Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Mom and Leah Smoking a Cheroot
On our trip to Myanmar in October, we watched local girls hand rolling Cheroots - Myanmar cigars that many of the men there smoke. The girls can roll about 1,000 cigars each day, and get paid depending on how many they roll. There is a short clip below of a girl rolling the charoute. The girls gave us a charoute as a 'souvenir'. Mom tried it - and so did Leah! I was too wimpy, and I'm glad I didn't, because neither one of them liked it very much.
Just wanted to post these videos to share the experience with you. It was very funny to watch Leah take her puff!
xoxo
Jane
Just wanted to post these videos to share the experience with you. It was very funny to watch Leah take her puff!
xoxo
Jane
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
A Bit Homesick
I understand the fall days, and leaves, have been beautiful this month. I know the clocks have been turned back, making us 13 hours apart, and queuing you for the winter months ahead. Football is on the TV, and our NHS friends are playing in the stadium. Turkeys are being ordered. All this makes me a bit homesick for New England, family and friends.
It is interesting to live in a place where we don't have seasons or cooler temperatures. Days are same-same, with the sun setting and rising at the same time of day-everyday. We don't have football, and our ovens are way too small to roast a turkey.
November is one of my favorite months, and Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Although I miss this time of year in New England, I am thankful for how well I have it in Singapore. As ex-pats we live a great lifestyle, in our borrowed home (with air conditioning!), in the heart of the city, in a tropical rain forest. Jed will buy our cooked turkey from The American Club on his way home from work, friends will join us for dinner and we will give thanks.
So as much as I am missing home at the moment, and as grateful as I am for this life I am living, I am looking forward to joining you all back home to appreciate this wonderful season next year.
With Love~
Lauren
It is interesting to live in a place where we don't have seasons or cooler temperatures. Days are same-same, with the sun setting and rising at the same time of day-everyday. We don't have football, and our ovens are way too small to roast a turkey.
November is one of my favorite months, and Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Although I miss this time of year in New England, I am thankful for how well I have it in Singapore. As ex-pats we live a great lifestyle, in our borrowed home (with air conditioning!), in the heart of the city, in a tropical rain forest. Jed will buy our cooked turkey from The American Club on his way home from work, friends will join us for dinner and we will give thanks.
So as much as I am missing home at the moment, and as grateful as I am for this life I am living, I am looking forward to joining you all back home to appreciate this wonderful season next year.
With Love~
Lauren
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Rewards for the Summer Yard Sale
Hi all,
Thank you for your support of Leah's and Claire's yard sale this past summer. They raised enough money for Journeys Within Our Community to send a young girl to college in Cambodia for two years. Here is an email we received from JWOC. We thought you might enjoy it. Leah and Claire hope to raise additional funds this summer so they can pay for two more years for Seky.
Dear Leah and Claire,
I hope you are well. I wanted to write and thank you again for your very kind donation towards our JWOC Scholarship Programme. I am very happy to be able to write to you and let you that we now have a scholarship student to be supported by your kind donation. We have just completed a round of applications in which we had 226 applications! We were able to invite 54 for interview and have chosen 23 new students!
I am really happy to inform you about the student you are now supporting. The student will be writing to you herself shortly so I won’t tell you too much! Her name is Seky Nguon. She is just about to start her foundation year, studying Accounting and Finance at Build Bright University. Here is a small excerpt from Seky’s application essay that highlights her desire to study to help her country:
“..I want to get education and knowledge that I can get a skill to develop myself and make my family improve and also to develop society and our country. I can also share my knowledge to my friends and my neighbors who can’t continue their studies....”
We have a system at JWOC to help support and monitor all our scholarship students. We now have a growing number of students, thanks to your kind support and assign each student an individual mentor. Andrea Ross, JWOC Founder, is the mentor for Seky. The mentors will be able to meet with the students on a more regular basis and follow their progress at university more closely. They will also be able to talk to the students about their time spent volunteering with JWOC and their future plans. Mentors will also be able to answer any specific questions or queries you have.
A further role of the mentor programme is to ensure students follow JWOC procedures. The guidelines we have for our scholarship students are there to reaffirm the original idea behind JWOC’s Scholarship Programme - to help create socially conscious future leaders for Cambodia. The main element of our programme, as you know, is that students must volunteer at JWOC in return for their scholarship. This gives the students not only valuable experience and skills, but an approach to life which recognizes the importance of giving back to their community. Our students are also expected to do their very best at university and provide JWOC with their grades regularly. They are also expected to update you regularly on their progress and are not allowed to ask you for further money. All students will be asked to copy both their mentor and myself in on all emails to you so we can ensure this. Should Seky need extra money for something she must speak to Andrea and she will discuss the situation with her and contact you if she deems it to be a fair request. This we hope promotes our original goals to have responsible and committed students but also ensures that you, having given already, are not constantly being asked for help. Often the students see their donors as their lifeline and don’t understand the boundaries needed to make a project like this successful. I hope that you will both support us and help us to achieve these goals. Please feel free to contact Andrea (andrea@journeyswithinourcommunity.org) or myself should you feel these rules have been broken or should you have any questions at all.
Thank you for your support of Seky. We look forward to watching her progress together over the coming months. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have. Seky will be writing to you shortly and we hope you enjoy getting to know her.
Very best wishes,
Camilla
Thank you for your support of Leah's and Claire's yard sale this past summer. They raised enough money for Journeys Within Our Community to send a young girl to college in Cambodia for two years. Here is an email we received from JWOC. We thought you might enjoy it. Leah and Claire hope to raise additional funds this summer so they can pay for two more years for Seky.
Dear Leah and Claire,
I hope you are well. I wanted to write and thank you again for your very kind donation towards our JWOC Scholarship Programme. I am very happy to be able to write to you and let you that we now have a scholarship student to be supported by your kind donation. We have just completed a round of applications in which we had 226 applications! We were able to invite 54 for interview and have chosen 23 new students!
I am really happy to inform you about the student you are now supporting. The student will be writing to you herself shortly so I won’t tell you too much! Her name is Seky Nguon. She is just about to start her foundation year, studying Accounting and Finance at Build Bright University. Here is a small excerpt from Seky’s application essay that highlights her desire to study to help her country:
“..I want to get education and knowledge that I can get a skill to develop myself and make my family improve and also to develop society and our country. I can also share my knowledge to my friends and my neighbors who can’t continue their studies....”
We have a system at JWOC to help support and monitor all our scholarship students. We now have a growing number of students, thanks to your kind support and assign each student an individual mentor. Andrea Ross, JWOC Founder, is the mentor for Seky. The mentors will be able to meet with the students on a more regular basis and follow their progress at university more closely. They will also be able to talk to the students about their time spent volunteering with JWOC and their future plans. Mentors will also be able to answer any specific questions or queries you have.
A further role of the mentor programme is to ensure students follow JWOC procedures. The guidelines we have for our scholarship students are there to reaffirm the original idea behind JWOC’s Scholarship Programme - to help create socially conscious future leaders for Cambodia. The main element of our programme, as you know, is that students must volunteer at JWOC in return for their scholarship. This gives the students not only valuable experience and skills, but an approach to life which recognizes the importance of giving back to their community. Our students are also expected to do their very best at university and provide JWOC with their grades regularly. They are also expected to update you regularly on their progress and are not allowed to ask you for further money. All students will be asked to copy both their mentor and myself in on all emails to you so we can ensure this. Should Seky need extra money for something she must speak to Andrea and she will discuss the situation with her and contact you if she deems it to be a fair request. This we hope promotes our original goals to have responsible and committed students but also ensures that you, having given already, are not constantly being asked for help. Often the students see their donors as their lifeline and don’t understand the boundaries needed to make a project like this successful. I hope that you will both support us and help us to achieve these goals. Please feel free to contact Andrea (andrea@journeyswithinourcommunity.org) or myself should you feel these rules have been broken or should you have any questions at all.
Thank you for your support of Seky. We look forward to watching her progress together over the coming months. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have. Seky will be writing to you shortly and we hope you enjoy getting to know her.
Very best wishes,
Camilla
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The girls and I wanted to take perhaps one last holiday in SE Asia. Jed really didn't have vacation time left, and Evan is so done with third world travel. How different can Myanmar be from Cambodia, Thailand or Vietnam? We were lucky enough to have our visa's granted by their government so we could see for ourselves.
I sense and appreciate the differences, albeit subtle, between all these countries. Myanmar, formally Burma until 1989, is the largest country in SE Asia, sharing borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. Buddhism has great influence on the daily simple life of the Burmese. They are a friendly people with a rich culture and on old history. It is rare for the Myanmar people to meet American visitors. They admired the girls fair skin, eyes and hair.
Myanmar has been through many wars, political unrest, and natural disasters. I didn't think we would ever have the opportunity to visit this country during our expat assignment. Since we have lived in Singapore, Myanmar has kept Suu Kyi under house arrest (on/off since 1989 for her outspoken criticism of the Junta) despite recent pressure for her release, in 2007 the government raised fuel prices 500% causing an uprising that led 10,000 Monks to march in protest (some were killed, some are still imprisoned). Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2008, killing ~140,000 people. Remember it took the Myanmar government 3 weeks to allow people in to help. The Myanmar people we spoke with are certainly unhappy with their government, and are hopeful for change with the upcoming 2010 election.
We traveled through Yangon, visiting the 2500 year old Swedagon Pagoda. We flew to Bagan, where thousands of pagodas, temples and stupas dot the ancient capitals landscape. We bicycled among the ruins and off the path into little villages. And when we couldn't cycle any more, we traveled by horse cart into the evening. Another early morning flight took us to Nyaung Shwe, the gateway village to Inle Lake. The villages, and our hotel, are built on stilts over the water. We witnessed the Intha people rowing their boats with one leg while they fished and saw their floating gardens that are built up from strips of hyacinth and mud and achored to the bottom with bamboo poles. We enjoyed the busy morning market and set off on a five hours trek through remote hill tribe villages and farms. Little education. No electricity, cars, plumbing or McDonald's. Lots of people wearing the traditional longyi, beautiful views and bright stars in a pitch black night sky.
Despite coming home with upset and uncomfortable bellies, we feel so lucky to have traveled within this unique country that was virtually sealed off the the outside world since 1962. We supported locally owned hotels and restaurants, rather than government owned and bought handicrafts directly from the artisans, rather than government shops. The hardship and the oppression of these poor people did not keep them from warmly welcoming us to their "Golden Land."
Thanks for reading.
Lots of love to you all.
I sense and appreciate the differences, albeit subtle, between all these countries. Myanmar, formally Burma until 1989, is the largest country in SE Asia, sharing borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. Buddhism has great influence on the daily simple life of the Burmese. They are a friendly people with a rich culture and on old history. It is rare for the Myanmar people to meet American visitors. They admired the girls fair skin, eyes and hair.
Myanmar has been through many wars, political unrest, and natural disasters. I didn't think we would ever have the opportunity to visit this country during our expat assignment. Since we have lived in Singapore, Myanmar has kept Suu Kyi under house arrest (on/off since 1989 for her outspoken criticism of the Junta) despite recent pressure for her release, in 2007 the government raised fuel prices 500% causing an uprising that led 10,000 Monks to march in protest (some were killed, some are still imprisoned). Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2008, killing ~140,000 people. Remember it took the Myanmar government 3 weeks to allow people in to help. The Myanmar people we spoke with are certainly unhappy with their government, and are hopeful for change with the upcoming 2010 election.
We traveled through Yangon, visiting the 2500 year old Swedagon Pagoda. We flew to Bagan, where thousands of pagodas, temples and stupas dot the ancient capitals landscape. We bicycled among the ruins and off the path into little villages. And when we couldn't cycle any more, we traveled by horse cart into the evening. Another early morning flight took us to Nyaung Shwe, the gateway village to Inle Lake. The villages, and our hotel, are built on stilts over the water. We witnessed the Intha people rowing their boats with one leg while they fished and saw their floating gardens that are built up from strips of hyacinth and mud and achored to the bottom with bamboo poles. We enjoyed the busy morning market and set off on a five hours trek through remote hill tribe villages and farms. Little education. No electricity, cars, plumbing or McDonald's. Lots of people wearing the traditional longyi, beautiful views and bright stars in a pitch black night sky.
Despite coming home with upset and uncomfortable bellies, we feel so lucky to have traveled within this unique country that was virtually sealed off the the outside world since 1962. We supported locally owned hotels and restaurants, rather than government owned and bought handicrafts directly from the artisans, rather than government shops. The hardship and the oppression of these poor people did not keep them from warmly welcoming us to their "Golden Land."
Thanks for reading.
Lots of love to you all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
