Down by the riverside

On Thursday morning (28th Aug), a friend, Elysha, and I went down to the riverside to witness early morning Khmer life and the sunrise. The Khmer attend the river side en-mass to exercise, eat, chat and feed pigeons. Scattered amongst the people are homeless children asleep, beggers and also people selling their wares, often disabled or elderly.

Neighbourhood stroll

Recycling
he hoots the red plastic horn in his hand
so people will come out and sell him cans which he can onsell for a profit.

Home made kite
notice the mud splatter up the wall

This lady makes awesome waffles.

Broom and duster selling


Boys who wanted to pose for the camera

Life's little Challenges

Life here is really not that much different to Australia....

You can still get ants in your sugar, insects in your rice, mice in the kitchen and little lizards..okay geckos, in the house. Glass still shatters when you drop it, the oil in the pan can still catch alight and send flames up high enough to scare you. You can still lock yourself out of your house, washing machines still break down, drains still get clogged, and the neighbours dogs still keep you awake....

and when too many happen in the one day, you can still want to cry, put on some worship music, or go out for a prayer/photo walk and be thankful that you have sugar, rice, a kitchen, glassware, a washing machine, a stove, a house and plumbing.... not too sure about being thankful for the neighbours dog though...

Fiona

Hope School Week One

Well we have just had our first week of teaching at Hope School. The resources here are minimal, but then so is the administrative expectations, discipline issues and playground duties, so it is swings and roundabouts. Simple things like the pictured covered outdoor eating / work area for staff really make the place comfortable. There is a fan above the area and a kitchen next to it. I have enjoyed using this space for eating and for lesson preparation during a free period. The school has wireless Internet so staff can sit at these tables with their laptops and have access to the school network and Internet. I guess wireless was cheaper to establish than running cabling across the site.

This week the school had major problems with power, so often our rooms were dark and the fans inoperable, while the classrooms were over 30 degress, but I didn't hear any child have a major winge. The power supply was to be expanded during the holidays, but obviously wasn't, it should be this weekend though. The school owns a generator that kicks in when the power is out, though it was struggling with its own issues, so we had power outages more than often than we had power. Thankfully the server and main printer have a UPS (Uninteruptable Power Supply) so lesson prep was gernerally not affected if one was using a laptop.

The teachers are predominantly Kiwi, Aussie, Brits and Americans. We all get on very well, though we do not always understand each others colloquialisms which leads to plenty of laughs. The school support staff and classroom helpers are Khmer Christians. The children are a mix of Korean, Khmer and Europeans with a smattering of English, Americans and Aussies. - 25 Nationalities in all.

Setting the scene

Hi all,

As you can imagine Phnom Penh is culturally quite different to Nowra Australia. Rather than explain at length the myriad of differences I have decided to post just a few photos so you can see for yourself the flavour of sensory input we face each day as we go about our daily lives.

God Bless

Fiona

Traffic around the corner from our house.

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Poverty as we walk home from the market

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Security guards ( this is our school gate)

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A Buddist monk walks in front of our house