Floating villages, fried bananas, and sugar cane juice.

Today, I had the most fun day. The day started off kind of lame...I showed up to school at 7am when school 'starts'... the same that I have been doing every day 6 days ago. And I spent over an hour sitting outside an English classroom full of students waiting for the teacher to show...after an hour I finally track down the phone number of the teacher and she tells me she isn't coming to school today because she was busy. I then call the other English teachers and they all proceed to tell me that they are busy too and would not be attending school that day either.

Frustrated, I text some of the k2 volunteers to ask if this sort of thing is normal and they said yes, this is very normal and things just take a little patience around here.. so I headed home and read for four hours.

During lunch my family tells me that they are headed to the Tonle Sap river to hang out and that I am invited to join. I am more than happy to go, and since I cannot ride a moto, I biked the 10 kilos to the river while they rode their moto along side me. We get to a floating village and hop in a motorboat. Driving through the floating village is insane. When I say floating village, it's literally a entire village of people in the middle of the river. Families tie shoots of bamboo together and that is the foundation of their house. Then they simple build a hut on top of it, choose who they want as their neighbors to be and simply tie up. And it's not simply a residential village, they are equipped with floating health centers, gas stations, cell phone stores, and even a school. They are typically fishing communities that are often of Vietnamese or Chinese decent.

We drove through the floating village until we reached an island. It was something out of a movie. There were hundreds of people flocking to this island, and there was some sort of celebration going on. There were lines and lines of street vendors selling sugar cane juice, fried bananas (my favorite), fermented duck eggs (not my favorite), and balloons...among other goodies. We walked into one of the wats (Buddhist temples) that was especially crowded with people. Inside, we found yeays (grandmas) dancing khmer style, men playing the bongos and a Cambodian looking guitar, and people being blessed by monks.

Outside of the wat, there was a Cambodian style 'carousal'. Which is literally a merry go round type thing with old motor bikes attached by elastics bands that spin around. I'll upload a picture when i have more time. I find it slightly terrifying, but the kids seemed to have a lot of fun.

After some more wat-hopping- consisting of praying and lighting incense. We treated ourselves to some fried bananas and sugar cane juice then hopped back in the boat to head home. On my bike home I reflected on how much fun it is to take part in a cultural practice even when you have no idea what is going on. I wish I could do more justice to my experience than what has been described in this entry. I think you guys are just going to have to visit and see it for yourselves. = )