Weekends

So my weeks here are not super exciting, or worth writing much about. I work from 7:30-Noon, go home for lunch, then work again from 2-5:30. Every weekday. Luckily, the organization I'm working for has air conditioning, so I'm pretty happy whenever I'm there. The organization I'm here working for is the Reproductive and Child Health Alliance. They have more projects than I'm even aware of, but most of them have to do with maternal and child health/nutrition, as well as infectious disease control in Cambodia.
That's about everything there is to say about work. It's work, it's air conditioned, and it's every day. The weekends are full of "field trips" and weekend getaways, so they're a little more exciting. Last weekend (May 19th), we went on a tour of the Royal Palace complex and the National Museum. The Royal Palace(s) are some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Also, it didn't rain that day, so we got some good pictures. Unfortunately (for us), that also meant it was scorchingly hot (and of course, way humid). I'm going to be honest and say that I'm not really sure how to do this whole blog thing, so I'll try to post pictures, but it may fail.

There were a lot of really cool things inside of the palace too, but you aren't allowed to take pictures inside. So oh well. But in the Silver Pagoda, the entire floor is made of pure silver. Each square tile is an entire kilogram of silver. There are also a lot of really cool Buddhas. The most famous/valuable of which is the Emerald Buddha, which was fairly large. We also learned about the different positions of Buddha, hand positions of Buddha, and origins of the Buddhas in the Royal Palace. The Buddhas are gifts from different countries to the King of Cambodia.

The gardens were also really beautiful, and there were a lot of smaller structures out around the gardens as well. The complex is pretty big, but the buildings aren't very large, so the gardens and statues fill up a lot of the space. It's amazing how much ornamentation there is everywhere, both on the buildings and in the gardens. There are a ton of statues around as well, and they all have unique and individual meanings. I'm not sure how our guide kept them all straight. Or maybe he made them all up, who knows.

After we went to the Royal Palace, we went to the National Museum, which is right next to the Palace. It was pretty small, and a bit underwhelming, but the stuff that they did have was pretty neat. They had some interesting statues and ruins in the museum, but most of the labels were only in Khmer, so I really have no idea what they were. The building of the National Museum, and the gardens in the center of the building were probably the most impressive part. There were 4 large ponds in the courtyard area that were full of beautiful fish, and the ponds were surrounded by so many huge plants. In the center of the courtyard, there was a large sitting Buddha statue as well.

We had one of my favorite meals so far after visiting the National Museum. It was at a restaurant called "Friends" (I know, I know... Friends is already my favorite), but the restaurant has a really cool story. They employ only Cambodian teens who had been living on the streets, and they train them in the restaurant business. It was a really cute restaurant, with free unlimited ICE water, really good food, and a good story behind it. We also visited the central market after, and I'm sure we'll go back there. It's a HUGE market, which was a bit overwhelming, but we'll go back sometime to get some stuff. We then visited a big mall close to the market. Malls here are amazing. Simply because they have air conditioning. They also always have stores that sell DVDs. Cheap, COUGHillegallymadeCOUGH, movies and seasons of TV shows. This has been one of my weaknesses here. So far I have purchased Seasons 1-6 of How I Met Your Mother (8$), all 10 Seasons of FRIENDS (8$), and Seasons 1-5 of Scrubs ($4). Next up? Filling up my collection of Grey's Anatomy.