1st May 2012

Just before I started to write this I did what I usually do which is to look back on my diary for the time I am writing the blog entry for to remind myself of what has happened (maybe it’s only because I am so bad at doing it regularly that I need to do that?). It was rather telling that since my last update I’ve written almost a whole notebook worth of diary entries- oops! I had a great morning today and so I’ve finally got around to writing this blog after a long time of trying to but never really having enough time or energy.

The main event since my last update is of course that my family has been to visit, arriving 2 weeks after I wrote my last blog. Flo’s parents got here the week before so for a few days when she was in Siem Reap with them I had our room to myself which was very strange. Part of it was over the weekend and it was very novel to be able to go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted without having to be considerate of anyone else. There was one very strange event over that weekend though when I went into a coffee shop and the entire place stopped talking and turned to look at the white girl that had come in the door. I don’t think I had my dress tucked into my pants or anything particularly shocking like that it was just because I am young, white and female. I’m used to that kind of thing at the market (especially Takhmao Market), walking around with people staring at me and calling to me, but I’ve never had it happen in a coffee shop before! It’s one thing that I certainly won’t miss when I come home, the almost scary levels of attention we attract simply because we are white.

Those few days without Flo totally exhausted me because (perhaps rather stupidly) I tried to complete the whole volunteers’ timetable single handedly. I combined my classes with hers and taught them all together and did her evening classes or activities myself. When my family (minus Mum sadly, but hopefully she can make it here later in the year with both knees functioning!) got there on the Friday I was more than ready for a break!

I had expected it to be very strange having them here in “my” country where I had been without them for 6 months, but it wasn’t as weird as I had anticipated, probably because on the whole we were doing very different things to what I would be doing normally. When they arrived I went to meet them at the airport with fresh mango/pineapple sticks that I’d bought on the way (“all this for only a dollar?! That’s so cheap!”) and was amused in the taxi on the way back to the centre of Phnom Penh by all of the “strange” things that they were pointing out. Hannah was gazing open mouthed out of the window at a moto with father, mother and baby all perched on it and pointed this out to me, who was confused as to what was novel about that! In Cambodia you can fit however many people you want on a moto, it just depends on how fast you want to go- I went on one once with 4 adults and it wasn’t exactly whizzing along. Safety is obviously a concern too (don’t panic Mum!) but they thing about having more people on it is that you’ll be going so slowly that if you do have an accident all that happens is you fall off the moto into a big pile on the floor! Much less dangerous than motos with one person on which go a lot faster and can cause a lot more damage in a collision. There is a bizarre law in Cambodia that the driver of a moto must wear a helmet but a passenger is not obliged to which seems like an odd decision to make in my opinion- I definitely wear a helmet when I am a passenger! I even think sometimes I should wear it on tuktuks and other forms of transport too!

I spent the weekend in Phnom Penh with my family showing them around and then worked Monday and Tuesday at the Group Home. One of the highlights was an amazing boat trip on the Mekong/Tonle Sap rivers (they meet in Phnom Penh) to the floating villages, especially with Jess’s comments. Hannah stood up and walked to the other side of the boat so that me, her and Jess were all on the same side and the boat tipped maybe a couple of degrees. Jessica panicked and insisted that Hannah “sit down, it’s going to capsize!” Hannah and Dad were all for my suggestion of running across the deck to see what it took for it to ACTUALLY capsize, but for some reason Jess didn’t think this was a great idea. Later on me did run aground too, so maybe her safety concerns weren’t entirely unfounded.

All three of them came to see Magna on Monday morning and it was odd to see them in my Cambodia-home with all the kids. The kids didn’t let themselves down on cuteness, despite becoming kleptomanical about sunglasses, and Hannah and Jess in particular spent a lot of time saying “aww, (s)he’s so cute!!” which I couldn’t help but agree with! I’d told the caregivers that they were coming to visit and they had made a special lunch for them of sweet and sour stir fry which was amazingly delicious, I don’t think I’ve ever had something so western at the GH. They even went so far as to use real chicken meat in it (rather than bone), but they also gave us a bowl of the fish soup that is more representative of the normal food we get, just so that they didn’t think that was what I normally ate. After we had finished lunch Seyha and Somnang were messing around at the table when they should have been sleeping so I took them back to the house, picking up Seyha and carrying him on my back. Being as helpful as most 3 year olds are he grabbed the back of my skirt and lifted it right up so that everyone could view my pants, and I could do nothing as I had both hands occupied with carrying him! Of course, my sisters thought that this was hilarious, and his cheeky grin ensured that he didn’t get into any trouble.

They spent 2 days doing touristy things around Phnom Penh and then I met up with them again on Tuesday afternoon, ready to go to Siem Reap on Wednesday. I spent a week travelling with them in total, visiting Siem Reap and Battambang and it was nice to be a tourist in Cambodia for a bit, especially as I wasn’t paying for it myself! One day in Siem Reap we visited the temples of Angkor which was amazing, if rather hot. My favourite was probably Ta Prohm (or ‘the jungly one’ as Flo refers to it) which I went to see with Dad, but Bayon (‘the one with the faces’) rated highly too.

A recurring theme of our travels was my horror that we should pay ‘westerner price’ for things- ‘you spent a dollar on a coconut?! That’s so much!!’- and it took me a while to get out of my mindset of walking away from a deal if I knew they shouldn’t be charging me that much. I would barter for things in Khmer because I could get a cheaper price, and then the others would check how much it was. At one point quite early on we were taking a short tuktuk ride to the riverfront from Central Market and the tuktuks around us wanted 1000 riel more than what I would deem a reasonable price. I was ready to walk away, until Hannah asked me how much money difference that was in pounds and I was forced to admit that it was about 16p and they all got in the tuktuk. I gave it up a bit more towards the end of their time here, but I’ve gone back to it, because I know what a fair price is for each journey and if I pay over that then it pushes costs up for everyone who uses motos and tuktuks because then they refuse to take what used to be a good price as they know that someone else will pay higher.

On Wednesday I came back to the GH while they went to Kep (on the coast) and saw them again on Thursday evening and Friday, before having to wave goodbye to them after lunch. I cried (predictably) and they laughed at me (also predictably) and Dad came back to the GH with me to help me with my things and to pick up some things that I wanted him to take back to Britain with him. I definitely didn’t cry anywhere near as much as I did when I said goodbye to them in September, but as they can all confirm that isn’t saying much!

The weekend they left was Khmer New Year (yes, we have 3 ‘new’ years here) so we had some fun celebrations at the group home, including a game a bit like piñata but with clay pots and a hilarious race where they had to carry water in their mouths to fill up a jar at the other end of the yard. Some of them just couldn’t keep themselves from laughing and spraying it everywhere- one of the benefits of living in a hot country really! We also had a water fight and a talcum powder fight in one day (although not at the same time, which happened to coincide with me washing my hair. As soon as I came to see what the noise was about outside I was pelted with talcum powder and did my best to get my own back; I can’t say that I have any problem throwing talcum powder at ‘innocent’ children when they have just done exactly the same to me!

Since then I have had a fairly normal few weeks, with not much out of the ordinary to comment on. I did self portraits with the children in my art class using the new paintbrushes Mum got and which they did surprisingly well at. Well, all apart from Vicheka (“Vicheka, that isn’t a picture of you, that’s a picture of a cat!”) but I have to say that his picture was at least a recognizable thing, and that has to be a start.

I have had a lot of new tasks to do at the moment and have been kept very busy with them, including some wall painting that should be done at some point in the near future (it’s been part done for over a week now!) if I find some time in my hectic schedule. I’ve just made a huge chart for focusing on hygiene too, as some of the children aren’t too good at showering/washing their hair/brushing their teeth and it would be nice if they did. It would smell a lot less definitely!

It feels like I have hardly any time left now, the year has suddenly caught up with me- at the weekend we had had 2/3 of our time here, which is scary. Also scary is the fact that the budget (which we started in December and received last week) for the group home won’t be done again during our time here, the next time it’s done will be by the next 2 volunteers. We’ve started our post report for them and putting together an info pack on all the things it would have been nice to know at the beginning, which feels odd to think of, I can’t imagine leaving yet!

This week I also got the news of Soph and Dave’s new arrival, Evie Rose Lyons, which I was very excited about. My phone went off in the middle of church with Mum calling me to tell me (she then texted the news when I couldn’t answer) and I was so pleased I told some random people sitting near me at church. Once we got past the lost-in-translation bit (“your friend is in hospital? Why are you so happy about that?) they said congratulations but looked a bit confused as to why I was telling them! I’m looking forward to some cuddles with Evie when I get back and will just have to cuddle the GH kids in the meantime. As I typed that last sentence Seyha (the youngest kid in the GH) sneakily broke into the office but it was to steal the trike rather than to give me a cuddle, and he’s now wailing about the fact that I told him it wasn’t his turn- not exactly a cute baby any more, although I’ll bet Evie does a fair bit of wailing too!

Hopefully next time I do this it won’t be quite such a long gap between updates as it was this time (although I’m not promising anything!). Hope you are all well and less hot than I am at the moment!