Arn's House to Siem Reap

So I thought I'd start off by wishing my sister Jennifer a happy birthday. It was yesterday, the 27th, and she turned 19. So if you're completely bored out of your mind, call her up and wish her a happy birthday.

We left for Arn's house early in the morning, stopping first at his plantation where we got a very quick tour of the trees he grew there. Our second stop was at this very nice restaurant on the Mekong river, where there were no tables or chairs, just hammocks. We almost persuaded Jake to dive into the water, but Karen (always the logical one) talked him out of it.
Our first night at Arn's house was very simple. We all went to the market to watch Sey Ma and her astounding bargaining skills, and later set up our sleeping areas and ate dinner. We ended up going to bed at around 7:30, partially because there was nothing else to do an it was dark, and partially because we were exhausted. The next morning we woke up and had a breakfast of coconut waffles from the market. The day went by fairly slowly, with some of us going to the market, watching a presidential parade, playing frisbee, or lounging around reading. Arn showed us some of his music videos he had made of Sey Ma, some of them fused with hip-hop. One of the videos featured this one Cambodian kid who must have spent his entire life watching MTV, because he looked like a professional rapper from the U.S., including all the dance moves and fashion choices. At the end of the night, Sey Ma and Arn sang and played for us, accompanied by a guitar. In exchange, Mitch and Luke sang, and I played guitar for them. After that, Karen led a short acting lesson for the people that live at Arn's place (Arn's request. He wants them to be in his movie, but he feels like they need to get more used to acting). The next morning we got up early and left for Siem Reap, which took us about six hours total. Once again, we stopped for lunch at a place with hammocks, which was very relaxing, except they made you pay to use a squat toilet, and the woman who was collecting the money kept raising her price with every person who went.
After arriving in Siem Reap and getting settled, we took a tuktuk tour around the Angkor grounds (we'll update you more as we continue exploring the area). Once we returned to the guest house, we ate dinner at the star rise restaurant (a favorite of last year's travelers), and went to bed. This morning, we all met in Riege's room to take inventory of everything we had brought for Man Men's village. We have loads of stuff, and will be spreading out our gifts over the week so as not to overwhelm them on the first day. When we arrived at the village, we received a very warm welcome. They played music for us, and we presented them gifts of headlamps (for fishing), copies of the CDs they recorded last year, clothes, and toys. The bubbles were a huge hit- they were playing with them the entire time we were there. Many of the younger kids took all of the girls by the hand and ran them around the village twice for absolutely no reason. They also gave us lots of flowers, and later turned branches into crowns and covered them with more flowers. Several of the guys had fun playing volleyball with the older boys, and were later accompanied by our tuktuk drivers. It was a very fun and productive visit. We learned a lot more about the village and how it's changed in the past year. We think that only one of the trees planted last year survived, but the friendship hut is still standing strong, and seems as though it will continue to do so for quite a long time. We also learned that all of the rice patties were gone, which led us to worry about how they will eat, seeing as the price of rice tripled within the past year. There were also two new healthy babies, and Man Men (without being asked) told Karen and Reige that they wanted medicinal supplies for their village, which was exciting because it means that they are learning to trust us even more.
Later on, we ate lunch and made our first visit to Angkor. We visited Ta Prohm, which is impossible to describe in a blog, so you can just check out pictures of them when we return. We then ate dinner and saw Dr. Beat Richer play the cello for about 5 minutes.... then talk for 15 minutes.... then he showed us a 40 minute video about his hospital. yay music!
We'll update you all about our time in Siem Reap later this week.

-Sarah