A new day

We were collected straight after breakfast by minibus and driven to Prey veng. The journey itself was a fantastic experience. We all stared out of the windows at the strange and foreign country before our eyes. Everything here is different and new to us. During te journey we packed the bags of health care items which each person would receive at after the teaching. They contained a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and a  nit comb.We got quitew a good system going by passing each bag from back to front in the bus adding one item per person and then the last person knotting the bags. Irene and Rebecca started it off with toothbrushes.

We had to cross a river by car ferry, a very different experience from a car ferry at home in Norway. Waiting for it allowed peole to come and sall their goods, we were offered everything from sunglasses to fruit.There was also some people selling snacks, nobody was tempted to buy any though, there were stirfried cockroaches which one lady showed Pat how to eat by removing the legs and wings then popping into her mouth - yum? The lady selling griddled frogs and stirfried locusts dd not tempt any of us either.

Thankfully Situon had brought fruit for snacking on and cola to drink. After a couple of hours we arrived at the Parce project which will be our headquarters for the next couple of days. We were treated to a lunch of rice, pototoes and carrots with an uidentifiable meat and a veyr tasty sliced meat fried in oyster sayce.

Full and happy it was straight off to our first teaching  in a village. I have never been chauffer driven before and when we realised we were to be driven on motorbikes we had various feelings about it. The drivers, 13 in all seemed amused by this group of westerners - not surprising really!

I was determined to enjoy it, and did once I got used to it. The journey should take about an hour by motorbike we were told, after 15 minutes on a reasonaly good road I began to enjoy watching the countryside zoom past. This is definately raural Cambodia and I felt priviledged to be seeing it. My driver set off last and I was happy to be at the back but no, we whizzed past all the others and then left them behind! We turned off the road onto what can barely be described as a track between rice fields. The surface was incedibly bumpy! So me of the bikes had less powerful engines than others and a couple in our group had to get off and walk in places. When we arrived Irene said she had never prayed so much as when she was on that journey! Others were rather stiff with cramp in their hands from hanging on tightly!

There was about 60 people waiting for u in the village and as we arrived so did more people! Pat taught and we supported the teaching with drama, all went very well. After that some of us played with the children while the health team dealt with a variety of illnesses and injuries.

Before we knew it we were back on the motorbikes and heading to the Parce headquarters again.