The Rotary Club of Summerland was fortunate to have Rebound Rotary Exchange Student, Michaella Haidenger, join us for a breakfast meeting back in August last year before she headed off on her travels to Cambodia. Below is an update we recently received from Michaella:
I hope you are all doing well, it looks like the club is going strong as I am always following you on Facebook. David is looks like he is having a ton of fun doing the play, I am glad he did as I remember in Taiwan he wasn't so interested. I am hoping to catch up with him when I had to the Rotex convention in August in Taiwan. I also have seen that Roch has tapped some Summerland maple trees and I wished the mail was reliable enough to mail some haha.
I have been doing well here! I am coming into my seventh month in Cambodia. It feels like time has gone so fast. We are coming into the hot season and the temperature has been 37 and higher and polluted in the mornings, but passes by around 10 am. Summer every day but in pants and long shirts. But the sun rays keep me very happy.
It really is starting to feel like home here as I have joined ariel yoga, dodgeball, and cooking classes. Yesterday I even bought my first motorbike for 400USD which I will be taking to a wedding where I am a bridesmaid for a full week. Which will be a new experience for me and its quiet exciting. I have gotten a regular veggie lady, fruit man, and flower lady at the market which do a lovely job of filling my fridge completely for $10 a week of healthy food and spices. I have also come close with my cleaner which makes me happy and I have met her two daughters who play with me on the weekends.
My life consists of six major things, work, wandering, "charity", studying, being sick and sleep.
Nursery has suddenly made me mother of 20 children with new ones all the time. My classroom has become my sanctuary. Most of my kids spend ten hours a day with me for five days a week. Thus I have become their dominant adult. A lot of their stories even though their ages range from 1 1/2 until 5 still break my heart. But they also inspire me to do the most that I can. You're probably thinking these are stories of struggle as it is Cambodia. However it is much the opposite. It is safest to teach in private school so we are teaching the richer kids who pay to 4000 dollars for a year of nursery. But this leaves them very much without parents at home. I love them all as if they are my own and it is such a rewarding job to see them learn and grow. It is amazing what they have been achieving. We study three languages in the day. Chinese, English and Khmer and all my students are able to read, trace or write/ count to 20 and more in all three languages. A blessing and a curse I believe. But this job has stolen my heart and taught me a lot. And has 100% brought out a lot of creativity.
When we are not working we have been slowly trying to work on a organization I am hoping with the Rotary club here in the city will stand behind when we grow. This focuses on construction families. These are people who build the city but get paid 2 dollars a day and cannot afford to live in the city. It is a vicious loop where women get paid a dollar and a half and raise their children on the construction sites until they are old enough to work there. In which their daughters do the same. Thus we have been looking for ways to improve their job possibilites, as they spend sundays 2 times a month at a child play centre with English and Khmer teacher for the kids and Chinese teachers for the parents to help them communicate with their bosses employer when they are on site. This time is also allowing to check their health, give them safety gear and anything else we are able to provide them. It teaching us a lot about a little hole in the city we did not know much about. It is also a flip side from the students I am teaching at work.
This also pushes me to learn Khmer which is a terrible language, a mix of Thai, Chinese, and French it has been a real challenge for me. I have three modes of learning. A man Johnny who was a refuge to Canada during the war teaches me at his café, the cleaners and my TA's at the school teach me as I teach them English and Chinese. As well as asking over and over again how to say this and that when I am out which seems to confuse people a lot. One day hopefully I will get some sort of grasp or break through.
Besides that I have a lot of travel plans coming up. I hopped over to Malaysia for the new year and have been keeping here since then. Since their has been many country side and boarder issues lately that have been declared as "resolved" or contained. Which means the Boarder of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia had a shoot out and retreated after 24 hours. As we have been waiting we have covered a lot of phnom Penh and have been joining a lot of groups. We have learned how to properly cook bugs and more. My younger self would have never imagined. Next weekend I am hoping to head to the national forest for protected elephants where you can sleep in the Jungle. Which will be a start to many cool adventures to come. I think I may cry as i love elephants. My teaching team laugh at me because they say they have elephants wander directly into their houses in their homeland…. they talk about them as they are pests.
I am excited to get out of the pollution as well as our immune systems are very much not as strong as Cambodians as bugs stay with us from a week to three at a time and the pollution causes coughs. Which will be a great benefit to traveling outside the city now that it is safer :) I am very much missing Canadian clean air. I have been learning a lot though loving it very much here.
Anyway, I thought I would throw out a “quick” update to my favourite club as I have been missing in action for a bit.
Again I cannot believe it has been eight month since I have seen you all. But I am always happy to see the post you have on face book and the updates that get sent my way. I hope you all are enjoy the little sunshine you have as the weather is getting warmer.
Miss you all!
Michaella