A Week of Ups and Downs

This last week was definitely a learning journey, and had its ups and downs (for me anyway).

It started out pretty well as we moved into our new house on the Saturday, filling up a tuk tuk with our suitcases and then going out with a friend to buy rattan furniture. This was then delivered to our door all at once; 16 pieces of furniture on 1 tuk tuk!

It's quite interesting, the Khmer's have an amazing talent for handiwork in rattan, but they themselves prefer large wooden furniture in their homes, such as hardwood beds, solid wooden couches (they're NOT comfortable) and big thick dining tables with rigid-back chairs that are too heavy to move! Furniture seems to be quite a matter of prestige, because the large, thick, chinese-dragon carved hardwood (mostly teak) is very expensive and therefore a luxury that many middle class Khmers will fill their living rooms with to show their wealth.

Anyway, so we nestled in nicely on our first day. On Sunday, we were planning to have a relaxed day at home, but the power went out (we hope this will NOT be a normal occurrance!), so I took Ben downtown to see Psar Thmey, or Central Market; a giant colonial dome market built by the French in their occupation of Cambodia as Indochina.

It is a very impressive architectural site, and as a market it is just as interesting inside. We got quite lost in the corridors of clothes and jewelry, electronics and kitchenware, meat, fruits, flowers and vegetables. Ben had a wonderful time exploring! We also took a walk by the River Tonle which joins the Mekong, and Ben had a chance to briefly see the Royal Palace and National Museum from the outside. We'd decided on having pizza as a special treat at a Western/Khmer cafe on the riverfront, but it was at this time my body decided it had food poisoning from something earlier in the day. I spent the meal on my knees on the wet floor of a Khmer bathroom and later in the back of a tuk tuk speeding to get me home. I did not get to enjoy my pizza.

I was also unwell on Tuesday, and after lopping off 50cm of hair from my head and going brunette, had a bit of a breakdown. When you've been on the road for months, living out of suitcases, away from family and are now home alone in a foreign country (for this is not the same Phnom Penh I once knew), you begin to question your identity. Your other half is back at work, you yourself are currently unemployed, are feeling disconnected, struggling to communicate with locals and wondering about your future here, so all the stress and fatigue catches up with you. It would be easy to leave the struggles out of a blogpost, but I don't want to pretend it is not difficult at times; we didn't move here to have an easy life. Part of it all is learning to manage and cope with these difficulties and rely 100% on God.

Wednesday was a real game changer. After being a bit unstable the few days before, I contacted some old family friends who still live in Phnom Penh; the Applebys. 12 years ago, we were the only 2 Australian families to attend Hope International School. They were fantastically kind and took me out to lunch with their new baby daughter, and we went on some errands such as visiting the post office, the vaccination clinic, the bank and a new supermarket (that sell exciting things like flour and yogurt and even arnotts' biscuits!!!). They've lived here for over a decade, and really helped to show me that one CAN learn the language, can maintain a family and their sanity whilst overall surviving well in this crazy and chaotic country. My new-found confidence helped me attend my first lesson at Gateway to Khmer language school on the Friday morning, where we got a basic introduction to the course and started learning phonetics. I am the only non-American in a class of 10, so the phonetics part was a little tricky with all my classmates' accents haha! Shy and nervous at first (and late as the traffic was TERRIBLE at 8am, and my poor motodup was weaving in and out of other motos, pushy 4wd's and crammed-out-the-window minivans), I soon got over it and am now very excited to learn more Khmer!

After class, I met up with the Applebys again and attended a very special (and emotional) celebration. Hope International School, where I attended from 2003-2005 as one of around only 250 students at its beginning, has now grown to nearly a thousand, with multiple campuses across the country. The Phnom Penh site where my sisters and I attended has had to move, and Friday was the very last day on the old site. There was a large assembly, and there I was reunited with some very old friends and the principle who still remembered me. I was the oldest student there (and believe me, being graduated from University and married made me feel it!) but it was so cool to know that a very small number of people still recognized me :')

       (The principle and his eldest son (who was in Katie's class and WAS half my height!)

The above photo is a picture of 'the murals', some now old and 'famous' paintings at the school done by students of their own countries back in good old 2003 when the school was new and needed some colour. The artists of the Australian mural were myself and my two sisters, and one of the Appleby girls. I was in year 7 at the time, Katie was in year 5, and Esther and Sarah Appleby were in year 2 (I think), with Johanna too young to paint! But here it is now; cracked and faded with half of the artists, all grown up, because THAT is what 12 years looks like!!

                                        (Katie and Esther we were thinking of you!)

I will greatly miss this campus and all the people I met and memories that I made there. Although it was only 2 years, Hope International School changed my life, and is part of the reason why I am back in Cambodia today :')