Khmer School

 My fellow Khmer language learners, left to right, Louise, me, Neil, Dara (the Stig of Khmer language teaching), Katie & Pete.

 The 7 minute cycle to school, avoiding the crazy motos & other road users(including dogs, chickens and stray children).

 The Bridge over the River Mekong (or in Khmer - Spean Kizuna)

My favourite corner shop

Khmer Language learning has started in earnest. The good things are that Dara is an enthusiastic teacher with a great sense of humour and a large reserve of patience. Good to that Khmer is not a tonal language, has no tenses, words are constructed with common sense if a tad long e.g teuk doh koh translates as water breast cow - milk!
Also good 4 hours every afternoon with mornings to lie in and study. We have two favourite spots Smile and Destiny cafe where we make the iced Khmer coffee with condensed tek doh koh and/or lemon & ice last as long as possible and amuse the staff with our attempts at Khmer.
Learning a new language 22 years after the last attempt (school girl french) is challenging and frustrating. You can have whole rally of one particular sound with Dara & never get it right and other times he tells you its 'clear'. My barang ears can't hear all the consonants & vowels of the Khmer language but I try!
Trips to the Market - P'sar - to buy washing powder, coat hangers, a note book & a present for Katie my astral twin are all good practice. No one understands my spoken Khmer but that's ok because I can't understand them either (yet).
The VSO regulation bike are real bone shakers but it great being mobile and quite literally cool. You have to keep your wits about you and I was even able to shock one moto driver who cut me up and apologised by responding in Khmer "no problem".
It's been clearly established early on that I a shit magnet with the formation of the phrase "the est factor". So no surprises that I was at the epicentre of the first bike RTC. Scrages only - my specialist skills were not required.

Now this is intensive language training but it become even more compressed yesterday when we asked to cut class early to go to the wat to see the dancing. No photos of this I'm afraid but I will try to acquire from the Gill of bike incident, if she's forgiven me the scrages.(Above is one of Gill's photos I'm stolen, the joys of free wifi and lazy sunday afternoons). We did 3 hours work into 2 which was more than my aging brain could handle but the dancing children were worth it.

 Louse, Caleb, Pete, Peter, Neil & Gill, night market $1 noodles.

Warm Angkor Beer through a straw, is there a better way to spend a saturday night?

Yesterday ended with more warm beers sat by the Mekong discussing personality tests, land rights, logging, corruption, development work and the meaning of life.

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