WEEK 3: Down came the rain and washed the ceiling out.

By week 3, we had settled into a good routine. We had all the names down, were teaching with (slightly) more ease, and rice and soup everyday seemed totally normal (but thank god for Cambodian instant coffee packets... the teachers need a break during the day... we became addicted!). In our constant need to do as much as we could for the kids and give them all the things we had when we were young, we set out to get the materials needed for a big craft session that would culminate in a costume show. On the insistence of the staff, we dragged 3 of them to the large market in Phnom Penh and bought paper, ribbon, glitter, fabric, etc, etc, etc!! We spent many hours in our room (again, thank god for coffee!) designing and pre-cutting the masks, pre -cutting material, and making neat little piles of stuff. Since there were so many kids, we had them divided into 3 groups, and did 3 consecutive craft nights this week. The first night was HECTIC, by by night 3, we had a very orderly system going on! We let the kids design whatever they wanted for themselves to wear during the show the following week. They loved getting to use all of the different materials (Aunt Gale - the stickers you sent were a HUGE hit! Although I think some were smuggled out and used in the centre black market!). The staff also loved seeing the kids in costume and I think that they are going to try to make a craft room for this process to continue in the future!

When we first arrived at the centre, it was blazing hot every day. However this week, we got a real introduction to the Cambodian rainy season. It poured rain every day. The kids were not hindered at all by this. As soon as the rain started, the boys stripped down and ran naked all around in the rain...!! The girls played too in their clothes. It looked like so much fun that, after taking these photos, we jumped into the moat around the dining hall fully clothed and splashed around for an hour with the kids. They thought it was hilarious that we had joined them. It was one of the most brilliant scenes ever watching these kids run around stark naked (or almost naked) playing in the rain!

Later that night, we had a big party to attend. We were invited by Seng Long, the third Director of the centre, to attend his son's first birthday party. If you have money in Cambodia, celebrating your first son's first birthday is a big deal. Invitations were handed out, but we didn't get many details. We finally dragged ourselves out of the rain and went to get ready for the big party, only to realize that the power and the water were off (this happens a lot in the villages)!!! So we had to get ready, hair soaked with rain water and no straighteners or shower, and put on a make shift combo of the clothes we had and the dressy stuff we had and make it look conservative. When we went to the front to get in the car that would take us and the rest of the staff that had been invited into the city, we were horrified to discover that the women had spent the whole day getting ready. They were in beautiful (and a bit scandalous!) traditional dresses, with perfect hair and make-up! Needless to say, we felt a bit under dressed with our weird outfits and fuzzy rain hair (did I mention that we were also sweating profusely, as rainy season does not equal cold weather!). When we got to the party, we had barely sat down before the women started pouring the whisky bottles that were on the tables! The poured insanely strong drinks and mixed it with anything and everything available! It was horrible tasting, but most of them got drunk pretty quickly! That night, looking our worst, we were stared at like it was our wedding and we were the guests to watch. The local people on the street stared at us through the gates and the guests stared at us from the tables. Everyone wanted to dance with us, and I think somewhere along the way Mars might have been married off to one of the village chiefs. (This man is village chief... he likes you...). We learned Khmer dancing, which is basically a very immature form of dancing that involves not touching each other and dancing around a fixed object (in this case a tree on a table) in a circle! It was a great night, and definitely an experience we won't forget.
To top off a great and strange week, we arrived home from the party to find that the leak in my roof that had been there since my arrival had finally succumbed to the pressures of rainy season - a massive one square foot section of my ceiling had collapsed onto my floor!! For the rest of my time at the centre, I had the pleasure of living with a new sky-light!! (Things take a while to get fixed... we were still waiting on the toilet situation to be resolved....)

L to R: Pheak in his mask as we helped get the crafts underway; The second group in their costumes; Rim leading the rain dance; Rithy and the naked boys; Cheers to Whisky!; Us with Sopheap and the birthday boy.