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.