Birthday's and More Catch-Up

Hello everyone! We haven’t had the time to blog every night so we are going to do an update of what has been going on here in Siem Reap over the past few days.

Wednesday
Leah left off on Wednesday before we went out to celebrate for (other) Sasha’s birthday. Before Sasha and Victoria got home we went to a bakery across the street and got a chocolate cake. While the cake itself had a good texture the icing was pretty much just whipped butter. Though there are so many amazing different types of food here cake isn’t something we would go out of our way to buy again. We actually ended up eating the cake after our game of Yatzee at V&A before we left to get dinner. After Sasha blew out her candles and we dug into the cake like vultures we went to Charlie’s, an American style bar. It was really awesome and we ended up running into Jeff, Jill and Henry, three teachers visiting Siem Reap from Thailand who are staying at V&A during their school vacation. Henry and Jeff are from New York and Jill is from England. They are all really cool people. They came along with us to paint the town and celebrate Sasha’s 21st BIRTHDAY (less of a big deal in Siem Reap as it is in the states but we still had a great night)!

Thursday
Nothing too exciting happened during the day on Thursday, we just went to Cafe Central for lunch and then did our first grocery shopping in Siem Reap! We bought some Nutella among other things, which is sadly really expensive here (about $5 a jar), so we are going to have to really treasure it. When we got home from the store we relaxed in our room for a bit and then ended up going to Trivia Night at Ivy with Sasha, Victoria, Jeff, Henry and Jill. Our team name was, “Next Question” and we came in second place! But to be fair most of the teams had two people and we had seven. Every week a different NGO or non-profit is sponsored and they get to talk about what they do and people can donate money. This weeks was a school from a poor village that offers families food and medical care and schooling. It was a really great night; we enjoyed awesome food, played trivia and supported a great cause! We will definitely be going back to Trivia Night next week. Maybe we will try to get a JWOC team together, all the scholarship students are so smart!

Friday
Friday we went to school in the morning which was great as usual! Nesa was out so Leah and I were in charge of the library. At first we were a little worried about how this would go but it was so easy with these kids. They all played with each other so well and always cleaned up after themselves. After lunch at our local spot we had to say goodbye to Pat, which was really sad but we know that it wasn’t a permanent goodbye. Unfortunatley we didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to Jane. Leah will see Pat and Jane when she goes to Davis and I will see them when I visit Leah! We really enjoyed getting to know these to amazing women and can’t wait to stay in touch with them.
After our goodbyes we met with Liz and Neath, two staff members of JWOC, as well as Makara who is the director of the Journeys Within Tour Company in Cambodia. Makara took us on a tour of the squatters village behind JWOC where many of the students who attend the school live. As I talked about in my last post it was really eye-opening going to the village but especially interesting to have Makara telling us more about the village. We saw some kids that had just left JWOC who called out to us, “Teacher, teacher!”

When we were walking home from school we talked about going to bed early but when we arrived at V&A Valek, Andy’s wife, told us that she was going to Savon’s house warming party. There was no question that we would go. We changed and were ready to go see Savon, who we have become good friends with over the past two weeks. Andy told us that it would be a short Tuk Tuk ride but it actually ended up taking a while. We followed Valek on her motorbike (she is so cool) but we had to get out and walk on the road to Savon’s house. The party was great and her house was beautiful with marble floors and walls; we got to meet all her friends and family. We were dancing on the dirt roads for what felt like hours but it was so much fun. It was great that we were having such an awesome time while experiencing Khmai culture. I even learned a traditional Khmai dance and was doing that with some people for a bit! There were a few really cute babies there too! But by far the best part of the party was seeing Savon and her father-in-law together. They both have such wonderful spirits and were dancing, smiling and laughing. Her father had the warmest smile and he had KILLER dance moves for days. Every time people would try to imitate his moves, which no one could do as well as he did, he would switch things up and blow everyone away with his moves. We hope that we will get to see Savon’s friends and family during the rest of our time here.

Saturday
Today we didn’t have to go to school until noon because there aren’t many kids in the library on Saturdays. As I said, Nesa was out yesterday and will be out until Monday because she is graduating! Raya, another scholarship student, is also graduating in her class. We are so proud of both of them and we know that everyone at JWOC is too! When we got to JWOC it was lunchtime so there were no students there. This was kind of nice for us because we got to talk with some of the scholarships students. One of the students, Kimchhay, taught us the Khmer alphabet. There are 55 letters altogether but they look so interesting and beautiful. We are really enjoying getting to know all of the scholarship students and everyone at JWOC; they are all so amazing. Tomorrow we will go take a tour of the squatters village with another scholarship student who will tell us about all the projects that JWOC has done in the village.

No pictures for this post sadly but we will make sure to get some for our next post!

Love,
L&S