one week in pnh

favorite moments in phnom penh thus far...

orientation for new teachers, direct quotes from the orientation staff:

"maybe you go down waterfront after 11pm and some gangsters try to take you money. maybe you just give them one dollar, maybe two."

"if police try to stop you when you on motobike, you just keep driving. you pretend you not see them, it's okay, they do not have gas to give chase."

tuk tuk driver named Lucky says,

"my name lucky because my mother have me during pol pot time. i alive. i lucky. i have two children, age 4 and 6. they too much funny."

my new house is in a dead end street off of Mao Tse Tung Blvd. Very cute, typical Khmer wooden house on the top, cement on the bottom. White tile floors, white walls. not ecru, not eggshell-- but Clorox Bleach Insane Asylum from hell white. i am hiring one of the guards/drivers here at school to paint it. the cost to paint the entire place, you ask? including paint, brushes, labor, etc...$200. sweet.

spent the weekend cruising the markets for household stuff. i hired a car and driver for the day to carry all the stuff around. driver was a young former monk named Po Po. he clearly misses being a monk and has a photo of himself with the orange robes and bald head on his cell phone.

he bought his car with a loan from the bank-- a 1991 Toyota Camry with curtains on the windows. His other car is a tuk tuk, and he takes english classes in the morning and drives foreigners for the rest of the day. he supports his mother in the countryside-- his brother works at a garment factory seven days a week for pennies.

he also drove another teacher here around a few months ago, and he is keen to take us both out to his village in the countryside to meet his mother. he is also proud of the fact that his village has a zoo, so we will probably go there. god only knows the condition of the animals there, not exactly the free range zoos they have in the states.