Day 55: Friday 11 December 2009 – Rice Drop Day.

Today was rice drop day at New Hope, the second Friday of the month.  With this one came two new delights – the huge smiles of two families I’ve been able to directly help through the generation of sponsorship and other support, meaning that the pressure to feed their families has been relieved, not just this month, but hopefully until they can stand on their own feet and support themselves.


Physically getting the rice, eggs and sauce home proves challenging to many, you'll see below.  One family juggled 50kg of rice and six humans!

Also, today I handed out the clothes and toys donated by friends in Hong Kong.  Thank you everyone!

Day 54: Thursday 10 December 2009 – Fashions on the Field.

How can I leave Cambodia without sharing with you some of the stand out looks from some of the country’s style ambassadors, Korean tourists, and others?   These images include some great winter outfits, completely out of context in the searing heat.

Enjoy the collection!

Day 53: Wednesday 9 December 2009 – Last Day of Teaching.

Due to tomorrow being “International Human Rights Day”, the Cambodian Government ruled that all schools and businesses close (except those tourist-revenue earners, of course).  At first this sounded absurd to me however given consideration, I suppose a day to mark Cambodian’s rights, considering all they had been through, wasn’t such a bad thing.  If they did in fact acknowledge the cause.

Anyway, tomorrow’s public holiday meant that today was my last day of teaching at New Hope.  Mentally, I was not prepared for this.  I really needed another day to psyche myself into the goodbyes.

The farewells were heart wrenching, beginning with a cluster of girls surrounding me after the end of their 3:00 PM class, and ended with a very public farewell for both Andrea and I (another volunteer, from the UK), by the entire school.  I was completely spoiled with cards, drawings, gifts, impromptu speeches and heartwarming hugs.  And to top it off, another farewell on Friday by Kemsour.

I continue to be flawed by the generosity of these people and their willingness to completely open up their hearts to complete strangers who filter in and out of their lives.

With all their kindness and tears, I easily forgot my own struggles of the past few months and found myself promising to return to New Hope and Siem Reap.   In my heart I know I can never turn my back on these children and their families.  I will be back one day soon.

Day 52: Tuesday 8 December 2009 – Retailing.

Today I raced around Siem Reap, hunting down glue, safety pins and ribbon to make swing tags for the remaining shirts made by the New Hope women.  (Sounds easy enough but believe me, it wasn’t).  The swing tags provided background on New Hope and a subtle, emotive plea to encourage tourists to purchase the product. 

I have managed to secure Rogue, one of the coolest boutiques and music outlets, to carry the shirts on a consignment basis.  The shirts will retail for US $20, with 75% going to the New Hope ladies.   Let’s hope it works and develops into a lucrative business!

See here the shirts in-store at Rogue, Siem Reap, so professionally modeled on Lisa (L) and Ann.  Oh, and by the way, that's (a very young) King and Queen in the background!

Day 51: Monday 7 December 2009 – Counting down and Princes Bitch Face

Time is literally flying by now, with this being my last week of teaching at New Hope.  In all honesty, I won’t be sorry to give up the daily lesson plans, which have begun to seriously challenge me.  The constant stress of coming up with something interesting that covers a range of ages and abilities in each of the four classes is beginning to stretch my teaching ability.  Obvious things like finger painting and other forms of craft are completely impossible with the little ones, purely due to the lack of facilities.  (How do you wash the hands of 30 under five kids when there is one tiny sink?).  As for the other end of the range, how does one cater for a class of 30 teenagers, a quarter of whom can barely speak English?  I manage, of course, but I think two months of this is my creative limit!

Anyway, the count down was literal today as we taught the little ones a new song about a rocket launching into space, (supported by my hideous drawing of a rocket on the whiteboard which embarrassingly, they later copied).  What’s more important however is that they did master the countdown from ten. 

The last class today produced the ugly side of teenagers, a case of the leader of a pack, bullying one of the really gorgeous girls.  The victim sat, face down at her desk for the entire class, sobbing silently.  No one was able to break through, the Khmer teacher, her friends or me.  Even gentle hugs and back rubbing failed to produce the slightest reaction.  After class, she sat there for another five minutes, refusing to raise her head.  I was so frustrated and completely powerless.   

Day 49: Saturday 5 December 2009 – More visitors.

After a slow and emotional start to the weekend after yesterday’s experience with the villagers, I caught up with Amanda and Phil who were visiting Siem Reap from Hong Kong to do the half marathon.  Major effort by them - not only for starring in the marathon, but tolerating my ear bashing over dinner.  (I don't get many visitors and there are so many stories to share!).  

After dinner and a visit to the night market (the beginnings of Christmas shopping), I went back to their hotel to collect a huge stash of clothes and school supplies that Amanda had brought up from Hong Kong.  An email to Expat.com had produced practically an entire suitcase full of clothes that I plan to distribute at Friday’s rice drop.  A special thanks to Sasha Koch, Anita Ng, Louise, Ross Bolton, Thierry Halbroth and Phillip Haw for the clothes, to Michelle and Hamish Bruce for the school supplies, and Vince Viola from McCann for helping to arrange waiving Amanda’s excess baggage through Cathay Pacific.