Day 15
Travel Location: Phnom-Penh,Cambodia
Last night we met up with an old work collegue – Julie Forder for those of you who may know her. Julie worked with me in the UN and has been here on and off for the past 14 years. She has an 8 yr old daughter to a Khmer guy who sadly died suddenly 4 yrs ago. Julie currently works as a kind of health advisor with Unicef and so she has heaps of contacts and is only too happy to help out ……….. It was so lovely catching up with her after all this time and picking her brains about this and that, people who are still around that I know etc.
So on the advice of Julie we went and checked out a school today. All in all it seems very impressive and the kids were pretty stoked as they don’t wear a uniform and in typical traditional asian style they take their shoes off before going into class. There were 47 different nationalities and they all seemed to playing together fine. We arrived at break time so were able to check out the class rooms etc. They have about 20 kids per classroom and one teacher with one aid per class. The school has a 25 m pool, basketball courts and tennis courts on location but the oval for athletics is about a block away.
We also met another contact (thanks to Graham!) an ex-detective from Australia doing some amazing work with child trafficking, sex workers and domestic violence. He was really friendly and helpful so we are keeping our fingers crossed. So sad I don’t have the sexual assault grad cert as he is in the early process of setting up a rape centre which he said when completed he would be able to offer me employment. (I do vaguely remember myself saying if I ever moot the idea of further study someone was to shoot me!!!! – so No I am not going there………..)
Anyways a fairly exhausting day travelling all over town in a tuk tuk. We are all very excited about having a couple of days out of the big city in the rural villages of kampong Cham and meeting Lyda. The kids have made some great little friends here in the courtyard – all in all there are about 6 of them (girls and boys) and both Zara and Theo cannot wait to get out and play early in the morning and in the arvo as soon as we come home from our outings.
I do apologise for the low quality photos but I have to reduce them otherwise the download can take me all night and even then it may not work!!!! But hope you get the gist from the photos – I will try to get them slightly better quality so you all don’t go mad thinking you need new glasses!!!!
