where cider meets condensed milk: I like it when you call me big PEPY (Ride) (School).

where cider meets condensed milk

Friday, May 12, 2006

I like it when you call me big PEPY (Ride) (School).

We had a free day on Thursday, so five of us went to visit the PEPY Ride school, which was built through the support of the PEPY Ride last year. It was a fundraising and enviromental-education bike ride across Cambodia last year, organized by former JETs: Daniela (the PEPY Ride founder/president and leader of the trip) and a girl named Greta. It stands for Protect the Environment, Protect Yourself. They built a whole new building, provided a salary for an english teacher, brought in computers and computer classes, and are still making a ton of other improvements to the school. The trip was a huge success, so Daniela has stayed in Cambodia to organize additional bike rides and volunteer trips, and the PEPY Ride is now an annual event. Furthermore, she is branching into PEPY Tours as well to cater to volunteer/tourists from around the world, and it will soon be established as an official NGO. PEPY won a competition last month at University of Notre Dame for a social venture business, which is a huge honor, and she now has the support of ND alumni donors as well as a connection with the travel agency at Notre Dame, and thus a huge pool of trip-goers. Ganbatte, PEPY with the move into the big time! Daniela is so amazing and motivated and wonderful and my life is richer for having met her. It was great to be a part of the PEPY team, and I hope to be back again within a year. The school looks great, and the kids are super friendly and keen to drill you with every English question they know. (What's your name? Where are you from? Where do you go in Cambodia? What's your job? How old are you? I miss you, do you miss me?)

Saisho gu! Janken....

The school is in a village area outside of Chanleas Dai town (main drag, above), way out of Siem Reap. The government does not have the roads paved because it would decrease airline travel, so this major thoroughfare between Siem Reap and Thailand is rutted and potholed, with creaking and nearly-rusted-through bridges, and turns to tire-stealing mud if it should rain. Most pick-ups and trucks we passed were carrying about 20 or more workers, so we were riding in semi-luxury with just 5 of us bouncing around in the truckbed like jalepeno poppers in a frying pan.

Two hours each way in the back of a pick-up on this road will get you... bruises, a sunburn, motion-sickness, and a lovely smokers' cough. More importantly, Cindy and I decided to do as the Cambodians do, don a scarf or towel, and become sand people!

I've had a hard time explaining at work what I did during Golden Week, since we went to so many various places. We played with kids at the CCF orphanage (in Phnom Penh) and hung out with the kids at the dump, but our building project was at the Sangkheum Center orphanage (in Siem Reap). Our group was officially called PEPY Ride, and half of us visited the PEPY Ride School (a state-run institution), but we didn't do any bike-riding. We took the 6th graders from that school (which is not an orphanage) with us to Ankor Wat. My attempts at explanations and picture-sharing keep getting scrambled, particularly in Japanese, so I think there is the misimpression that we built houses for the kids at the dump (which we didn't) and then took them to Ankor Wat (which is halfway across the country). Oh well. Even though we only spend one day at Stoeng-Meanchey dump, my teachers and students get most excited over those pictures, because I'm told that apparently that site (or somewhere similar) is featured on TV in Japan. After teaching a thrilling episode of Write Your Golden Week Diary, my teacher said to me, "That student says your vacations are like watching TV!" I think that might be a compliment. Ah, the confusing vacations of better-than-television ALTs...

posted by Raychaa @ 11:57 PM

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