Phnom Penh!

Greetings from Phnom Penh! We took a five hour drive from Siem Reap here the other day, and on the way Mr. Riege bought cooked tarantula and fried crickets. Some of us -- including me -- tried them, and they didn't taste too bad! The crickets were actually pretty good. Anyways, ever since we've arrived in Phnom Penh, we've been bombarded, in a good way, with the arts at Arts Festival. It's been fantastic, especially the workshops that we get to take in the afternoons. Every day, we get to choose from twenty or so workshops being offered in various Khmer art forms, like Pinpeat (an orchestra of gongs and xylophones), Shadow Puppets, a bunch of dances, etc. We've all been having a pretty fun time at those workshops, but sometimes it is difficult when a Khmer person -- in my case an old lady Pinpeat master -- is yelling at you and pointing furiously at the instrument, and you cannot understand a word, or sound, she is saying. Difficult as it may be, it is really cool. Yesterday we visited Toel Sleng before lunch, which was a high school back in the 70's that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture center. The buildings are old, concrete, and disturbing, and so are the prison wires all over the place that were used to keep people inside and to prevent them from committing suicide (the wires cover windows and balconies). There were signs everywhere with a smiling face on them with an "X" through it. I don't think anyone needed the advice. The pictures of the atrocities, as well as standing in the same rooms and places that so many people had been held unwillingly, had been tortured, and in some cases had been killed, was powerful and incredibly upsetting.
Anyways, we didn't let the horrific nature of our late morning museum visit hurt us! We went right to lunch and had a pretty good time. Mr. Riege played Tic Tac Toe with a boy who wanted to sell us guidebooks. They tied, so the price went down from $10 to $7. Mr. Riege and I did a workshop later that afternoon and saw the Memm being played. The Memm is a pretty ancient instrument that everyone thought was extinct until a year or two ago, when it was discovered being played by people in a tribal village in Ratanakiri, which is where we're going next week! It's so cool! It's like a violin, sort of, except the sound resonates our of your mouth as you play, because you hold a lizard scale between your teeth, which is attached to the instrument via string. It's complicated sounding, and I'm not describing it too well, but it was very cool to hear. We attended this workshop in a high school, which was an interesting experience in and of itself. The school reminded me of Toel Sleng in the depressed looking concrete structures and the small rooms with old tiled flooring. I couldn't imagine going to school there. It is another assertion of the poverty and difficult living situations here in Cambodia and Phnom Penh. Anyways, the workshops continue through tomorrow, so we will have, hopefully, a good deal of fun, and learn a lot, I'm sure. My feet still hurt after a Shadow Puppet workshop taught in bare feet on gravel. This week, and Ratanakiri should be amazing, even though the drive there will be 10 HOURS LONG.