The great escape

A few days ago I had a few too many spring rolls for dinner, and then sat on the 2nd floor of a hotel writing an e-mail. All of a sudden a bat comes flying in the window. "Can't bats have rabies?" I had time to wonder, before it headed straight towards me. I jumped out of my chair and ran for my life. What should I do, what should I do, I asked myself while running around in circles with the bat after me. Sometimes it would go away the other side of the room, giving me time to catch my breath and look for escape routes, before it started chasing me again. (It must have looked funny for someone just coming up the stairs.) In retrospect, I see that I might have scared it as well, making it fly around even more. Girl imitating bat or bat imitating girl, what would Oscar Wilde have said? A scary and exhausting experience. I probably burnt off the spring rolls, though.

Ingrid and I held a workshop last Saturday at the Youth to Business Forum in Phnom Penh. Our theme was education, and we talked about our experiences going abroad. There were several interesting workshops there, and we had 11 students coming to ours. I was impressed by the students' English level, and they were very nice to talk to and have discussions with! I was a bit nervous about holding it, but it was a good experience.

I will try to write a new blog post once a week (Thursday, I suppose), so that those of you who want to can get the news of my stay here. So what's new. I got another e-mail from my mother, saying that the skiing trip was successful: "After the first 30 minutes, which were rough, your little sister also enjoyed the trip." Nice!

Also, I'm no longer working for SCAO. They are a great organization, but I could only work a couple of hours per day there, so now I will live in Phnom Penh and work full time on a project called Let's do it. We will spread awareness about waste disposal and the benefits of clean surroundings to the Cambodians. I was surprised at SCAO, when I asked where I should put a trash bag. They just brought it to the lawn by the house:

They said that a group of kids came about once a week to pick out some plastic and metal to sell, and then they burnt the rest. This creates smoke with a lot of dioxin in it, which is dangerous to your health if you're exposed to too much of it. It's a very interesting topic to learn more about, you can read a good article about people making a living out of selling trash here.