As we entered our second week of our WorkAway exchange in Phnom Penh we were eager to get out and explore. Since we had the use of bicycles, courtesy of the school where we’d been volunteering, we just had to use them to take a spontaneous, free-wheeling tour of Phnom Penh.

Our new wheels took us down to the river, past temples and marketplaces, past some mysterious, gigantic new development that looks like a Las Vegas casino, and past a little park decked out with oversized Christmas ornaments bracing for the upcoming holiday season — yes, even in Cambodia.

Exploring Phnom Penh by Bicycles

Back at home, we discovered that we’d both collected a sunburn on our outing, despite having applied sunscreen. Evidently we needed to find better sunscreen — which was problematic because in Cambodia good sunscreen can be hard to find, and is outrageously expensive when you do.

Another item that was hard to find was cocoa, which Kimberly considers an absolute necessity to make her chocolate drink every day. It took searching in four stores to score some.

That night, we had another go at cooking dinner in our new kitchen, but again we were unable to get the stove lit. Now we’d just obtained a new cannister of gas, so obviously that wasn’t the problem. So we went to the hotel lobby and told the staff there about it. And one of the ladies came over to demonstrate the secret: after turning the gas on, you have to push the button on the valve a few times to prime it. We wondered if that had been the problem the whole time, and we hadn’t really needed to buy more gas. Anyway, we finally were able to have a home-cooked meal.

Volunteer Teaching Experience in Phnom Penh

The next day at school, we were issued school shirts — the blue ones, matching the uniforms worn by the students on days when they have P.E. And we were given a generous allowance for food, which the school gave us every week in addition to supplying our apartment.

Once again, we got stuck on the elevator with our supervisor Lin. “Get used to it”, she joked. (Or was she joking?)

As the date of the end-of-quarter ceremony approached, we buckled down with rehearsals for the students’ presentations. We were leading them in a song (“We are Unity”), a Christmas dance to “Jingle Bell Rock”, and a performance of the Russian folktale that we call “Silly Boy” — one of our perennial staples, back in the days of our touring theatre company. For this story, we also made some props, including construction paper flames for a fire scene.

Then the big day came, a Saturday with all or most of the parents in attendance. And the performances were… well, a bit chaotic. It had been a rush, trying to pull everything together in such a short time, and Murphy’s Law was operating with a vengeance. Still, the students displayed their talents quite nicely, and we were quite proud of them.

Show Time

12/4-10