For Crying Out Loud! 21/09/09

Khmer word of the Day: NGO Ong Kaa Krao rot taa pii baal
Weather: Hot and Wet. Again.
Day 2 of the Patchum Ben Festival here so another day off.
I have never spent so much time in my life imagining how I would silence a baby. Don’t think my cruel and of course I would never do it, but the baby next door NEVER STOPS CRYING! It goes all day (when trying to study) and all night (when trying to sleep). This morning it was so bad at about 5:30am that I had to go to the drastic measure of closing all the windows and just relying on the fan to stop me sweltering. It has become a common phrase in the house now ‘what time did the baby wake you up?’ ‘Do you think that baby is sick?’ Anyway rant over...!

We had the most enormous monsoon yesterday. I was chilling in my room, when the others went to market to get some lunch bits, when this almighty noise began. All the roofs around here are made of corrugated iron (although I can’t think why, it is boiling in the sun and makes so much noise when it monsoons!) so the noise is immense. I had to leg it (well, hobble and hop) my way upstairs to the roof terrace to bring in the laundry, language work and furniture to stop it from getting soaked. So by the time I got back downstairs I realised that all the windows in our rooms were open and rain was pouring through. I came off worst here as my windows were directly facing the direction of the rain. Put it this way, my unearthed electrical extension was sat in a relative pond on the floor and my fan (which was on) was soaked. Scary moment. Can’t believe I actually touched it now but managed to mop everything up then go around closing everyone else’s windows without too much water damage.
Spent the rest of the afternoon going through all my language stuff and getting really quite frustrated with it as is getting progressively a lot harder! I would feel better if when I tried to converse with Khmer people I could get a response. They mostly just stare at you blankly as they expect you to be speaking English and have probably never heard Khmer spoken with a foreign accent (or so our teacher says!).
I then went down to Smiles, the lovely little wireless cafe place and had a chat with my parents on video skype. If anyone wants to do this e-mail me! We hung out there forever and eventually headed off for some dinner with the promise of returning later as it was Fabio’s birthday (a German NGO worker who helps run the project with street kids at Smile who we have all become quite friendly with). We had noodles at our usual street cafe in the market which were ok but I thought they tasted a bit different. The only issue with eating there is you get a lot of beggars approaching you and it is really hard to know what to do. The general advice from our Khmer teacher and VSO colleagues is not to feel you have to give and if you do only give to the elderly and disabled. Never to the children as the money does not go to them and perpetuates the problem of street children as they will be sent begging rather than to school if we give them money. However, I didn’t finish my food so I gave them that and they finished it all hungrily. Sarah and I then headed back off the Smiles and had a really nice time with the German NGO workers and then some teachers (English and Russian) visiting from PP. However, when we were sat there my tummy started to feel awful and I was sweating like mad so I had to rush home. Really surprised I made it to be honest, thought I would have to pull over to puke on the way back. So that was a fun night all around. I Managed to get some sleep though (until the baby started at some ridiculous hour!) and feel a lot better this morning.

So I need to practice my Khmer numbers before I head to the laundry and Smiles for lunch and to upload this blog!

Love xx