In My Wildest Dreams

Rice is the new black

Well, here I am in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. How I managed to get here I can't quite figure out yet. Sometimes things just happen, it seems. Still a bit jet-lagged but not too bad. Left on Wednesday, Jan 2. Arrived in Singapore at 12:50 a.m. on Jan 4 after a short layover in Hong Kong. Flight wasn't too unbearable, except for the fact that United apparently is one of the few airlines w/o the personal on-flight video screens, so I didn't really get to watch any movies, but it was fine. Once in Singapore I took a taxi to my hotel, showered, and went to bed. The next day I woke up to BBC, found out that (what?!) Huckabee is the Republican choice for Iowa. Scary. At least Obama won. That's cool although Im still torn between the top 3 (and Kucinich who is my fave but oh well). ANYWAY, then I went for a walk and got some fish (rice) porridge for breakfast in honor of Meng. A very nice woman named Grace came to pick me up after I checked out of the hotel. She is with the organization that is working in Cambodia. She drove me around Singapore, to Mt. Fabor where we checked out views of the city, and then for chicken and rice and sugar cane juice across from the WTC. Yum. I had 2 glasses of sugar cane juice. Delicious and not as sweet as you might think. She chuckled at my inability to properly use a fork, which is mostly for scooping rice onto your spoon, apparently. Singapore is a beautiful, very developed city. Lots of high rises surrounded by water--I mean, the island, not the high rises :).

Grace dropped me and my happy bloated belly off at the airport, where I bought some trinkets for the kids in Cambodia, drooled in front of Starbucks (did not allow myself to indulge), and briefly checked email. On the flight from Singapore to Cambodia, I was served a meal of fish and rice which I mostly picked at, but then we were served rice--I mean, ice--cream for dessert. Happy, bloated belly Take 3.

I arrived in Cambodia painlessly after freaking out a bit on the plane when I finally got around to reading my Lonely Planet and realized that there are no ATMs in Cambodia. You must bring US dollars, which you can use and then get change in Cambodian riels, but apparently US$ are preferred in most places. So I'm thinking, huh, mmm, okay cuz I didn't have many US$.... WELL, as it turns out there are now like 3 ATM machines in Cambodia: 2 in the airport, so I pulled out a bunch of money just in case (I passed another on the way through Phnom Penh--Take note, Lonely Planet.) I exited the airport to find no one waiting for me, except for a few anxious taxi drivers. I hated to disappoint them but I had absolutely no knowledge of my destination and therefore no way of supporting them with my patronage, though they continued to try to convince me otherwise. Just as I was getting, uh, nervous, someone ran up to me with a sign that said SARAH, so I figured that was probably my ride. Turns out, it was. Riding through Phnom Penh was an amazing experience. It's a very interesting mix of thatch huts, "lamina" shacks, and French colonial buildings along mostly dirt roads. Also, motorbikes and scooters seem to be the preferred method of transportation. :)

I got here and was let into the room that I am sharing with Jennifer, the professor from San Jose State who got me involved with the Cambodia project. She was out at a meeting with the Ministry of Education and some people from the province where we will be teaching/developing curriculum/etc. Apparently, the govt is very interested in supporting the community-based science curriculum that we will be developing. Well, that's very cool. Will be even cooler when I have more of an idea of what the curriculum will look like, but for now I'm thinking of several strands to be developed across grade levels, including Health (HIV, water/food-borne bacterial illnesses, etc),. Sustainable Agriculture, Natural Resources management/Ecotourism, Anatomy/Medicine, and Ethnoscience/Community Science Knowledge (medicinal plants, etc). We'll see where it goes. The teachers have no formal science training. It's pretty clear that the curriculum must be tied to that which is both familiar and helpful to the people. Competition in the global scientific/technological arena is not a suitable or realistic vision for the country, but revenue from ecotourism certainly is. Apparently there's been massive logging over the past several years to earn some revenue for the country, but Cambodia is actually one of the countries with the most impressive rainforests and fauna in the area, so to earn income from preserving it rather than destroying it makes some sense.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Met up with Jennifer a couple of hours ago. She brought me dinner--fried egg and rice--a couple of hours ago. She has been here for a few days already--is excited but also exhausted. Tomorrow she and I will explore the city before we take off for the villages.

Take care and write me emails,
Sara

posted by Sara @ 4:58 AM