School, Aerobics and Blue Lagoon!

So it's day 10 and I thought I better get blogging. I don't even know where to start - it feels like we've been here for years! The plane ride was fine with only a short wait in Bangkok airport which is far better looking than Hethrow. Then we arrived in Phnom Penh. VSO looked after us well. We were there for a week having sessions on all sorts of things from cultral do's and don'ts to health. We had a cyclo (pronounced see-clo) tour of the city which is a wierd seat thing attached to a bike peddaled by a little man. My little Cambodian man was very concerned about me being in the sun and bought me water and kept giving me his cap to werar. I think he was called Leehill. Phnom Penh is crazy - but not as hectic as I thought. There's some amazing colonial looking buildings and all the sights, sounds, colours and smells are incredible. Every second there's something new to marvel at. It sits on the banks of the Mekong and we had a lovely couple of hours in the Foreign Correspondants Club overlooking the river with a couple of cold Angkor Beers.

All the other volunteers are fantastic. There's 13 of us in total hailing from England, Scottland, Ireland, Holland, Belgium and India. We all get on well and there's a good mix of ages and backgrounds. It's great doing something like this and getting to meet people you might not usually. Hannah is my room-mate and we may aswell have been separated at birth. We were actually both at Durham uni at the same time, in the same collage and didn't ever know each other. We can't find much we don't have in common and haven't got sick of each other one bit. Our only problem is being tired in the day because we stay up talking too late at night. It was worth coming just to meet her.

There are a couple of guys our age who we spend a lot of time with called Jon and Zac, (I met Jon on a VSO training course and we flew over together) and when we have time off it ends up feeling a little like a club 18-30's holiday, which is also how the boys described our room. We're going to enjoy it while it lasts though as in December we'll be off to our placements to get stuck into some hard work.

After a week in Phnom Penh we all moved to Kampong Cham, which is about 3 hours North East of PP. It has such a lovely atmosphere. The people are so friendly and smiley and let us practice our K'mai with them and all the uber cute children (Hannah and I are going to kidnap a lot of them) run up to you and shout Hello. VSO have given us bikes to ride - mine was called Black Beauty untill I realised it wasn't black so it's now called Blue Lagoon. I love Blue Lagoon. I ride him back and forward to school every afternoon and also try and get a bike ride in on the morning. Yes that's right - school. We are in Kampong Cham to learn K'mai, the Cambodian language. We can say quite a lot already and it is made easier by a fantastic teacher called Dara and a distinct lack of tenses. Hannah and I are in the afternoon class which is completed by Zac, Gary, Mike and Dawn. We all get on great and have a little study group over breakfast each morning. We go to class 6 afternoons a week and then have Sundays off.

When we're not in class we have been running over the second longest bridge in Cambodia - 1.7km, cycling round the town, joining in aerobics classes on the river front led by a guy wearing tight, pink jeans with a boom box and attending the water festival which seemed to have an absence of health and safety laws around fireworks.

There's so much I could write about. I will try and write more regularly so I can fit it all in.

Hmmm... P.S. Can't seem to upload pictures today - will do an entry just for pictures later. They're all on facebook so have a perusal - Mum I know you will.

The incident of the runaway car.....

So I didn't think I would have too much to write about before I actually arrived in Cambodia but thanks to the curious case of the silver corsa I do!

It was a normal cool October evening in Sunderland. I was visiting some friends for a catch up and to babysit their children while they went out. I took my parents lovely little corsa, which I have managed to drive for years and never cause so much as a scratch on, and parked it outside my friends house on a SLIGHT incline. I checked the handbrake was on properly and went inside. After 35 minutes of catching up my friends went out. The kids and I waved at them through the window as they walked past the lovely little corsa (which hadn't moved an inch) and got in their own car and left. The next 35 minutes were spent playing caterpillars, finishing our tea and picking a DVD to watch before bed time. Then there was a knock at the door.

I answered to reveal a woman who asked if I owned a silver/blue corsa.
'Yes' I answered perplexed as I looked behind her to see it was gone.
'Where is it?' I demanded, slightly panicked.
'Over there next to the police van'. Pause. 'It crashed into a wall. You've obviously not put the hand brake on properly' (cue judgmental look from woman), 'It actually crashed into an old lady's garden wall. She got quite a shock'.
'Well I can't leave the house, I don't live here, I'm babysitting. The kids are only 2 and 5'. The woman looked at the kids and seemed to soften a bit.
'Well I'll tell the police woman to come over to you. Stay there'.

I then had phonecalls with my parents who the police had already contacted so were on their way over. When they arrived Mum came and watched the kids so I could go to the scene of the crime. Dad was already there and the old woman had her son there, so they were all swapping insurance details. The car had rolled back onto the main road, somehow done a very wide, 180 degree turn and then bounced off the garden wall, totally demolishing it and wrecking the back of the car.

I went inside the house to apologise to the old lady.
'I'm so sorry. I had put the hand brake on properly, but I am very sorry'.
Old lady, slightly shaking, replies; 'It's O.K. I mean I did get an awful shock. And I am 86. And I have just had a spinal operation. But it's fine.'
'I'm so, so sorry.'
'I thought the house was coming down. Then I looked out the window and saw the car. I was very confused when I saw there was no one in it'.

Thankfully my parents have been very nice about it considering I just wrecked the car. Everyone assures me that it wasn't my fault, - after all, if I hadn't put the handbrake on properly it wouldn't have remained stationary for 35 minutes before my friends left. All the same, everyone has also explained how I'm very lucky the car didn't stay on the main road and cause a major accident.

So we are a household with one car for my last few days in England, which has got me out of going to the gym, therefore there's been no point in sticking to my diet, so I have been eating whatever I like, assuring myself that I'll sweat a few pounds off when I'm in the 35 degree heat of Cambodia.