Day 3 (July 14th): Cultural Night

Chelsea:
Get Out Those Dancing Shoes!

Wednesday night we were treated to a very special evening. There are many orphanages in Phnom Penh, too many unfortunately. We were told that most of the children in the orphanages were actually dropped off by their parent(s) because they simply could not afford to feed another mouth and orphanages are a much better than the alternative of living on the street or being sold into the sex trade. Living in an orphanage means regular meals, access to education and social activities such as dance lessons. On Wednesday, Habitat arranged for one of the local orphanages to come to our hotel and perform a few traditional dances for us in return for a small donation. These kids were FANTASTIC! Not only were they dressed the part (full makeup... even fake eyelashes!) but I'm quite sure that I have never seen a pair of hands flex so far in any direction.They performed four different dances for us. The first one was called "Wishing Well" which ended with us, the audience, getting gently pelted with jasmine flowers for good luck! :) The second one was called the "Grasshopper" dance. It was very up beat and, as you may have guessed, involved a lot of hopping- at one point there were three boys moving attached to each other across the floor bobbing up and down on only their hands! The third dance was called the "Bamboo" dance. It was a lot like skipping double dutch... only with bamboo sticks. They bang the sticks to the beat (which gets faster and faster) and take turns jumping in and out of them as the kids on the end move them in a skipping like motion. They invited a few of us up to join in this one and believe it or not, we did really well! No one wiped out. The last dance was called the ``Coconut" dance. It of course involved the clinquing of coconut shells together to the beat. We got to try this one too and quickly found out that it was not as easy as it looked! It was an awesome night! The kids were so happy to perform and share their stories with us...many actually spoke a little bit of English.
We were then asked to perform some kind of dance or song for them. As none of us seemed to have any talents to display, we ended up doing the chicken dance...it went over quite well. :)
Looking forward to seeing them again on Saturday when we visit them at the orphanage.