The last day of our stay in Bangkok we took a bus to Cambodia (because dad thought it would be fun). It actually didn't end up being all that terrible, it was eight hours but we had plenty of space and the bus was quite luxurious. We stopped twice for a bathroom break, and once for lunch. When we arrived it was about 9pm and we were all exhausted. We booked one big family size room in the hotel, but when we showed up they announced that there was a mistake and that the family rooms weren't going to be available until tomorrow morning. They did compensate though by giving us two free massages. We had a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant, and then slept. The next morning we slept in and then moved all of our stuff into the family room. We all agreed that we could have survived in the two rooms, but the family room worked much better. For lunch we had our tuk tuk driver, who came with the room, take us to a restaurant for lunch where we were meeting Dareth and Thida Ly (the missionaries) who we planned on helping. Mom and Dad discussed with them the agenda for the week, and how we were planning to help them (I couldn't hear a thing because I was on the far end of the table). After Mom and Dad were done talking, we headed back to the hotel. At the hotel there was a really amazing swimming pool, so we spent the afternoon in the pool and doing homework.
Amazingly, both Dareth and Thida have incredible stories, both of them lived through the Killing Fields, grew up in the States, and then came back to Cambodia. They have two different projects, the Dream Center and the floating school. The floating school was the first project that they started. This is a school in a really poor floating village, without this school, the kids in this village would have no way to become educated. The next project that they started was called the Dream Center. When the children graduated from the floating school, they would move to the Dream Center to live. The kids who lived at the Dream Center were between the ages of thirteen all the way up to college kids. They would come here to go to high school, which was across the street from the Dream Center.
We spent most of our time at the Dream Center. Our first day at the Dream Center we spent about an hour and a half there. As the adults talked, us kids played basketball with the students. While mom and dad were talking, they met John and Pam Pries. They are missionaries from Oregon, who had moved out to Cambodia to help Dareth and Thida. We actually spent most of our time with the Pries', because the Lys went on vacation. While we were at the Dream Center, we taught English for a week, and Mom taught an art class, other than that we just hung out and played with the kids. Teaching English class was a blast and basically all that we did was ask the kids very simple questions. We would ask them questions like, "What is your favorite color, what is your favorite food," questions like that. The kids favorite question to ask was, "Do you have a special?" Their English was basic, but great when compared to our Khmer (pronounced Camai). English class was an hour, and we would normally hold three or four a day, because half of the kids at the Dream Center went to school in the morning, and the other half went at night. Two other days, mom taught an amazing art class, this was a huge hit and most of the kids showed up. Mom taught the kids how to draw people, a road with mountains, and Starry Starry Night by Van Gogh. They loved it. While we were at the Dream Center, we bought another basketball for the kids and taught them how to play lightning.
During our time in Cambodia we went to the floating school twice. It was about an hour and a half drive from our hotel and the road was really bumpy. When we arrived at the water's edge, we jumped in a boat and rode for about twenty minutes until we arrived at the floating school. The first time we went Thida gave us a tour. The second time, we went with John and taught a Bible study. We acted out the story of Joseph and when we were finished we had a mummy wrapping competition. The kids loved it and were laughing so hard as they wrapped each other up. After the kids started leaving I noticed that they took all the toilet paper with them. This really struck me because they are so poor that even an everyday item like toilet paper is considered luxurious for them.
One day we visited the Ankor Wat temple complex, this was so amazing, and the drawings were incredible. We were up there at sunrise so that we could watch the sun come up over the temple, and it was well worth it. The drawings on the wall at Ankor Wat seem to stretch on forever, and they were carved into solid stone. Ankor Wat is an amazing temple.
Since we were in Cambodia during Christmas, we went out to dinner for Christmas and Christmas Eve. For Christmas Eve, we went out to a Thai restaurant with the Pries. We even had fried ants. Christmas dinner we went to a newly opened place right by the hotel. We all ordered the set menu and it was delicious. The waiter thought that my sister's name was salami!!! One of our family traditions is fondue on Christmas night. Somehow Mom managed to find a Swiss restaurant that did fondue. The food was awesome, and it was really cool to continue our tradition halfway across the world.
All-in-all, I really enjoyed Cambodia and would list it in the top three countries of the entire trip so far. The work that Dareth and Thida have done is nothing short of amazing, and because we were here longer we were able to actually connect with some of the kids at the Dream Center, which was really fun. I was really inspired by coming to Cambodia and would like to come back some day
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