Yesterday I drove the moto with Lisa on the back for an hour each way on the highway and then on a dusty dirt road out past out door duck farms and very free range chickens through fields of rice and water buffalo. There was a strong warm side wind that made staying to the side of the road a little tricky. When we crossed one of the many bridges the side wind was blocked and I felt how much I had been leaning against the wind. I had to adjust to avoid a crash.
We went out to the school Angkearhdei and met with the principle Sot Urn. He is from that village and has a real goal for educating the children there. These teachers struggle to keep kids in elementary school. They are poor farm kids whose parents need them to work on the farm or go to Thailand to earn extra money. One of the teachers told me that it’s hard to interest teens in high school because they can go to Thailand and in a month make more than a teacher makes in a year in Cambodia. They just laugh at the teachers. He said. Sounds like the drug dealing in schools in the U.S.
But MCC through Global Family is going to put in concrete floors this year which the teachers and community leaders really want. Right now they are dirt. Interestingly when we talked to kids about what they like about the classroom walls MCC put in they said they like that they are warm when it’s cold in the morning. I would have never predicted that since the coldest it gets in the morning is 74 degrees and I consider that nice. But finally just the other morning I got cold in bed and had to put on a second sheet and turn off the fan. It was 76 degrees. So maybe I’m getting acclimatized. The locals say it’s very cold now.
We like our house a lot. Our landlord seems really nice and we are slowly starting to communicate. It’s good living out in the country here since we have to use the language.
It’s nice to have a weekend to chill. Finally. We walked to the market this morning and bought vegetables and bread. I’ll put photos on my blog. It was nice to get there early before the raw meat started stinking. By afternoon the fresh fish, hanging raw pork, raw chickens and the like don’t smell to good to me.
Each evening we try to go home from work by the lake. It is actually a big marsh that looks like a lake in the rainy season but then lowers in the dry season. As it lowers it’s like a tide going out and the farmers pant rice right up to the edge. Each month as it goes further out they plant to it’s edge until it is gone and where the lake was are beautiful fields of rice. Then they harvest it hopefully before the rains fill it all back in again. At the end of the rainy season the lake comes right up to the edge of the town and is held back by a large dike. Judging from the water lines I see it looks to be 9 feet deep at the edge of town at it’s peak.
Michaelbade's Blog 