When training was over and I found out that I was moving to Battambang province I was a little disappointed. I say this because I requested to live in the southern provinces and got assigned to the second most northern province that Peace Corps stations volunteers. Now that I've been at my permanent site in Battambang province I couldn't be happier. I live in a nice for Cambodia house with an awesome family.

As part of settling into my home for the foreseeable future I wanted to explore the surrounding villages, so that's what I did. Most of my discoveries were great. I found beautiful rice paddies as far as the eye could see along with palm and coconut trees soaring to great heights making me really feel like I was in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Adding to the natural beauty is that fact that I live a stones through from a river. I can't see it from my house, but it is within a minutes walk from my doorstep. When I bike to my provincial town I bike along the twists and turns of the riverside road watching fishermen cast their nets for the days catch.

All this sounds great, right? It is, but there is one place that I frequently ride by that literally and figuratively spoils any good day. The place is called Pasaa Prohoc. Pasaa is the Khmer word for market, but that's only half the story. It leaves you wondering, what is Prohoc? For those of you not living in Cambodia fear not. No country in their right mind would ever manufacture such as atrocious, offensive, foul smelling, meant to be consumable item except Cambodia. Put lightly, Prohoc is fermented fish.

Situated on the banks of the river that runs near my house, about two villages away, sits Pasaa Prohoc. It also happens to be beside one of only two bridges that cross the river before you make it to my provincial town. I cross the bridge to visit my Khmer language teacher as well as to use internet at the closest internet shop. The market also sits less than one hundred meters from the best coffee that I've had in Cambodia. Whenever the necessity arises to pass near the malodorous market I hold my breath and pedal fast.

I don't want you to think that this is made up or that people are so desperate for food that they eat fermented fish, because that is not the case. Khmer people happily and willingly eat fermented fish mostly adding it to soup to "add flavor." This stuff is manufactured by the vat. How do you make it? Easy! Cut up old, smelly fish, and salt, and let ferment for the foreseeable future then enjoy!

As with most things in life and is commonplace with my blog, pictures are worth a thousand words.

The unassuming market from the outside

Not so fresh delivery from Thailand. No amount of soup can rid that kind of smell

Unloading the gold

Yum!

First you gotta cut em' up

She's a pro!

Add salt

Fishcicles

Let it ferment

Yum!

She's wearing flip flops

Some get filleted

Some get baked in the sun.

Fish, Fish everywhere, but not a drop to eat

This isn't your local Captain D's

Let it rot!

The ground enhances the flavor and colorIf your British it enhances the flavour and colour

The health department keeps a tight leash

Grinding enhances the flavor

From the inside out

Gotta love a panoramic

Coming to a used car lot soon!

Vampire's delight

Fish guts

120 Kilos to much!

It's heavy

One of the two salt factories beside the market

Grinding the salt

I had a little too much fum making he captions. It's the little things that brighten my day.

Now you can enjoy your morning cup of Joe. Remember I bike by this every morning to get mine.

That's all for now,

-Matt

Our first Voices of Cambodia interview comes from Chantha, one of our first friends at site. Name: Ok Chantha Age: 28 Occupation: Primary school teacher Tell me about yourself. My name is Chantha and I am a teacher and I live with my family. There are five people in my family. My father is a [...]

Shout out to 2006!

Today, we have some very important things to discuss.

Firstly, why is the movie Batman and Robin so terrible? Alone, you have three medium-good-in-the-right-niche actors of George Clooney, Alicia Silverstone, and Chris O'Donnell, who are not that horrible in general. But then you put them together with really horrid dialogue and bad lighting and cheap pyro and you get what may be the worst movie in the entire Batman series franchise.

And you also get the only thing on television. And in a household wherein your husband thinks he's Bruce Wayne, loves Batman and has since his inception in the womb, you get two hours of awkward laughter and groans of lamenting.

It's really just awful, guys.

On that note, have you seen American Psycho?

(Train of thought: Batman-Christian Bale-Newsies-Opposite of Newsies-American Psycho.)

American Psycho is actually a very good movie. Except that I saw it when I was sixteen and I should have been weirded out by it but I actually liked it? I watched with a high school girl friend, and we both loved it, but then we also watched Fight Club and she loved it and I hated it.

Still hate it, actually. But American Psycho! Good!

Maybe it boils down to liking Christian Bale far more than I like Brad Pitt OR Edward Norton? I don't really like Brad Pitt. He's too pretty to be attractive to me. And his eyes are tiny.

Now Harrison Ford. That's an attractive male actor I'll always love. He's old but hot.

Other important things.

Secondly, I've been meaning to tell you about the two sides to Cambodia. On the happy side, Cambodians are incredibly generous, giving, and helpful people. They are willing to do many things for the greater happiness of the population. This was evident the other week when our bus broke down and all the men on the bus got out to push it so it could start again.

And then, two hours later, I was trying to get myself some really terribly almost-delicious cheeseburger and fries, and then it happened. A body, in front of me, butting in line! And then another! And then four total people were crushing my bones from both sides! and I remembered:

There is no concept of "line" in the 'bode.

Thirdly, Topher and I disagree about the "name" of this actor:

To le husban' he is Peter from Band of Brothers. To me, he is and shall always be the cute-but-in-the-end-post-it-dick Berger.

Source here

I mean, he's Berger, right?

And then, fourthly, there's the fact that I'm a an ex-underwear addict. It's true! If this were the basement of a church, we'd be sitting in a circle and I'd say my name was Delilah. And I'm actually an ex-addict. Because I used to own a ridiculous amount of underwear. I used to be proud of the number but I don't actually want to admit it. Like, now, instead of being proud of and exclaiming how many raw-cookie-dough-cookies I DIDN'T eat, I have to think of a less embarrassing fake number of raw-cookie-dough-cookies I DID eat.

That made no sense.

But guys. I have lived for six months utilizing thirteen pairs of underwear. Thirteen! I'm saving sixteen other pairs. I'm not sure for what? I think I'm just so used to seeing a stockpile of underwear. I'm saving some. Like, for future me. Because future me, she deserves some super soft never been worn underwear. Future me should get the luxury of sweating into ultra great nearly America-smelling cotton undies. HOORAY FOR FUTURE ME! Jealous a bit, I am, yeah.

Somehow, when I began this post I was going to tell you about how jealous I am of Topher's deodorant, his boy stuff, because it absorbs so quickly! and doesn't get stuck to the pits of shirts! and that I sneak wear it all the time!

And finally (sixthly?) I was going to expound on the amazing things that are shelf bras? Because my boobs are so small that the built in bras in my tank tops that I wear under, well, everything, is all I need? And I kind of wish everyone could know the joy of a supportive shelf bra?

To round this out, seventhly, Topher would also like it be quite clear that he does NOT like or endorse the movie Batman and Robin.

That's how it goes.

I have realized that after over six months in Cambodia, the amount of pictures I have taken is just dismally low.

Sometimes I think that not even pictures could capture the feelings in some of the more interesting moments here, and to an extent, I think thats true. But I need to make more of an effort to visually capture the good and bad, the funny and the sad and the daily and the extraordinary. If nothing else, I will want photographic evidence when I am explaining my PC stories to friends and family back home.

Therefore, I am going to try my damnedest to be consistent in taking and posting a new "special picture" every week. I try to include pictures in my normal blog posts when I can, but I am hoping that this weekly segment will encourage me to keep my camera at the ready so I can capture all those things I have been meaning to or wish that I had the chance to but my camera was out of reach.

Over the weekend, Kate and I visited our training village. It had been over two months since we last saw our training host grandma and she was so happy to see us. We bumped into a few other friends we had made in the town as well. It felt good to know those relationships didn't just disintegrate after we left.

Anyhow, on the 12k trip there, I came across this beauty. Not uncommon here, but still so amazing. I stopped my bike to snap a few shots.

The driver slowed down to say hi to me as he saw I was taking his picture, and the two guys riding on top were all to happy to smile and wave.

I have always hated moving day, but I guess I was just doing it wrong.

Despite the incredibly dangerous traffic hazard this could be, it shows a lot about Cambodian resourcefulness, their attitudes and lack of understanding about traffic safety and strong desire to get the job done in as few moves as possible.

Why take two cars when we can fit nine people in a Toyota Camery? Not a riddle and not a joke. I've been there...

In an ongoing effort to make this blog a readable, interesting, but unromanticized account of our Peace Corps lives, Katie and I have decided to begin a new series entitled “Voices of Cambodia.” We’ve talked at length about the pitfalls of writing personal blogs about Peace Corps service and realized that it is exceedingly difficult [...]

Essentially, they loved it.

By they of course, I mean my family, and by it of course, I mean the delicious spaghetti I made for them.

While our host nephew decided against trying the food (he is really picky/spoiled), both the girls ate the pasta sans sauce (at least they tried it).

Opting for rice over the (obviously) more delicious spaghetti

and homemade pasta sauce. He did, however, guzzle

down several glasses of Coke that we had brought. Host nephew getting his come-uppins for being such a (cute) little snot.

Our host mother, sister, brother and Khmer tutor ate numerous bowls of pasta and sauce - whether or not they were truly enjoying it or just being polite is something I will never know.

However, the dinner was full of laughs, talking about how much we were thankful for each other and of course, how delicious the food was.

Our host mom and host sister chowing down on some spaghetti.

A family dinner, in every sense of the term.

Kate and our Khmer tutor, Thany. She is pretty freakin' awesome.

An impromptu English study session during dinner. The highlight of our host

niece's reading is when she recites the alphabet, "A - apple, B - bird, C - cat..."

My host brother had a wedding to attend while we ate, but he ended up making it home to try a bit of pasta and "ankoi lang" or literally translated, "sit-play."

Host sister and host brother, husband and wife. I don't typically imbibe alcohol around the family - I don't want to give off a negative image that sometimes accompanies alcohol consumption in this country. But in this case, it was a celebratory event, my tutor and host mom were also kicking a few back, so I felt that it was appropro to have a cold brew with them. Host niece and I goofin' around. I promise, she was not drinking beer. I was...One more...

Happily, the evening was everything I had hoped for. While I have always felt very close to this family, showing them how much they meant to Kate and I seemed only natural and well-recieved. At one point during the dinner Kate and I needed to run out to grab a medical package that PC had sent Kate in a spur-of-the-moment decision. Kate was going to go and get it herself until our mom shooed me away with a gesture that said, "go with her, you are her husband and you need to make sure she is safe!" The feeling of love mixed with obligation and guilt that this gesture produced in me, solidified how she has become such an important figure in our lives.

At one point during the meal, Kate and I were joking around with each other in Khmer. Nothing out of the usual...but our family remarked how much they enjoy us being able to "loosen up" around them and be ourselves. They also can clearly see that, while we try to be respectful of their cultural norms, the love we have for each other is very evident.

As a quick aside, this contradicts much of what we were taught during training, that often, its much better to toe the line of propriety and act in accordance with K'mai standards. In fact, many times, our family likes to see how we act "normally." This is not a comment about the shortcomings of PC training, only to note that in reality, our cultures often do not differ by all that much.

The night came to a great end as Kate and I insisted on doing all the dishes and giving the family a true night off. Again, the gesture was taken well and it was hard to peel ourselves away from the family and go back to our own house.

All this to say that we have a fantastic host family in Cambodia, and the Spaghetti dinner was a huge success.

So in training I wanted to get a white shirt made. I had a helper tell the tailor to make the plain white shirt. Then the tailor asked what kind of buttons I wanted. Normally they use buttons resembling disco balls for women’s shirts, but I pointed to the plain white buttons. Upon receiving the shirt the tailor gave me buttons that were only half glitter.  “Surely,” she must have thought, “that girl could not have meant NO glitter.” 6 months later and I regularly get my nails done with enough glitter to choke a horse and own a wedding outfit to put 80s prom dresses to shame. My regular teaching skirts are also sparkling, of course. Cambodians love glitter.And,  it is shiny and happy- why shouldn’t they? So now I do too.

This week Cambodia will feel a lot different to me because two Thompson cousins will be landing in Siem Reap for a short visit. My cousin Alice-Anne and her husband, Robert live near Hiroshima, Japan.  Alice-Anne is a dentist for … Continue reading →

Whenever I cooked at home (Maryland), forgetting something from my recipe at the store was simply and easily rectified by jumping back in the car and making the five minute (roundtrip) journey back to and home from the store again. Nonetheless, I am pretty sure I complained when this happened.

In Cambodia, it usually takes several trips to the market for me to gather the ingredients I need for more-complex-than-usual-dishes, mostly because they don't have enough of what I need or they don't have it at all. In this case, 4.5 kilograms of ripe tomatoes, a half kilogram of pork, a half kilogram of green pepper, two onions, two carrots, garlic, and fresh parsley. The tomatoes alone gave me cause to make two separate visits to two different markets. Even getting this far gives me cause to be proud.

Ready to cook!I had no intent of ever making this blog a "cooking blog," mostly because I could never do it as good as most of the ones I have seen out there already. Also, I tend to "cook from the hip" and often don't ever work with recipes. If I do, its usually something I have modified. However, cooking spaghetti in Cambodia feels different than it would in America, so I have tried to capture the process here.

Skinning the tomatoes is the first step. Its pretty simple, the tomatoes go into boiling water for about 30-40 seconds, and then immediately into cold water. You don't want the tomatoes to cook, only to blanch the skins and then they will slide off. Cook the tomatoes a few at a time so you can easily remove them form the water after 30-40 seconds.

An added bonus for boiling fruits and veggies in Cambodia is that

it kills any bacteria that may be on the outside of the produce. The skins should pop off real easily, then you are left with naked-looking tomatoes. Don't throw out the tomato skins yet.

Disrobed, slippery tomatoes...Now for the most tedious step. You need to remove any part of the tomato that won't cook down into a liquid-y sauce as well as most (not all, that is impossible) of the seeds. So...cut the top part of the tomato off (the part where the stem meets the flesh) and squeeze the pulp into a sieve or strainer that will gather the seeds. Allow the juice to run from the seeds through the strainer into a bowl underneath. The rest of the tomato parts, is what the sauce will mainly consist of. Use your hands, a blender or whatever to mash up the flesh the best you can and put it all in a big saucepan. Go ahead and turn the heat to low while you are doing the next few steps, the longer the tomatoes cook the better the sauce will be.



I don't have a lot of cooking supplies, so I sterilized a slatted bowl

for fruit and used it to catch the seeds and tough pulp. Save the juice, its really helpful later and usually contains lots of sugars from the tomatoes which helps to make a tastier sauce. While the strainer is still over the bowl, squeeze the skins from earlier to ensure they the juice they hold makes it into your bowl.

I like to proceed by doing the following: take about eight or nine cloves of fresh garlic and half of an onion, chop them up fine and then put into a smaller saucepan with a few glugs of olive oil. Brown, but don't burn, the onions and garlic.

Also give the tomatoes in your main pot a quick stir, don't let them burn on the bottom. They should be simmering lightly.

Once the garlic and onions have been browned (and smell delicious) add about 2/3 of the tomato juice to the smaller saucepan and begin to season.

***NOTE: If your sauce ever gets to be too thick, that is when you add the rest of the tomato juice. If you don't need it, fine, make yourself a tasty Bloody Mary...you deserve it.

You need to season this. The tricky part is how your sauce is seasoned because this is largely dependent on the quantity of sauce you are making, personal preference, etc. Start with a few tablespoons of salt, the same of oregano and basil (or an all-purpose italian seasoning), a few generous pinches of sugar, pepper, a little bit of chopped parsley and you are golden (I also like about half a tablespoon of cayenne pepper or hot sauce for a bit of kick). Don't add too much, you can taste the sauce along the way and add more if needed, but if its too salty/peppery, you are kinda screwed.

Let that simmer, but keep an eye on it, don't let it burn.

At this point, your big saucepan of tomatoes should start looking like this:

You want this to continue simmering for a LONG time...for the amount of tomatoes I am using, (roughly 9lbs), it will go for about 2.5 hours. You want the water to boil off from the tomatoes, the sauce to thicken, the tomatoes to breakdown and the juices from the tomatoes to caramelize (it will get darker). I like to add a few pinches of salt to it right now, it seems to help coax the juice from the pulp of the tomatoes.

In the smaller saucepan, keep it simmering. I like boiling the juice down to a paste-like consistency and since you seasoned this heavily, all the seasons and flavors will intermingle and concentrate. It will take a good long while for the juice to turn into paste. Keep it simmering, keep stirring and keep it from burning.

As both pots continue to simmer, and you continue to stir periodically, chop up the veggies and meat you want to add to the sauce. Again, based on preference, for a smoother sauce, chop them up finer, for a chunkier sauce you'll want to chop them more coarsely. I like a chunkier sauce so I usually cut up my carrots, onions and peppers fairly coarsely.

Ok, so your juice should be right about at the paste stage now. Add it to the large saucepan with the majority of your tomatoes. This should all still be simmering now but with the paste now in, it should also be a bit thicker and darker.

Continue the simmering and the stirring and the thickening. Take a small handful of the chopped green peppers and add it to your sauce now, this will help with the flavor of the sauce.

Take the rest of the vegetables and put them in a skillet with a little oregano, a pinch of salt and pepper, some olive oil, and sauté until slightly browned.

Then, add the veggies to the sauce.

After this all you need to do is keep it simmering until you like the consistency. You will also need to give it a few taste tests to fine tune the seasoning to your tastes.

In the end, it looks something like this:

Notice the darker color? That is because the sugars from the tomatoes have caramelized. Your sauce is now delicious.

One final step, if you want your sauce to have meat in it. I chose to add some thinly sliced pork. This is mostly because not having a dish with meat in it is a sign of frugality or poorness in Cambodia, I wanted my family to know that we cooked them a "good" meal that contained meat.

To keep it tender, I added the pork in the last couple minutes of simmering and let it continue to cook while the sauce cooled. This way the pork stayed tender but still cooked through.

Now, after only like three or four hours in the kitchen and untold treks to countless markets (if you are making this sauce in Cambodia).

I never intended this to be such a cliff-hanging-three-part-post, but tomorrow I will post how the actual dinner went with the family (I promise!).

If you follow me somewhat regularly, you’ll remember me telling you about six months ago that my host cousin was in a serious motorcycle accident in Puok.  I told you that he had to have one of his legs amputated … Continue reading →

Friday morning I taught a couple hours before making my usual visit to the mango stand behind Puok High with my co-teacher, Socheat. As we sat on plastic stools next to the mangoes, I noticed a well-dressed Khmer man in … Continue reading →

Earlier tonight, I came across a new post from Tales from the Hood entitled, “American Culture 101: More blessed to give than to receive.” It’s a passionate article that links the giver-centric American attitude with the contemporary humanitarian aid industry. Drawing upon examples in current pop culture and American history alike, the author makes the argument (among [...]

Most people go around Cambodia wearing flip flops, or plastic sandals. I don't play that way. I wear socks, you see; this I wear flats. When packing for Cambodia I wasn't really sure what I was going to do about the rainy season. I debated bringing my rain boots. Haha, I'm so glad that I didn't. It's so stinking hot that I don't think I would have ever worn them.

I brought three pairs of shoes to Cambodia. My tennis shoes, my traveling shoes, and a cheap pair of shoes from Payless that I didn't care if they got ruined. I have a lot of shoes, so only bringing 3 pairs was tough.

Cambodia is hard on shoes. The roads are dusty and during the rainy season your feet get soaked every day. These are what my cheap payless shoes look like after the rainy season.

This is what my traveling shoes look like after living here 6 months. I love these shoes, I've taken them with me on every trip I've gone on for years. They've held up amazingly well.

and finally here are my sweet mustard yellow flats I had made here back in October. They took a while to stretch out, so I didn't wear them a lot until rather recently, but they've still taken a beating.

I'm thinking about getting another pair of leather flats made for the rainy season, so send me links, or tag me in pictures on pinterest for really cute flats.

hey blue eyes,

i do a lot of my thinking about blog post topics while i ride buses, or bikes, or eat rice. so, as you know, that affords me a great deal of time to brainstorm.

one of the more recent ideas that my brain derived was writing to you. which seems so silly in actual fact, because don't i spend so much time with you already? isn't this the most time we've ever been around each other? hell, it's a crazy day if we're apart for more than four hours at a time.

thusly, it would seem pretty anti-reality to write you a little something when i could actually just tell you things anytime. i could right this second, in fact. tonight we watched (listened to? tolerated? ok, mocked) vanilla sky, and when it was over you couldn't believe that social network was coming up next, as you were hoping we spent the last ninety minutes dealing with tom cruise in hopes of something better.

but secretly i love the movie social network? though i kind of think this isn't a secret and you know it, but you were so kind to choose not to give me crap for it.

its the little things that make me love you. so thanks.

a lot people might not know it, but you're actually one of my most loyal blog followers. which i love. my breath is usually quite bated until you give me your thoughts on my recent writings/rumblings/erklings/verbvom. so you can imagine how hard it is on my lungs sometimes when you don't say anything until the next day. but i always know you're going to read this. and give me an informal rating of sorts.

sometimes you just offer me your opinion on what i wrote. when this happens, i know you liked it and it made you think or laugh or cringe.

other times you update me on my comments, because you know that sometimes i get down when no one says anything.

my favorite is when you actually read it while i'm around and you chuckle and then i find out that that it was me, my little post, that eeked out that chuckle.

but really, i think i'm writing this (and probably more?) because even when you spend approximately nineteen hours with your husband, there are still just some things you'd like to say. so here's the space for that.

in the hours we were apart today, you should know that i was still cleaning, like i was when you left. and in the midst, when i realized that somehow you'd caused a big ole mess by trying to make sure we had a full water filter and had to stop my cleaning (ugh!) and sop up a buttload of water from the floor.

you should know that in that moment, i made the decision to actually use both of our towels to clean up the water. not just yours.

both of ours.

your welcome.

love,

the happiest wife who has to go watch the social network now.

If I have not already said this, let me make it clear: Kate and I have an amazing Cambodian family that we live next to. They are as generous and kind as they are respectful of our privacy as a married couple living in a foreign country.

We live in a pretty awesome home here in Cambodia that, by comparison to most homes in this country, is more than satisfactory. Our family has also gone to great efforts to ensure that we have all the things we need to more than get by: furniture, appliances...even cushions to sit on (a BIG luxury in Cambodia)!

Our K'mai family consists of six members: a mom, her daughter and her husband, and their three children (including a set of twins).

With the twins and their grandma, who we call "Mai," Khmer for Mom. Also, my

host nephew is making a really satanic/hilarious face hereOne of many nights when the twins crashed our house because they were bored.

Apparently I missed the memo on the funny face picture.

Single PCVs typically live with host families in a more complete way - they eat most meals with them, usually live in a room in their house and while they tend to become much closer with their families then a married PCV couple may, they also tend to have more issues with privacy, food and the daily grind.

Kate and I live in a detached home on our host family's property, only a few meters away from their own home. We can lock our doors and maintain our privacy if we want to.

We choose to try to integrate into our family, in some way, on a daily basis. I think you could say that we are like adopted members of the family most days. Our "mom" calls us her children, the kids call us Aunt and Uncle and we interact with them as such pretty regularly.

The kids run out to us when we get home from teaching and either ask us to play to help us put our bikes away. We help them study English and they come into our house from time to time to see what we are watching on our computer (if I want them to leave I just say I am watching a movie about ghosts...perhaps immoral, but it works really well).

Even though its not in the official agreement our family made with PC, they invite us over for lunch or dinner once a week or so and bring us fresh fruit several times a week. We really appreciate their generosity, but even more, the balance they have struck giving us our privacy and inviting us into their family.

After eating with them this past week, Kate and I decided to turn the tables and make them dinner instead.

I have made homemade spaghetti sauce here several times already and thought that was the safest choice to give them a taste of foreign cuisine. Several other PCVs have already attempted dinners similar to this with mixed results. Sometimes the families really dig it, sometimes they put the sauce over rice because the noodles must just be too weird and other times I have heard of families eating only small amounts to say that they had tried it.

I don't expect a home run, but I do hope that our family understands the gesture and tries the food.

After another quick trip to the market tomorrow and a few hours in the kitchen, we will be serving dinner for the family. Pictures and results to follow this weekend.

Recently, I was looking around online and ran into a Flickr account that I started a few years back. There were some bad photos that I wouldn't have minded deleting. So, I went to log in.

"Please enter in your Yahoo ID and password."

...wtf. Yahoo??? When was the last time I used...right. 2008. Well, I'm sure I just used..my...nope. I don't remember my username whatsoever. So, I clicked on the I'm-an-idiot-and-never-wrote-this-crap-down button. It says, do you want us to send it to your t..............@gmail.com. Oh god. TheNewStravinsky@gmail.com (pompous, now, I know). Okay, no problem, I'll just go on and sign into that e-mail account that I haven't been using for over 20 months, now. I definitely used that one password.

"Either password or username was incorrect."

No problem. I probably just typed it incorrectly.

"Either password or username was incorrect."

Maybe I used this other password.

"Either password or username was incorrect."

Oh, come on! Alright. So, I click on that you-really-forgot-all-of-this-information-too? button. And it asks for my security information. I used some stupid word that I made up like 10 years ago, and I guess I didn't remember how to spell it. Okay, send it to my other e-mail address.

"Would you like us to send your information to your other account g.......@e****.a******.edu?

You've got to be kidding me. Okay, fine. I'll log into my school e-mail account. Apparently they extended the use of our school e-mail from six months after you graduate to when you die. Hmmm. Okay, User Name: gmatlick. Easy enough. Password: ********

"Either password or username was incorrect."

Fuck. Try again.

"Either password or username was incorrect."

Double f3kyuwq09209409(($&&$*&#*#*#.

Okay, wait. Security questions. Okay, and I got the information correct. I wasn't an idiot when creating security measures for my university account. So, I got into my @email.arizona.edu account, then subsequently accessed my TheNewStravinsky@gmail.com, then finally retrieved my Yahoo ID. which I then had to use to change the password for my Yahoo account. After all of that, I finally was able to remove the 7 pictures I didn't want up on Flickr.

Yeah.

Talk to you soon,Garrett

At the beginning of December, there was a going away part for a dear friend who was moving back to England (and then on to Milan, where she is now). The day after, when I had gotten back to my site, I could seem to find my Kindle, so I could only assume that it was back at my friends' house in Svay (the provincial town, formally "Serei Sisophon"). One of my friends looked for a long while and found nothing. There had been workers coming in and out of the house to work on the roof, and things going missing had not been unusual (but never anything on that scale). We assumed somebody stole it. I was bummed, but hey, it's a thing. No one got hurt, but still. It was sad, as I was in the middle of a book that I was really enjoying. I tried to forget about and found out later that I might get a replacement when I came back home in August. A m mononth later, in Phnom Penh for New Year's Eve, I had put a bunch of books on my laptop that I could later transfer to my new Kindle 8 months from then. That night, a PCV who went home for the holidays asked me if I had any need to purchase her old Kindle. It so happened that she had received a Kindle Touch for Christmas and was trying to sell her first generation one. I asked how much: $5. Five dollars! That's just crazy. I gave her $10, even though that still didn't feel right. It was such a fantastic thing to do for someone, so I went on reading e-books until just two days ago, my friend texted me to tell me that it had been found! Joy! (That means "fuck" in Khmer, by the way; I meant it in the English definition, though) Who found it? Someone who frequented the house and had actually known that it was there since the very day after I thought it was gone! How was this possible? She simply thought that another volunteer was leaving it there on purpose. Hmmm, wouldn't you think to call said volunteer? I guess not. Either way, I wasn't mad, I was just happy that two things could happen: one, I get my Kindle back; two, I could find someone else to reap the joys of the Kindle. So, in celebration, I bought the most current edition of The Economist and The New Yorker. Okay, so I've read both magazines before, but I never remember them being so damn long! I've been reading it for the past three days, and I'm almost done. Ugh. I'm enjoy it, though.

Also more fun things, this weekend is full of a lot of things going on.

1) A friend's going-away party (they are early terminating [ETing])2) Another friend's birthday3) The first meeting of the Diversity Task Force (intense name, I know)4) Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT)...you'd think they'd call it an exam. That would just sound a lot more elegant. Anyhow, I'm not taking this test very seriously, so we'll see how I do and where it goes.5) Hangin' out with a couple of friends that live in the capital.

Anyhow, that's it.

Talk to you soon,Garrett

You know how time moves on, and there are things you wished would have kept up? Well, surprisingly, I'm able to do that with such a thing here: music. Are there rock bands in Cambodia? ehhhh, well. Let's just say no. Are there jazz bands and ensembles to join? Nope. However, there are cafés and other Peace Corps Volunteers who share my passion for music. A buddy of mine, last June, got together with the owner of a fairly new-to-town café in Battambang Town. She asked Dave (my buddy) to perform an hour to hour and a half set at Café Eden in Battambang. I happened to be there that night (and actually performed with him for one song), and it turned out to be a good thing. He's continued to perform and has added a second to his act, Peter. Peter and Dave have now performed four or five times; it's becoming a regular thing. A little more than a month ago, Dave and Peter asked me to perform a couple of songs with them: "First Few Desperate Hours" by The Mountain Goats (on harmonizing vocals) and "Day Tripper" by The Beatles (on Tambourine and harmonizing vocals). Well, as time went on that transformed into me performing "First Few Desperate Hours" solo and adding "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" by Bob Dylan (on harmonizing vocals) and "California" by Josh Ritter (on lead vocals and guitar). I had performed once with Dave before, but it was nice to actually have a quite a few songs to practice on my own and with multiple performers. The show was last weekend (Jan 28th) and went very, very well. I had a lot of fun with it. I would say there were about 25 people in the crowd (6 or so of them being PCVs, not including the three of us). I hope this is something I can keep up here, and as I've realized, something I can continue to do back home in the States (wherever that may be). I'll post the videos when they get uploaded.

Talk to you soon,Garrett

Hi. Sorry, I've been absent for quite some time, now, and I can only attribute that to being fairy busy with program development an a myriad of meetings and events over the past 30 days. I calculated (typical me) that I was spending 7.5% of my time simply on buses over the past month (once this weekend concludes). That's absolutely ridiculous. To make it sound even worse, that's 54 hours spent on a bus (it takes me approximately 8 hours to get to Phnom Penh). How terrible it that? Come visit me, and you'll find out. Either way, I had a meeting on the 21st with Peace Corps about my extending. I assessed, throughout the meeting, that I needed to be a little more proactive, so two things happened: I e-mailed the NGO, Population Services International (PSI), and I was informed by a good friend that another organization, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), was interested in partnering with Peace Corps/Cambodia and potentially utilizing a third-year PCV. So here are my current options (though not really options, because there have been no offers):(NOTE: This is all probably extremely pre-mature to talk about)

CHAI: they might be looking into a third-year PCV working with them being based in Phnom Penh and on occasion, traveling to various projects to help implement their health-related projects. I probably couldn't have been more vague with that description, but that's the description I have, so you have about the same knowledge on the subject as I do. Anyhow, the have a meeting with Peace Corps this weekend, so we'll see what comes out of it.

PSI: First things, first. PSI is pretty legit. Check out their website at www.psi.org. They operate in 67 countries and are based in D.C. A brief description from their website: "PSI is a global non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world by focusing on serious challenges like a lack of family planning, HIV/AIDS, maternal health, and the greatest threats to children under five, including malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition." They e-mailed me back just a day after inquiring whether or not they needed any "free" help. The response asked for a CV (curriculum vitae, for those who don't know; it's simply a more elaborate résumé), and within an hour of sending to them, I got a response back that said they could definitely find 20 hours of work for me but were slightly worried about specific projects that (they seemed to imply) required more time spent. I inquired about 20 hours/week, because I am interested in what is called a PCV Leader (PCVL), but I'll explain that afterwards. They suggested a meeting in April/May, which doesn't work for me as my COS conference (where details on extending need to be solidified weeks before) is the first week of May, so it was moved up to February 23rd. This meeting will discuss the potential scope of work (should they want me to work, well, volunteer with them). I'll keep you updated.

Point of clarification: when I talk about working with these organizations, I mean to suggest that I will be volunteering my time there as a human resource through Peace Corps. I will not actually be working for them, as I will not be getting paid. Were that the case--that I could be getting paid tens of thousands of dollars--things might be a little different.

Peace Corps Volunteer Leader:

"5.0 VOLUNTEER LEADER ASSIGNMENTS

In each of their assignments, Volunteer Leaders contribute their own unique Volunteer perspective and expertise. Volunteer Leaders are generally expected to provide on-the-job supervision (that is, provide direction or guidance), handle administrative tasks related to logistical support for Volunteer projects, provide counsel and guidance to Volunteers, and be on the lookout for difficulties in job relations or personal adjustment. Specific examples of appropriate Volunteer Leader assignments include:

(a) Acting as liaison among Volunteers, host country supervisors, and Peace Corps staff;(b) Assisting Peace Corps staff in site selection and placement of new Volunteers;(c) Assisting Peace Corps staff in the design and implementation of Volunteer training;(d) Assisting Peace Corps staff in the design and evaluation of Volunteer projects;(e) Assisting Peace Corps staff in the provision of logistical and administrative support to Volunteers and Trainees; and(f) Providing Imprest fund services if designated as an Imprest fund Class B cashier or sub-cashier within the provisions of MS 760, after having received the same training, directives, materials, guidance, and supervision as cashiers who are U.S. government employees."

I figured that the text from the Peace Corps Manual would be the easiest way to explain. PC/Cambodia is considering (though I haven't heard final decisions and specifics yet) four PCVL positions (out of the 6 general 3rd-year slots). Those would be programmatic and regional, e.g. general volunteer concerns in the North and South regions; specific volunteer concerns related to ETTT and CHE programs. I am not sure exactly which one I'm interested in yet, but I will keep you updated. Should PSI ask me to volunteer for them for 40 hrs/wk in a role with more responsibilities, I might take up that. I have to consider the fact that what I do in this third year should compliment my career goals. Don't get me wrong, I like what I'm doing here, but if I were told to work at the health center again for a third year, I would elect not to as new volunteers can just as easily do that.

Anyhow, wish me luck. I'll hopefully have more to tell in the coming weeks/month.

It's February. How did that happen? 1/12 of the year is gone, or appx 8%! Crazy. Just crazy.

Talk to you soon,Garrett

Hello all you readers of my blog! And my "readers" I of course mean the 6 of you that actually read this. Maybe 7. On a good day. Anyway, my life is going pretty steadily right now. I haven't had to teach for the past 2 weeks. Chinese New Year took out 3 days of school, the day after hardly anyone showed up so I went home early, and I only had to teach for 2 hours on Friday. This week they are doing testing all week so I didn't have to show up for that either. And next week, Tuesday is a holiday. SO MUCH FREE TIME. This free time is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand I have a lot of free time to read extremely long books in very short amounts of time. On the other hand, I read all the good books and now I'm stuck with shitty ones. I mean, bad ones...sorry Mom. I get to sleep in until whenever I want to, but when I wake up I have absolutely nothing to do other than read copious amounts of literature. And not anything that will expand my mind or anything. I don't want to waste my free time learning stuff. That would just be silly. I want to read trashy romances and sci fi books to alleviate the sucky-ness of both the boring-ness and lack of love in my life. So to sum up this paragraph of rambling, I've been reading a lot lately.

I'd like to make a list of things that I miss from back home. So I will.

1. People having the same manner standards that I do. I miss it in the U.S. when it's very rude to ask people how much they weigh. It's not rude here to ask, it just gets on my nerves. And when the children will follow you around screaming HELLO at the top of their lungs and their parents think it's funny. In America, if your kid is being obnoxious, you'd probably take it away and apologize. Nope, not here. Also, when I'm walking down the street, people like to ask if I want a tuk tuk or a moto. Instead of just letting me walk by when I say no, they stand in my way, try to talk to me, then when I don't, they make jokes to their friends about me. Not polite in America, totally acceptable here. I'm not saying that I think it's wrong. It's just annoying to me because I've been brought up differently. It's just their cultural norm to do things the way they do it and I understand that but it doesn't mean I can't get annoyed with it all the same.

2. Having a police force I can trust. I've never had to deal with police in America, except for when I got my one speeding ticket. But I know that if I was ever in danger, if I ever got in a car accident, etc, they would be there to help. Here it's not the same story. If you get into an accident here they'll show up, but no matter what happened it's always the foreigner's fault. You could be stopped at a stop light and someone rams into you from behind and it's your fault. Their reasoning "If you weren't in this country, the accident wouldn't have happened". It's completely true and logical, but complete bullshit too. I've heard that this happens from several different sources but have never experienced it, thank goodness. But it's nice to know that if i'm on my bike and I get hit by a moto or a car driven by a Khmer person, I'm going to have to pay for all damages. Sorry, if this sounds a bit bitter. It's just they way it works, or so I've heard. Also, you can drive at night without headlights and no one says a word, but driving during the day with your headlights on will cost you $1.25 in fines. One of my friends got pulled over on his moto for driving with his headlights on during the day. Just another example of ridiculous laws that the police here enforce. Oh well, I just hope I never have to deal with them. Corruption is very real and it can be very dangerous for a foreigner.

3. I miss being able to earn my own money. It's difficult to know that no matter how hard to work, you will never get more money. It's difficult when you've always been able to afford the things you want and if there was something you couldn't afford, you could work harder, put in more hours, find some outside work, etc, to get the thing you want. Here, I can't do that. It's the same small allowance every month and you have to pull from outside money if you ever want to do more. I've been very fortunate that my parents have been supporting me while I'm here but I don't want to have to rely on them. Oh well, I guess I just need to get better with my money and learn to live even more modestly.

4. I miss training. I miss being around all my friends and other people who are going through the same thing as I am and being able to talk to them and hang out with them on a daily basis. It's hard to be alone, especially in the city that I'm placed in. I feel very isolated. I don't fit in with the tourists but I don't fit in with the people that live here either. It's very lonely sometimes. Hopefully that'll be alleviated a little bit by my new family. Right now my family has stopped talking to me completely and we only exchange maybe 2 sentences a day. It's very frustrating and depressing to be at home now. So I try to get out of the house as much as possible. I feel like this post is getting to be a downer. I'll try to wrap it up soon.

5. Along the lines of missing training, I miss my training host family. They mean so much to me still. I feel so guilty that I haven't gotten a chance to go back and see them yet. I was so spoiled there and I absolutely love them. In those 2 months that I lived there they showed me so much love and my host mom especially made me feel like part of the family. I've been living with this new family at site for 4 months now and I don't feel even the tiniest bit of love on their part. I don't feel like part of the family and I don't think they know how to make me part of the family. I'm moving to a new host family with a mom that reminds me of my training host mom so I hope that this new family will be better. The new house will be a downgrade but I'm willing to give up my comforts that I have now in order to have a family that accepts me and treats me like one of their own.

Some other things I miss include

Air conditioning

BAKING CUPCAKES!!!!

good spaghetti

watching tv

the YMCA

not eating rice for every meal.

Oh my goodness...the rice. Every time lunch or dinner rolls around I'm dreading eating. The amounts of rice i've consumed in the past 6 months has been insane. I hate it. I wish I never had to eat rice ever again. I'm going through a major rejection phase of it. It makes me want to cry looking at it. I wish rice would die. Even talking about eating it is making me angry. So I'll stop.

So I realize that this is sort of a negative blog post but I promise they won't all be like this. There are many things I do like about site and I definitely want to be here. I miss the comforts of home and I miss my family and friends a lot but I know that this is where I should be and where I need to be. I hope I can find a productive routine to get into and start to feel a little bit happier about my service. My vacation in April to Malaysia will definitely help.

I'm going to Phnom Penh this weekend so that should be fun. I'll keep you updated!

Things are changing so fast outside my house that sometimes I can’t even keep up with what’s going on.  This morning I was woken at 5:00am by loud, traditional Khmer music blaring from across the street. I assumed it was … Continue reading →

How do we adjust? How do things that at one time seemed so new become so much a part of our everyday lives? Just another thread in our tapestry. At six months, my body has adjusted to the rise (and less often, the fall) of temperature. I have learned to communicate with my co teacher [...]

Today is the end of the first day in February. All day, I was inexplicably tired and sullen even though life here at school, though busy, is going well. It's true, I have an essay on the origins of suburbia due Monday, a decision analysis concerning whether or not an industrial town should build a school now or in two years vis a vis the probability that a key local employer will relocate (thus taking tax revenues with them) due Wednesday, and more coming up, but those assignments aren't due for a while. What gives?

Laying here in bed, with a few minutes to spare, the reason behind my funk hits me: I'm homesick for Cambodia again. I don't have much time to openly dwell on my past, but in the past few days, in chance moments snatched while walking to class, my mind has wandered back to the Kingdom of Wonder.

The memories that come to me like that are so...bodily...sometimes I think I'll fall just remembering them. It's like my actual person here weighs less, or like I'm less physically alive than I once was.

What are these memories? They're somewhat composite. In many, I'm riding my bike through the wilds near my town--in the jungle, near Wats, on open plains. There was a feeling to that: to setting out to explore. Usually, there's an acknowledgement of extreme heat and of a tropical landscape. I remember Cambodia's sun, which is so fiery it can make you sick--can make you so hot you feel orange and red. Sometimes I see myself. My arms are tan and glistening with sweat as I undertake to fix my bike chain on a dirt path to nowhere. My hands get coated in chain grease, but I don't care because damnit, I'm in the Peace Corps. My memories are shaded in either greens or reds. I remember the rice fields, so emerald, or out-riding menacing thunderstorms with their flashes of lightning. I remember what it feels like to be scared of death, to be fleeing from real danger. I ride my bike endlessly, over red and orange dirt roads, with a blue sky overhead, and always a ball of fire somewhere too. I remember riding my bike, then being scared out of my wits as a snake would cross the road just under my tire. I remember being afraid it would whip around and bite me. That makes me think of a story a Cambodian told me: once, a Khmer NGO worker was driving in a Land Rover with the window down, when they saw a cobra sunning itself on the road. The guy decided to run it over, and did, but the cobra was so long and the tire only just caught it that it got whipped up and through the window caught the man's hand on the steering wheel with a fang--enough to kill him. I heard that story from a notorious liar, but even still, it scared me.

I miss so much of it. I miss my host family, and the strange yet loving connection we had. I miss teaching, and my students, and even the exhaustion of a day of lessons and running the library, because...I felt it was worth something. It was hard and hot, and I'm not sure how I made it through, but it was worth something.

The sunsets. The cool feeling at dawn. The jungles, the monks, the paddies, the lack of deodorant, flag-decorated pagodas, beating drums, vans full of seamstresses, steaming bowls of gweeteo, the mud, the feel of slicing open exotic fruits with my knife, (which I took everywhere), the tools I needed, the little I had--how everything I did have was necessary and functional. I miss the evening power outages, tucked in my room, sitting with long-sleeves rolled down, collar popped so that mosquitoes couldn't bite me to pieces. It was...so badass, so cool.

Only one person here at Cornell really cares or knows. Otherwise, I walk around with my secret-- it's tucked in my fancy pea coat, or like it's written on my pampered, "soft" body. Gah--I used to be hard; able to handle so much. Once, I rode my bike 40 miles in order to illegally cross into Vietnam to buy one single coveted box of Raisin Bran. Now I can take my car to the store and buy anything. Anything!

So...yes, I'm nostalgic for my past. Grant me these rambling posts. At the very least, I need them.

Siem Reap for the Angkor Wat Bike Race Monkey Island for Christmas Pursat Roller Rink for an 80s Party I promise I do work hard and am at site often, but sometimes you have to go see the country and have fun!

happiness is:

.a cold coca light.

.a cold coca regular, for that matter.

.a cold coca anything inside a mason jar.

hilarity is:

.being amazed by things like GLASS JARS.

happiness is:

.the satisfying sound of a mosquito getting electrified to death on my orange and purple mosquito racket.

.impressing ten young children with your khmer writing skills- no matter that you had to look up every single word before you wrote it.

.a long email from a good friend.

.one of your trainees confiding in you between classes.

.mascara.

(.even when everything else is sweaty, mascara is wonderful.)

.going to school with your hair down and coming home two hours later with it STILL down.

.the simplicity and brilliance of mundane tasks like labeling library books.

hilarity is:

.labeling 'see spot run' books "fiction-intermediate" with the volunteer librarian because she doesn't know any english and can't discern the difference and i don't know enough khmer to explain clearly.

happiness is:

.reading three really good books in one week.

hilarity is:

.having time to read three books in one week because classes have been cancelled for (going on) three weeks now.

happiness is:

.michael c. hall.

hilarity is:

.apologizing to your best friend waitress at a local restaurant when you offer her some fry sauce to try, and making her puke because she hates it, and then being forgiven, though maybe feeling slightly vindicated about hating durian?

.even better, that said restaurant has been dubbed the 'not brothel' by pcvs because it, in fact, is not a brothel.

(but the place next door is. perhaps.)

have you any happiness or hilarity for hump day?

The United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge trial in Phnom Penh has had serious obstacles for a long time, but this week, officials say they’ve run out of money to pay hundreds of Cambodian trial workers. None of the 300 Cambodians working … Continue reading →

this past weekend, we rode a lot of buses for many hours to visit a northernmost province here in cambodia. and to visit friend who lives in said province.

and i learned that while some people might hate being cramped into a pretty small bus seat for countless hours and then repeating the same travel experience 36 hours later, i love it.

i love the endless amounts of sitting and thinking it affords me. the hours of watching rice field, water buffalo, and street-side "cafe" ride past. the endless moments of people watching and life pondering.

it's utterly satisfying unto the soul.

to round out january and welcome in a month i'm super excited about (leap year, people! say hello to february 29th!), let's visit the final pictures in my photo a day series you can follow on my tumblr.

what'd you do this month?

So tonight I go downstairs at my normal time for a shower and I see my host sister, who is in from Phnom Penh with her little boy and husband, is all dressed up. I politely comment that she is looking beautiful and I am not (I’m wearing a sarong and it is not sparkly). My host mom then rushes out and asks if I want to go to a wedding. I say yes, but first I make sure I can shower before I go. I quickly shower then my host mom follows me up the stairs to make sure I put on my fancy sampot and to help me into my wedding shirt (its tricky, trust me). I then awkwardly stand around downstairs trying to understand the male relatives and waiting for my host mom to finish getting ready, I guess I didn’t need to hurry like I did.

We all then pile in the car and head off to the wedding. Once we arrive, I just follow my host mom as she introduces me to all the people we pass. I try to politely greet everyone but my 2 year old host nephew has a tight grip on my hand, so I just smile and nod. My group is lead to a table far in the back, we are a little late, but this gives everyone at the wedding a good chance to stare at the foreigner in Khmer clothes at the event. As usual the food is wonderful and there is unlimited supply of ice and drinks. I stick to soda since getting cold soda with ice is such a treat here. The men at my table however choose beer and one older gentleman gets quite sloppy. He begins to man handle all the other men around him. While this is going my host mom proceeds to empty the content of her purse into a plastic bag, put that plastic bag in my purse, fill her purse with about 7 cans of soda and beer as well as the party favor pens and tooth picks. She also gets a whole new plate of this cabbage, shrimp, peanut salad dish (sounds odd but is fantastic) puts that in a plastic bag and gives it to my host father to hold and take home.

We are home after about 2 hours of eating and stashing food. Just another fun Tuesday night in Kampuchea!

As fierce as Cambodia’s water buffaloes may look, they are mostly calm and friendly.  You can see this guy let me say “Hello” up-close. I’m out of school a few days this week because of government testing in Puok High.  … Continue reading →

Every once and awhile Hats likes to play a little game where she tries to guilt trip me into giving her more money. For some reason she thinks I have an abundance of it hidden somewhere. So, the other day I was riding to a wedding with Hats, Moneybags, and Chief when suddenly Hats says, [...]

On one of my recent weekend adventures the next closest volunteer to me (Robert) and I had just finished a visit to The Killing Lake in Battambang province (Blog post next week). On our way back to our sites we passed a roller rink that I sometimes pass on my way to town depending on what road I take. So after having just biked over sixty kilometers I had the bright idea to give the rink a shot.

When we pulled up on our bikes there were only two other people skating, so the rink was pretty much empty. As interesting as skating in Cambodia seems it was even more interesting getting fitted for skates. I must digress in saying that many things in Cambodia aren't my above average size. I will never be able to buy pants right off the rack because of my height, and I have to duck when going through most doorways and stairwells for fear of banging my head yet another time. My size thirteen feet are no exception. Any shoes or sandals that I need will have to be shipped from America because my size simply doesn't exist here. You probably see where I am going with this. I had my eye on the prize of skating, completely forgetting that I would need skates that fit to be able to skate.

The woman who ran the place was very persistent in trying to find my size, when in reality all the skates seemed to be around the same size. After having tried on at least five different pairs I was presented with a black and yellow pair of blades that looked to be the biggest pair yet. Like all the others before she undid the straps for me and helped me wiggle my ski sized feet inside. Like the others before they didn't fit either leaving my toes curled up tight inside, but I made up my mind the allure of skating in a developing country was worth the agony my toes were being put through. It was game time!

Within a minute I was having flashbacks to elementary school skate nights where the rink would lower the price to skate for students at the school. Along with the flood of memories I had to give pointers to Robert who hadn't skated since the cold war.

The rink's design led me to believe that that building was used for something else before. Instead of skating around in a giant oval there were poles intermittently spaced throughout, and the concrete tile floor left more to be desired. I kept reminding myself that I am skating, skating in a developing country. Places like this aren't supposed to exist, so take what you can get.

The best part of the rink was the ramps off to one side. There were two total each having a similar design with small hills and valleys. I tried multiple times to get enough speed to make it over one set without stopping or falling, but my efforts were fruitless. Because of my efforts with the ramps I decided it would be in my best interest if I put my bicycle helmet on.

Since we had been gone all morning and had already made ourselves tired we only stayed for around an hour before calling quits. In all my excitement of getting to skate I forgot that skating without socks isn't the best idea. Let's hope the Khmer teenagers who used the blades before me didn't have any feet fungus!

As always the event was well documented in picture and movie form.

Inside of the rink

One of the ramps

The bigger ramp

One of the intruding poles with attached ring

Our Khmer skate buddies

Ramp ≠ Roller coaster

Fuzzy but neat

Taking a break

Hot and sweaty as usual

A high school student that showed up

Group picture

Here are two videos from the afternoon as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNXu_r964S0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHTWL1HpNTE

That's all for now,-Matt

As others who have spent a good deal of time living in other countries will tell you, one of the best parts of the experience can be the daily humorous things you witness as your new country attempts to develop or grow or simply just fold in some of those more Western things that we take for granted in our culture.

In particular, English signage or general wordage can prove quite hilarious.

To begin, let's digest two fine examples of advertising I've seen in the last few weeks. Perfectly enough, both of these examples come from imports from OTHER Asian countries- Japan and China.

You know you want to buy these amazing butter cookies that are produced meticulously, delicious loved by all. Also, you should know that they have adopt advanced technology to make these cookies.

Or perhaps that is simply a general directive to the consumer to avoid being left behind, technology wise?

Get thee to a Best Buy!

Social status is heavily based on the color of one's skin here. The lighter the better, and they've taken to using everything they can to lighten- or whiten- here. See above, wherein we've imported a miraculous treatment from China called LOVE Speckle-dispelling & Whitening Distillate Set, which describes itself best as an In-depth Whitening Cleaning Milk Whitening Tender Mend Liquid Skin Life Liquid and Spot Dispelling Cream.

Of course. Don't forget to use the Tender Mend liquid before the Skin Life liquid, and apply the final cream.

All sales final.

One of the constants of Peace Corps service is talking about the things you miss: food, places, weather, freedoms...

Sometimes it is almost taken for granted that the thing PCVs tend to miss the most are our family and friends that have been physically absent from our lives for an extended period of time. The activities that I did at home, the things I ate and places I visited, don't mean as much without being in the context of the people I did them with.

So when I talk about missing something like eating a Chipotle burrito, watching a hockey game or going for a run at home - its not only the action I truly miss, but doing the action with someone I love and miss.

The other day I needed a laugh. It was just one of those days where things didn't go right, the heat got to me and the lessons I taught at school flopped. In Cambodia as in America, people can have bad days.

So I tried to think of a time where I laughed until my sides hurt. A Cheetos commercial immediately popped into mind:

You may not think this commercial funny. Hell, you may find it downright ridiculous and a complete waste of your time watching it now. But when it first aired on TV I happened to watch it with my younger brother, Scott. For some reason it really tickled us.

Sometimes you are just in the right mood at the right time for something to come along and really make you laugh and enjoy something, even if you can't put your finger on what it is. I am pretty sure Scott and I laughed at this for well over half an hour and then YouTubed it again after we stopped laughing, only to restart our snickering.

During the bad day I had recently, I laughed mildly when I YouTubed this, somewhat disappointedly as I thought that it would bring me out of my funk.

But when I wrote the dialogue from the commercial into a text and sent it to Scott, I couldn't control my laughter. I think it was because I knew that he would read it, laugh and it would again connect us in the same ridiculous way it did some months ago.

It worked anyhow. And, not that it takes 9,000 miles and six months of absence to learn this, but a big thing the Peace Corps has helped me to understand is the power of companionship and how much more enjoyable the events of our life can be when we share them with people we love.

A while ago I was approached to do a review for Grammarly.com, which is a resource that checks your grammar, and is supposed to be way better at it than Microsoft Word. Cambodia is full of the worst grammar, basically some of the worst as I like to call it "khmerlish" ever. All of the clothing they wear, the signs they post, even products that are being marketed are full of ridiculously incorrect grammar. So the hunt was on for some product with horrifically incorrect grammar to test.

At hotels here they often given you packets of shampoo to use. A while ago I received one that made me literally laugh out loud as I was reading it. I know they have this product written in khmer and they sell it all over my town, but this is the final English product that they're marketing to foreigners? It really could use some help. So I typed up what was written on the back into Grammarly's website to see what it would suggest.

This is exactly what the package of shampoo says. Amazing khmerlish, right? So after I plugged it into grammarly.com's Grammar Checker, this is what it showed me.

So I started working through all of the tools to fix it. The spelling, punctuation, and capitalization tools are awesome, as well as the synonyms tool. They offer you fixes right there and will replace it for you, which I really like. Then I can see what has been fixed. As I worked through the more hefty grammar problems it got a bit harder. I wish that they would give you suggestions to fix what is wrong with your actual sentence in addition to telling you what's wrong; mostly because I'm grammar lazy and don't want to figure out how to fix the sentence myself by reading about the problem and the examples of correct and incorrect sentences. Really though, it's great that it even recognizes such complex grammar points as a squinting modifier, which apparently existed in the first sentence.

After a couple of times fixing problems and then re-checking them in through their grammar review, only changing what the program suggested I change, I ended up with this.

As as you can see it's not 100% perfect, but I'd say the grammar is immensely better. There are still problems, but I think it makes a lot more sense than it did before. A native English speaker, or someone who has been speaking English for a long time probably wouldn't make most of the mistakes left in this document anyway.

Oh, and something else I found really cool about Grammarly is that it offers a plagiarism detector, and it will check your grammar according to the type of paper you're writing.

Overall, I think Grammarly.com offers a really great service. It would be great for possibly a business or foreign NGO, to offer their workers who are not particularly confident in their English writing skills, but have to write reports, or important e-mails. It would also be great for college students to use when writing essays for classes.

If you're interested, Grammarly offers a free 7-day trial, so you should try it out on an upcoming essay or important report and see how much it helps you.

The road is on of the most dangerous places in Cambodia.  A majority of the emergency aid that comes to the health center is due to traffic accidents.  It seems almost every family has been effected by a death/severe accident … Continue reading →

So Chinese New Year was last week. Most of it was uneventful but there were a few moments of interesting-ness. On Sunday my host brother slaughtered 2 chickens in the morning to make soup with later, and then they prepared a lot of food and left it out to the ancestors or something. All I know is that a ton of food was on the floor for a long time while the incense burned. And I almost died. The incense was so strong and they burned about 20-30 sticks of it at the same time. I feel like they were trying to smoke me out of the house. I woke up and my eyes were watering and something smelled funny and the longer I stayed in my room, the more pain I was in. I finally left my room and saw the food on the floor and the incense so I decided to stay away from it for a while. The house finally aired out and then it was time to eat all the food that had just been sitting on the floor getting cold for an hour. And this was food that should be eaten hot....room temperature chicken...not good. and probably not healthy either. Oh well, I eat a lot of questionable things in this country. If I was picky about the health standards of everything I eat, I'd never have anything to eat. So we ate and we started drinking beer. I had about 3 or 4 at home....it was 11am. Don't judge, everyone else was doing it too. Then they all got tired and went for their afternoon nap and I wasn't tired so I went to go get internet. On my way, I walked by a restaurant that I eat at sometimes. There were tons of people there and they all called me over to come sit with them. I politely said no but one woman grabbed my arm and pulled me down to sit with them so I felt like i had to. Then they gave me a beer. Then they gave me three more. So I was on my 7th beer at this point and I think I got a Khmer boyfriend during this whole thing. They would just talk to me in Khmer, laugh, blabber on some more, and then sometimes someone would translate a little for me but not usually. My Khmer boyfriend spoke a lot of English and he convinced himself by the end of me being there that I was going to be his girlfriend. Crazy Khmer boys. So I eventually left and when I came back later they were all drunk and had passed out. The next day, I saw them again, and they called me this time. They kept asking when I was coming back. I told them i didn't know and they kept saying that they were going to sing and dance. At this point I really wanted to go sing and dance with them. I was thinking we'd go to a bar or a Khmer club and do these things and I would be around some women that I trusted so it would be ok for me to go and I really wanted to integrate more. This was my chance. I finally went back and they said they were going to Karaoke. I was a little worried but I decided I needed to integrate and do this with them and I'd probably have a good time. Boy was I wrong. I was miserable the whole time. We went to this place and you rent a room and you and all the people you come with go in and pick songs to sing. They are all soooooooooo slow and boring and khmer. And they kept pressuring me to dance but I can't dance to something that slow. The music was just awful. And there was a creepy old guy sitting next to me that would keep making me carry his lap top bag around and he would just say things to me that made me think he was just an ass. He actually said "You have a beautiful face, too bad you're so fat" and then started talking to me about genetically modified organisms and the green revolution. I have no idea why. And he made me read the letter he got about getting a Japanese visa. Like I cared about any of this. He was probably just thinking he was impressing me by all of this but it just made me extremely ticked off. And then he sang a terrible song to me in English and that was my cue to make up an excuse to leave. So i told them that i had to go talk to my mom in America and I got the heck out of there. I walked home and I've never felt so relieved to be out of a place. Note to self: Never NEVER go to a karaoke bar. Oh, and all the Khmer people kept calling me hot dog because they thought that's what my name sounded like and they can't pronounce my real name so they decided this would be funny. I was not amused. Here are some pictures of me and the people I went with. Also a note: Khmer men should not touch women, at all, but they do it to me because they think they can get away with it. I won't be letting it happen anymore.

This is the woman I went with. She's very nice and she definitely likes to drink.This is the creepy guy who kept making me carry his bags and talked about the Green Revolution. So creepy. During this picture he tried to sniff kiss my cheek. So odd. He should not be touching me. I should have given him a good smack. One of the feet of the chicken in my Chinese New Year soup. Looks delicious right? This was the karaoke room.Karaoke room

She is the best mango seller at Puok High School.  Not only that, but she has become my schoolyard love.  Not a school day goes by without a visit to a woman I call “Ming” (Aunt). She, her husband and … Continue reading →

I have a lot of updates and stories for you but I won't write them all one at a time so you won't be stuck reading an obnoxiously long blog post. This one will be long enough as it is. This first story happened yesterday. It is a testament to how ineffectual and corrupt the police are in this country. This is the story as I have come to understand it. I was getting bits and pieces from people while it was going on and obviously I'm never going to know exactly what happened from start to finish but I did witness some of it myself so I'll tell you the story as it has been relayed to me and you can decide for yourself.

So a Russian guy walks into a moto shop. He already rented a moto from these people but it trying to exchange it for another one. The owner says that there were 2 liters of gas in the tank and now they were asking for money for it (I originally heard the story that the Russian brought the bike back and it was damaged or broken in some way and he refused to pay for it or take responsibility but it was later revised to the gas story). Apparently the Russian guy refused to pay and the Khmer man who owns the shop said they wouldn't give him his passport back if he didn't pay. Things started getting heated I assume because soon punches were being thrown (I don't know who threw the first punch though) and the Khmer people closed the door of the shop and locked him in and took out an iron wrench and began beating the Russian. This is when I started watching and a huge crowd formed around this shop. I mean HUGE.

So after this point I pretty much know what happens for sure, the starts of this fight were just speculation from other people but at the point when he was locked in the shop and getting beat with an iron wrench is when I started witnessing the event. His girlfriend was outside the shop going trying to do something because her boyfriend was getting the shit beat out of him. Finally, about 5-10 minutes went by and the cops finally came and made the Khmer people open the door of the shop. When they opened the door, the wife of the owner tried holding the Russian back from running and the Russian out of instinct or because he was still scared he was being beaten or out of anger, hit the wife in the arm pretty hard. So then the police came and were probably trying to sort things out. The moto that the Russian initially brought back was smashed to pieces in the shop, I don't know if it was the Khmer people that did that while they were beating the Russian or if the Russian did it or a combination of the two things. And the Khmer people started telling the police the Russian was trying to steal the moto and that the Russian threatened to come into their house and break everything in it but I'm not sure about the truth in this because this man is known to not be a good person. So the police where there but then the owner's son drove up on his moto and apparently this guy is a psycho. So he comes in and starts to get fired up and then about 8 Khmer men start beating on the Russian guy again, in front of everyone, with the police standing right there, in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The police couldn't do anything to stop it. It lasted about 2 minutes or so before the police finally stopped it. The Russian guy pretty much ran away and went to a doctor's office because he now had a huge gash over his eyebrow and welts and bruises and scratches all over his body from the iron wrench.

He was in the doctor's office for about 2 minutes and went next door to the police station. He was is the police station for hours. We heard from someone there that the Russian guy now had to pay 500 dollars to the owner of the shop. By the way, the owner and all the people that beat the guy weren't arrested or even taken to the police station. So this Russian guy gets beat, for whatever reason, by multiple people who have a weapon and have locked him in their shop and then beat him again out on the street where no less than 100 people saw and the police were standing right there, and the Russian has to pay 500 dollars to the Khmer people who beat him and the Khmer people are unaffected but 500 dollars richer. This doesn't seem right to me.

Most of this story is just guesses of what happened and gossip around the incident so I wouldn't believe everything but I did see this guy get jumped in front of the police by 8 Khmer men, I saw his bruises and wounds when he left, and I saw him go into the police station and then finally leave hours and hours later. I also saw the smashed moto and I saw the situation outside when he was locked inside the building getting beaten. So those are the things I know for sure.

Also, a lot of other Russians showed up at the scene after the first Russian guy left. They looked around and hopped on their moto and left. Apparently, according to some of the people that I hang out with, the Russian mafia is a big thing here. You don't mess with the Russians here. They have tons of money and are scary mafia people that will kill and do anything to protect their own. I don't know how much of that is truth either. There do seem to be a lot of Russians and they seem to have money but I don't know about the whole mafia underground cartel thing. And they said the police here were scared of the Russians and won't get in their way. So according to the people I hang out with, this isn't over. The Russians will do something to retaliate. But I'm not so convinced. Oh well. We'll see. I'm putting some pictures on here of the scene yesterday. It amazed me how BIG the crowd got. It was huge!

This was the crowd right before the Khmer men beat up the Russian the second time. They blocked off almost 6 lanes of traffic. And the 2 police officers did nothing to break up the crowd. They stayed there for a good 45 minutes total. Insanity.

Well that's my story. I'll be posting more shortly so stay tuned! This was the most interesting thing to happen to me in months.

Four months as a PCV and 6 months in country.  To me, it seems like time flew by.  Of course that is only after the fact.  I am afraid that I will get too comfortable and then I will realize it is time to go home for good.  Then it will seem like I missed [...]

Hello hello! First of all thank you all for the birthday wishes! I’m very excited to spend my birthday in America next year but the celebrations this year were nothing to complain about. I went into Phnom Penh for a … Continue reading →

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been at site for almost four months. So it was a rude awakening when my coteachers told me that semester exams were coming up already. These months have been both busy and slow, productive and not, and, naturally, rewarding and frustrating. I think my time here is significantly [...]

1. My favorite place i've ever traveled to is New York, we had a short layover there on our honeymoon and we had such a blast in the city .

2. Scotland is somewhere I'd love to go someday. (APRIL!!)

3. I pass the time on a plane (or bus, or car ride or train) by sleeping on hal, listening to music, and reading books or magazines until I get car sick .

4. My three must-haves when I travel are a camera , snacks and a cardigan

5. My favorite travel companion is my husband Hal .

6. The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling is We were flying home from California and they were searching our bag over and over again, pulling out all of our dirty underwear (literally) and then they found what they were looking for, a pocket knife, a gift from Hal's grandfather he had received on the trip. Oops, we thought we had left it at his brother's house. Needless to say, after many bad looks we checked that bag .

7. The most exotic food I've ever tried while traveling is frog or shark meat here in Cambodia .8. If I could live anywhere else, I'd live in Possibly Colorado, or Northern California .

9. I have been to eleven states in the U.S.

You can go check out Lauren's answers, and read about her adorable newborn on her blog, The little things we do

That’s my next-door neighbor Nuut standing in front of what will be a huge building next to my house.  Part of the building, which will be finished this Fall, will be where Nuut and his family live.  Their current wooden … Continue reading →

as i mentioned yesterday, my mother, cindy, allowed my independence to flourish as i grew up. this not only turned me into the woman i am today but also allowed for an outpouring of terrible hair decisions and outfit choices as a young girl.

the sad part is, you'd expect that having made terrible choices at seven, and ten, by thirteen, i'd have earned some common hair sense. you already know i didn't, friends.

and so we had the saga of the maroon hair. wherein, yours truly decided that dark brown hair was mine to be had, not realizing that the box of choice was overloaded with red highlights, which would react oddly with my own natural red undertones thus producing maroon hair.

maroon as kelly kapowski's face during the homecoming episode where she got a zit and used zack's miracle zit cream that actually instead just gave her a huge maroon rash all over her face?

except, instead of getting homecoming queen anyway (like kelly!), i got to freak out and rush to have my hair stripped of all color and then redyed in an attempt to return to the mousey brown i was trying to avoid. and endure copper colored hair instead.

and thusly, i didn't learn from my seven year old self, who, as you'll see, opted for a bowl cut. for reasons unknown.

world, meet bowlcut kate. bowlcut kate, meet ridicule world.

thoughts? reactions? are you done giggling yet?

tell me you've done worse. tell me!

or, just join us next week in vlogging and share:

What is one of your current daily routines? Record it and show us! Ideas include your makeup or hair-doing, your daily commute, your breakfast routine, whatever! Just share a little slice of your life!

we tend to vlog sometimes (join us!):

Adventures in Love and HappinessFolly LifeForget me Not!Heart on HomesteadConventional BlissLife's Journey with a Smile

what's the haircut you're pondering right now?

It’s funny how nostalgia has a way of setting in the second a decision is made. External factors can be whatever you’d like them to be, yet it isn’t until that precise moment that your conscious comes in line with your subconscious that you truly start to feel that sense of finality. This is that post, the one where I talk about how I decided to leave the Peace Corps. This isn’t the post where I talk about how disillusioned I’ve become, or how home sick I am, or how doing little to nothing day after day has led me down a spiraling road of depression. Because frankly, that’s all a load of bull shit. I’m about as happy as it gets here. I’ve had an amazing experience, a wonderful host family and community to foster that time and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers that have been there going on the ride along with me. My time as a Peace Corps Volunteer has been an invaluable experience with unbelievable ups and downs. It’s been a time where I’ve come face-to-face with all that I hate and love about myself and I’ve come out the other end a more whole individual. It was also a time when I realized that no matter where you are, it’s always someone’s home and, to them, it’s about as interesting as a pile of cow dung. I don’t think I can pin just one reason down for the decision. Since visiting home in October for the funeral of my grandmother, I’d come to realize something about myself. I’m not as cold as I like to think I am. Living in a host family of 8 and being surrounded constantly by PCVs with healthy home relationships really did something to my system. It showed me the strength and happiness that comes from family. My constant need to find the next adventure, the next escape, has essentially left me finally at a state where I’ve realized the one thing I’ve neglected is as important as everyone says it is. Then again, if I hadn’t spent the time I did here, I may have figured that out a bit too late in life. I’m not going to get all sappy in here, spilling my heart out like some 16 year old, considering this is public domain and can be read by anyone, but I feel like a watered down explanation was warranted. Aside from the family aspect, my time at site has drawn to a close in terms of how much I can continue to contribute. With the school attendance rates rapidly dwindling, the prospect of teaching as a way to keep busy seems a bit uh….optimistic. All of those projects I’ve been ranting and raving about for the past year? They’re doing great. Actually, they’re doing so great, that it hit me hard and fast (that’s what she said) that I’m not the integral part anymore. BCDO has done a remarkable job adapting, learning and replicating (actually improving) what I’d introduced. A year later, they’re a full fledged organization with funding, a waterwell, an organic farm, a full list of tourist activities, alternative fuel source production and research, volunteer teaching opportunities, community outreach programs and so much more. I can’t help but smile at the fact that I had a hand in that. And, while it pained me to realize I was no longer needed, there’s a huge satisfaction in the fact that I watched it happen and I know after I’m gone, they’ll be moving right along. So, with a date in mind and the next steps being lined up, I’m leaving here with a happy heart. I couldn’t be in a better place with my time here, my decision to leave and the next steps. And thanks to the hilarity that is nostalgia and the wonderful mind tricks it can play on us, I have a true appreciation for all those annoyances and am looking to soak them all up, one by one, until that fated flight back to the States.

I find myself asking myself this, rhetorically or aloud to my wife, on a regular basis in Cambodia.

Before coming to Cambodia I have been relatively well-traveled, including a semester abroad in Beijing. So I assumed that I knew what I was in for with regard to the onslaught to my olfactory system. I may have underestimated Cambodia's might in this department.

A few examples...

The markets are probably the first stop for anyone coming to Cambodia and wanting an authentic experience buying groceries, haggling on the price of a shirt or see how life here continually carries on in the smaller towns and villages.

In most markets, there are certain sections for certain kinds of sellers to sell their wares - clothes, electronics, fruits, vegetables, home goods, etc. Be warned, the "fish" and "meat" sections of the market can be one of the more jolting places you will find on this Earth. In them I have seen children freely peeing near uncovered piles of pork and beef, a pig being slaughtered and bleed while customers haggle over the price of the blood and have been nearly smacked in the face by various raw pieces of meat as enthusiastic sellers show me or package up their goods.

The smell is, as my father would have delicately put it, "enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon." Cambodians don't have access to refrigeration and moreover, don't fully understand the benefits of keeping cooked and uncooked food cold to prevent the formation of bacteria. On the plus side, Cambodia consumes a great deal of fresh meat, fruits and vegetables daily. The downside is the smell of meat in a very hot and humid climate several hours after the animal has been butchered.

My house, and I'm sure, many others in this country have their own set of unique and ponderous smells. About a week ago Kate and I were having one of our bi-weekly language tutoring lessons when I stood straight up and started evacuating Kate and my teacher from the house because I thought we had a gas leak. False alarm...my host sister was preparing "prahok" a beloved dish in Cambodia made from dried and fermented fish paste. This batch did not turn out as well as one might have hoped (though its hard to tell by smell alone when prahok is "edible"), and smelled rank of methane.

In the same week, we had an alarming evening as two cats made their way into our roof and began fighting. Three holes in our roof later, our family had chased away the cats (the entire time we were consoling our host nephew that no, they were no ghosts in our house). Apparently, the cats must have chased something else up their and made the kill, because today and for the past three days, a horrific rotting smell is emanating from our wall and ceiling. I am sure it will go away soon though...

The people in Cambodia confuse me sometimes. Occasionally I will be walking behind a group of men or women and be overpowered by their ability to wear extreme amounts of cologne or perfume without passing out from their own fumes. Other days, I seems as though they are entirely unaware of the existence of BO in the world. Either way, I find that I usually have a 100% chance of "over-smelling" K'mai people, but only a 50-50% chance of that smell being a positive one.

I don't want to be biased in this post, so let me leave you with some smells in Cambodia that I really do love.

Cooking garlic - riding my bike home in the evenings, usually I pass several houses and restaurants frying up something good with massive amounts of garlic. No smell makes me hungrier...

Fruit stalls - especially at night, the dozen or so different kinds of fruit they sell on any given day just makes this perfect cacophony of scent by night.

Rain - you know that smell right at the beginning of a big rain storm? Somehow the heat and humidity here make that smell all the more welcome during the rainy season. I know I complain about the weather in Cambodia, but the big rains are something I will never get tired of.

Do you have a favorite smell, or better yet, a least favorite smell? One of the things I miss most here is the smell of honeysuckle in the summer, nothing better than that smell when you are driving at night.

Sometimes there is just not enough time in a day the last 6 months are looming upon me as far as being a peace corps volunteer in my village the irony of all this is finally all my project are panning out with a few bumps along the road of course because it is Cambodia. So I know its been a year running me talking about the ministry of women affairs while I have had some major growth with working for them I have also had to really do a lot of counting to 10 as to hold my tongue. How to explain this in a polite way but it is commonplace in Cambodia to make excuses for almost any organization because they are paid to little, my thinking is everyone is paid the same money then its not more or less then the next organization so it should not be the right of that organization to either work as little as possible or take bribes. By the way the bribes are from cops not the women’s affairs but never the less people take this as an okay behavior and buy into the poor them mentality which gets old real fast because the sellers etc who make even less don’t get to bribe people or just lay around bc they feel the prices they sell for are not fair. Why am I venting about this type of work ethic is because time and time again not just me but other volunteers cow down to this cultural mentality and for the most part you can stop working with whoever your working for in a few months but I have had the privilege of spending almost my entire peace corps service working with women’s affairs and I might have reached my limit to what I will excuses. When we first met with them it was we understand so much blah blah however soon it became we don’t know that much to teach about these things can you teach us. Okay so me and the other volunteers I am working with re did the whole budget because we never planned for this we did not have the money so we took out some people from the big workshop just for them to have a 3-day training to be ready to teach. This past week we implemented this training I even prepared a lesson on gender for the guy who speaks Khmer and Eng. Before said workshop we meet with them re go over what will happen they then ask about 20 dollars we have to explain for all of this they can not be paid its their workshop and part of the PCPP agreement which was translated in Khmer and not sure they read or kept but requires them to give in kind donation for us to get the money we did. After going back and forth for a while they finally get that they can not be paid which left them a bit bitter I think but at the workshop they seemed to have gotten over it. However a few people who were going to come did not because their was no money when we told the ngos who we are working on for this project they were pretty pissed bc they are the ones making lesson providing materials to them for free but they cant show up for free. So after much talk the NGO’s said it’s a waste of time and resources to only train 6 people to get other people which we did a bunch of students at the local university and some other ngo staff. With out fail the ministry was late to every meeting at least 30 min to an hour while the students etc showed up on time keep in mind they asked us for this not the other way around. After the 3 days we had to plan a time schedule for the big workshop which then they spring on us they want to change it up acting like they had no idea that the small workshop was what we planned for the big workshop which was said like 1000 times in meetings so frustrating. Well in between that I had to run to Phnom Penh for a meeting about tom shoes which the lady wrote me an email extremely late to tell me she could not make when I have explained about how much effort it takes me and other volunteers to get into the city but it was not a total wash because things were figured out with Khana which by the way the head guy who was helping us from their just left and never said anything so now we have a new counter part. This new person was on it though and we figured out how we were going to better work with Peace Corps volunteers that matched more of what TOMS wanted. The next thing on my list was to deal with books for the big workshop so we forgot to put photo copies into our budget so now we have to hope that some big organizations like U.N etc. have enough copies of various books we need copies of which took the whole afternoon me going around talking to them I still have to go back in and talk to GADC. Once again this would be much eaiser for the ministry to just call there head office to get us the books we need but seeing as they don’t take responsibility it makes it so difficult to count on them. The only other two things we asked of them was to make the invitations and hand them out which they told us they no longer wanted to do and talked to the school director for the classes rooms which they also told us they don’t want to do. Having them call in for books just seemed like just as much work as me asking for them my self which should tell you how pathetic their work ethic is. I had one day be4 I had to head back to kampong Chhnnang for a workshop in between that time it was Chinese new years and lots of parties to go to. My host family was really sad that I had to leave Sunday they kept trying to steal my phone bag and computer so I could not leave but I made a commitment a while ago to attend the workshop so I could not back out as much as I wanted to. The next week I spent time with a counter part from world vision on a program called PD Hearth which stands for positive deviance behavior training the major purpose is to use people in small villages and have them learn from one another to help malnourished children. It was pretty cool going and doing out teach for it ill post pictures but you should know weighing kids is like torture to them almost everyone freaks out. The purpose of bring a counter part from world vision is that I want to do it however it takes money and time etc which my counter part will have once his boss approves it. Anyways some stories to tell you about some convos I had during said training first step is to do a measuring and weighing to determine families that are model family’s and those who need help. After this we went to do interviews to see if they particles overall good health who takes care of the child etc anyways at this point I meet this lady who has a son who is only 1 kilo more then from the day he was born and is severally malnourished and she informs me he has constant diarrhea so there is nothing she can do to help him gain weight. This leads to me ask her a few simple questions like have you given him ORS taken him to the hospital. She just looks at tells me no because there is nothing a hospital can do he is possessed by a ghost humm okay how can I culturally be sensitive about this okay well then did you take him to a krew-ka-maie natural medicine healer yes did he/she help no. Okay well maybe now you can try the hospital since your tried to rid the ghost that way maybe some medicines will help your son. She just told me she would think about it I guess its better then nothing but I have a feeling that will end up being a no. Another good story was some little girl was really intrigued by my piercings so she kept asking me if I was from India how a 4-year old associates that with India does interest me. The last night all of us volunteers and counter parts were going to be together the counter parts requested we did something all together I was thinking sure why not we can go for a walk get ice cream or something nothing crazy but not what they had in mind. So after dinner we meaning all the volunteers go to meet up with them when low and behold there is this big truck waiting for us that IRD owns that’s an ngo anyways they are like we will go to the club I was like wait there is a club in kampong chhanag? Well it cost 3 dollar to get in o I forgot to talk about how poor I have been this last week so because I have been on constant going back and forth I spent so much money on transportation etc this month that I didt have enough money to buy food this week =( it was quite said to just eat plain white rice or bread but good news got paid today yay. Anyways so this 3 dollars I did not have so my counter part ended up paying for me because he wanted me to go so bad which I felt bad about because I don’t want someone like him paying for me. Anyways we go in and its hilarious so I am thinking we just paid 3 dollars to stand by are selves but nope there was people ages 10-50 I wish I could have you picture what this club looks like but think about some video arcade from the 80s with a club twist. I could only stay 30 mins because I had to get back to where I was staying another volunteers house Khmer people pad lock things pretty early which I think my counter part was sad about. Before leaving I did dance which good thing about this country you can never look to retarded dancing bc Khmer people are always worse and seeing them dance American style is pretty crazy. Till next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!!!

my host dad and churey asking for luck etc to the ghost.happy chinese new year time to burn the money to make money?yea in america kids freak out about shots but in cambodia its everything.this is the lady who told me her son has the ghost issue. one of the many children we made cry see the desperation it serouslittle girl who thought i was from indiaThis is the tree to show how many health and unhealthy children live in the villagecooking ba-bow-ia aka rice porridge with veggies and fish

when i was in fifth grade, i gave my very first political stump speech. the year was 1995, and bill clinton was up for re-election, running against bob dole. as we read our weekly reader, our teacher asked us who we would vote for and i found myself rising out of my seat to refute what a classmate had said about bill clinton being too young for the job and other things they were likely repeating from what they'd heard their parents' say at the dinner table.

that day, i stood my ground on the premise that we could in no way elect bob dole because, quite frankly, the man was too old, and to be sure, we didn't want to elect a president that would all too soon keel over from a heart attack?

the best part of the speech, in my opinion, was the enactment of said heart attack i then gave, collapsing into my chair, to much applause from my peers.

(the applause may have been in my mind, as i was quite an imaginative child.)

ponder, if you will, what a ten year old who will go to great lengths to speak out against old men for president will do when given the chance to dress and make decisions for herself?

if you guessed permed bangs, silk purple shirts, overalls and rose-tinted round glasses...

...sadly, you were right.

from a very young age, my mother had very little choice but to let me dress myself, let me advocate for my own hairstyles and make decisions about my general appearance. i'd hazard a guess it was an exercise in sanity preservation for my parents, and perhaps a bit of choice vindictiveness as i now realize, being an adult and all, that there must be something quite satisfying about letting your daughter choose many askance wardrobe options and know that someday, in ten or fifteen years, you'd get to witness, first hand, their self-realization that they were, in essence, insane. and they should have listened to you.

i'd imagine that's how it'd be anyway.

especially if your mid-twenties daughter continues to do silly things like wear (and actually LURVE) oversized glasses.

i've never strived for stylish. i've always chosen those things that i think are fun, quirky and silly and worn them. much to my detriment, i suppose.

except for those damn permed bangs. they were the sad results of me trying to be stylish and cool and up to date. all of my friends had perms in 1994 and 1995. all i wanted in the whole world was curly hair. my brown, long, straight hair was my everest.

but permanent waves were one thing that cindy put her foot down on. after what i can only guess were weeks of whining and complaining and maybe even crying, she relented. but just an inch. no taking a mile with MY cindy.

and so a family friend/hairstylist permed my bangs in her kitchen on saturday afternoon.

so can you understand when i cringe just the tiniest bit when i imagine having a little girl and having to raise what is sure to be mini-kate, in all her "i dress myself, i choose terrible glasses, i beg for a perm and end up looking like i have a chia pet on top of my forehead for my school pictures" glory?

and that's not even taking into account the dangly skeleton earrings i insisted on wearing in my fourth grade picture, or the velour striped shirt in sixth grade.

some things never changei share this all with you in the spirit of this being my two hundredth post, and it feels apropos to do a bit of soul sharing on such an occasion, no?

you are now welcome to share your musings on my ten year old self. or your ten year old self. whichever you prefer.

*eta: i am struggling to upload my vlog for tomorrow, so it's more likely you'll get it on monday. i hope some of you will decide to join in, and in the spirit of this post, share your worst haircuts!*

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!Good luck in this, the year of the DRAGON! Grrrrr!

Yeah this past weekend was Chinese New Year. Cambodia has a pretty big population of people who come from Chinese descent, so although the Khmer Government does not observe Chinese New Year as a national holiday, many people do celebrate in some form or another.I knew something was up when I came home from Ba Phnom on Saturday night. There was a chicken seller at our house. She was holding the live chickens upside down by their feet, and discussing the price with my oldest sister. She bought two chickens and put them under a little bamboo cage for the night. I said “alright, so what are the chickens for?” My sister said “Chinese New Year!”The next morning I didn’t leave my room until like 8:30 (pretty darn late). When I did leave my room, I saw that my oldest brother, Borun, was setting up a rice mat on our living room floor, while my oldest sister was decoratively organizing plates of fruit. So I plopped myself down to watch the action.

One by one my family brought different foods and drinks to place on the mat on the floor. My sisters got up super early to do all this cooking. There was a Chinese soup, Chinese noodles, fruits, muffins, rice, cakes, and the 2 chickens bought the night before- roasted whole (head and legs still intact). There was also beer, some soda, a little vodka, and some juice.

Then it was time to pray. My sister (who I believe has some Chinese in her blood) was directing the show. Everyone had to take their turn praying at the rice mat 3 times. The food and drink was being offered to the families’ dead ancestors. There were 6 cans placed on the edge of the mat, each one representing a different relative. Behind each can were 2 glasses. To pray, you must sit with your legs to the side, and your hands in a prayer position in front of your face. Between your hands are sticks of burning incense- one for each can. You pray out loud for those family members. When you are done, you stick the incense in the cans, and then pour a little vodka and beer in each glass.

My family also spent some time praying and offering food and incense to the “Buddhist house,” or little shrine that is in every Cambodian’s home. That is where I heard my sisters praying for me, which was sweet. They prayed for my luck, health, and happiness, and that I would always have delicious food to eat.

I did not burn incense this time. I was just an observer this time around.After everyone had prayed three times, we took “paper goods” outside to burn for our ancestors. And I quite literally mean paper goods. For my sister’s grandfather, we burned a paper shirt, a paper box of cigarettes, a paper razor, paper sandals, paper glasses, etc. For her grandmother we burned paper gold and jewelry. For everyone we burned more paper gold and paper 100 dollar bills. I guess the idea is that this stuff goes to the spirits of our ancestors while they are waiting to be reincarnated.

Finally, after the burning party, reminiscent of a teenage girl’s boyfriend gift burning party, we took some of the food out to the porch outside and feasted! We moved all the chairs to the side, sat on the floor, and filled out bellies. The Chinese soup and noodles were particularly delicious. The men finished their meals and left quickly, I don’t why. So it was just the three ladies. My oldest sister pulls out the beer and goes “alright, we’re getting drunk.” I was like- fantastic, it’s not even noon yet. She handed each of us a beer and told us to drink it as fast as we could.I lost. Third place out of three. Which is actually impressive, because I know for a fact that I have a higher tolerance than both of them. But I just couldn’t “bottom’s up” like they were doing haha. So yeah, we sat around for a few minutes, drunk, and then- my sister declared nap time! What else would you want to do after downing a beer?I actually napped! I ignored my sweating pores and managed to get a few minutes of real napping! I very rarely can nap during the day in Cambodia. The rest of the day was spent just sitting around doing nothing. For dinner, leftovers.Chinese New Year is a 3 day holiday. Chinese-Khmer students and teachers took off from school (without permission). About ¼ of my students were absent in each class. That is actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I thought no one would come. Well, I am not Chinese, so although it was still Chinese New Year, I went to go teach whichever students were dedicated enough to show up.I came home for lunch. Leftovers. Again. And let me remind you- there are no refrigerators in Cambodia. That is when my sister told me more about the customs of Chinese New Year. Apparently, for three days you’re not allowed to do ANY work. That explains why the chairs were never put back upstairs, and the empty beer and soda cans were still strewn all over the floor. You are not allowed to clean the house, do the laundry, cook, or even wash the dishes. When she said that, I instantly looked down at the plate I was eating off of- that I ate off yesterday- and would have to eat off of the next 2 days.Unfortunately, I was at a really desperate point with my laundry. Washing my clothes that day was essential. My sisters were a little upset that I was doing laundry, but I told them it was really unavoidable. Then, when I was bringing my soap and hamper to my room, I accidentally spilled laundry detergent on my floor in my room. Being a poor and crafty Peace Corps volunteer, I decided that meant I had to scrub my floor, so as not to waste the soap. You can wash floors with powdered laundry soap, right? Well, it was something that also needed to be done. But once again my sisters commented on my non-chinese-ness. Eventually, my sister also broke the Chinese-no-working rule. My brother (her husband) said that he was afraid that if I eat that Chinese soup every day for the full three day, I would die. He didn’t want to kill his foreigner, so he had his wife cook me some new food by the third day.

A part of me actually wonders if my sisters made up the no-working rule. I feel that’s likely, but that’s totally fine. They deserved the break more than anyone.

An incredibly busy husband and a computer-less wife has meant an unusually long hiatus from the blogging world. But, after more than two weeks, we’re back! First of all, let me clarify one thing since I’ve received so many inquiries in my inbox about it: I do not actually have rabies! The dog that bit me [...]