Water

The theme of this blog post is water.  Water is great. Water is necessary.  Water can be fun.  Here in Cambodia water pools in verdant green rice paddies. It splashes over waterfalls in some of the outlying provinces.  During rainy season, water hurtles down from the sky with alarming volume and force.  A cool shower is much appreciated to rinse of hot and sweaty bodies at the end of the day.  A downpour after a dry spell is fantastic when it beats down the dust and washes things clean again. Most of the time water is nice.  Most of the time.  But when it fills up drains and sewers and it rises to a level somewhere around the knees, then it's not so nice.

Here are some water themed stories that have emerged from this year's rainy season.  We are going to go backwards in time, starting from the most recent and work our way backwards to the Water Festival that took place in early November.


Strange things happen in Cambodia all the time. Things that you wouldn't normally encounter in your home countries (depending on where you're from of course.)  Most of the time this is all part of the adventure. Sometimes it provides a good laugh, sometimes it's a bit frightening, or a little of both.

Tonight's events fall into the latter category.

There have been strange glug-glugging noises emerging from my bathroom at odd times.   Imagine you just put a full jug of water onto a water cooler. That big, strong, bubbling, glug sound.  That's what I've been hearing from my bathroom.  Do I go look or do I (try to) ignore it?  It's loud enough to wake one up in the middle of the night.  Hmm.  Intriguing.

I just sent a text to the roomie below me..." Are you going to the bathroom right now?"  (I know that's a gross, weird and creepy thing to ask someone, but hey, we're in this thing together, right?) Then all the girls emerge into the hallways laughing at the glugging that is apparently happening in each bathroom on each floor the house. We're all glad it's not just our own bathroom doing it. Theories get tossed out. "It must be something in the neighborhood."  "They're working on the road so maybe there's air in the pipes."

Odd things happen in Cambodia all the time, but a gurgling toilet is no laughing matter.  At least I'm on the top floor, because I'm pretty sure Cambodia does not use back flow valves in their drainage systems.



Now that we've talked about water from below, let's talk about water from above.  During rainy season, the precipitation doesn't fall with a gentle pitter patter.  No nice drizzly drop by which to enjoy your cup of tea. It comes careening down from the heavens, and you have to shout to your housemates over the sound of it's roaring.  This is when a quality roof comes into play. Except when that roof isn't so quality anymore and instead of hearing the rain hit the roof, you can hear it hit your ceiling.  Normally I love the sound of the rain. It can be soothing and relaxing.  But when I hear the drips hitting my ceiling directly overhead I get a bit nervous. At first it starts slowly.  A little drip here. Then it gets louder and the drops are hitting that surface above my head faster and faster, louder and louder.  Can you feel my anxiety?   I can't sleep through it.  I imagine puddles over my head with only a layer of plaster in between. We have a great landlady.  She has been to check on it and says she will fix it soon. Like many things, 'soon' is a relative term here in Cambodia.  At the least the rainy season is come to an end she says.



Above, below, the only thing that's left is water from the middle.  The middle you say?  Yes the middle. We have a great house.  Not only does each room have its own gurgling bathroom, but each also has its own balcony.  A balcony to overlook the neighborhood.  A balcony that serves as a viewing platform for the neighbors to stare at you from across the street.  A balcony conveniently fitted up with a drain.  Can you see where I'm headed with this?  The problem with drains is that they can sometimes get clogged up. Which is just what happened. I'm on the third floor. During a strong rain my balcony filled up.  Then my room filled up.  Then it flowed into the hall and waterfalled three stories down the bottom of the house.  Why travel to an outlying province when you can have a waterfall in your very own home?


The rain tends to out pace the drainage systems here so after a good outpouring the low lying areas will fill up.  How does one travel to work and school?  With shoes off of course!

Thouen (our tuk tuk driver) drops his kids off at the Methodist school before dropping me off.  Here they are with sneakers off making their way to class.

The tricky thing about flooded streets is that you can't see where the potholes are down below.  At this point we got stuck.  You know it's a bad section of road because the piles of gravel you see above means it's slated for repairs.  Well, what do you do when you're stuck?  I'm sitting in the tuk tuk.  I can't help without defiling my work-ready person.  Thouen is pushing with all his might to no avail. A group of big boys from the Methodist school are on hand to help. These big kids pushed us up on the side of the road.  Must be a great school that produces such quality teenage boys.

This one's biking (paddling) to school.  

Early in November Cambodia celebrated Water Festival.  They've skipped it in the last few years due to some tragic events, so I was excited to be able to see it this year.  We rented a little hotel room six floors up directly across from the river.  We had a great view.

The boats look like caterpillars out on the river.

If they won the race they'd row by singing and dancing.

Each boat represents a different province or a government ministry.

Getting a bit peckish while watching the races?  You can always hit the bug cart.  Frogs, snakes, water beetles and much much more!

Towards dusk Sisowath Quay started filling up.

At night, lighted floats went up the river playing Cambodian music.

There were fireworks at the end of the evening.  I shouldn't have even tried to take pictures of the fireworks with my cheapy camera, but I did and I think this one is awesome.  I  couldn't have done this if I tried to.

I thought I'd end with a proverb about water. There's some interesting ones out there, some funny and some obvious.  Here's a Jamaican proverb that I thought was appropriate and falls into the obvious category:

"If you saw what the river carried, you would never drink the water."

True that.

Koh Kong

We had a long weekend, it seems like forever ago now. Whenever we have a little holiday, we like to get out of the house and go explore different parts of the country.  This time we went to Koh Kong, a quiet little gem on the west side of the country close to the Thai border.

This turned out to be my favorite weekend trip we have taken so far.  We stayed at a cute little place called Thmorda Garden Resort.  We ate our dinners right over the river in little huts.

And watched the sun go down.

We could jump right into the river from these little docks and decks and have a cool off.

There are some beautiful things to do in this border town.  Our first stop was to the Tatai Waterfall.

We boarded our luxury liner to travel up river.

There were small waterfalls along the way.

The water was clear!  I didn't think this was possible in Cambodia.

The falls were low and flat.

We frolicked like mermaids in some of the smaller pools.

A view from the top of the falls.

Taking pictures at the top.

This is the scene up river that I was shooting.

This is my favorite picture.  It's got the jungle, river and low hills of the Cardamom Mountains.

One of the cool things about Cambodia is that there are scenes in everyday life here that aren't that different from what one might have viewed 100 years ago.

What's a boat ride on the river and a frolic in the waterfall without a little jungle trekking as well?

The next day we visited some mangrove forests.  Mangroves are on the creepier side of beautiful.

The roots reach down into the black mud where tiny black crabs scurry around.

 Feeling a bit hungry from the walk?  The snack shops sell dried octopus, or octo-jerky as I like to call it.

Another great thing about our hotel is that they had kayaks you could take out on the river for free.  One night we paddled to some small mangrove islands to see some fireflies.  The stars were shining above and the fireflies were twinkling in trees like a string of fairy lights.  No pictures for that one, you'll have to use your imagination.

Guess where we are?

Kara had this cool GoPro camera.

Another day we went down to the beach.  The beach wasn't much to speak of.  We had a cold drink and sat in a little beach hut.

If the beach wasn't great for swimming, it more than made up for itself in shell collecting.  Some nice Khmer girls befriended us and found some gorgeous shells for us.

One late afternoon we used the kayaks from our hotel to explore the river and little mangrove islands.

I love traveling with these two easygoing gals. 

As we paddled around the river, there were these spooky statues up on the banks.  They went far back into the trees.  Some had animal heads. 

I must tell you, it's quite difficult to keep your boats parked straight and still for the picture.

We kept paddling down the bank until the sun started to set.  The light was changing in the clouds and was phenomenally beautiful.

Our long weekend in Koh Kong was the perfect balance of rest and activity.  It was also great to see a different part of the country.  With waterfalls and fireflies, this little gambol will be hard to beat!

School Bits and Bobs

We've been in school for about two months now.  I've got a really good class this year.

Here are some fun things we've been working on....

The poetry units are always my favorite.  We often have some good things emerge from our lessons.

For this lesson we were working on using descriptive language and making shape poems (not a poem about shapes, but poems written in the shape of the subject of the poem.)  Here are some samples from our literacy journals.

I really like this one.

I love how they all turned out a little different.

We made acrostic poems with our names.  They really look super hanging in the class.  Many kids with the letter 'a' in their name used afraid to describe themselves.  I asked one student what he was afraid of and he said ghosts.

  

How could you not enjoy swim lessons when this is your view?  By the way, this little fella gave me a high five after swimming and said, "Miss Carson, I learned to swim today!"

I replied, "I know.  I saw you."

He was flailing/swimming out to Mr. Sato in the middle of the pool with his head above water so he could cry and breathe at the same time.  When he reached Mr. Sato his cries turned into laughter and all the kids sitting on the side of the pool cheered for him.  Good times in grade 2.

This is the same lesson from last year on 3D figures. Instead of using marshmallows we used modeling clay rolled up into little balls.  I thought this was so clever and such an improvement over the marshmallows, but by the time the kids got downstairs to go home, they were in pieces.

It's the raining season here.  Either I'm acclimating or it feels much cooler than last year.  Low 90's feels like a nice day.  My campus gets some flooding after a strong rain.  Notice the level of the water from the road all the way into the school yard.

Those are my feet underwater.  Those are little leaves swirling around.  Yes, I wore white capris that day.  Don't say it.  I already know.

No umbrella?  A moto helmet will do just fine.

Our tuk tuk driver Thouen has a special place in my heart.  He takes really good care of us.

This is our view once we are Velcro-ed in.  Water still splashes up from the sides when someone speeds by to close.

In topic, we've been studying light.  This lesson was about shadow.  We read a book on making shadow puppets, then went outside to make our own.

Once one person traced their body, it was all the rage. It looks a bit like a crime scene, but they had a blast.

Speaking of the above-mentioned Thouen.  His youngest son rides in the tuk tuk with us every day.  We get dropped off first then he goes on to school.  Every day I watch this sweet piece of apple pie nod off to sleep.  It took him about a month to overcome his shyness and say good morning to us.

As I was walking into school one day, the guard was pulling up to his breakfast.  I peered into his bowl and asked about it.  A hearty breakfast, no doubt.  It looks like a cow deconstructed.

You know how kids go a little berserk-o when a bee buzzes by or there's a spider in the room?  Not here in Cambodia.  A gecko drops off the ceiling onto your desk?  No problem.  Miss Kanha will scooch the desks around to catch it and then put it outside after she gets it.  All quiet and calm-like.  No big deal.

This year there are bats living outside my classroom in an open air hallway. They've swooped on some of the small groups that work at a table right outside of my room.  I think I would be the one going berserk-o if I was swooped upon by a bat.

   

Rats, bats and geckos, oh my.

Here are two night-flyers hanging from the eaves.  

There's always something interesting on the way to school.  This was a bin full of piggy parts driving down the road.  The Khmer lady is trimming up the pieces as they drive along.  Might as well use the morning commute to get some of the prep work done.  You can see the ears in the back waving to us as it went by.

I'd like to title this picture, This little piggy went to the market.  

We are really enjoying learning in the classroom this year.  There is no better confirmation, than hearing it from a third party.  So I'd like to finish off this post with quotes from some of my students, while in guided reading with Miss Rebecca.

Miss Rebecca, "How is your day so far?"

Nai, "Great! Every lesson was so much fun, but topic was the best! We looked at light through a prism today."

And another day Miss Rebecca teaches about adjectives.  She asks for an example of an adjective and one student says, "indigo."

When Rebecca asks them how they know what indigo is, they say they've learned about refraction and colors of the rainbow.

Hooray for school! 

Ok, just one more. This notice appeared in our school newsletter this month. Inspired by real events.

Underwear for Boys

Please can you make sure that if your child is a boy that he wears underpants under his shorts to school every day.  This will avoid accidents happening with zips on their shorts.

Have a nice day everyone~