Puppet, Khmer lessons and dancing

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This week was very short, as we started the project again on Wednesday after the long holiday. In the morning we always went to a shadow theatre where they tell stories from Hinduism using puppets. Those puppets are made from dried cow skin. They buy the cow skin on the market, clean all the meat out, wash it and then color it and then let it dry from the sun. We all just picked a puppet that we like, they applied a model to the cow skin and we started to cut out. It's quite a hard work with the hammer, but the hardest part of it was to sit on those little chairs on that little table!

On every afternoon we had Khmer lessons. The funny thing about it is that we had 4 different ways of pronouncing things, one was our teacher saying it, then 3 different ways of repeating it as we were 3 students. But I think she understood what we said, so it's fine. I can say now the basic things in Khmer like my name is, I am from, how much is it, what time is it. Yesterday I went to central market and I could ask for the price and understand the answer. I was really proud of myself.

After every Khmer lesson we were supposed to go to dancing lessons, but we only went there on Friday because there were no students because of the holidays. So on Friday we went to this dancing school for Apsara dancing. In earlier times they only danced in the palace or in temples or for special occasions. But now it's mostly for the tourists. We saw different students dancing, from small girls to teenagers. They need to start very early to learn it, because they need to be very flexible.

Next week we are going to have cooking lessons! Very exciting!

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