Can you uptuk in a tuk tuk?

Hello all!

Its been a few days since we have wrote, but don't be alarmed we are still alive and well.  We had our second day of orientation where we were given a tour of the city including the Olympic Stadium.  The stadium in Cambodia was built for the olympics to come here one day, but clearly that was not going to happen.  Its actually quite sad as the stadium is beautiful and obviously the people had hope.  We did some more market hopping and bought some pants - luckily they fit!

After the formal part of the orientaion day we had a welcome dinner at the Riverside - which is an area where lots of tourists go.  We were fed a traditional Khmer menu which consisted of rice, deep fried corn (delicious!), fried beef, crunchy noodles, fish curry and of course an Angkor beer.  It was very very good.

The next day we were taken to our orphanage to start work.  The building itself is large and open and quite nice.  The director was an hour late as she was running on Khmer time but all turned out well.  We were basically told to do whatever we wanted and had a short tour of the different rooms we could work in.  There is some disappointment in our placement as there are many volunteers there and we feel as though there is not much for us to do.  The placement also has a full staff so volunteers are just kind of a bonus.  Because of the amount of volunteers and the fact that there are 60 more coming next week (not all at our placement) we made the decision to cut our volunteering down to 2 weeks instead of 3.  We feel this is the best use of our time and theirs as we are really enjoying being here.

Last night we went out for drinks with another volunteer staying with us at our host family - Sarah.  We went back to the riverside area and ate chicken pizza and french fries - both of which were awesome!  Kelly and I both enjoyed a few cock talls (seriously thats what was wrote on the sign haha!) which lead to the saying, "can you uptuk in a tuk tuk""?  Needless to say the drinks here are very strong. 

Maria had her first attempt at doing her laundry by hand which turned out well for the most part, keep in mind I had had 2 drinks...  Mostly, they came out clean.

The plan for this weekend is to see the sights of Phnom Penh so stay tuned!

Kelly and Maria,
Travellers abroad.

ps. Another tip we've learned is that time goes by very slow here and the days are really long as people start at 5am and don't quite until 10pm.  Something fun to do in the evenings is read the map of Manitoba lol.  We spent 1 hour looking at funny names of our home and it made us smile.  Has anyone been to Ladywood, Manitoba - what kind of a name is that, talk about being anatomically incorrect.  Some other funny names of Manitoba include but are not limited to - Ethelbert, Big Mossy Point, Pansy, and Gunton.