Day 2

Chelsea:

Well, I`ve convinced Susanne to lend me the computer to write an entry on this thing. Day 2 was just as great as day 1. The houses are really starting to take shape with the walls going up higher and higher and windows being put in. We arrived as usual and went straight to work moving bricks and cement in rickty old wheelbarrows to the house and then laying them in a very percise manner. We work very closly with the skilled workers and have even started to pick up some of their language. The guy I was working with told me that I could be a skilled worker.... hmmm, career switch maybe??? :) At lunch time we headed off to our regular hangout and enjoyed a much needed break out of the sun eating in hammocks. There are a few young girls that make bracelets and try to sell them to you at the lunch site. The day before they had asked us to write our names down on a napkin which most of us did thinking that they were looking for autographs but come to find out, they took them home that night and sewed our names in to personalized bracelets. Seems as though they may have passed the names around though to other friends as Marianne ended up with 4 or 5 with her name on them!! How could you say no? Plus, they were only $1.00.

After lunch a bunch of kids came up to the fence to say hi. Some of them actually spoke very good English. Apparently public school in Cambodia is free and it is taught in Cambodian but there are private schools which children of well off famillies go to as they cost money and they are taught in English with French classes. According to Raymond (one of our Habitat contacts here) to be a teacher, you have to go to university for 5 years and make about 550 per month. It`s crazy to think how different things are over here and really puts things in perspective. Anyway, back to the kids- the one child that spoke English asked if he could come meet us so with Eric (another Habitat staff) as our guide, we went up to the road to meet them. There were only about 6 or 7 kids to start but before you knew it, we were surronded by about 30! Brian and I had happened to grab frisbees when we went up to the road and ended up having a huge impromptu game of frisbee with all the kids- what an experience!! They were all surprisingly pretty good too! Certainly a memory I will hold on to.

Eventually it was time to head back to build site and continue on for the day. We continued the same jobs and spent time entertaining the kids at the site. Michelle and I taught them how to play See Matteo (sorry, no idea how to spell it) and took them on wheelbarrow rides. At about 4:30 we cleaned up and headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We went to a huge 3 level Thai resturant for dinner. Brian and Kevin ordered frog legs but the rest of us were a little less adventurous ordering things like Pad Thai, stir fry and rice or noodle dishes. But as you can imagine, the change is diet would evetually catch up with us... unfortunately Erin and I were the lucky two who spent all evening in the bathroom getting sick. Oh well, guess it comes with the territory although I certainly hope to not have that experience again! The policy when someone gets sick is to have them stay home the next day so both she and I spent today sleeping it off at the hotel. Up now though and ready to go. Will add some pictures and write about Day 3 after dinner tonight. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting on the blog- we love hearing from you! :)