HAPPY KHMER NEW YEAR!!

So my organisation break up for Khmer New Year tomorrow - so I have 10 days off (including wkds). This is a bit of a treat and my parents have come to visit so am really looking forward to taking a break. I enjoy the work up here and I even learned to appreciate living in Samrong a bit - a break is always good!

This week everything is slowing down to absolute snails pace - a lot of people have finnished work already and there is a real holiday feel about the place (although our field staff have just got back from a good stint of fieldwork - good job So Cheat et al). In the daytime Samroang seems even quieter than usual and at night you can hear the parties going on. Work is very laid back and there is even more sitting around and general chatting than normal. In my review I think that they were saying that I should join in more in this as normally I only sit for a few minutes (generally the first 20 minutes and then the same again mid-morning) but there is only so much time I can follow in Khmer so I have been trying to join in in this general sitting around and to be fair I have picked up on a few things that I may have been oblivious to otherwise. In VSO training we cover the importance of joining in with your colleagues and I always sit down and chat for a bit and do a lot of smiling when I can't follow the conversation but as work has got busier the temptation to try and just get on with it is very tempting - but, not very culturally sensitive! I often have to try and go against my natural instinct in how to deal with a situation here and try and look at things from a Cambodian perspective - I'm getting better at this but there is significant room for improvement.

Picking up my parents over the weekend was very strange - Bangkok was closer to my London life than Samroang and seeing my parents in the setting was very strange. They then came to Samroang and I hope they enjoyed it even though the weather was bad - Dad seemed to like driving a Moto anyway!!