Day 2
We arrived at midnight last night and had to get fingerprinted and go through customs. It took an hour to go through all of that. By the time we got to the Golden Gate Hotel and crashed in our beds. Today we went to the new orphanage to teach children and watch some traditional dancing. It was a wonderful experience. When we arrived we went into the classrooms to a huge amount of applause. They started singing familiar songs in Khmer. They were all very joyful and all singing and laughing. It was the most wonderful greeting I have ever gotten! We taught them the story of Jesus Stilling the Storm and we used story learning methods with them. We had a translator that translated from English to Khmer. There is a method of storytelling which involves drawing pictures and the children drew the most detailed pictures. A lot of them were very good artists. After we taught the stories the children danced for us. They showed us traditional dances of Southeast Asia. One of the dances was the dance of the sticks. The dance of the sticks which was when two people sat at the end of long poles and banged them on the ground. The two dancers danced in and out of the sticks. When the children stepped out of the sticks, the sticks banged together. The dance got faster and faster and you thought it would be incredibly hard not to get your feet caught in the sticks. This was the dance that the children taught us. It was a lot of fun.
AFTERNOON
In the after noon we went to the National Palace. It was incredibly interesting the way the architecture was and the amazing layout of the place. We learned about each building and each shrine and statue commemorated for a certain king and or queen. One of the buildings was called The Silver Pagoda. In the Silver Pagoda they had one floor that was covered in silver. Most of the room was covered in carpet but there were some spots with no carpet and we could see the silver. Duct Tape held it together and kept it from falling apart. Some of the statues encased in class was a gold statue of a woman praying. It had 1,250 pieces of silver on it. It was worth over 1 million dollars. We really felt jet lag and tired from only sleeping 5 hours the night before so instead of going to the national museum we went back the the hotel and rested.
EVENING
This evening we went to dinner to meet the Gitobus family. It was very good to see them again after three years of not seeing them.
AFTERNOON
In the after noon we went to the National Palace. It was incredibly interesting the way the architecture was and the amazing layout of the place. We learned about each building and each shrine and statue commemorated for a certain king and or queen. One of the buildings was called The Silver Pagoda. In the Silver Pagoda they had one floor that was covered in silver. Most of the room was covered in carpet but there were some spots with no carpet and we could see the silver. Duct Tape held it together and kept it from falling apart. Some of the statues encased in class was a gold statue of a woman praying. It had 1,250 pieces of silver on it. It was worth over 1 million dollars. We really felt jet lag and tired from only sleeping 5 hours the night before so instead of going to the national museum we went back the the hotel and rested.
EVENING
This evening we went to dinner to meet the Gitobus family. It was very good to see them again after three years of not seeing them.