A puppet parade, hordes of kids and a lady boy show.

Hello crowds

What a truly incredible evening. I met up with my new Cambodian friend and after hanging out all afternoon we headed into town to watch the Siem Reap Puppet Parade. There were people everywhere and SO many kids!! The ginormous puppets are made by local NGO's. Grace House made a Clouded Leopard. The kids had SO much energy! They shouted and sang and chanted and jumped around all evening. I suppose for many of them, this parade is the biggest event the get to see/take part in all year. It was only slightly less than chaotic. :) But so much fun, and so incredibly hot and humid; all those bodies moving and so close together. Keeping up with all the kids and walking in the jammed crowed for an hour.....we came out looking like we'd just been in the pool with our clothes on. Afterwards I had dinner from a street vendor with my new Cambodian friend. We sat on the curb and watched the parade die down and ate out noodles. It was great! Later we went to watch her brother perform. Little did I know that he dances at a gay bar. He does a killer dance to 'Billy Jean.' There were a few lady boy acts as well. That's definitely something I've never seen before. It was pretty amazing. Oh, and her brother is 18. What an evening!

The Grace House Puppet!

Jubilant students :)

The Lobster

More photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151322163625442.814374.636050441&type=3&l=23e786ceb3

A most amazing day!

I've had one of the most memorable days. To start, we took a field trip to the Angkor Butterfly Centre this morning with 22 kids. :) This was our transportation:

For 40 mins. Nothing beats a Cambodian style school bus.

The Butterfly Centre was pretty amazing. There were butterflies everywhere, duh. The gardens were lush and green and there were so many different flowers in bloom. The centre had a room of all the caterpillars they're raising and huts full of beautiful cocoons. The kids had a blast running around and trying to catch the butterflies. :P When they got tired of that they all gathered in a little pavilion and started singing Khmer and English songs at the top of their voices: The ABC's, If You're Happy and You Know It, etc. 

My afternoon class went really well considering I didn't really plan anything. We were doing maths so I had each of them come up with 10 sums and 10 subtraction questions and then trade with a neighbour and answer the equations they'd come up with. I was surprised by some of the equations using numbers over 50 and even 100's (although it was 100-100.) These kids are brighter than we give them credit for. One boy took longer than the rest so he didn't have anyone to trade with when he finished writing his equations. I told him to do his own. Later, when I was looking over them I was blown away by what he'd done. In many of his problems he'd put the larger number second (eg. 8-9), but he still answered the equation. In the case of 8-9, he put 1, which isn't exactly true, it's -1, but that's not a concept they're even aware of. But he was still able to say what the difference was between the two numbers. I thought it was brilliant, even if it was wrong.

This evening I met up with a Cambodian friend and she took me too the most amazing thing I've seen. Every evening, on the side of the road, 100's of vendors set up their wares. There's a small pond with paddle boats, a stage, a Ferris Wheel, a fair atmosphere and not another Westerner in sight. Most of the vendors were selling clothes, shoes and jewelry. There was food for sale and a few fruit stalls. I bought a shirt, toothpaste, toothbrush, juice and a kilo of JACKFRUIT (I've finally bought jackfruti!!) for $5.25 (USD). It was amazing. As the sun set each vendor turned on a small light; I'm sure the electricity was leached from the nearby powerlines. After wandering around we headed back into town to meet some of her friends and headed to dinner at the food stalls. When I'd left my guesthouse the power had been out. On our way back into town you could tell who had their own generator and who didn't. Hotels, the supper markets and larger stores had power but the small restaurants and shops didn't. Many of the smaller establishments had candles set up. The city was at half luminescence. As we were leaving dinner the entire city lost power. Everything, everywhere, no electricity. It was magical. A metropolis without power. What a thought. It only last a few minutes but.....wow....it was wow. What a day! 

Just what is is that I'm doing in Cambodia?

I suppose I should let ya'll know just what it is that I'm doing over here in Cambodia. The big picture is me travelling around South East Asia for a few months; adventuring, volunteering, learning, gazing in wonderment at all that is present in the world. Currently I'm in Siem Reap, Cambodia for three months. I'm here with a charity organization called Globalteers. They're help support many NGO's around town, with funds, volunteers, supplies, etc. The project I'm working with is called Grace HouseCommunity Centre. Grace House provides English classes for ~200 kids aged 5-18, vocational training (weaving and electrical wiring) and food for many of the kids and their families. I teach English lessons to kids who are 8-12 and of a level comparable to kindergarten-grade 2. It's grand. I have one class in the morning (2 hours), lunch break (2 hours) and a second class in the afternoon (2 hours). I teach the same material in both classes, more or less, so once I've done it in the morning the afternoon is just a repeat. The kids are great, they have such respect for their teachers, especially English teachers and they are so eager and willing to learn. I rarely have to tell them to quite down or pay attention or get them to stop mucking about. There's no way it kids at home would behave the same. There are 5 levels of class at Grace House, ranging from the very young (5-7) to the older kids (16-18). Each class has a Khmer teacher and at least one volunteer. In the older classes, the Khmer teacher teaches one of the hours but in my class I teach both of the hours. Many of the kids who come to Grace House where the same clothes every day and the only reason the brush their teeth is because we provide them with toothbrushes and toothpaste and they brush their teeth during the break.

Playing football during a break

My morning class :)

Goofing off before class.

The weaving ladies washing their materials

Better late than never right?

Tomorrow I will have been in Siem Reap, Cambodia for one month. I figure better late than never in starting a blog right? I've been putting it off for so long with excuses like, 'I don't have time,' 'I don't know what to write,' 'I'm too tired,' 'I'll start it tomorrow.' Lately though I've been thinking of all the people I know who don't have Facebook and would like to hear about some of my adventures here in SE Asia. So today I finally start writing something. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up or how often I'll update it, but I'm going to try. :)
Instead of attempting to fill you in on ALL the stuff I've been doing since I got here, I thought I'd write out a list of all the crazy/weird/odd/different/cool observations I've had.

1 – It's bloody HOT, and humid, all day, every day. The nights are slightly cooler. In fact, the evening temperatures are just about ideal. Unfortunately, they occur at night; the day temps are in the high 30's (C) and the humidity is around 55% or so. It's rained once since I've been here. Although, rain is hardly what it did. A few drops of water happened to fall from the sky and if you were lucky enough to be outside for those 5 minutes you may have been graced to feel a drop or two. I miss variances in the weather.

2 – The traffic here is at first glace chaotic but on further observation you see that it's quite an organized chaos. They generally drive on the right hand side. But of you want to turn left, then you merge over to the other side of the road, make the turn, and then merge back over to the right side of the road. The two best pieces of advice I've received about riding my bike around town are, 'Never stop or start suddenly,' and 'just keep moving, they don't understand what you're doing when you stop.' If you happen to be in the wrong place then it's not a huge deal, everyone goes slow enough that they just move around you. There are no stop signs and only two or three traffic lights in all of Siem Reap. It may look chaotic, but it works quite well.

3 – It is possible to carry just about anything (live or dead pigs/piglets, chickens, a refrigerator, 8 people, building materials, bags of rubbish, etc) if you have a bike, moto or tuk-tuk.

4 – The people here must have amazing balance. From an early age they can sit in front of or behind the driver of a moto, they can stand in front of the driver of a moto or a bicycle, and they can sit sideways or astride on a bicycle carrier. Then the driver has to be able to pedal/drive with that extra weight. It's amazing.

5 – The locals have fabulous, hard, well shaped nails and both the males and females grow them out to indicate that they are not farmers. I am very jealous.

6 – There are dogs everywhere, of all shape and colour and breed. Most of them are small/medium sized. I haven't seen any large dogs. They don't seem to belong to anyone. For all that this is a very poor country, the dogs appear to find enough to eat; very few of them look starving.

7 - Even though there are dogs everywhere, you don't see their poop at all. You would like it'd be on the street, on the side of the road, under every step; but it's not. I wonder were the do their business.

8 – There is a sever lack of grey haired elders. There are lots of young kids running around, many of the businesses are run by young adults or middle aged people but you hardly see anyone over the age of 60 or so. An entire generation of individuals was wiped out 30-40 years ago.

9 – Cambodians don't eat any dairy. It's likely because they don't have refrigerators to keep dairy cool. Most of their shopping is done the day to ingredients get cooked and electricity here is expensive. So no cheese for me. :(

10 – Gas is $1.20 USD a litre.

 A monk at Wat Bo, just across the street from where I'm staying.

 Villages in the flood plains of Tonle Sap Lake.

 Where the locals go to shop.

 The floating/on stilts village of Kompong Phluk

 A temple at Sambor Prei Kuk

The winning team!