Week 25: Bring in the Cutting Edge!

Sunday 22/03/09

Well, I can safely say that there is no shortage of events for me to write about this week! Last week Savoeurn brought down one copy of the new Starter and Elementary Cutting Edge text books so we could have a look at them before the final decision to buy them for the school. We were all very pleased with them so we went on a mission to Kampot on Sunday to get enough for all of our students. Unfortunately the trip was unsuccessful because the shop wanted to charge much more than it would cost for them in Phnom Penh so Savoeurn said he would buy them during the week. This meant that we only had one text book to teach each class with which wasn't ideal but we really needed to start teaching this week because we only have about 3 more weeks of teaching left and need to make sure the Cambodian teachers will be able to carry on teaching Cutting Edge when we leave.

Returning to CLC on Monday we found the basketball court builders hard at work laying bricks to mark the boundaries of the court. It was very exciting to finally see it coming together!

Tuesday afternoon was accompanied by a massive rainstorm and subsequently an absence of Cambodian teachers and half of our students. Unfortunately this meant that an unattended class of kindergarten students plagued our classes in which the students were being particularly rowdy. I can tell you that two hours of trying to get heard above a class of 25 noisy students, a windy rainstorm and constantly slamming wooden windows and doors was not easy on the vocal chords. Let alone that, but the school was expecting a visit from the Prince that afternoon as he, as the King's advisor, was spending a few days in the village to see if it was suitable for a visit from the King. Fortunately he spent the afternoon at the CVTC instead.

The next morning Sarim, who would have been helping me with my class, didn't show up again as her father was sick. However, I decided to go ahead with starting to use the Cutting Edge books anyway. Fortunately the students were really focused and unusually well-behaved which worked out pretty well because the Prince decided to drop by that morning with his video recorder. Apparently he enjoys making videos and was making a 2 hour presentation on the village for the King to see. I was wondering if he was "the Prince" or if there were many princes so I asked Sara who said that he was perhaps a brother of the King but that there were a lot of princes.

That morning we looked across the pond to see not only Paa but a procession of enforcements proceed down the gravelly path towards the Red House. She had been asked the night before to cook lunch for the Prince and 10 Community Based Organization members from the village. So the Prince came to tea at the Red House and we had delicious battered prawns and juicy juicy mangoes. Over lunch he spent an hour or two asking the CBO members what they did and how the village had changed since BAB had arrived and also suggesting new ideas for the development of the village.

On Wednesday I started teaching Beginners Cutting Edge to the CVTC producers with Savorn (an ex-Youth Team member who is being sponsored by BAB to go to university - part of the deal is that he helps the project by teaching English and helping to run CLC) at 12:30 and with Theary at 4pm. And back at CLC Tom started teaching the Starter level Cutting Edge with a new class of Youth Team members and CLC teachers at 1pm. Tom's class seems to have very good attendance although I'm not sure how the attendance levels will be at the CVTC. On Thursday they said they couldn't study because they had a big order which was overdue and were too busy. I guess we'll have to see how it works out and make changes if necessary. It was of course a little tricky teaching with just one book and we were hoping to have enough copies by next week. However, on Friday when we met Savoeurn here in Phnom Penh (we're here to help out with the second and third round of the 5-year UWCSEA scholarships), he said he hadn't had time to buy them yet. Fortunately we knew a shop down the road from the BAB office and the lady said she would have enough brought in by Sunday afternoon when we're going to return to Chamcar Bei.

Yesterday we spent a long, hot day at the Cambodian Dump Children's Centre invigilating the second English and Maths exam for 20 potential scholars. We also oversaw and marked an interactive group activity where the students had to work in 4 groups of 5 to build the tallest tower possible out of newspaper. We met up with Kevin Morley (who had come down to do the interviews) again in the evening for dinner, after which we met up with 5 students from UWCSEA who had arrived that morning for their Project Week which they'll be spending in Chamcar Bei with us building a house and teaching English.

Anyway, must go now as the 7 top scorers in yesterdays activities will be arriving soon with their families to receive more information about UWCSEA and for further interviews - who will be the lucky two???

Week 24: Birthday parties and Basketball courts

Saturday 14/03/09

Most of this week was fairly uneventful up until Friday. We were supposed to have the Cutting Edge books ready on Monday but of course we didn't so Joss and I had to do some last-minute lesson planning AGAIN. Hopefully we should have at least one copy to work from by next Monday.

All week Savoeurn has been promising a meeting with another building contractor for the basketball court and on Thursday morning he finally delivered! Although he suddenly told me he had the contractor waiting for a meeting when I was five minutes into my morning class I was still pleased on some level haha. The meeting was far more arduous than any class with Savoeurn and the contractor talking heatedly in Khmer that was too fast and probably too rude for me to follow. Eventually they came to a decision and Savoeurn took fifteen minutes to type it all up into a nice neat contract that took forty-five minutes to carefully explain to me in English. Eventually we all thumb-printed the contract to make it official and the contractor promised to return tomorrow with materials so we could give him the first installment of his pay.

So bright and early Joss and I commuted to Kampot to withdraw cash from the Basketball fund. This worked out pretty well since we were able to pick up some party snacks and a really tasty cake for my birthday party on Friday night. As promised the contractor started work on the basketball court on Friday morning.

The basketball court finally being built was a pretty great b'day pressie but I also got some other pretty memorable ones. I got a great book about Ladakh from my family that my mum carefully smuggled into Joss's care the week before. I got some nice cards and a funny luggage tag from the Ames clan.... and I got a bunch of coconuts. Not just any coconuts either, coconuts that required a long and drawn out story. Apparently Phirom, Lalin and Bo were trying to think of a good present and they remembered we really like fresh coconuts. Unfortunately, by the time they had figured this out there was quite a storm going on. Phirom decided to climb the tree in the rain anyway and Lalin told me he was yelling "Phirom! You crazy!!" at the top of his voice as is the Khmer custom among friends to which Phirom replied "No I'm not crazy, its for Tom's present!". Thats how crazy our students are. I also had lots of fun and exercise getting the coconuts open with a realllllly blunt cleaver on Saturday.

The party itself was great fun. At least half the youth team showed up along with most of the staff. Savouern was still in Chamcar Bei so he came as well bringing some exciting news. As soon as he arrived at the party he got a phone call and talked away from the house for a while and when he finished he came back grinning from ear to ear and explained that the King of Cambodia had expressed an interest in visiting the project before Khmer New Year. He also informed me afterwards that the King is a big basketball fan and would like to play with us if he visits. Savoeurn thinks this is a good excuse to speed up the construction. The party went crazy after that with youth team members blasting raucous Khmer tunes and dancing, drinking and generally partying while the staff looked on happily from behind their beers, occasionally joining in with dancing. Even Sarim and Pech showed up about half way through the party (on the same moto, which caused quite a sensation and elicited lots of teasing from the youth team) and got right into the swing of things. Just before the party started, when we had tied down the last balloon, we had worried that we might have gone overboard buying lots of fruit, snacks and a 24 pack of Angkor and Coke. We realised we had been right on the money pretty quickly when everyone started challenging each other to beer downing contests. But of course being Khmer they slowed down or switched to Coke after two beers which made for a far more pleasant party. We played lots of weird and wonderful party games as well. One game involved putting a balloon between two people's foreheads while both of them pushed until the balloon popped. Luckily nobody drank too much so nobody got more than a light collision of heads.

It was a really great way to celebrate my birthday in Cambodia, despite alllllll the tidying up :)

Week 23: Hilary's visit

07/03/09

After spending Monday night in PP catching up on some much-needed sleep at the BAB office, we hopped in a tuk-tuk to the airport before breakfast to pick up Tom’s mum, Hilary, who would be spending a week with us in Kep. Although she has visited us once already, in November, we were particularly looking forward to having her again to show her the real Red House experience as we had arranged for her to stay there with us for 2 nights.

The three of us and Hilary’s bag full of basketballs, books and baking supplies tuk-tuked back into town for breakfast at the Boddhi Tree guesthouse followed by a visit to Lucky Supermarket for some special cooking ingredients, the office to meet Vy, the Russian Market for anything and everything and finally the FCC (!!!) for a delicious end to a well-filled day.

After filling Wednesday morning with odd jobs we caught the 1pm bus to Chamcar Bei. An uneventful 3 and a half hours later we were standing at the entrance to the village on the main road waiting for Sara and co to pick us up by moto as unseasonal clouds began to cluster and loom. Fortunately, the rain never came (although we have been having an unusual number of downpours recently) and we spent a nice evening letting Tom win Monopoly again.

By Thursday morning Hilary had already shown herself to be an accomplished Red Housian, much proven by her excellent standard of flashlight and ability to sleep through the sound of laboriously nibbling rats.

The morning at CLC wasn’t incredibly exciting although Hilary gave out some pens and pencils to the students. During my teacher training class I taught the teachers a few new teaching games and activities and after our classes Hilary, who is herself a teacher trainer, gave us some useful tips, especially on CLC classroom control. However, in the afternoon we bought balloons at the market and had a massive water balloon game which when down with a cacophony of shrieks and laughter.
But the day’s excitement wasn’t over yet! When Tom and I had finished teaching I ferried Tom and Hilary to David’s guesthouse, about 10 minutes away by moto, where we were met by Saran. When the guest house eventually opens she’ll be in charge of the kitchen so she’s been begging us to teach her how to cook Western food. As it happens, Hilary is an excellent cook and so we arranged a pizza-cooking lesson at the guest house which has the only oven in the village. While Saran and Hilary got started in the kitchen Tom and I worked up an appetite by going back to the Red House to get the forgotten cheese. When we returned, Sok and Sara, the rest of the Tasting Committee, had arrived and soon enough the kitchen had churned out 6 delicious pizzas of various textures and tastes. Yummmmm.

Friday was another full day as we visited the Kampong Trach Caves again in the morning before showing Hilary the sleepy town of Kampot where we had lunch and dropped by the Epic Arts café for carrot cake. With full stomachs we headed to Kep where we’d booked 2 nights at Botanica. We spent our Saturday in Kep playing boules at Botanica and chilling out by the poolside at Kep Lodge before going to the Crab Market for dinner followed by a visit to the Riel Bar. The weekend felt like a nice break from teaching but I remember what a strange feeling it was when, while at Kep Lodge, my mind wandered to our time at CLC and I realized that even though we were only about 45 minutes away from Chamcar Bei, it felt like we were in a completely different world. Tom agreed and we both started thinking about how it would be when we leave in a month’s time. Will it all feel like a dream again?

Week 22: The Kep trio!

03/03/09

This week saw some significant changes and events in Chamcar Bei, some of which were expected. We had the long awaited Kep trio running and cycling events which took up the whole weekend and quite a lot of the week for planning and preperation, which was all worthwhile because the events were a lot of fun for everybody involved and a substantial amount of money was raised for the BAB Kep Community Development project.

We found out last weekend that Srey, the head of the Livelihoods Project, is leaving for a job closer to home and her young children near Sihanoukville. Because she has done so much for the community of Chamcar Bei, BAB and the Community Based Organisation (CBO) members coorganized a leaving party on Wednesday night this week. The party was a great success and a nice example of the community organization skills Srey has taught to some of the Chamcar Bei residents since BAB's involvement in the party was mainly financial (extra power until midnight!). There was a huge meal of Khmer laksa-like curry with duck, rice noodles, salad and baguette which we have decided is the staple party food in Cambodia since we had exactly the same dish at Phirom's house a few weeks ago. We were also forced to participate in tradtional Khmer dancing with our youth team friends. This basically entails walking slowly around a table while gracefully (or not in my case) weaving your hands in the air. This is fun until you realise you have done one and a half laps in the last four songs! As is the custom at these parties the music was also so loud that conversation was made rather difficult. But what kind of Khmer party would it be without some dodgy Cambodian pop blasted on a really bad sound system? But seriously it was a really nice send-off for Srey and a good celebration of the work she has done in Chamcar Bei.

Joss and I left the party relatively early as we were quite tired after a full day's teaching. We said goodbye to Srey and her family and headed back to the Red House. About fifteen minutes later we were looking over towards the party and saw some car lights come on and start heading towards the pond. We assumed whoever it was just needed the extra space to turn around until the car was practically on the weir. As it turned out, when Erin and Sara said goodbye to Srey and her family, it was decided that they should be given a "ride" home aallll the way to the Red House and so having driven about a hundred metres Srey's family walked them the rest of the way. Of course having arrived at the Red House Srey's daughter was forced to sing us every English song she has ever learnt in school for the hundredth time that evening, but it's still cute :).

Teaching this week was fairly uneventful in comparison to the weekend so I don't really have that much to say about it. We taught role plays on shopping/going to the market and numbers.

On Friday afternoon Joss and I went to Botanica guest house in Kep so we would be ready for the meeting on Saturday morning during which our duties for the weekend would be allocated. Staying at Botanica was a pleasure as we expected it would be, and we got a good night's rest which was fortunate because on Saturday afternoon we got busy with the events! We went inside Knai Bang Chatt for the first time for our bus monitor meeting so it was interesting to see what was inside the imposing walls. Our jobs, partners and buses for the weekend were finalized and we went back to Botanica for a quick lunch before picking people up for the 10km bike ride at 3pm.

Since my bus was for the spectators rather than the participants we didn't start picking people up at the guest houses until it was almost time for the race to start. The bus I was responsible for could seat 45 people and we had a whopping 6 supporters to pick up before heading to the finish line at CLC. When we were about half way to Chamcar Bei some ominous black clouds that had been gathering broke into torrential rain just as the horn blew for the bike ride to begin. It was a bit sad to arrive in Chamcar Bei in the pouring rain because the beautiful hills were eclipsed by the downpour and the village was a lot less attractive as a result. I was quite dissapointed because I had been anticipating showing people how amazing the village is but in the rain it looked rather bleak in comparison to its usual radiance. This was remedied when we arrived at CLC to be greeted by literally every child Joss and I teach (in their best school uniform) lining the road to CLC like a miniature Khmer tour de France. The children and other village residents made for a really nice atmosphere at the finish line despite the weather and thankfully the rain over CLC wasn't so heavy and the kids weren't drenched.

Having dropped the supporters off at the guest houses after the bike event we grabbed a quick shower at Botanica and when to the sailing club for the big dinner event. This was nice because we had a brief opportunity to talk to some of the prospective 3YO students in their last year at UWC. Unfortunately having been there for ten minutes we were summoned to another bus monitor meeting and I got the short straw of taking people back to the guest houses for the last hour or so of the dinner. Unfortunately the buses weren't that well organized so this got a little hairy and I didn't finish till around 11pm. Thankfully Joss saved me some food .

Next morning Joss and I were up at the inhumane time of 5am to organize transport to the running events commencing at 6:30am and 7am. These trips were fairly uneventful although apparently one bus for runners didn't arrive on time and it took some miracle working from Vy and Antonia to compensate and somehow get everyone to the starting points on time. My bus arrived on time and all the supporters were ready and waiting when the first runners started coming in. As I had been predicting to Joss for weeks, our friend Hal Quin came in first place for the half marathon and his two younger brothers came 2nd and 3rd in the 10km run! Joss and I showed a few people around the Red House (including one of the next generation 3yo UWC students) and everybody seemed to love it just as much as us. There was a slightly drawn out group of speeches before the cyclists handed over their bikes to village children but the ceremony was still quite well done and everything was wrapped up in time for the participants and supporters to visit the CVTC shop and purchase pretty much everthing that has been made so far. This was really great because the project was very much in need of a boost since the women have been working very hard for months for very little reward up until this point. It's great that the project will have wind in its sails now for some time. On Monday morning Joss got the worst job instead of me as she had to leave Botanica at 4:15 am to get people back to P.P. for a 10:15am flight. Lucky, for I was spared another early start as my bus left at lunch time. We got everyone safely back to P.P. with no problems and stayed the night to pick up my Mum from the airport on Tuesday.

So the Kep trio events were a great success once again and just over USD$50,000 was raised for the village - not counting the refreshments and CVTC products bought. Thank you to everyone who helped and participated in this event. Joss and I would like to say another thank you to the people who brought us teaching/basketball supplies and toothbrushes from Singapore as well as some much appreciated ant powder!

P.S. an upcoming event that is FAR more important than marathons and parties etc. drumroll please..... we are getting a kitten in two weeks!!!!!!