Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I'm a grandma

“Da” is what a 17-year-old girl calls my husband. It’s the Khmer word for “grandfather” – so that means if she addressed me I would be “yiyay” (grandma).
So how can we be grandparents when we don’t even have children? I guess in this case the relationship is actually some sort of great uncle, as the girl is a descendant of Kimsoeun’s mum’s brother or something, rather than directly from our (non existent) children. But I find it amazing there is already that many generations younger than us in our family. Kimsoeun is only in his early 30s and people from his generation have already had kids… and their kids have already had kids…

(Soeun’s mum is the youngest of many siblings, and they all got married young, so by the time Soeun was born I think he already had cousins that were more than 13 years old. So if those cousins got married at age 16 too and started having kids, that would mean there would have already been a generation below him before he finished school.)

Friday, May 08, 2009

Killing Fields Museum- Choeung Ek


We thought it was ironic that our tuk tuk driver's name was Duch. We were going to visit a mass grave museum and the guy taking us there had the same name as one of the people who are on trial for their part in the genocide. I'll let these pictures speak for themselves, or you can find out more from the links.



The start of Pol Pot time : April 17th 1975
The end of it: Jan 7 1979
A prison from that time that has been turned into a museum: Toul Sleng
I also put some more of my photos on my other blog.