Our first few Days

DAY 1:  HOT HOT HOT!
We arrived safely, minus a few casualties on the way; including Emma's photo album & suncream, Rachel's sunglasses and Nikki's plate.
Our first impressions are the heat and the amount of motorbikes (which we will not be riding) with lack of road safety. As we have seen a total of six people on one motorbike.
All the people here are very friendly and all go out of their way to help us. On our arrival at GGAC we were greeted with a dozen or so kids all wanting to say 'hello'. After a quick trip for water; leaving Millie and Emma asleep in the entrance hall, we all headed off to bed.

DAY 2: AEROBICS, SPIDERS AND THE BAG SAGA!

After a lazy morning we met with the GGAC employees and the international commissioner to finalise plans for leadership training. Katie then proceeded to teach them how to tie a friendship knot. We then took a trip into town in a tuk tuk (google it) due to interesting road safety issues there were several screams from one or TWO of our team members!
The first thing we came across was a gathering of people doing lazy aerobics in the middle of the street. Which Nikki and Rachel joined in with. We wandered a little further and found a temple and saw several monks in orange robes. On the way back we passed several market stalls we found a rather interesting stall selling spiders, crickets, cockroaches, frogs and an unidentified fetus (we think). We were then offered a taste on a spider's leg by a random french guy which Millie and Rachel tried; it tasted crunchy and saucy (or as the french-man described like meat). We the went for a lovely khmer meal (Katie even ate rice) in a restaurant called 'fish'.
On the way out of the restaurant it had started to rain which Emma was not pleased about; as Rachel had assured her there would be no rain that day because Emma had locked herself out of her bag which contained her waterproof. Once we got back to the office we spent the next few hours trying over 400 different codes to get into Emma's bag, eventually we cracked it, the code was 205, no where near the one she thought she'd set.


DAY 3: A SWARM OF SHOP ASSISTANTS (THE BOX)

We were up nice and early today, with lots on our to-do list. After a lovely breakfast we went to the shops for food and resources for our training sessions. For our resources we went to a shop called IBC where our innocent question "How much is this box of paper?" caused such a fuss and we were suddenly surrounded by about 9 shop assistants trying to help us. Still no one knowing the answer to our question, finally the trainee managed to answer it for us. Much to their relief, we ended up buying the box. After piling ourselves up with paper we loaded into our tuk tuk and tired to explain to our driver that we wanted to go back to the GGAC office, which took us around ten minutes to explain.  The afternoon was spent sorting out resources and fine tuning our sessions for tomorrow and first day of English teaching.
We are all feeling quite excited and a little bit nervous about starting our training but we are all very much looking forward to meeting and sharing experiences with guiders here in Cambodia.


Much GOLDen love
Team Cambodia xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

7 1/2 hours to go and we are off to the airport!

Team Cambodia 2012 ready to set off!!

The Night Before....

Feeling nervous, excited and got dragonflies in the stomach.....and almost ready to go.

Tonight has been spent checking and re-checking kit and bag weights; checking resource lists and preparing lesson plans. Oh and watching the olympics opening ceramony.

The excitement and the buzz has finally set in and we are all really looking forward to experiencing a different culture, sharing & working toward a common goal, visiting the countries landmarks and trying the different foods.

last few preparations before bed, and all ready to go to the airport in the morning..


GOLDen love and wishes.

Team Cambodia enjoying a final cooked breakfast before we leave (not quite chips and gravy for Emma and Millie though!)

TEAM MASCOT!!

3 weeks today!

It is exactly 3 weeks today until we fly to Cambodia. We have now had our final meet up in the UK where we finished off our session plans, sorted documents and discussed packing! (in particular how many shoes Emma would pack!)

Team Cambodia finished the day with a lovely meal where we all reflected on how far we have come since being selected at the INTOPS weekend back in September 2011, and what we were most looking forward to about project. After saying our goodbyes we all headed home, very excited knowing that the next time we see each other will be the night before we fly out to Cambodia!