Happy Independence Day...From Cambodia

Today has been so much fun!! (Well let's be honest, every day here has been fun. lol). We woke up early and got ready for the day. This first week that we're here is kind of our cultural immersion week and then next week is our work week. So we left Phnom Penh to go on a six-hour drive through the country side to Siem Reap. The ride was fair from smooth but we did get to see a lot of different things along the way. I think we passed probably close to a million rice paddies. They're everywhere!! But they look so green and luscious. It makes the countryside look tropical. The people that work in the paddies have to plant the rice by hand. I can't even imagine working in the heat here. On our way to Siem Reap we stopped at their version of a truck stop. They have fruit vendors and bug vendors...yes I said bug vendors! They sell different types of bugs that they have cooked, a variety of water beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, and tarantulas. They don't just cook the tarantulas though, some of them carry them around as if they were pets. They come up and put them on you if you look afraid. Apparently I looked terrified because I ended up having a tarantula put on me at two different times. Let me just pain this picture for you...whenever I was a child I couldn't even touch a picture of a spider because I was so afraid of them, so having them put on my body while I'm looking right at them...can you just say SCARED!!!!! After we were there for a little bit we got back on the bus and kept going. The sights around the countryside were overwhelming. Thatched huts on stilts with garbage all around them. Bulls that were so bony you could see every rib and every vertebrae. Naked children running around in stagnant water that had to have parasites in them. But everyone that we passed had a smile on their face and waved to us. They are all so happy here. We stopped for lunch and I got my first lesson in how to use chopsticks. Apparently my hands just don't work like that. It took me the entirety of lunch to figure out how they worked. At certain points I had to use a fork because I couldn't let the amazing food on my plate get cold before I ate it. We had cashew, pineapple chicken. My mom would have loved it! Then we finished up the drive to Siem Reap. Our hotel is absolutely amazing. We dropped off our stuff and took a walk around the area that we are in. Brandie and I got a fish massage on our feet.

You put your feet into a tub of fish and they eat the dead skin off your feet. It tickled so much that it took me quite some time to get used to it and keep my feet in. It didn't hurt but every once in awhile they would take a pretty big bite and it just felt very strange. Then we walked to a little restaurant and had milkshakes. Very strange for Cambodia, I know, but they were mango so maybe that makes a little bit of a difference. Kids were coming up trying to sell us trinkets and items. There was a man on a hand-pedaled bike selling books. He had lost his legs and that was his way of making money was to pedal around and sell his books. A woman with a baby boy that was probably two years old kept begging us for money. The little boy had sores on his legs and water in his bottle. He looked as if he were slightly malnourished, but not too bad at this point. While we were sitting there some of the people in our group saw here pickpocket some people on the street. When Chris, our group leader, told her to go away she used a lot of cursing in Khmai (the language here) and she used some very interesting English profanities as well. She was not pleased with us. After we regrouped at the hotel, we went to a buffet style restaurant that also had a show at the end.

The show was of typical Aspara dancing. Aspara dancing is similar to what some might have seen in "The King and I" the movie. It was very beautiful. Some of them I didn't understand but it was still very interesting. The food was wonderful. They had a mixture of Western dishes and typical Cambodia dishes. I stuck to the Cambodian dishes. It was a lot of fun!! Then we went to the night market.

It was awesome seeing all of the vendors and what they had to offer. A lot of it was the same stuff but it was still a fun place to people watch. It was a million degrees though because of all of the people and all of the lights.

I can't really blog anymore tonight because I am so tired and we're getting up at 4:30am to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I'll add pictures tomorrow because I haven't put them on my computer yet.