The day after I met the other trainees and took a tour of Phnom Pehn marked my first day of classes.  For the next two weeks I spent everyday in a classroom hardly having any time to actually get to know the city.  At 8:15am we were expected to be waiting in the lobby with all our material to start our journey to Panassatra University.  Depending on the traffic, which was normally horrendous, it took anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes to get from our hotel to class.  We always traveled by tuk-tuk, in fact, I don't remember seeing a single taxi my entire time there.  It took us a few days to settle into a routine, but it was still a struggle everyday for us all to agree on a time to head to school so half of us could eat at cheaper places near the school.  Normally we could get 4 people to agree to about 7:50 but our drivers wouldn't leave without 5 people in a tuk-tuk.  It really sucked since there was always one person *coughBlakecough* who would wake up at the last minute possible and pay to take a moto, thus throwing off the numbers and leaving those who wanted a bite to eat just minutes to grab some food once we got there.

Our typical breakfast, my favorite meal everyday and something I crave here in Bangkok, was a fried egg with sweet and sour coleslaw on a toasted baguette.  It was absolutely delicious and only 75 cents!

We had 4 classes each day that were nearly 2 hours apiece and an hour long lunch brake in between.  That said, we spent everyday between 8am and almost 6pm either on our way to, or in class.  I skipped out on a lunch time trip with some classmates to S21, an old school converted into a prison and torture center during the Khmer Rouge, but did go along to see the Killing Fields.   Most days we cajoled our instructors into discussions about Cambodia's history having them tell us about the Khmer Rouge where the entire city of Phnom Pehn was evicted and many, many cambodians were executed or died from the extreme conditions they were subjected too.  Khmer is what the Cambodians call themselves and is pronounced either as it is spelled or more informally as "ka-mai'.  However, what they told us did not prepare me for the reality presented at the Killing Fields.  This place, where many thousands went to die, contains mass graves that are still being excavated and occasionally, heavy rains will wash away the topsoil causing bones and old clothes to surface in the walking paths.

On a lighter note, Phnom Pehn has come very far in the past 15 years.  While it is still very rough around the edges, the people are very friendly and accommodating and seemed to thuroughly enjoy us trying to interact with them and learn about their city and history.  Another thing about the city; since it is still so "new" traffic and other laws tend not to be so strict.  Case in point, Happy Pizza.  Happy pizza which is also the name of a chain found in other larger cities in Cambodia is a place where you can get happy "herb" pizza, or anything else on the menu "happy".  And for dirt cheap.  These restaurants can be found all along the riverside in the more happening part of town, a part of town that was on the complete opposite side of town near our classroom since LanguageCorp decided that the best place to buy a hotel in the city was on the very outskirts.

Throughout these two weeks I got to know a bit about my classmates, a real interesting bunch, and take an excursion to Siem Reap.  The one weekend we had in the city was our chance to spend over 8 hours packed into a van each way to go explore one of the most defining sites in all of Cambodia: Angkor Wat.  We took a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat, for which we had to be up and ready by 4am.  From there we returned for breakfast, I got to hold a baby crocodile from the crocodile farm behind our hotel, and then spend the rest of the day exploring the many ruins that make up the Angkor complex.  This included wandering the towers of the Bayon Temple as the giant faces that adorned all 4 sides of them smiled down gently at us.