School Days - Getting There is Half the Fun

At noon we get geared up for our ride to school. We've got our lesson plans, pens, whiteboard markers, and dictionary.

We're each wearing
-a cotton face mask to protect from the sun; dust; moto (scooters, a common mode of transport), car, and truck exhaust; and unpleasant odors
-a sun hat with dorky chin strap
-foreigner sunglasses
-gobs of sunscreen.

Thus outfitted, we mount our rickety one-speeds and navigate the rutted dead-end dirt road outside our guesthouse, stop to buy a hefty supply of water, and set forth on our 20-minute ride. Once we negotiate the center of town, we merge onto the road following the river. Now that the dry hot season is in full swing, the river (resembling a stagnant puddle) is not at its most picturesque but it's lined with coconut trees, other greenery and people fishing in the mud. The traffic is slow, which is a good thing. Food stands, moto repair stalls, and other small businesses crowd what would be the shoulder, if the road had one. We pass droves of uniformed school kids on bikes returning from their 2-hour lunch break, little bridges over the river to our left, and construction (?) projects that sometime take up half the road. We hear the toots of horns letting us know something faster than us is there and snippets of music playing (on Friday, a funeral dirge and today, a Cambodian cover of Hotel California). Eventually we pass under a white stone arch (presumably announcing the village) onto a quiet lane past typical Khmer stilt houses through the grounds of a Wat (Buddhist monastery) containing ancient Angkor stone ruins to the Krorsang Rolang Primary School.