so everyone (including Nim) has gone back to their home towns, making it very spookily quiet in Phnom Penh. All the shops are shut and the markets are empty, the only places that open are the very touristy or western places, so we can get meals but no snacks...
So far, I'm really enjoying being here! The people here are lovely- always smiling and laughing, especially the people in the guesthouse laughing at our Khmer! The only thing now is we all want to get to our projects and get settled in and start doing something useful!
