Easing in

There have been a few small challenges today which I feel grateful for, by which I mean that they feel like a lesser version of things to come.

Today has been my first full day here. I don't think I need to say everything that's happened today, so I'll try to summarise by giving a few examples of these challenges.

Heat
Let's start there. It has been about 28 degrees today. It is likely to be about 5 degrees hotter in community, and more humid. I feel like today is easing me in because we didn't spend much time outside today. Most of the day was spent travelling to Kampong Chnang on a bus with air con, or inside a hotel. Plus we got to see a lot of sights on the bus!





Facilities
One of the things I am most nervous about is squat toilets. We stopped on the side of the main road to Kampong Chnang to wait for the second bus to catch up with our lunch, and we also went to the toilet. This one was not a squat toilet but it was the only one available with running water(!) and it had a lot of insects. I also banged my head on the door coming back out - Cambodians are much shorter on average than people from the UK. 


Language barrier
In this new hotel instead of sharing with UK volunteers like last night, we are sharing eith Khmer. I was a bit nervous about getting to this point as we were told they may not have much English. But I have been blessed with a lovely roommate named Channa who speaks conversational English and has taught me a lot of Khmer this evening already. We will find out who our counterparts for the duration of the project are at some point this week, and I feel more prepared now, if it is someone with less English.

Food
Having read about the food on Katie's blog, and knowing that the food hygiene level is much lower here, this is something I was concerned about. But so far today the food has been pretty good. 
For breakfast, this is what we had:
Anyone who knows me knows that one of the few things I really struggle with is egg, but I ate almost the whole sandwich - I took an especially chunky piece of the omelette out. I think maybe 5 of us managed to eat a whole sandwich, because generally people did not like the fish paste in the sandwich, which was also in the veggie and vegan options.

This was lunch - very nice! I gave my egg to one of the boys. Savoury meat and veg with rice. We sat on flattened cardboard boxes on the side of the road to eat this.

And this is where we get to the challenge of today. On the plate is sweet and sour (very bony) pork with rice, and some kind of fried mushroom - very nice. I was told the stuff in the bowl was a fish soup. It was pretty fishy, so I asked what this on my fork was. 
Channa told me that the meat was actually pork, and this thing, which I had already eaten one piece of, was pig intestine.

Since I had already eaten one piece, I ate the rest too.

So when I am faced with the Khmer delicacy of unhatched baby ducks, maybe I'll have to give it a go...


Retrei susdei! (Goodnight)

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