My 1st week in Phnom Penh

I have been in Cambodia a whole week!!! (And survived to tell you about it!!)
My initial thoughts are:
It is hot and wet!!
It smells funny!
The roads are insane!!

My hair is getting curlier each day- it mainly it looks like I have stuck my hand in an electric socket:

Curly Cambodia hair!

Monica's humidity hair

I do seem to keep getting electric shocks from the dodgy electrics, so maybe this has something to do with it? We have high humidity-it is rainy season= dramatic monsoon rain fall, and thunder storms. I look increasingly like Monica from Friends when she goes to Hawaii!!!

I have mainly spent the week trying to over come jet-lag (i think I have finally conquered it!), quite a few nights were spent lying awake in the dark for hours-not so much fun! But the past 2 days have been better :-)

I have achieved various things to help me start to set up my life here...

The 1st day I got a mobile phone, sounds like a simple thing to do? But here in Cambodia I found I had to buy a hand set from a scruffy shop, a sim card from a shiny new bright yellow 'Hello' phone shop, where it took about 4 people and a photocopy of my passport :-/ to buy a sim card, and then some phone credit from a little stall at the side of the road. This all felt like quite an achievement-and a culture shock on day 1!! 

The 2nd day I kind of repeated the process in order to get a dongle for internet connection. Im up and running on my 'unlimited' month of internet, which the girl in the shop told me once Id bought it, "isnt actually unlimited, it's just called unlimited"!!?? Ok! It seems to work so far.

I also managed to get a helmet: 

So I have been taking Moto-dops (a moped taxi). Every street corner in Phnom Penh has a group of men who say "you wan moto lady", if you do, you hop on the back of their moped, try and explain where you would like to go, and then cling on (praying the whole way that you don't die) while they weave in and out of 100's of other moto's, tuc-tuc's, cars, trucks, dogs, bikes, people etc. and usually end up where you expected. Only one time this week I had to get off the moto, as the driver was driving like a mad man in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go. 

And a P.O. Box (again this was a right palarva!!) but I have now rented my own post box :-) If anyone would like to send me post-especially british fashion mags and chocolate ;-), but all post would be much appreciated, let me know and Ill send you my address. 

I started work yesterday. I have a design room, where I will be based, and where the girls will come for their design and pattern cutting lessons.

The view from the design room

The new design room, the fan is very important!!

Here I am designing some men's accessories 

My desk (anyone who has worked with me knows it wont be this tidy for long!!)

Tomorrow I am going on a retreat with the staff team at Daughters. We are going to Kep and Kampot, on the Cambodian coast. Ive not been out of Phnom Penh before, so am looking forward to seeing the countryside as we travel, and enjoying the sea...pictures to show you soon I hope!!