First Blog, First Post

First things first: thanks to everyone who took part for the fantastic send off. I'm so glad I got to see so many of you, and particular thanks to all the people who came from London and Brighton and to my sister and to Hal for making it so far. The party was just awesome, and finishing our last night as UK residents with everyone joining in on 'Hey Girl' a-la-samba-batucada was just the greatest, most fitting, fun outro to living in the UK that I could have wished for. Put a grin on my face and kept the tears from my eyes!

The scene after getting home that night was pretty hectic, still lots of stuff to sort, throw out, box, and store. We were already over our baggage allowance, and we kept finding things and going "Oh lord how come I haven't already packed this!". Got it done with a little help from my sis. Finally hit the sack at 4... ready for 6am rise... (this after nearly six weeks of night-after-night of getting 3-6hours every night - good lord I was tired, but having something of the enormity of this VSO adventure thing to look forward to just kept me going and going).

After a nervous are-we-going-to-be-there-in-time drive to Heathrow Airport; Aunt, Uncle, Sister and a friend of Mel's saw us off. (Paula: thanks again for the lift.) Shed a few tears as we set off, not out of sadness, more out of fondness and the momentousness-of-the-moment. Despite the grinding fatigue and my head bidding me to 'keep it together - stay focussed' my emotions were soaring: a heady mix of nerves, and excitement.

I mean, this is something I've wanted to do since I can remember. I kept thinking to myself: "This is it!" And I gripped Mel's hand as I watched our takeoff of the window. "This is IT!"

OUR FIRST CAMBODIAN
Some 12-14 hours later (I lose count) and we were touching down in Pnomh Penh. The language tapes I'd promised myself I'd learn on the plane still ringing in my ears, though scant words seemed to have stuck.

There was a Cambodian guy from the VSO office there to meet us, was great to see him, his English was pretty passable - a little mixup with the visas - it turned out there was another VSO on the plane but they'd brought someone-else's visa for her... and a stern-looking border officials told us we were supposed to have passport photos, and I wondered if we were going to have to bribe him (though it seemed unlikely) - we'd been told they could take a photocopy from our passports, and when we explained this he seemed quite satisfied and hurried off to fill out what seemed like a hundred different forms and stamp 20 different stamps on each. He even cracked a sheepish childlike grin when he realised he got one of his stamps wrong - as if he expected we would scold him for his inattention. 'Welcome to Cambodia', I thought to myself.

IN AT THE DEEP END
We all climbed into a VSO pick-up to go to the VSO office. It turns out Cambodia really does look and feel like a slightly poorer version of Vietnam - was wonderfully reassuring to hear the familiar buzz of motorbikes swarming around us.

Our arrival at the office was not quite as smoothe as we'd hoped - in fact a bit calamtous (and slightly embarrassing!). We were exhausted, having barely slept on the plane, and having been told we would have the first afternoon off, were looking forward eagerly to a siesta. But in under an hour we were fetched for our first briefing on admin and orientation, and then told that an hour after that we started our first afternoon of training! We were not best pleased! Even worse there'd been a communication breakdown and we kept being told how we were 'late'! During our first briefing we were even told how they'd gone with all our papers to collect us from the airport several days earlier, how everyone had had to wait around for ages while they tried to work out where we were...

Well after a that I couldn't help but introduce us to everyone with as evocative an explanation as I could muster about how WE were there on the day THEY had requested at the time THEY had requested and that there had NEVER been any other day for our arrival. In fact I was feeling a bit hot-headed about it all and went to make sure my programme director knew the full story and to see if we couldn't get the afternoon off after all.

After airing my grievance in the plainest possible terms, and making sure he was in absolutely no doubt about our innocence in the matter, he nodded sagely, and explained in fairly good English that there was nothing to be done, that since they hadn't known about this no arrangements had been made, and that although some of the briefings we had missed were quite vital, there was no time to catch up on these so we would have to muddle through, and I could choose to miss the afternoon's briefings also if I wished but these were very important and there would be no opportunity to catch up. Fuming though I was, I could see there was no way forward, so I had to concede.

ONLY LATER did I discover that the guy I'd been talking to was in fact called Pisit.... wheras my programme director is called 'PisET' and I'd been ranting on to a completely un-connected member of the office admin staff.... who had obviously listened to me going on and on out of nothing but the sheer politeness for which Cambodians are famed... and not wishing to seem unhelpful thought up the best information he could muster!

Moreover it turned out that catch-up sessions had been arranged, just no-one had actually told us about them, so all was not nearly so bleak as it had at first seemed!

UP-TO-DATE
So that was the first day. A few briefing sessions, and a day or two on we were all piled into a large coach that looked like it had just driven out of the 70s (though thankfully the air-con did still seem to be working just about) ... complete with some really awful cambodian karaoke. The destination was Kampong Cham, which is where we'll be spending the next six or so weeks for language training. On the way we stopped off at a large concrete watering hole ... where we got to see our first fried spiders and cockroaches... our language teacher explained: in the khmer rouge days people got pretty desparate, I couldn't imagine ever making it back to a normal existance, we were so hungry we would eat anything, even leaves off the trees just to having the feeling of having something in your mouth to chew. Thank god those days are gone. And there is real feeling of industriousness that makes me feel hopeful for the future of Cambodia. And I hope will mean my time here won't end up being in vein.