Halfway through orientation in Cambodia!
- Lauren Achen
- Sep 6, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 25, 2018
Monday September 3rd marked the halfway mark for our orientation here in Cambodia. We arrived Thursday August 23rd a little before midnight, and didn't get to bed till almost 2am. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday consisted of a good amount of rest time, and we covered a lot of logistics. Saturday, the 25th we took a tour of the Royal Palace, just a short walk from our guesthouse. The flag was raised, meaning the King was there, however we did not see him. We did get to see the Throne Hall, Silver Pagoda, and beautiful gardens.
Sunday consisted of traveling to Church and cooking. We attended the City Church service which was mainly in Khmer, however for the sermon and most songs they were translated into English, or subtitles were placed on the screen. The congregation was very welcoming, and we even got to cook with some after! We headed to a local market to buy produce for Beef Lok Lak and Chicken Lemongrass soup with the help of 2 mentors from the church. We spent about an hour preparing the dishes, and then sat down together to eat our delicious home cooked meal! We spent the afternoon relaxing, and had dinner at the Happy Damrei Board Game Cafe.
Monday was the start of our language classes at Khmer Friends. We have 3 weeks of classes, 15 hours a week, and will learn to speak Khmer (no reading or writing). During these hours we have 3 different sessions. The first hour is all 6 of us together with our first teacher, the second hour we break out in groups of 3 and have a different teacher. We then have an hour break where we can get coffee down the street from us, and we finish our third hour in the same groups of 3 but with a different teacher. At the beginning everything was challenging. We were diving in to a new and challenging language, while also having 3 different teachers. As the days have gone by, I see the importance of having the different teachers. Just like in the U.S., Cambodia has different dialects depending on where you travel to, so being able to understand them is important!
During our first week in country we were introduced to David's Noodles, a restaurant that very quickly became our favorite place to eat. Here they ask that you order noodles to see the noodle show, I wasn't really sure what that meant at first, but I ordered noodles anyway! Shortly after, the noodle show began. There was a gentleman at the front of the restaurant flinging and spinning a long piece of dough for the noodles. At first I wasn't sure how they were going to end up as noodles, but minutes later, the flinging and spinning created the most amazing noodles. I could probably eat these everyday!
Some other highlights of our orientation have included cooking together, taking our daily tuk tuk or rickshaw rides (tuk tuk: 4-5 person cart attached to a moto / rickshaw: 3 wheeled motorized vehicle, kinda like a smart car w/out doors), and sampling the new and exciting fruit. Mangosteen has become one of my favorite new fruits, and kind of looks like a head of garlic when you peel the skin off. It's very sweet and delicious, however, DO NOT eat it with sugar!!
Some of the more challenging days of our orientation was watching the movie First They Killed My Father, and then visiting Toul Sleng (S-21) Prison and one of the many Killing Fields, Choeung Ek. When I first began the process for this program I knew NOTHING about Cambodia. When I came back from my Interviews and was placed in the Cambodia program, I was shocked and confused as to why I never heard about the genocide in Cambodia. In April of 1975, the Khmer Rouge evacuated everyone out of Phnom Penh to the countryside, telling them that they would be able to return in 3 days. Soon, 3 days passed, and everyone was forced to continue on and soon placed in work camps. Individuals that had soft hands, spoke a foreign language, wore glasses, worked in a professional field, and worked in the former government were seen as a target and usually killed immediately. In the Toul Sleng Prison, between 12,000 and 20,000 people were imprisioned, and there are only 12 confirmed survivors. Prisoners from S-21 were then taken to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields where they were executed and buried in mass graves. The torture, starvation, and inhuman treatment lasted until January 1979 when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia.
1 in 4 Cambodians were killed from 1975-1979. Today, those that are 40 years old have survived the Khmer Rouge. For those that didn't live through it, they know someone that has. If you don't know much about the history of Kampuchea I encourage you to watch The Killing Fields and/or First They Killed My Father. There are also many books out there from survivors you can read, along with First They Killed My Father. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, and please keep the people of Cambodia as well as my YAGM cohort in your thoughts and prayers.
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