Life in‘The Cham’ and Homestay
on Hells Bells Hits Cambodia (Cambodia), 21/Dec/2010 03:37, 34 days ago
Life in‘The Cham’ (Kampong Cham) flowed nicely. We were split into two language groups. Our group met each morning for breakfast, practiced what we’d learnt the day before, either went for a cycle or caught up on some sleep before going to language classes. The evenings held big decisions on which restaurant to eat in that night and whether to be good and just have a couple of beers or……….!Our language teacher was called Dara who made us say all sorts of things in Khmer and often made me repeat it in English too. This was due to my North Eastern trait of dropping the‘T’s’ in the middle of words and he said Khmer people who speak English wouldn’t be able to understand me if I didn’t speak English properly. So my Khmer teacher taught me both Khmer and English. Did it work? Well let’s just say you can take the girl out of Sunderland but you can’t take the Sunderland out of the girl.Our life in‘The Cham’ was not all Language classes, we all left for a week to go visit our placements where we will be based permanently whilst in Cambodia. I went off to Ratanakiri – an incredibly beautiful, mountainous, remote area in The North East. I stayed in the most amazing guest house called TreeTops which looked like Bedrock from the Flintstones, except made of a wood. I had a gorgeous bungalow with a hammock outside and a great view. During placement week I met everyone I will be working with, other VSO volunteers and lots of ex-pats. I also picked my house, which I deliberated for agesover but finally settled on a wooden house above a family with a wrap around veranda and lovely view out back. I won’t write any more about Ratanakiri as you will find out about it as I write more blogs.Another adventure we had whilst in‘The Cham’ was Homestay. This is when you live with a Cambodian family for 24 hours. We were all loaded onto a bus and driven to a village 40 minutes from Kampong Cham town. We were in pairs and had a family each to stay with. Hannah and I doubled up and lived with Brian and Sue. What their realnames were I have no idea (there are only so many times you can ask) but they looked like a Brian and Sue. So, Brian and Sue are an elderly couple, may or may not have small children (they may have borrowed them for the purposes of homestay), definitely have 9 grown up children, speak no English and didn’t understand our Khmer.Over the course of the 24 hours we had some lovely food, played volleyball and played with uber cute children. We also were put to bed three times by Brian and Sue’s neighbours during Siesta, were told to shower three times and ate a lot of unripe Mango.Sleeping arrangements were you all sleep in the same room on the floor (Bri and Sue gave us their mattress) and listen to the roosters all night who need to learn what morning is because it certainly isn’t 12 o’clock at night. I loved homestay though and it was definitely a positive experience.