Jayson in Cambodia

Ok, I read in the Lonely Plant travel book that the moto drivers will soon learn your routines and wait for you outside your hotel. A moto is the form of public transportation in Cambodia that is actually a man on a moped. You know a man on a moped is a moto driver because he will be wearing a baseball cap; non-moto drivers avoid wearing a hat so they are not mistaken for moto drivers. Anyway, I expected this and was not surprised when this happened outside my apartment. However, now I do not even tell any moto drivers where I want to go. I come out of the apartment in gym shorts, they take me to the gym without a word between us. This seems pretty cool, but keep in mind these are different drivers every day! Now that is some communication system.

I have gotten many queries on data collection...so here is the scoop. During a national technology curriculum improvement workshop, I gave my survey to 26 master teacher trainers. These folks in turn will give the survey to 526 teacher trainers they personally trained on ICT skills. I am supposed to get the completed results back July 7th-ish. Since the postal service is so unreliable, the surveys will come back to me via a taxi! So, all in all the data collection is in full swing!

This weekend I went to the National Museum. The first picture is of me with a statue in of a monkey god in the garden. I was thinking the museum would fill my entire afternoon. I soon found out it only took about 45 minutes to go through. I guess most of the good cultural artifacts were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge. The second picture is of the UNESCO building. It is a very fine French colonial style building.

On Sunday, it rained for 3 hours. This means the roads around me were completely flooded. I waited a few hours for the water to go down, but to no avail. Going 1/2 block north, south, east, or west, I was up to a foot of water. This sounds like no big deal, but keep in mind there are often holes in the street large enough for a grown man to fall into. I thought would skirt the water but hugging the sidewalks but soon realized that with the rains, came an overflow of the sewers! I turned around, showered, and ate at home. I learned to keep food on hand just for these monsoon emergencies! Good thing I just did a big shop!

I received a phone call at 6:45 am this morning from my boss. He told me the trip to the rural provinces has been postponed! Keep in mind the driver was to pick me up at 7:30 am. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed. This trip was to be the jump start to my data collection as well as give me a new perspective of Cambodian life. As I was explaining my data collection frustration to my co-worker, he arranged to have my survey sent to 400 teacher trainers in the morning. I will pick up the surveys next week at a training I am facilitating. This is awesome news (if it all comes together). It means my quantitative data collection will be huge and done. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

View from my balcony.


Sunday I was finally able to move into the new apartment. I thought I would share what the apartment looks like. The top picture is from the balcony. The bottom two are the apartment itself. The wooden walls with white cloth are actually movable. The apartment is set up a little odd in that to get to the kitchen, I have to walk through a shared hallway into my private kitchen. I guess all these old houses were made like that so the smells from the cooking would not be in the same area as the living quarters.

I am off on a 3 day adventure to the rural areas in the morning. I will post pics soon.

By request I have included a picture of a monkey at the local Wat. Better ones will come later. The left picture is of the rules posted at Toul Sleng the genocide prison used during the Khmer Rouge. It is now a museum. I know, the pics do not really go together, but I thought I would share! Thanks to Rian and John I downloaded a resizing program so the pics should be smaller and easier for me to upload. P.S. The pics are small, but if you double click on them they should open bigger in a new window.

Today I took a 4 hour walk around the town and have realized no one walks. Everyone takes a moto (a motorcycle taxi). I visited Wat Phnom which sits on a hill overlooking the whole city. There is even a resident elephant named Sam Bo who walks along the rivers' (there are actually two merging into a third) promenade every evening. Sam Bo was not chained up, just sitting under the tree looking at folks looking at him. I guess you can feed him bananas but I did not try this. The second pic of the wat itself (a wat is a temple). There were monkeys all around the wat. They were not too friendly. I saw one bite the hand of a small boy. I kept my distance from the critters after that. Tonight, I took in a full dance recital that developed around dancers with disabilities. It was quite remarkable. Sunday I will head out to two other wats and maybe take in the museum.

I just finished the first week of my internship at UNESCO. So far, so good. It turns out the job will be pretty intense, however there does seem to be some perks. June 12-13-14 I will be going to the rural provinces to help assess the ICT in education program.I am excited to see how the rural Cambodians live.I will write more this weekend when I have more time (and post some local pics).