Ok, let me see... where was I? Oh, the weekends..

Saturdays
Saturdays are usually pretty laid back. For the past few weeks I've been working in the lab on Saturdays. Not all work of course. Sometimes I'd just be checking my e-mail, surfing the net while trying to kill the annoying mosquitoes with the cool mozzy bat. Sometimes I'd do some water testing if there're a lot of samples to process or do some experiment in the lab or something.. Last Saturday Mickey was running the AA (atomic absorption) machine to analyze for Arsenic and I decided to just stick around and help and learn. We did more than 40 samples, which made Mickey really happy. The AA machine hadn't been working so well and this was probably one of the first time that it did so well. The bad news was... just when I felt confident enough to run the AA by myself, it bailed on me.. Half way through calibration, I saw sparks coming from somewhere under the machine and I smelled smoke. Needless to say, I was shocked, so I turned off everything. I thought, "oh no, what have I done?? Did I do something wrong and blew the equipment?? This is one of the most expensive piece of equipment in this lab. Even though it is old and second hand. Feeling somewhat guilty, I told Mickey and he came in
to look at it. The good news was, it seemed like it was the UPS system feeding the furnace of AA machine that got burned. I really hope so.... So now we just have to spend a few hundred bucks fixing the UPS instead of thousands of dollars for AA...

So anyway, as I was saying... Saturdays are... pretty free and easy. Sometimes we'd go to town if there teams are here. We'd bring them out to do something fun or interesting, like visiting the market, going to the hair shop, river cruise on Mekong River, or for the newcomers, we'd bring them to the Killing Field and Touls Sleng. Which is what happened today. A group of high-schoolers came from Springdale for about 10 days.

The usual routine for Saturday evenings is USA Donuts. Mickey is a creature of habit so if there's no special plan, dinner on Saturdays is always at this place in town called USA Donuts. It's near Central Market (Phsaa Thmay). Lately though, Mickey found this place which we call it the Chinese Noodle shop. The boss is this Chinese lady who doesn't seem to speak much Khmer at all. She relies on her workers to translate for her. It's basically Chinese ramen. Just about everyone's impressed with how they make the noodles. The pulling and twisting action of the noodles. And for the price you pay, the noodles are surprisingly tasty.. Each bowl is like US$1. So sometimes we'll go to the chinese noodle shop if the mood is right.

Oh, sometimes on Saturday mornings I'd clean my bicycle, or clean my Crocs.. And I feel up to it, I'd clean my house. Even though I have someone clean my house twice a week, it still get pretty dusty. Of course, since I don't usually clean it except sweeping of the floor. It's amazing how dusty Cambodia is....

Sundays
Ah... Sundays.. Breakfast as usual, although not as early as weekdays. After breakfast I'd usually attend the Khmer house church at 9a. Even though I still don't understand what they're saying most of the time, I think it's good to just be with them.
So, what is Sunday service like at Khmer house church? Well, they'd usually start off with the traditional Khmer greeting, "cum riep sue" with the two hands together, much like the Thais. Then they'd sing a song, all in Khmer, of course. I still haven't gotten round to get the lyrics down so I can sing with them too. After that is usually a time of sharing or prayer reqeust or thanksgiving. I can't remember if they do the memory verse before or after. But yes, every week, they have a memory verse and everyone is free to recite the memory verse of the week. Before sharing of a bible passage, they'd sing another song. The leader who shares about the bible passage is Bu Dee, Ming Supian's husband. I think he's taken over after Suen, the previous leader, passed away. Suen is Bu Dee's brother in law. After the sermon, it's bible story time. Pii Ruen or someone will read from a Khmer bible story book. At the end of the service, they'd sing a song for offering.

After Khmer church, there's English church at about 10:30a. English church is also a house church, at Mickey's house. Format is similar to Khmer church. Church is comprised of Mickey's family and all other Christian volunteers. The format is much simpler. We'd start off with a series of songs. Whoever has a song will lead the group to sing the song. Generally we sing in acapella, but sometimes we have visitors who'd play the guitar as accompaniment. After songs is a time of prayer request and thanksgiving. Whoever feels moved to pray would pray and Mickey would end the prayer. Following the prayer is a time of studying the scriptures. We have been doing the book of Matthew for the past few months. Mickey generally starts off by sharing what he has learned from the scriptures after which he'll open the time for anyone to share what he or she has learned. Church ends usually with Zay (short for Isaiah, Mickey's son) leading us with any song that he has in mind.

After church, we'd usually head to THE noodle shop for lunch. This noodle shop is not the same as the Chinese noodle shop. It's located in town, and the food is cheap and good. My personal favourite is "Loc Lak" (rice with pan fried beef cubes and some excellent sauce; salt and pepper and you squeeze some lime juice on it) and the stir-fried noodles. Why do they start calling it THE noodle shop? Because they sell noodles and I guess it's easy to call it that way. Hahaha... There's actually a Chinese name for it.

After lunch, we usually head to Lucky, our favourite supermarket, not just to buy groceries and other necessities but also to use its washrooms since they're nice and clean! These days I've been buying more and more snacks, to eat in the lab and to share with my fellow colleagues. I also use the snacks to keep my TOEFL class awake. It's just difficult to stay awake after lunch... Let's see, after Lucky is The Market! Phsaa Tul Tumpou or Russian Market. After going there so many times, week after week, you'd think that I'd be bored, but it's not that bad. I still have fun every week. Sometimes when I don't need anything I'd just wander around... Russian Market is where we get our dose of DVDs and CDs. So far I have not seen any place that sells genuine movie DVDs or CDs so I guess this would have to do. Surprisingly, I haven't bought that many movies. In my 3-month stay, I've only bought about 10 movies. Haven't bought any TV serials so far which I'm quite glad. There's just not that much time to watch movies. I haven't even come close to finish watching the drama series I brought from Singapore! Most of the time, I'd watch movies with the volunteers in the lab on computer with projector. There's something comforting about watching documentaries with a group of people. Planet Earth is the favourite series. Just about everyone buys a copy of the series when they're here.

After the market it'd be time to head back to the village. Dinner is usually at Mickey and it used to be sandwiches, but after Michal (Mickey's eldest) started making chilies, we've switched to having chilies for dinner on Sunday nights. This version of chilies is similar to spaghettis, but with beans and chilli powder. Sometimes after dinner we'd watch an episode of Planet Earth or some movies.

Well, I think that's about sums up my typical week in the village.

So, anyone interested in knowing what is my typical week out here in Kien Svay, a district in Cambodia? Incidentally, Michelle also wrote about her typical week. Not that I'm trying to copy her, but... well, I thought it'd be fun to tell my stories.. and bore you at the same time! It helps me to remember what I'm doing.. Sometimes I lose track of time.

Typical day
Typical morning will start with breakfast at the coffee shop near RDI. Usually that's the place where the activities of the day are planned, for volunteers or groups. Most of the volunteers and groups eat breakfast at THE coffee shop starting from around 7:30a. That's the place where the RDI staff discuss what's going to happen or for everyone to find out what and who and how, etc...

I guess I should dedicate another post about the food at THE coffee shop. My favourite is rice with pork and soup and pickles.

After breakfast I'd normally head to the lab, which is where I usually work and check some e-mail. Sometimes when I'm free, I'd check the progress of the project with the lab staff who're working on the Arsenic project and see if there're any problems. They're Leak, Sukorn and Konkhea. 9a is when my Khmer lesson starts and ends around 10a. I'm using a book called "Modern Spoken Cambodian" by Franklin E. Huffman. I have 2 tutors, Vanthoen (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and Sophak (Tues & Thurs) and both are RDI staff. Sophak is an accountant but also doubles as secretary for administrative work at the moment since the previous secretary just left to go to the US to get married last month. Sometimes they swap if one is busy on that day. Sometimes I don't get any lesson when they're busy.

Lunch is usually at Mickey's house, for most volunteers, except those who have families and eat at home. After lunch, I'd head to the lab for the TOEFL class. There're about 4-6 students. Class is supposed to start at 12:45 and end at 1:30, but very often we'd start late and end slightly late. I try to avoid ending late so it doesn't cut into their work time.

Work ends officially at 4:30p.m., but of course, for people like us, long term volunteers, RDI team, work and play and personal time kind of overlap.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll try to spend about 1/2 hour with the kids from neighbours' and teach them simple English from about 5p. Some days I skip, some weeks I'll do more days depending on my work.

Dinner's usually around 6 plus at Mickey's and can last anywhere till 8 plus, if people are free . Sometimes teams will stay back after dinner to chat or play games or just hang out.

After dinner, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I teach English to village teenagers at Min Sooka's house. Both Min Sooka and her husband Sarreun are part of the Khmer church members and also two of the four leaders in training. On a typical week, I teach English on Mondays and Wednesday, whereas Caleb teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays. But these 2 weeks I've been covering all 4 nights because I'm covering for Caleb, since he's gone on vacation covering Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand... We all call him Junior. Because he acts like one sometimes... :)

Lately I've been sleeping later and later, which is probably not a good sign. When I first started out here, I'd go to bed like 9 plus or 10p and wake up before 7a. Nowadays I'm sleeping at close to midnight and wake up at 7 plus. I used to have the false impression that life at the village is very free... But that's not the case here. Life is bustling with activities here. Plenty to do, if you want to.

Wednesdays

For the past 2 weeks I've been joining the bible story telling night on Wednesdays. Mickey teaches the villagers bible story, sometimes with actions and it helps them to remember the bible teachings, and there's usually a time for discussion on the things they learned or any questions they may have. Most are Christians from the Khmer church, but sometimes non-believers join in too, out of curiosity or interests. Some of the point or things they learned they brought up are pretty cool. Things that I never thought about, and it makes me think that I don't think hard enough about the things I learned from the bible.

Fridays

Fridays are normally movie nights... along with some other nights if there's enough time and people are keen. For the past little while, we've (volunteers) been watching the Planet Earth series by BBC, which I absolutely love. Documentaries about all parts of the earth.

Thanksgiving and Update
What an exciting month it has been! I was able to hang out with my church friends from Singapore for a week this month on a mission trip. I didn’t realize how much I miss speaking Singlish or mixed languages until I met them. It was a timely encouragement and also a privilege to be able to work with a dedicated group of people on the mission trip. I was also thankful to have some time off to visit Vietnam for a few days after the mission trip.

For a while, I’ve been wondering why I’m involved so much with teaching English to the Khmers. Because that certainly wasn’t my intention. Nor was it my “forte”. But I realized that perhaps God have plans for me to work with a specific group of people, which is the young ladies in the lab and the office. And it is amazing because it seems I have come in at the right time, since there was no one else in the RDI team who could do that due to age, cultural and gender factors.

I’m starting to build closer relationships with some of the local staff, such as my Khmer tutor, Sophak, a really sweet girl, who’s also one of the students in the TOEFL class and a non-believer. She mentioned once that she was looking for ways to obtain inner peace by going to a guru who teaches how to get peace from within. I have difficulty to make her understand that she’s looking at the wrong place. Pray for better communication and the right time and right words to witness to her.

Please pray for one of the girls in my English class, Vanny, who is a believer. Her brother (Sopheak), a non-believer, is a drug user and has caused much grieve to the family. He’s been taken to a rehab centre. Pray for change of heart.

The English class for the village teens are going well. I think the maximum no. of students that have turned out so far was about 30, which is quite a handful to handle. I have decided to take a break from learning dry stuff like verbs because they have problems catching up and switch to learning some songs and playing some games.




Advanced case of arsenicosis (arsenic poisoning) or so called “black foot disease”.





Next month there’ll be a group of 15-20 high school kids coming to build a rainwater harvesting tank at Preak Russey (Russey means bamboo), one of the 2 villages with arsenic poisoning cases identified. Praise God that the village head and school principal have agreed to let the school be used to house the volunteers. So the group will take turns to stay at the village (instead of travelling, which may be a life changing experience for some. I may be staying with them for some of the nights while they’re at the village. Preak Russey is an example whereby good intention isn’t always a good thing. Some 10 years ago, some NGO put tube wells at this village without checking the water quality. Consequently, the villagers have been drinking arsenic contaminated water and thus the arsenic poisoning.




Filters that I’m working on.







One thing that RDI works very hard is raise the awareness of cases like this and to provide information and recommendation to any NGO. For example, an ongoing project is the development of drinking water quality index. Essentially the plan is to map drinking water quality for the entire country. This will be particularly helpful for NGOs that come in and want to put in wells for villages, and they can refer to the map and determine the best location or whether it’s a good idea at all to put in wells.

One exciting thing about the project I’m working on (assessing the performance of arsenic removal filter) is that we have stumbled upon some new technique that may be a viable solution to removing arsenic. The current technology that I’ve been working on doesn’t seem to give very good results so this is a good news. Current technology uses rusted nails and laterite as media to remove arsenic. Now we’re looking at using “cooked” sand as media.

There’re always many interesting projects going on at RDI, and most of which are impacting the lives of the locals as well as the volunteers. I can see God using people of all skills and background and doing some amazing stuff.

Prayer Items
1. Language - learning curve is slowing down. It’s difficult to focus with so many things going on.
2. TOEFL & English class - for continual growth of friendship and chance to share the gospel, especially the young ladies and girls. TOEFL class is having a regular turnout of 4-5 students and English class for the village teens about 20-30 students.
Spiritual health - When I’m tired, I really slack in keeping up my bible reading and I’ve only just started doing bible study on my own.
3. Project work - The lab is shorthanded this month and work gets piled up. One critical instrument is not working well.
4. To juggle between project work, teaching TOEFL and English, and learning Khmer. It can be quite taxking.
5. Working with different cultures - wisdom and sensitivity in dealing with people of diverse background.




During RDI staff retreat. These are students from TOEFL class. Most are from the lab. Sophak, my tutor is on my left.







On the ferry. Visited Lvea Em with Health and Medicine crew