Oct 5th

Pagoda

Today we took some of the children to the pagoda. It’s a big Cambodian Holiday here right now (Pchum Ben "Ancestor's Day", a Cambodian religious holiday when many Cambodian Buddhists pay their respects to deceased relatives by cooking meals for monks and making offerings to the "ghost" of the deceased relatives) so they go to the temples to pray. We have about half the children left in the village while the others who have some sort of relative to visit has gone to do so…therefore it feels extra important to give the children left behind some extra care and loving right now.

So, the drive there was just over 1 ½ hours long, which wouldn’t have been so bad thinking in western terms where everyone would usually get their own seat on a comfortable bus. Well, we have THE Truck, the one that takes us to the market, the one that gives the children a ride to school, the one that does most everything around here…and this is what it looks like when you try to squeeze more than 40 people on it…

...and what your ass feels like after 1 ½ hour with a little boy sleeping in your lap, I won’t even mention.

And then there was the huge amount of food that the truck also had to carry

Food that more than just we got to enjoy

Time to climb about a 1000 steps to go to pray for good health and luck

A little to touch for the smallest ones which made for a good work out for me and a nice shiny forehead.

But well worth it as the view was spectacular

And it was great to go into the pagoda and have the children show me their traditions...they just loved it!

A really nice day spent with both the older and the younger kids that also offered some great sights and cultural knowledge

A nice break from yesterdays work on planning the schedule, getting the registers all in order, setting up for my art project and arranging the volunteer work.

Oh, and not to forget that I finished my day off with trying out chicken feet for dinner! Taste was good, but it's extremely chewy and hard to swallow.

Oct 3rd

Church

This might come as a shock to many, but on this Sunday morning I went to mass together with John and Kathy and some of the children who choose to go to church. I wanted to see what it was all about, and it’s also nice to get out of the village from time to time and to have breakfast in town. Even more shocking is that I actually liked it!? Who would have ever thought? Perhaps the fact that it was all in Khmer and I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying played a part in it all, but I found myself enjoying listening to all the singing and watching all the people around me. It was just a very relaxing atmosphere and it gave me an hour to sort of sink into myself and just be. I was touched and impressed by the peoples belief and what it seemed to mean to them, happy for them to have it to turn to I guess…but as for me, I’m definitely still my own God J

Oct 2nd

My Saturday fun! Hanging with the children.

Watching the older children's dance class, they are so good!

Saturdays are extra special as it gives me the opportunity to talk to this little boy!

Surrounded by 200 children, but still miss this little boy

Art Project

In an effort to bring out all the talent that we have in our children I am starting up art classes and attempting to make it part of their education. There is plenty of talent in this village and I would like to give them the opportunity to further develop their skills and to show that off. I also want for all children to be given the chance to explore their artistic side.

I’m very excited to have the support of John and Kathy to get this started and my goal is to make this project self sufficient. I’m hoping that we can get a collection together so that the kids can sell their work and for new supplies to be able to be purchased.

Although exciting I also realize that it will be tough starting out with an empty classroom. Desks and supplies of all kinds are in need for this project to get started. Also, I will be teaching the class until we find an art teacher, so any teaching material and knowledge that can be shared is very welcomed.

Suggestions and help in any form will be greatly appreciated!

Sep 30th

Fireflies

Went to bed feeling like a princess inside of my pink heaven. As the light went out at 8.30pm the mosquito net around me was lid up by tiny little fireflies. Never seen one so close up before, strange looking little creatures with a "stomach" that lights up and gives the most amazing and tiny light in the night.

The painting

Starting to paint

with lots of concentration

only to have it all come off and we had to sandpaper all the walls down again

A little help from our cambodian friend

dust everywhere (this is crazy Kelsey :) )

Sep 29th

Painting, scraping, painting, scraping...

For two days now we've been working on getting our living room area painted, only to find out that the paint shop sold us the the wrong kind of paint and therefore we have now painted twice as well as scraped all the paint off and sandpapered twice. Two days of work for nothing, but we just had to laugh about it and then bring in all the older kids to help us...which made it so much more fun. It's a good group that we have and we all kept our mood up with some playing and teasing, dancing and singing going on. Doing it all over tomorrow again. Lucky it's a Cambodian holiday here right now, so the kids don't have school.

There are a lot of things going on here for my part. I'm trying to get everything organized for the volunteers for the new school year to start here. Getting the schedule together and organize the material for them to use and a teaching outline so that it's easy for them and they have something to follow. I am also gonna start an art project here! I've talked to John and Kathy about it and they think it sounds like a really good idea. So I have plenty of work to do in setting all of this up and looking for donors. Lots of exciting things going on!

Sep 27th

Russian Market, Pots of Clay and Happy Home

Went in to the market today, the Russian market, it's so big and overwhelming. I lasted 45 min and then I went to sit at Pots of Clay, where we were all meeting for lunch. I read my book and did some journaling, trying to write down all of the thousand thought I seemed to have in my head during the night. There are so many things I wanna get working on here.

We also went to visit happy home. Happy home is in Phnom Penh and it's were all the babies under 1 year lives before they come out to the village. If a child comes to us and is healthy it is put up for adoption (we have 3 babies ready for adoption at the moment), unless they have a sibling who is infected and is staying with us, cause they never wanna split family up. In that case they all come and stay with us in the village.

Face painting Sunday

Arranged a really fun but crazy afternoon with the kids today. One of the volunteers had facepaint with her that had been donated and we decided it would be a fun face painting sunday. Absolutely crazy with paint and kids everywhere, but they loved it and we had so much fun! I love the weekendfun!

Getting ready

Bringing out my artist skills, ha ha!

My happy clown

Hard at work

Batman was a really popular on

and balloons

and of course butterflies

Sep 25th

Wandering down the streets of Phnom Penh

We all went into town to do some sightseeing today. I dropped the other volunteers off at the Toul Sleng Museum (S-21) and then went off for a walking tour on my own. So nice to just walk aimlessly down the streets and watch the people live their lives. A nice morning spent on my own, and then I met up with everyone at Friends where John and Kathy treated us to a delicious lunch…feeling a bit spoiled.

Just a little bit of wiring going on

Single mom's quilting project

Expect quilts for Christmas everyone :)

Sep 24th

This morning I got to go into town to meet the new volunteer and bring him out to the village. It was a nice change of a morning to go in to the office and meet everyone working there and have a look at the quilting project that they have going on.

In the evening I was house watching for John and Kathy, taking care of the doggies as they stayed in Phnom Penh over the night. We had a movie night and then went to bed as usual at 8.30. However, I was woken up at 10.30pm by the dogs running around barking like crazy. So, I grab my flashlight sneak out of bed to see what's going on. I get out in the living room and see a mouse run across the room with the dogs chasing after it. I never thought a day would come when I'd feel happy over the fact that it was 'just' a mouse in the house. It's all a matter of perspective, and here I'm thankful for 'just' a mouse. I calmed the dogs down and snuggle up in bed again. Life is good.

Sep 23rd

Redecorating our common area for the volunteers.

It's been bugging me ever since I got here that there is no organization to our living room and work area. Since it's our home Kathy told me I could rearrange however I wanted it and right away we started moving furniture. We put up some curtains too and now the feel is so much better. Feels good to be in charge sometimes :)

A few more sweethearts

Sep 22nd

Changes

Ella has been here for 1½ years and was the one living with, and taking care of the volunteers. She has all of a sudden left as of yesterday and it seems they want me to take over some of the things that she was in charge of here. They are already (in a serious joking manner) talking about me staying for 6 months or more…hmm not sure how this happened. I’m happy to step up and take on some more responsibility though, it’s all happened pretty quickly, but I think it will be fun and a good experience. We will see how this all works out.

Oh, and yesterday night our 17 year old volunteer got stung by a scorpion in her room, and I had to try be the calm comforting person telling her it will be ok (really I was scared out of my mind)…lots of things happening in the village right now.

A few of my cuties