Time to Say Goodbye...

Last day of work!!! Amber and I have been there for because it was Amber and my last day of work in AIP Foundation! They were very sweet to us!! They used the whole day to prepare BBQ for our farewell!! We had the event on the roof top, just behind the AIP board. In the party, we had fried rice, kebab, corn, etc.  I am always amazed with how Cambodian start their fire and start cooking.  The man are always telling the women what to do and they do not do it themselves, the women are always the one who prepare, cook, and clean up the whole event, and men never help, that is one thing that I did not like as a Cambodia culture. 

These are my co-workers, Pagna, third right is AIP country director.  None of my School Based Program mangers were there, It was a great party, but without them, I felt incomplete! 

These are the volunteers at AIP, of course there are more, but I didn't have a chance to take a picture with them, this is one of my biggest regret.

She is one of the sweetest lady in the office, she cleans for us everyday! We cannot communicate, but through simple body language and Khmer, we can feel each other's love.  She is a great helper! She opens the door for us every morning, she would share whatever she has, like snails, bread; she would also clean the desks and floor for us, to make sure we have a good environment to work. I love her! :)

I will miss AIP Foundation in Cambodia! :) I love all of my co-workers and volunteers for all of their help and kindness! :) 

The other thing I will miss is these cute little Khmer children, Visna (AKA Pizza) and Hang! Hang started to go to school in "Hello, American School" by Russian Market, they all wear school uniforms, they are very cute!! Hang was screaming for the first few days in school because he doesn't want to go.  Hang does not speak any English but he tries; however, Pizza speaks a lot English! He helps me to translate to his mom when I would be in the kitchen.  They are the fun of our Cambodia trip! I love them!!

The women sitting down is Pizza and Hang's mother.  She is an angel to me! She cooks everyday, everyday, 3 meals daily for us!! She is an amazing cook!! If Ohm is home or not home, she still cooks 24/7.  When we did our laundry the first time, she taught us, she helped us a few times doing laundry as well.  She is a great mom!! She laughs a lot and she cares a lot too! Even though she doesn't speak a lot of English, she still tries to talk to us! I love her so much! I think she deserves a hug and a kiss! :)

Another person I will miss is Ohm.  She is Ohm.  She loves to go to the PaKuDah (Buddhist temple).  She loves Chinese and she loves me!! She tries to teach us a lot of Khmer, but we would never understand.  She speaks some English, enough for her to know when we will be home for dinner. :) She is amazing. She is an amazing sewer! She sews really well! I remember she helped me sewed my very first elephant pants because it was too long! She is so sweet!! She is always the one who always put water into the fridge for us! :) I love her!

This is the house that Kayla and I have stayed for the past 2 months! It has been great!! I will never forget the things I have learned and the things I have experienced because of how great my host family was! 

The other girls stay at Ohm's house across the street! Kayla and I would go over for dinner everyday! We love it there! :) 

Something that I will never miss in Cambodia is... the SMELL!!! The smell of the market!! And the tummy of that man! I do not think I will miss a man on the bike with a loud speaker saying "Nom Bang, Nom Bang Bayon" around the neighborhood.  Or.. a chart saying " Snails, snails!" Or... waking up by monks.... 10 different monks come into the house in 30 minutes and give blessings to others. Or.. waking up by a rooster, who always crow at 4 in the morning! :)  I will not miss the honking on the road as well! Even though I miss my bell on my bike, and I wanted to ring my bell while traveling through campus now! :)

Goodbye Cambodia! Thank you so much for everything! Your kindness and culture has brought me a greater understanding of what love is and stress-free is! I love Cambodia!! I will never forget about this country!

Unforgettable Meals, Part II

Mike's Burger.  Apparently, due to Khmer Rouge, Mike went to NYC and worked in different restaurant and learned as many skills as he can possibly learn.  Then, he came back to Cambodia and opened Mike's Burger House!  Because the food did not come all at once, I needed to take a picture.  Stole the food from Dillon, therefore, thank you Dillon for the triple Hawaiian burger.  

Dillon LOVES to put Sriracha sauce into his burger instead of ketchup, it is AMAZING!!! Their fries were good, but their shake was better than FCC! :) I enjoyed the meal we had at Mike's 

 Indian restaurant!! I was VERY stuffed!!! It was our last Monday night as a group!!! For this restaurant, I have no words to explain how good or bad this restaurant is.  I do not dislike, or like this, it was OK, it was not something stunning or amazing, but it was not bad that gave me an impression to remember this restaurant. It was just a restaurant like no others.  I remember the napkin towel was still damp and they would move our cups for no reasons, and there would be no one in the restaurant, so I can laugh as loud as I CAN!! Yay!!

After we had Indian food, we went to ToTo!!! Look at our beautiful group!!! Although they forgot my order, it was OK! I wish I can have more ice-cream in the future! :)

Before any of these happened, our last Saturday, Aug 22, 2015, we cleaned the South Stake Center, our chapel.  It was very fun and funny!! We would sweep and mop, and other people would sweep and mop the exact spot that we did! And after we mop, they would use a hose to hose the floor.  Haha, after we mopped about 4 or 5 times, they finally used the machine and put laundry soup on top and hose down the soup. I love it!!

At the end, we had a lunch sack of sandwich and coke! :) I don't think I have drank that much coke in my life! :) I love coke! hahaha!!! 

Then, we were invited to go to a member's home.  I felt it was a 6 star hotel, it was a luxury of all the hard work of Cambodian! Somehow I felt really bad being up there.  This is the view.  The had one floor for BBQ and panic, and another floor for swimming pool! It was cool and pretty!! The river was very brown, it is beginning of rainy season! Rain! Rain! Rain!! It is rainy season for all the rice field workers!! 

Unforgettable Meals-Khmer Edition

These are some of our last meals at Ohm's house and in Cambodia for Khmer food.  I am going to miss it!! 

Because we have been to Mama's for so many times, mama said she will make us Khmer food for the last week in Cambodia.  She made Khmer curry and fried rice!!! The funny thing about Khmer curry is Ohm's curry and mama's curry are identical.  I tried asking mama on how to make Khmer curry.  She said, "oh, it is very easy, you can close your eyes and make it!" I don't know what is it about Khmer people, they do not share any tricks or even ingredients with you on Khmer curry.  Luckily, just right before we leave the house to the airport, Ohm brought me all the ingredients for Khmer curry to me to bring it over to the States!! I was VERY happy!! :) Hopefully I learn how to make it! :) I will need to pray really hard to know how to make it right! :) 

Ohm has been making spaghetti for breakfast in the morning, therefore, lots of left overs and we need to finish it until it is done! :) Fried fish is actually one of my favorite meal because I LOVE fish and the sauce that she made!! Ohm taught me and I have learned quickly ! I am excited to make it on my own! :)

This was our last lunch we had, so.. Monday lunch.  It was the BEST lunch ever!! They made the Thai fried fish curry, beef fried with red, green, and yellow pepper, a pumpkin soup, and Khmer salaw, it has fish and some sort of veggies in it, it was GOOD!!!  

The Thai fried fish curry was a lot of spices mixed together, including garlic, yellow ginger, curry spices, red chili, and grand them together, then fried the coconut milk and the spices first, then add basil and chili, the add the fried fish.  It was good! I want to try making it too!

Tuesday morning, our last morning in Cambodia.  Everyone is getting to work, doing laundry, they are doing what they have been doing on weekdays.  This morning, it was special, as we walked toward the dinning area, we saw this!! We have had fried pork for breakfast in the past two weeks.  This is a treat!!!! We had stir fried pork with ginger, and fried eggs with onion.  BEST breakfast ever!! I loved it!! :)

I still remember we had fried eggs with onion on our first day in Cambodia, and we are having the same dish for our last meal in Cambodia.  It started well and it ended well!  I love Cambodia! :)

Taiwanese Tuesday with HOPE Worldwide.... and food, of course!

Today, Amy and I had an opportunity to volunteer with HOPE Worldwide.  HOPE Worldwide is a Christian organization from all over the world, in Asia, Taiwan was the place to have the connection with Cambodia; therefore, 17 Taiwanese people were there to help as well. The project that they are working now is to build a house and toilets for a local primary school in Udong.

That primary school has 800 students total and they only have 4 toilets, however 2 of them are broken.  HOPE Worldwide is building another one for them, so that the children can have their privacy.

We start everything from scratch, they have started it on Monday, and yesterday, when I went, we put dirt on the steps of the toilets and also we put the ring like stones behind the toilet in order to separate the solid and liquid of human waste.

When we start to do our toilet work, we all would gather together in a circle and put our hands out together and all will say "1,2,3... toilet" in Chinese! It was really fun!!!

These were the ring like stones that I was talking about.  They are super heavy, it takes about 10 people to carry them, it takes 3 local Khmer people to carry one. The workers did not wear shoes, they all were bare foot. PPE is important! :)

At the end, we put 12 of them behind the toilet. It was a lot of work.

While we were breaking, we saw a lot of cows walking on the street!!! :) It was fun!!

Then we went and visited the house that they are building. So, one of the finished house costs about 10,000 HKD, so about 1,500 USD including materials and laboring fee, it takes about 3 to 7 days to build one house. Its impressive!

This is our TEAM!!!! 

This is a labor group as well as eating group! We eat, we work, and we eat, and work, then we eat again! :) This is ALL about being Asian!! I LOVE IT!!!

This morning, I had a good start with Chinese steamed buns, bought by Ohm! :) It is very interesting bun!! There is a white part and a yellow part on top.  The yellow part is like a cake, and inside, it is meat and half a boiled duck egg.  The bun helped me to become a true Chinese! :)

Then, for lunch, we went to a place... This is what we had! Some veggies, grilled chicken, and soup. Coke as a side. It was good!! I was very satisfied with the veggies we had! It was REAL veggies!!! I can have 10 more plates of that veggies!! And later on, we had some dragon fruits and jack fruits.  Amy and I also ordered Milo while other people ordered coffee! :)

In the group of HOPE Worldwide, I met a guy named Duncan Ng, he is from HK as well!! I was so happy and excited when I know he is from HK! We talked and laughed and had lunch together!! He is such a nice guy! I wish I could have more time to be with him and get to know him more! There's another girl named Karen, who is from Macau.  She loves speaking  English, so she spoke with Amy the whole time! Both of them are really sweet!! Good people!

When we were done for laboring today, they had a tradition to stop by a corn shop to get some corn.  I had this whole entire corn by myself.  The corn in Cambodia is different from the corn that I had in American, HK, or in Thailand.  Cambodia corn does not have a sweet taste onto it, it is rich in corn taste though, but it is the most starchy corn I have ever had in my life! 

The corns are very cheap! 10 corns for 800R, it might be 8000R, but Tee said it was 800R. :) They also gave us pickled radish, it was salty and spicy with a bit of sourness.  We were supposed to eat the radish with the corn together and not separate. But the radish itself was pretty good. I personally would not put the radish and the corn together in my mouth.  Maybe next time I'll try. :)

After we had corn, of course its for DINNER!!!!!

We went to this fancy place by the riverside! It was beautiful!!!! The food was decent. We had firing fish with curry sauce, sweet and sour pork rib, egg omelet with onion, and beef.

After we eat, drink, its now time to be marry.... Everyone was drunk, especially with Ohm! :) He chuck the whole entire beer, and he is in his late 60s. He also taught us some traditional Khmer dance! It was A LOT OF FUN!!! Look at Amy and me behind her!

Here are more pictures of the group and the area.

Ohm's food & Western food!!

We are back to Phnom Penh now... Back to Ohm's house!! For some reasons, I miss Ohm's cooking, maybe it feels like home! 

This is what we had for dinner. Its a welcome dinner from Ohm!! We had fried pork and chicken, pineapple with beef, and Khmer curry!!! I LOVE Khmer curry, I love it so much that I bought Khmer curry power so I can bring Khmer food back to America! 

The cleaner in AIP is so awesome!! Though she doesn't speak any English, I tried really hard to speak Khmer with her.  She loves us so much that she bought snails for us to eat one afternoon.  2 lbs for 75 cents.  These snails are small but I like them more than the big ones. It was good! :) 

 This is called Bang Seung. They say it's Vietnamese noodles, but I think it has a lot of Khmer influence on it.  It has peanuts, fish sauce and coconut cream, along with fish cake and fried taro. It is one of my favorite things to get for lunch everyday! :) Only a dollar!

Ohm fried some fish for us and made eggs and veggies.  So good, maybe because she puts a lot of MSG!! I see her cook everyday and she always, always, always put MSG into the dishes. We always have left overs. 

Wifi in the office was down for few days at one point.  We could not do anything, therefore, we just watched movies.  We requested some pop-corn, good colleague, Ellen, popped some on her stove!! It was really nice of her, some of them were burnt though. It tasted better than the pop corns at Aeon Mall.

One day, I helped cooking, they wouldn't let me help, but I finally took over, this is a mixture of a lot of ingredients, it had curry power, cumin, garlic, chili, and organ ginger, and young ginger in.  I helped to get the huge red chili seeds out, the next morning I did laundry, I cannot feel my fingers.  The chili were TOO powerful! 

After the mixture is ready, the fried the fish and set it aside, then they mixed the power with coconut milk. and fry it with the fish. Put basil and chili to garnish.  It was good!! It took a while though.

  

Almost every morning, we would have this purple red dragon fruit! It is delicious to the taste and it will stain your fingers, tongues, and teeth! :) Its fun to eat!

 Brown Coffee!! It's 30% off everyday after 5pm!! We ordered cheesecake, passion fruit chocolate moose and chocolate, it was good, but it wasn't that great.  The cheesecake was very lemon, they put too much lemon zests in the batter, and it did not taste cheese at all. But it was a good environment to chat and have tea time! :)

We ordered the burrito to deliver! It was a GOOD GOOD GOOD burrito!! Its huge!! But it was good!!! It tasted like I was in Mexico!! I cannot believe Cambodia can have these food!! :)