I am sorry about being MIA from the blog lately. I have been super super busy with preparing lesson plans, teaching, evaluating lesson plans, thinking of art projects, reading for class, preparing workshops for teachers and administration at PIO and taking a language class for Khmer. The past week has been great, but also a lot of work.
I taught kindergarten again on Tuesday, (my class is pictured to the left) but it was at the other school, Borey Santhepeap, the school that is on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. I used the same lesson and we did another hand print rainbow. Teacing was SO much easier this time, I had 2 RUPP students with me and the teacher who usually teaches the class. Thins went a lot smoother this time around. At Borey Santhepeap, there is much more space to move around than in Borey Keilah. The children loved the art activity and as expected were soo soo sweet! During the break they picked flowers and gave them to me, it was SO cute! One little boy made me some sort of instrument by weaving vines together. They would say, "Teacha, teacha, this for you" and shyly hand me a flower or a weed. At the end of class I was saying good bye and a swarm of kids ran up to the front of the classroom, they put their hands in the praying position and said, "Saaunk You Teacha, Good luck to you." and they dropped their hands and gave me a HUGE hug, a squatted down to get on their level so I could hug them back, and about 45 kids swarmed me to try and get a hug in and I fell over, hahahaha!!! It was pretty embarrassing yet so funny! They were all laughing and trying to help me up. On Thursday I was supposed to teach level 4 at Borey Santhepeap, but Kristin got sick so I had to take over for her last minute. I ended up having to teach levels 3 and 4 at Borey Keilah (they are on a totally different section that level 4 at Borey Santhepeap and I had to create 2 separate lesson plans for the two sections. They are in the same classroom, but learning different materials...complicated, I know) so I had to totally re-do the lesson plan, it ended up working out, but it was a little stressful at first. Level 4 made flags and learned about the different countries that spoke English: Scotland, Australia, America, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Great Britain and South Africa. They loved this activity and were so proud of their flags after they finished! 
Level 3 was learning about directions (turn left, turn right, go straight, make a U turn) and about places (super market, cinema, hotel, restaurant, internet cafe, temple). For this art activity I had them make buildings with construction paper, after they made the building I made a small city on the white board with roads and taped their places on the board and had them give me directions of how to get from one place to the next. It was successful and again they were proud of their artwork. This class is very bright. They could read and write a limited amount of English very well. I did not have an RUPP student with me at all on Thursday, the teacher helped a little bit, but the students understood most of what I was saying. I enjoyed teacing the older kids, Pictured above is 3 girls from the 2 classes so proud of their artwork! Thursday night a couple of us went out on the town for the first time since I've been here! It was pretty fun, we went to this place called the FCC and had a couple of beers and split a pizza! The FCC overlooked the MeKong river; it was full of foreigners enjoying the plesant night.We just got back from Siem Reap, also called Angkor Village, where all of the beautiful temples are! We saw 7 temples this weekend, they are all so magnificent and absolutely stunning!
Friday morning we left Phnom Penh, via bus at 8am. The drive through the Cambodia countryside was a treat! I never got tired of looking at the houses on stilts the entire 7 hour drive to Siem Reap. I loved seeing daily country life. We saw everything from rice paddy fields to cricket catchers to children moving oxen across the land to cows grazing along the side of the deep orange colored dirt roads. The bumpy and scenic bus ride put us in Siem Reap at 4pm. We checked into our hotel and then went to a buffet and dance performance, the dancers were SO cool, it was APSARA dancing where they wear really cool costumes and dance in the traditional ways that they used to dance during Angkorian time. Apsara means a celestial being.
Saturday we woke up at 4:30am to see the sunrise at the sacred waterfall but missed it because the drive took too long, but we saw the sunrise from the bus; pictured to the left is the sunrise over the Cambodian jungle. This waterfall (I forget the name) in Cambodian history, supposedly is where "life began." We hiked through the jungle for an hour and finally arrived upon the stream where the ancient people carved religious statues into the bed of the stream, so as the water runs over these statues, it becomes sacred, we followed the stream all the way to a waterfall where the water is most sacred, a few people in the group, including Dr. Lewis, went underneath the waterfall to get drenched in sacred water. I sat on top of a rock and took it all in. There were butterflies everywhere at this site. One of which landed on my finger and stayed on me for a solid 5 minutes, it was really cool. After we climed down from the waterfall, we went on to see 2 more temples, Banteay Srei and Banteay Samrei, they too were amazingly beautiful. Banteay Srei is a temple that was dedicated to women. It is small in comparison to the others, but extremely intracite. Banteay Samrei was my favorite. It is pictured to the right! 
This temple is off the beaten path, so there were no tourists there except for us. It was so peacful and very idyllic at this temple. I sat inside a doorframe and reflected for about 30 minutes, something I have never done before. After 7 hours of touring temples, we went back to the villa, kicked it poolside and ate some banana pancakes! It was so nice to relax under the sun. It was my first time to be in a pool all summer!Saturday night we went to a concert at one of the childrens hospital in Siem Reap, called Kantha Bopha/Jayavarmmann VII. OH MY WORD, this was my favorite thing we did all weekend. The concert is an effort this man, named Dr. Beat Richner, pictured below, does to raise money and awareness for the hospitals he has built in Cambodia.
He is very talented at playing the Cello; he is also a truly amazing man. I feel honored to have heard him play and speak. I was so moved by this cause and his concert that I bought his book and have already read it! I am considering e-mailing him and telling him how great and noble I think his works are and how we need more people like him on this earth. The reason this is such an amazing hospital is because the Cambodian government and the Ministry of Health are EXTREMELY corrupt and Dr. Beat Richner runs his hospitals (Kantha Bopha I, II and III) as corruption free organizations. Corruption of the Cambodian government is causing a "passive genocide" of Cambodian children. In Cambodia, you can only receive medical treatment if you have money. The Cambodian government and well as international Health organizations (such as World Health Organization, UNICEF and others) have set up the Cambodian Health system this way. Well 95% of the population is poor, so 95% of the Cambodian people either go without medical help or recieve the wrong treatment. Let's say that a poor family has no money to get medical treatment from an NGO children's hospital in Camboida, which follows the rules of WHO and the Ministry of Health. The hospital diagnosis the child with tuberculousis and thells the family that they must pay $200 in order for their child to be treated. So this poor farming family sells their oxen and half of their belongings to get money so their child can be treated. At an NGO hospital overseen by the Cambodian Ministry of Health, they are only allowed to use "cheap medicine," because Cambodia is a "poor country with poor people." This cheap medicine in turn makes the child treated even more ill and in most cases the child dies. The medicine this hospital uses to treat tuberculosis in Cambodia is with a treatment that is outlawed to use even on CHICKENS in Western states. So now this family has sold their oxen and half of their belongings and has also lost a child to a disease which could be treatable with the correct ( a little more expensive) but correct medicine. Dr. Beat Richner thinks this concept of cheap medicine for a poor country with poor people is ridiculous and inhumane. So his hospitals are free of charge for anyone and serves all of the poor families in Cambodia. He carries the correct vaccines and medicines for the diseases that plague thsi country. The Cambodian government and international health organizations are trying to shut him down even though the statistics for this hospital are astoundingly successful, especially when it deals with cost to healing ratio. They want to shut him down because his hospital is not corrupt, therefore they are not reaping the benefits of the success of his hospitals. The hospitals run solely on private donations, which is why he holds a free concert every Saturday in the training center at the Jayavarmann VII hosptial in Siem Reap, in hopes to get more donations from tourists. The Cambodia government does not give him any money to run these hospitals. I want to tell you the whole story about his hospitals and the history of Cambodia within the context of the hospitals, but its way too long to type right now. If you are interested please visit their website http://www.beat-richner.ch/ Dr. Richner is talking about starting a children's hospital in Africa, so I am thinking about e-mailing him my resume and asking for a job, no joke!! I was truly moved by his words and the amazing and meaningful work he does for the poor children of Cambodia.
On Sunday we woke up at the crack of dawn (4:45am) so we could make it to see sunrise at Angkor Wat. When the sun rises over Angkor Wat, it looks like the temple is floating on a sea of gold because there is a reflecting pool in front of it. Angkor Wat is HUGE, it took us 4 hours to go through it, although it was at a leisurely pace. Two children are looking at taking in the beauty of Angkor Wat in the picture to the left. Angkor Wat is the largest temple in all of Siem Reap-Angkor Village. After Angkor Wat we went to another temple called Bayon. Bayon is a temple that has huge faces on all sides of the large pilars. We were invited to eat lunch at a friend of Dr. Lewis' village. The village was an hour away from Siem Reap. Dr. Lewis' best friend from home is a Cambodian man and he wanted her to see his village and meet his family who still lives in Cambodia. The man's sister hosted Dr. Lewis and all of us to their village. She made this huge delicious meal and I think the whole entire village came to meet us ( and by that I mean watch us eat...it was strange having 70+ people watch me eat, but it is normal for their culture, so I just went with it). I am SO glad we did this, it was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had!!!!!!!!!!!! So we had this delicious noodle meal with vegetables and a special green sauce that was to die for!! The niece of the woman who cooked all of this was so nice and chatty, her name is Sophea (pronounced Soapy), she is 19 years old and goes to school in Siem Reap on the weekdays and volunteer teaches English to 152 children in her village on the weekends, she is an amazing girl. So she told some of her students that Americans were coming for lunch and there were about 40 kids there wanting to practice their English with us. They were some of the most precious children i have ever met. They were so happy that we were there and they meant every word of praise and thanks that came out of their mouths. They would say, "I will miss you." or "I will never forget you, good luck and all happiness to you." We played a game with them called Zip Zap Bong, it was pretty fun and easy to play with such a huge language barrier. During our visit we also were invited to the village temple to be blessed by the monks. This was so neat. We drove down the road from the woman's house and turned down a road with heavy wooded forests on each side and at the end of the road was a small pavilion made out of tin and concrete, in the middle of the pavilion was a beautifully painted Buddha carving and a monk was sitting on a raised platform, we met the grandmothers of the village, who all have shaved heads (it is part of a traditional Buddhist belief for grandmothers to shave their heads as a sign of letting go of worldly possesions). 
They are so beautiful and look so wise. We hung out with some kids for a bit while we were waiting for the monks to come. They were looking at us like we were so strange... (You can see pictured above, one of the village children and on the right of the photograph the monks are arriving to give us the blessing). Dr. Lewis isa practicing Buddhist so she did the whole bowing to Buddah. THEY LOVE HER AT THIS VILLAGE!!! The monks finally arrive and we take our shoes off, walk into the pavilion. There were 5 monks total, 1 king monk and 4 of his proteges, they took their seat on the platform next to the other monks. We chum reap soured the monks and knelt in front of them. The monks start chanting the blessing, where again I felt so surreal. I felt a very peaceful presence during the blessing, I can't really explain it other than that. The king monk had kind eyes, and an extremely sincere expression the entire time. I really wanted to hug him, but you aren't supposed to touch monks, not sure why, I'll look into that though. After the blessing we went back to the village and played with the children some more. We taught them the song, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey, you never know dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away. They were so adorable and I was so sad to leave! After the village we went to see Sunset at Phnom Bakkheng, another temple; it is on the biggest hill in Angkor Village. I rode an elephant up to the temple with Lisa and Brittney, 2 other girls on the program; it was a really cool experience. Sunset from the temple was breathtakingly beautiful; you have to climb up extremely steep steps to get to the roof of the temple; it was kind of scary (because the steps are SO narrow) but fun! When I made it to the top a couple of monks started asking me questions, they wanted to practice their English with me. So I paid my respects to them, with a Chum reap sour and a bow and sat next to them.
This morning, Monday, we woke up early and saw one last temple called Ta Phrom. This was an amazing temple, the jungle is "overtaking it" i.e. tree roots have started to crumble the temple and it makes for an amazing sight. I took so many pictures this weekend and when I upload them I will send yall a few. After the temple, we checked out of the hotel and went to the silk center on the way out. This place was SO cool, they show you exactly how silk is made, from growing the mulberry trees to feed the silk worms the mulberry leaves, to how the silk worms spin spools of silk as a cocoon, to how the people turn the silk in to spools of thread to how they die it and weave it. It was amazing. I got a log of presents there for my grandmother, mom and aunts! My favorite temples were Banteay Samrei (which was the last one we went to on Saturday) it was so peaceful, nobody except for us was there, Phnom Bakkheng (Where we saw the sunset) and Ta Prohm (the one the jungle is overtaking). All in all I LOVED Siem Reap, I like it more than Phnom Penh because it is a lot more open and breezy, not as rushed and crowded, it is not as congested is a lot cleaner and a bit more touristy spots. I still love Phnom Penh, but Siem Reap was absolutely wonderful.
Sorry for the long blog-post, I got a little carried away, but I had a lot to tell!! I must go to sleep soon, we have been invited to the ribbon cutting ceremony for PIOs orphanage (just built), which has been built on the trash cite of Stung Mean Chey. I am SO excited because I thought we were never going back there since they already have volunteers. They have invited us as their "distinguished international guests," (hahah there is nothing distinguished about me so I think its pretty funny). The children at this school were my favorites during the tour of the 3 schools, they were so personable and had such a lively spirit. The ribbon cutting ceremony supposedly is a pretty big deal, papers are coming and everything! Dr. Lewis said that PIO built this orphanage with the money they received from CNN Heroes, so it is causing a lot of media attention! After the ribbon cutting ceremony we will come back to the villa, have lunch and then go to Tiny Toones, they are doing a performance for us!! check out this article to read more about them and watch the video! Tomorrow is a big day and I've got to get my sleep. BTW June 1st is Children's Day in Cambodia, so HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY TODAY!!! I am having a great time in Cambodia. The longer I stay the more I love it, I discover something new and exciting about Cambodia each day, she is slowly revealing to me all of her wonders, Mom you might loose me to the beautiful Kingdom of Cambodia...
until next time!!!! Liahiii (Bye in Khmer)
Rosie
On Sunday we woke up at the crack of dawn (4:45am) so we could make it to see sunrise at Angkor Wat. When the sun rises over Angkor Wat, it looks like the temple is floating on a sea of gold because there is a reflecting pool in front of it. Angkor Wat is HUGE, it took us 4 hours to go through it, although it was at a leisurely pace. Two children are looking at taking in the beauty of Angkor Wat in the picture to the left. Angkor Wat is the largest temple in all of Siem Reap-Angkor Village. After Angkor Wat we went to another temple called Bayon. Bayon is a temple that has huge faces on all sides of the large pilars. We were invited to eat lunch at a friend of Dr. Lewis' village. The village was an hour away from Siem Reap. Dr. Lewis' best friend from home is a Cambodian man and he wanted her to see his village and meet his family who still lives in Cambodia. The man's sister hosted Dr. Lewis and all of us to their village. She made this huge delicious meal and I think the whole entire village came to meet us ( and by that I mean watch us eat...it was strange having 70+ people watch me eat, but it is normal for their culture, so I just went with it). I am SO glad we did this, it was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had!!!!!!!!!!!! So we had this delicious noodle meal with vegetables and a special green sauce that was to die for!! The niece of the woman who cooked all of this was so nice and chatty, her name is Sophea (pronounced Soapy), she is 19 years old and goes to school in Siem Reap on the weekdays and volunteer teaches English to 152 children in her village on the weekends, she is an amazing girl. So she told some of her students that Americans were coming for lunch and there were about 40 kids there wanting to practice their English with us. They were some of the most precious children i have ever met. They were so happy that we were there and they meant every word of praise and thanks that came out of their mouths. They would say, "I will miss you." or "I will never forget you, good luck and all happiness to you." We played a game with them called Zip Zap Bong, it was pretty fun and easy to play with such a huge language barrier. During our visit we also were invited to the village temple to be blessed by the monks. This was so neat. We drove down the road from the woman's house and turned down a road with heavy wooded forests on each side and at the end of the road was a small pavilion made out of tin and concrete, in the middle of the pavilion was a beautifully painted Buddha carving and a monk was sitting on a raised platform, we met the grandmothers of the village, who all have shaved heads (it is part of a traditional Buddhist belief for grandmothers to shave their heads as a sign of letting go of worldly possesions). They are so beautiful and look so wise. We hung out with some kids for a bit while we were waiting for the monks to come. They were looking at us like we were so strange... (You can see pictured above, one of the village children and on the right of the photograph the monks are arriving to give us the blessing). Dr. Lewis isa practicing Buddhist so she did the whole bowing to Buddah. THEY LOVE HER AT THIS VILLAGE!!! The monks finally arrive and we take our shoes off, walk into the pavilion. There were 5 monks total, 1 king monk and 4 of his proteges, they took their seat on the platform next to the other monks. We chum reap soured the monks and knelt in front of them. The monks start chanting the blessing, where again I felt so surreal. I felt a very peaceful presence during the blessing, I can't really explain it other than that. The king monk had kind eyes, and an extremely sincere expression the entire time. I really wanted to hug him, but you aren't supposed to touch monks, not sure why, I'll look into that though. After the blessing we went back to the village and played with the children some more. We taught them the song, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey, you never know dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away. They were so adorable and I was so sad to leave! After the village we went to see Sunset at Phnom Bakkheng, another temple; it is on the biggest hill in Angkor Village. I rode an elephant up to the temple with Lisa and Brittney, 2 other girls on the program; it was a really cool experience. Sunset from the temple was breathtakingly beautiful; you have to climb up extremely steep steps to get to the roof of the temple; it was kind of scary (because the steps are SO narrow) but fun! When I made it to the top a couple of monks started asking me questions, they wanted to practice their English with me. So I paid my respects to them, with a Chum reap sour and a bow and sat next to them. As I was talking to the 4 of them (orange robes and all) I was thinking to myself, "Who the hell do I think I am just sitting on the top of a temple in Cambodia talking to 4 monks at sunset... it was definitely surreal. The sunset was gorgeous, there were clouds in the shape of Angkor Wat, which is the biggest temple in Siem Reap-Angkor Village. There was also a lightning storm the the left of the sunset, so every couple of minutes a lightning strike would accompany the setting the sun. (The picture above is from the top of Phnom Bakkheng temple, you can see the city of Siem Reap in the distance.)
This morning, Monday, we woke up early and saw one last temple called Ta Phrom. This was an amazing temple, the jungle is "overtaking it" i.e. tree roots have started to crumble the temple and it makes for an amazing sight. I took so many pictures this weekend and when I upload them I will send yall a few. After the temple, we checked out of the hotel and went to the silk center on the way out. This place was SO cool, they show you exactly how silk is made, from growing the mulberry trees to feed the silk worms the mulberry leaves, to how the silk worms spin spools of silk as a cocoon, to how the people turn the silk in to spools of thread to how they die it and weave it. It was amazing. I got a log of presents there for my grandmother, mom and aunts! My favorite temples were Banteay Samrei (which was the last one we went to on Saturday) it was so peaceful, nobody except for us was there, Phnom Bakkheng (Where we saw the sunset) and Ta Prohm (the one the jungle is overtaking). All in all I LOVED Siem Reap, I like it more than Phnom Penh because it is a lot more open and breezy, not as rushed and crowded, it is not as congested is a lot cleaner and a bit more touristy spots. I still love Phnom Penh, but Siem Reap was absolutely wonderful.
Sorry for the long blog-post, I got a little carried away, but I had a lot to tell!! I must go to sleep soon, we have been invited to the ribbon cutting ceremony for PIOs orphanage (just built), which has been built on the trash cite of Stung Mean Chey. I am SO excited because I thought we were never going back there since they already have volunteers. They have invited us as their "distinguished international guests," (hahah there is nothing distinguished about me so I think its pretty funny). The children at this school were my favorites during the tour of the 3 schools, they were so personable and had such a lively spirit. The ribbon cutting ceremony supposedly is a pretty big deal, papers are coming and everything! Dr. Lewis said that PIO built this orphanage with the money they received from CNN Heroes, so it is causing a lot of media attention! After the ribbon cutting ceremony we will come back to the villa, have lunch and then go to Tiny Toones, they are doing a performance for us!! check out this article to read more about them and watch the video! Tomorrow is a big day and I've got to get my sleep. BTW June 1st is Children's Day in Cambodia, so HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY TODAY!!! I am having a great time in Cambodia. The longer I stay the more I love it, I discover something new and exciting about Cambodia each day, she is slowly revealing to me all of her wonders, Mom you might loose me to the beautiful Kingdom of Cambodia...
until next time!!!! Liahiii (Bye in Khmer)
Rosie
Hi Rosie,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you are having an amazing time. You sound very happy and excited about what you are doing. I think you are so brave!!! It is 11:10 pm on June 10th, 50 minutes til your birthday. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, Rosie! I'm so happy for the experience you are having. You are an amazing young woman. Have a happy, happy birthday.
I love you, Aunt Jaynie