I know it has been a while, and there hasn’t been a great deal worth reporting on. But it seems that now is a good time for an update. The weather has finally turned and it is a beautiful spring day here in Kunming. I’m sitting here in bay window looking at a qoi fish pond, sipping coffee. Lest you think this is how I spend all my days, I must say that we are still on spring break. Ridiculously late in the year, I know. It did coincide with the Chinese tomb-sweeping festival. You go to your ancestor’s tomb and sweep out all the dust, kind of spruce the place up a bit. You give them fresh offerings of fruit and incense, burn some fake money so that your ancestors can by themselves something nice. It’s kind of like mother’s day for dead people. The best part is lighting off a huge string of firecrackers when you’re all finished, effectively making passersby feel as though they are in a war zone.

I just got back from a trip to neighboring Guang Xi province. They have landforms called “karsks” which are basically gigantic rocks that shoot up from the ground. And by gigantic I mean really really gigantic. Check out facebook for pix. Anyway, on a lovely Friday afternoon a group of us hopped on board a train that would be our home for the next 20 hours. It’s like a moving summer camp with several dozen complete strangers. Good times. We purchased the top bunks, as those were the cheapest. Aside from requiring acrobatic skills to climb in and out of them, they were quite nice. The only minor inconvenience was that occasionally the train would jerk about as though we had just hit a cow (I’m pretty sure it was just moving to a different set of tracks, I’m fairly certain no harm came to any livestock during our journey) and forcibly jerk a sleeper awake. The light sleepers among us were unimpressed. But my cabin was next to the bathroom, so I really can’t complain, although the bathroom made me very happy that I had brought along my rubber boots.

We arrived in Guilin, the capital of Guang Xi province, about 20 hours after we left Kuming. There we wandered about in the rain and found a travel agent who helped us get a hotel. Subsequently we spent a lovely evening having dinner at pizza hut, chilling at a bizarre coffee house, and prowling a night market. The next day were up bright and early to head out to the rice terraces at Ping An. The day started rather bleakly, with nothing but rain and fog as far as the eye could see (again yay for rubber boots!). So we piled into a bus, where the tour guide proceeded to talk (yell, rather) for an hour straight about all the things we would do and see when we arrived at our destination. It made want to bust out a window and make a break for it. We finally arrived in a ridiculously touristy fashion, herded into the tourist information center (read: place where they make you wait in hopes that you will buy their sourvenirs) and after enough time had elapsed we get onto a different set of buses and head up the mountain. This is where things get fun. Careening through narrow, rocky paths on the side of a mountain is really what I cam here for. I like the sense of adventure, it’s far better than any roller coaster.

We finally arrive at our destination, a lovely little village nestled in the mountains, home to a minority tribe called the Yao. The views were breathtaking, however it was a bit sad to think that these people just subsist on selling their culture to tourists. We saw a “long hair show” which consisted of the women (who never cut their hair) showing us how long their hair was. There were old ladies everywhere aggressively hawking their wares. One decided that my friend’s fiancé (who was wearing shorts) needed to buy one of her shawls to wrap around himself like a skirt so that he could keep warm. While it was really beautiful, there was something kind of depressing in the commercialism of it all. But they need to eat just like everyone else, and if this is the only way they can do it then more power to them.

After the village we headed up to the rice terraces. On a clear day you can see for miles. This was not a clear day. We didn’t really get to see the rice terraces, but the fog was beautiful in itself and it made for a really cool hike. We ate a delicious meal of chicken and rice cooked inside of bamboo shoots. They actually stuff the food inside of the bamboo chute and put it in the fire. It was one member of the group’s first time to use chopsticks in his life. It was kind of funny. After spending the afternoon hiking through beautiful fog, we returned to Guilin just in time to catch a bus to the neighboring town of Yang Shuo. We met our excellent guide, Christine, and checked into the Fawlty Towers Guesthouse. Funny name, but a lovely place. They had sheets and hot water and everything like that. We arrived in Yang Shuo around 8pm. Christine lives outside of time, so we had to wait at the bust station for her to arrive. While were waiting, we noticed that all the mountains have lights at the base, so you can see the mountains lit up at night. We also saw a cloud of smog that changed colors and weren’t really sure what that was all about. We figured it has something to do with the light show. At least we hoped it did. Anyway, after checking in and showering we strolled down the main western street and had dinner. At which point we were so exhausted that we promptly returned the guesthouse and passed out.

The next day was river day!!!! In the morning we took a bus to the village of Xing Ping and rode power boats down the river. You’re supposed to sit in them, but that was really boring so I stood on the front, much to the amusement of the Chinese tourists. It was like something from Lord of the Rings, huge mountains, basically enormous boulders, on either side of the river. We went upriver and then turned around. At the turn around the boatman made us put on life jackets, which seemed strange to me since we’d come this far without them. Apparently the government safety patrol didn’t start work until we’d stopped to turn around, rendering prior life-jacket usage unnecessary. We returned to Yang Shuo for lunch, and then we rented bikes and biked to the river for bamboo rafting.

First, a word about biking. I love biking. Pedaling hard, having the wind in my face, is the absolute best feeling in the world. I am not a leisurely biker, biking slowly sort of defeats the purpose. Many in our group did not share these sentiments, so I would go ahead of them, bike back to make sure they were still there. At one point I took a wrong turn and had to bike back a long ways, but I still say that was their fault for not keeping up with me. We arrive at the bamboo raft place and found a jolly band of raftmen sitting around. After exchanging some dance moves (we are working towards better cultural understanding) some of them finally decided they were low enough on beer money that they were ready to take us out. There are a few small cascades, so old ladies sell plastic bags to put on your feet to keep them dry. I opted to removed my shoes and roll my pants up. It was definitely the better decision. It was really nice and relaxing to just float on a boat down the river watching the biggest mountains I’ve ever seen.

We alit from the bamboo rafts and took the scenic biking route back to Yang Shuo. It was like biking in Cambodia all over again. Dodging water buffalo, riding 6 in wide rice paddy roads, biking through huge puddles and over gigantic rocks was quite refreshing after the traffic of Kunming. Upon our return to Yang Shuo, we split up, some going back to guesthouse, others heading to McDonalds for some coffee, fries, and ice cream. Dinner of champions. After dinner, my intrepid adventure buddy Kim and myself wandered around the city, then we found an excellent spot to sit and people-watch. Got stared at, stared back, played “where do you think they’re from?”, ate fried bananas. Nice. We got back to the guesthouse and played card games. The next day we returned to Guilin and played cards at KFC until we had to leave for the airport. Got back to Kunming and ate take-out while watching the Last Samurai. Lovely end to a lovely trip. And school doesn’t start til Monday!!!

Take care all

Well I have returned to China, after wonderful and somewhat extended visit home for Christmas. Christmas break was great, got some quality family time which made the ordeal of travel well worth it. As you might imagine, trans-oceanic adventures are generally riddled with their fair share of frustrations, and while 30 hours beats the 30 weeks it would have taken to make the journey by boat a hundred years ago, it is still a REALLY long time to be in a plane/airport. As with most journeys, everything went well til I got to the airport. At the ticket counters in the Kunming airport, the delineation between different airlines is fluid at best. There was no one at my airline’s ticket counter, so some random guy took me to a random counter. By some miracle they checked me in. I was even able to speak Chinese to them. A banner day. Then I arrived at Beijing, to be greeted by a Starbucks. Be still my heart. Until I got to the ticket counter (If I ever write a book, it will be titled “It was all going well until I got to the ticket counter”) to discover that my four hour layover had been doubled, giving me 20 minutes to make a connection upon arrival in San Francisco. After a great deal of people-watching, I finally boarded the plane and promptly fell asleep. I woke up somewhere over the Pacific vaguely wondering what would happen to me and my luggage as I most likely wouldn’t make my connection. Many others were wondering the same thing. We finally land and run through customs, only to wait for luggage. Unfortunately checking one’s bags all the way to the final destination does not get them through customs on their own. So we waited for our bags. And waited. And then just to change things up we waited some more. Our connections were leaving. Our bags were in some unknown location. And suddenly the beautiful sound of a luggage carousel clanging. Bags poured forth from every direction. So many that the carousel broke. Back to waiting. By the time we got our bags, they just let us bypass customs and run to the reticketing counter. I was told that I might actually make my flight. It was still on time (meaning it left 10 min ago) but was running just a little late so I could make it. I ran as fast as I could, flying through security and nearly running over innocent pedestrians. I arrive breathless at the gate, and go to join the line of passengers preparing to board. Except they’re all going to Monterrey. It turns out my flight, which was still “on time” was running “a little late” (20 min) because the previous flight was running over an hour late and was just beginning to board. I had time to clean up, grab a bite to eat, relax a bit. My flight ended up being over an hour late but I wasn’t complaining. Although I did have to fight the urge to scream at the woman who complained about the horrors of have to spend four hours in an airport. After all was said and done I arrived at my final destination only an hour late, which I think was pretty good.

But only a week and a half later I had to return. So we packed up the car and the family drove me three hours to Kansas City. It was all going well, until I got to the ticket counter. I tried to swipe my passport, but it didn’t work so I had to give it to the guy behind the counter. He entered my info. As soon as he did, a look came over his face which told me wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Turned out my flight (which the airline had told me was on time when I called a few hours before) was delayed 2 hours, but it didn’t matter since my connecting flight was cancelled. After some woeful system searching, it was decided that I couldn’t fly out for four more days. While a bit annoying since we’d driven all that way (and to the co-workers who would have to cover for me), getting another weekend at home was pretty great.

The weekend was fantastic, except the part spent on hold with airlines. There were issues with my rebooking, but after many hours I was assured that everything was fine and dandy. I made it to Los Angeles and everything was going well. Until I got to ticket counter. I discovered things were not fine and dandy. United airlines had sort of forgotten to confirm my seat (and two other people’s) and so they gave our seats away. Standby isn’t a good thing at 12:40 am. When the next flight won’t leave for another 8-12 hours. So I stood there and glared at them til they gave me a seat. Once again I ran through the airport, just making it in time to board.

After all that adventure I arrived safely back in Kunming and made it work that afternoon. Today was wonderful day of picture-taking with my new camera!!! I showed the pictures I took at home to the people who work at the restaurant where I had dinner. They were quite impressed. I know they said the snow was beautiful and then they were really excited to see my family but I couldn’t understand what they said about them. I’m sure it was good things though. Still tired and sore from the plane, so I’ll sign off. Love and miss everyone!

December is here already. Wow. First off, apologies for not having pix yet, I’ve been a bit under the weather. And a bit lazy. But anyway, hoping to have everything ready before I head home for Christmas, which is only about two weeks away! So excited, but so much to do. Things have been about the same. The small children are adorable, but a bit lacking in hygiene, so I’m getting to build up my teacher immunity the hard way. I’m thinking of asking their parents to pay for my Tylenol. Just kidding. Sadly, they had a Christmas recital which I couldn’t attend because I was sick. Boo. But overall things are going well. I can form complete sentences in Chinese, perhaps not correctly, but I can order noodles to go, purchase the world’s smallest tins of vicks vapo-rub, and ask for half a kilo of beef. Of course the market ladies are all very kind and tell me how good my Chinese is. They’re lying of course, but given our initial encounters I have made substantial progress.

One of things that I’m just now getting used to about China is how quiet the motorbikes (honestly they’re more like glorified mopeds) are. In Cambodia, they were gas-guzzlers, but here most of them are electric. Most buildings have electrical outlets on their outside walls so people can plug their motos in. You might think that these quiet, battery powered machines would be much nicer to deal with than the gas-powered ones, with their revving and exhaust and whatnot. I suppose if you’re sitting in your house, that’s perfectly true. But if you’re on the street they have a way of sneaking up on you. They might be going the wrong way down the sidewalk, and if you are not looking where you are going they are liable to run into you. Another fun thing that makes Chinese traffic awesome is that they can text. In Cambodia, most phones don’t support Khmer script so most people couldn’t text. But all phones support Chinese characters. So people riding silent scooters the wrong way while texting. It makes life an adventure

Because it’s turned cold, it’s time to get out the space heaters and… cook. Many people who operate stores don’t want to go back and cook in the kitchen, it’s much more efficient just to put pots on your space heater. Thus most storefronts smell really delicious this time of year.

Ah the cold. I have missed it, apparently my lungs don’t. I really can’t complain however. At night I curl up in warm clothes under mountains of blankets with a heating pad. The construction guys working behind my house have a tent. They are most likely from more rural villages, not from the city. This makes them illegal (people can’t just decide to move, their citizenship papers are only valid in their mother’s district) so they basically have no rights. Most of them speak their local village dialects, not Mandarin which puts them at a disadvantage. Since they and they’re children are illegal (even thought they’re all Chinese citizens) they don’t have access to schools or clinics or decent housing. Another problem is their bosses can basically treat them however they want. They might promise them a certain salary, and only pay a small portion, saying the rest will come next month. Of course it doesn’t come next month, but because they are illegal, they have no recourse. Very sad stuff.

But I wanted to end on a bright note. Thus I will tell you about possibly the coolest group of people in the neighborhood. The old ladies who do tai chi. On the basketball court. With swords. That’s what I call aging gracefully. My downstairs neighbor is one of indelible gals. Tai chi starts at 8, same time I’m supposed to be at work. Clearly neither my neighbor nor I are morning people, so we often meet on the stairs, booking it to be on time. It’s so surreal to see this basket ball court, where young guys play basket ball all day, being taken over by their grandmothers. They are extremely graceful, they do their warm ups, then some of them bust out what look like smaller versions of samurai swords. Wow. My neighbor has a hard time pulling open the door to our building because it is pretty heavy, but then she just goes down to tai chi and whips out her sword. Do not judge a book by its cover my friends.

It’s fall!!!! It’s fall! Its fall! I’m only a little excited about that fact. Leaves are brown, it’s chilly sweaters and slippers weather. Oh how I’ve missed fall. The only thing missing is getting up at ridiculously early hours to go eat Little Debbies in woods, waiting for deer to emerge. I must say, without camo, fluorescent orange clothing, and muddy pick up trucks it just doesn’t really seem like fall. But it is cold and there are brown leaves, things I haven’t experienced in a couple years. So I purchased some fur-lined boots and heating pad and they make me happy. In an attempt to try to readjust to the cold I held out on using any sort of heating device. And then I got a terrible cold. So I did the adult thing and got more blankets and turned on the heat.

My house is painted! Hopefully I will the light fixtures and art up within the next week and then I can post pictures. It really looks great. I am excited.

With fall comes nasty bugs and no one spreads nasty bugs as well as first graders. Many of them were sick this past week, so hopefully the weekend gave them a chance to get better.

Thanksgiving is coming. We do have school Thursday, but we’re off Friday. There is a western store that will order turkeys, but I’ve been promised one at Christmas so I will wait until then. If I tried to fry a turkey in my apartment I might end up burning the whole building down.

That’s about all for now, hopefully will have pix soon!

That means "Have you eaten rice yet?" Like Cambodians, the Chinese are far more likely to ask you about your food situation than how you are doing. Which I like a lot. Honestly, when we say to someone "How are you?" we really don't care how they are. We are being polite, merely acknowledging their existence. I think this is a much less pretentious greeting.

I think cities have it in for me. It took a couple years for me to get really sick in Cambodia. I have been in China for less than 3 months and have already gotten sick twice. Good times. So my dear mother has reminded me that I haven’t updated in a while. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I work mainly with Americans and other westerners now, so I don’t have nearly as many fun and exciting stories.

However, if you ever do up and decide to come to China, here are a few things you might want to keep in mind. I mentioned before that China is a strange mixture of America and Cambodia, so case in point: Like Cambodia, almost all toilets are squatters. And like America, they don’t have basins of water for clean-up purposes, people use toilet. Unlike America, the paper is not provided. Ever. If you go to Cambodia you can’t stay quite clean because of all the water, you just have to deal with a wet spot on your pants. But here that is not the case. If you don’t have any paper you are slam out of luck. And restrooms are generally filthy. While they always flush theoretically, usually (in order to conserve water) the pressure is pretty minimal. So imagine a public toilet that hasn’t been flushed in a few days. I’ll go in the bushes thank you very much. Also, and to be fair I have only seen this one time, there was a bus stop where the stalls had no doors. It was not pleasant. If you have a problem with people staring at you because of the color of your skin, I don’t suggest entering a doorless restroom. It is strange because there are people all over the place cleaning up streets and sweeping and scrubbing traffic dividers. No one cleans the bathrooms. Everyone has to have a job here; it’s the law. Unfortunately public toilets got the short end of the staff list.

Fortunately at school the bathrooms are much better, and we have awesome cleaning people. Our cleaning/maintenance people are pretty cool. We can’t really communicate but they smile a lot and help whenever they see I’m having problems with Chinese appliances.

Instead if just working with English Language Learners like I thought I would, I work with pretty much all of first grade. It’s a fun mix, but first graders are certainly a handful.

I’m enjoying living on my own. I can cook a few different meals and the veggie stand across from house has excellent stuff. The funny thing is that I don’t really know how to cook a lot of western food. I’m much better at making rice-related dishes. Although I did recently purchase a Jiffy cornbread mix and am planning to make it in my rice cooker. Will let you know how that turns out.

A parting note: congrats to both the Rangers and the Tigers for reeking of excellence.

I’ve been in China over a month now. In many ways it’s a lot like Cambodia. You can throw chicken bones on the floor, wear clothes that don’t match, spit on the street, and drive however and on whichever side of the road suits your fancy. In a lot of ways it’s different, there are roads, and cars, women wear high heals, and everyone has a washing machine. Sometimes this combination throws me off. I have sort of compartmentalized my life into Cambodia and America. For example, staring, in Cambodia I’m a foreigner and everyone stares so I’m used to it. But I’m used to it when I go to an open air market with a mud floor where people are throwing fish at me. Not so much in.. say … an international airport. Or WalMart. China does have a plethora of locations where vendors are enthusiastic about their wares in a more outdoorsy kind of environment, by the area of the city where I live is not one of those. Because it is so developed my brain goes into America mode, where large numbers of people staring at you mean you’ve probably broken some important social convention. I definitely don’t get stared at nearly as much here, but because of the setting it is still very strange to me. Also, I work mainly with other Americans. They are wonderful people, but being American they kind of assume I know how Americans are supposed to act and to be honest, I’ve kind of forgotten. It’s not that I’ve completely forgotten, when someone goes to shake my hand I don’t bow to them or recoil in terror, I’m just very unsure of my social skills. These were never really my strong point before, and two years in completely different culture hasn’t helped. When small children hear more than on language growing up, they will usually be able to speak both languages and distinguish between the two, but if they hear the languages mixed together, they become language confused, unable to distinguish grammar and vocabulary of the languages. I think I have become culture confused. I’m sometimes not sure what is appropriate; I do or say something and then realize that isn’t something you can do in Western culture. For example while I would never call a person I know fat, I will sometimes refer to overweight people as fat in the same way that I might refer to someone who has brown hair as a brunette. Luckily most people here can’t understand me and if they could they probably wouldn’t mind. But this tendency does bother foreigners a bit.

So aside from this sort of reverse culture shock I’m doing well. I’ve picked up some Chinese, enough to go shopping, order take out, and refuse offers of peach flavored condoms. However, I still don’t understand the majority of things that are said to me, so depending on the level of importance I can say I don’t understand, or use elaborate sign language, or simply smile and nod. That skill has come in quite handy over the years.

So China. I live in Kunming, which is surrounded by mountains. There is virtually no place in the city where you can’t see mountains. There are a couple WalMarts, a German equivalent of a Sam’s Club. There are a couple of lakes and several beautiful parks. There isn’t a lot of old, however. They tear down any building over 50 years old and build new ones. People can actually own their own homes, but if those homes are more than 50 years old the government will tear them down. Kunming is by far one of the nicest places in China. It is a very wealthy town, especially the area where I live. I do admire the Chinese devotions to the aesthetic. This is a new development, in the past all the building were the same sort of industrial design. But now almost every apartment complex (and there are lot of those) can be distinguished by it’s own unique colors. The upside of everyone having a job is that you have get creative in giving people jobs to do. There are sweepers everywhere. They sweep every inch of roadway, including six lane overpasses. Sometimes you see people scrubbing road dividers. There is a definite if not love then appreciation of nature. They go to great lengths to ensure greenery is everywhere. A lot of this has to do with the government’s energy reduction campaign. But like all countries, it is dealing with modernization. China is now a first world country, as the 60 mile traffic jam outside of Beijing proved, but it conflicts with a lot of cultural values. It is basically, like America, a nation trying to balance it’s love of nature with it’s love of tall buildings.

A typical day for me in China goes a little something like this:

My alarm goes off at 6:30, but it’s still dark, so I am unmotivated to move.

I finally get up sometime before 7 and have breakfast, usually yogurt and fruit

At work by 8:00, molding young minds. *Read: trying to get them to put periods at the end of their sentences.I have 6 students, Koreans, a “Canadians,” (Canada only requires one year of residency to get citizenship, so a lot of Chinese move there for a year, to get their kids Canadian passports, people with Chinese passports can’t attend international schools), Japanese, and some who are have parents from two different countries. While I only have 6, I work with all of first grade, which is a lot of fun. Some kids speak 3 or 4 languages, some are new to China, it’s a really diverse group.

I try to pack a lunch, but that doesn’t always happen. They have Chinese and Korean lunch at school.

Chinese food is a lot of meat and veggies stir fried, the rice is just a filler, eat at the end of the meal.

Korean food is basically spicy pickled cabbage called kimchi that is used to season everything. The other day there were kimchi burritos. If you are ever offered this particular dish, it would be a good time for you suddenly develop a burrito allergy.

There are usually meetings after school, so when I get home I play with my cat and listen to music to recharge my brain.

In the evenings I make dinner, or go to dinner with friends, or go to the park, or watch tv online.

That’s pretty much my life.

In the exciting news department I just bought my ticket to go the US for Christmas! I’ll be there from the 19th – 29th.

Ok, my building is pink, or perhaps it is more rust colored, but all the buildings in my apartment complex are yellow and rust colored. This is convenient, as it makes the place easy to spot from a distance. I don’t know my way around yet, so I spend a lot of time wandering.

On Wednesday I left Cambodia. The night before I stuffed myself on Cambodian food for the last time. I managed not to cry until I was on the way to the airport. My Cambodian friend came with me, so at least I wasn’t alone. I was able to stop crying by the time I arrived at the check in counter, but after I got checked in I waited with my friend before I had to go through security and just started bawling. People were definitely staring but I’m used to that by now. Walking up the stairs was hard. Getting on the plane was hard. I feel bad for the people who sat next to me. I was definitely crying most of the way to China.

We landed in Guangzhou. Thus began my 7 hour layover. In Phnom Penh they told me that my luggage was checked all the way to Kunming. At the transfer counter in Guangzhou I learned there was some sort of misunderstanding. So I had to go back through customs, back to the luggage carousel, and retrieve my bags. I already knew my bags were overweight and that I would have to pay extra for them, so I arrive for the second time at the transfer counter, ready to pay for my bags. Alas there was another misunderstanding. As the staff spoke rather poor English, and I speak zero Chinese, I understood that the bags had to be paid for before they could be checked in. And the paying happens on the 3rd floor. So I get in the elevator, only to find that there is no 3rd floor button. I wander the second floor trying to ask staff where I’m supposed to be going. Each person tells me to go somewhere else, when I arrive somewhere else, I am told to go elsewhere yet again. Did I mention my luggage was heavy? The staff was very eager to help, but the language barrier was a bit too much.

And then I had a bit of meltdown. I was lugging my heavy bags through a deserted hallway. My mind was racing, wondering why I left a place I knew, people I loved who loved me, to come wonder to a strange place all alone. I have never been so lonely in my life as I was at that moment. I just sat down on my bags and cried. Two guys drove by on an electric cart and asked if I needed to go anywhere. I’m a foreigner, alone in an empty hallway, sitting on luggage, crying her eyes out. I can’t imagine what a sight I must have been to them. I just shook my head, opting to attempt to pull myself together before any more social interaction. I finally find my way to another part of the airport, where lo and behold there is an elevator the third floor. The third floor was huge and bustling with people, I felt a lot better. Surely I could pay for my excess baggage here. I hunt for a promising counter. First I go to international overweight luggage. They tell me I’m in the wrong place, and point me to domestic overweight luggage. Domestic overweight luggage tells me I have to check in first, and I attempt to explain that the check in people told me I had to pay first. He sends me to CDE. I wasn’t sure what that meant so I just wandered some more, looking for any signs written in English. By now I’m feeling rather fantastic. It’s as though I’m playing some of airport counter scavenger hunt, go to as many counters as you can in seven hours. I am clearly dominating this game. I see a counter marked oversize luggage and give it a shot. Finally light is shed on my situation, it is the wrong counter yet again, but the guys manages to get across that CDE isn’t a special counter, it means that I can check in my luggage at counters C1-C20, D1-D20, or E1-C20. Yay! So it turns out the bags could be checked in, but just not downstairs. So I finally check in my bags! They weigh them and write the excess weight on a ticket, and hold my boarding pass hostage until I pay and bring them the receipt. I am more than happy to do this, elated at the idea that I have finally found someone willing to take my money. So after three hours of trying, I finally get rid of my checked bags.

Success. Time for McDonalds. The McDonalds is about the size of a closet. There are a total of three menu items: ice cream cones, oreo mcflurries, and spicy chicken sandwiches. A balanced meal if I ever saw one. I got a mcflurry and a sandwich. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit how delicious they were. Seriously it tasted just like they do in America. Granted I have been gone a while, but still. It made me ridiculously happy. So I napped until it was time to board the plane.

The flight was uneventful, until we got over Kunming. The weather was bad, so we circled the airport for about half an hour. Then the pilot decides it’s just too dangerous, so we land at another airport and wait there for over an hour. I felt terrible because I knew someone was waiting for me, and had been since my plane was supposed to arrive at 9pm. By the time we finally arrived in Kunming it was 1am.

But I made it to China. Kunming really is the nicest place in China (I haven’t actually seen any other places, but I’m assured by everyone that it is) and I believe it. It’s incredibly clean. Women with brooms are everywhere, sweeping. And there are trash can placed conveniently around the city so you don’t have to through trash on the ground. Nice. My apartment is wonderful, I definitely hit the jackpot as far a first apartments go. I have a big master bedroom, and two smaller rooms (so you can come visit!) in addition to a large living room, smaller kitchen, and a laundry room. I have 3 loveseats and a cushioned chair that are ocean blue. I have running (hot) water, a washing machine, and a bathtub. No dryer or AC, but those are really unnecessary. The weather here is great. The only times I’ve broken a sweat have been during exercise. Yay. The apartment complex has over 80 buildings. It’s really huge. The school is less than a ten minute walk away from my building. There are tons of convenience stores, fruit stalls, and various other small shops in the complex. There is even a coffee shop with wireless. The grounds are beautiful. There are tons of gardens and ponds and trees. In the mornings I can watch old people doing tai chi or bringing their pet birds out for some fresh air. There are gazebos and benches for hanging out, and random exercise equipment for anyone to use.

The school is ballin. The classroom are air conditioned and the entire campus has wireless. My room has a 3D image projector. You put anything inside this little box and it projects a 3D image of that object onto the screen. The new teachers all seem to be great. They’re all quite a bit older than me and more experienced. Which is good because I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m working with a guy named Jeff who has worked with underprivileged kids in Chicago for several years. He and I will basically be making sure the non-native English speakers in 1st and 2nd grade can keep up. The school is very progressive as far as teaching techniques. My instructions were to do whatever will help the kids learn, if standing on my head helps the kids learn than I should do that. So we’re probably going to move the desks, and get rugs, pillows and beanbag chairs to make it feel more comfortable. I’m thinking of maybe getting a play kitchen, and maybe even a classroom pet.

So that’s about it. I still need to go shopping and buy house stuff, and learn Chinese so I can buy stuff without it turning a game of charades.

I love and miss you all, and please come visit if you can!

An ode to insects

I love the market. There is food, tons of activity, and did I mention the food? I can sit there for hours drinking coffee and watching the action unfold. It’s better than TV. Today a woman was carrying a basket full of mudfish when one of them decided to make a break for it. She had to put down all of her other stuff and go chasing after her fish. These are the fish that can sort of walk. They look like catfish and can survive out of water for a while. During the dry season they sometimes scamper about on land to look for food when the ponds dry up. Luckily for the fish it is rainy season and the floor of the market is basically a thick layer of mud, so he was in his element. I like it when food fights back.

You can also meet lots of people at the market. They can get really friendly, asking for your phone number after knowing you for five minutes. You can get felt up at the market, too. It is an extremely homo-social culture, and personal space doesn’t exist. Your friends will come up to you and hug you, lay on you, hold your hand, admire your arm hair, grab your boobs to see if they’re real, etc.

This may make me a bad person, but I think the best part of the market is that if you sit there long enough, someone will give you crickets. I love crickets. We in the US are seriously missing out in our fastidious refusal to eat creepy crawlies. I’m sure most of you don’t consider insects to be a food source, unless you’re maybe starving in a cave or are an anteater. But you really need to broaden your horizons. Insects are packed with protein, low in fat, and like Lucky Charms they are magically delicious. Crickets fried in hot pepper oil are a dime a dozen in rainy season. Cambodians will tell you to take off the heads and legs before eating, but I think that this detracts from the crunchy goodness so I leave them on. Coming in a close second in the most delicious insect contest are ants. They have a certain kind of flying ant here that is huge and sweet. This is often served as main dish, rather than a snack. The best thing about ants is that they put larvae, juveniles, and adults all in the same package, so you have a plethora of ant choices. Rice and larva. Definitely better than it sounds. Another incredibly delicious insect is tarantulas. They are also fried, and served on a stick like a lollipop. A big juicy lollipop. The problem with tarantulas is that they’re kind of hairy. Sometimes they singe the hair off, but sometimes they don’t, and if you take a big bite the hairs can get caught in your throat. I think crickets have a lighter, more delicate flavor than tarantulas, but tarantulas are very filling. You could almost make a meal of them.

Really exciting: My pregnant friend asked me to choose baby names for her. So I listed off a bunch of names in my family and she decided on John for a boy and Lelah for a girl. I’m sad that she won’t have the baby until January, so I won’t get to see, but hopefully she’ll be able to send me pictures. Naming the baby before it’s born goes against tradition, so I’m really proud of her for doing it. Cambodians are extremely superstitious, especially when it comes to kids. I think it’s because in the past infant mortality rates were so high. They say it’s bad luck to name the child before it’s born, because this alerts the evil spirits to the impending birth. After the baby’s born, and until it starts to walk, everyone who sees it must lament about what a hideous little creature it is. When the evil spirits hear this, they will think the baby is bad and leave it alone. If you compliment the baby and the spirits hear, they might try to steal it.

But that's all for now! Today is my last full day at site, sad story.

Love and miss you all!

So it's monsoon season here. Which is awesome if you don't mind mud. I prefer mud to sweat, so bring it on, I say. Anyway it's been raining all afternoon. This tends to send humans and assorted critters into houses. Today our critter was tree snake. I just got home and really had to pee so I ran to the bathroom. A small tree snake beat me to it however. I don't know which of was more freaked out, me or the snake. I'm pretty sure my bladder was fuller, so I weigh my options quickly. I could just jump over the snake and hope that it doesn't attack me while I'm peeing, or I could try to catch it and throw it outside. In hindsight, given the fact that it was just a green tree snake, the first option probably wasn't a bad idea, but I went for the second. I stand there for a moment, not sure how to go about catching a small, wet snake on a slippery bathroom floor. What I'm sure of is that I'm not going to be one of those girls who goes crying to some man to take care of it. Tongs, I think. I need some tongs. By this point I've completely forgotten that I have to pee. I go downstairs to grab the tongs, but they aren't there. I look all over. Can't find them. I don't want to ask my family, because then they'll wonder what in the world I need a pair of tongs for when I'm clearly not cooking. Finally I give in. I go outside to inquire as to the whereabouts of our tongs. Just as I suspected, my host dad is like "Why do you need them?" I still want to do this myself, so I try to be as vague as possible. "I need to pick up something." He is surprisingly unsatisfied by my answer, at which point I break down and tell him there is a snake in the bathroom. "Forget tongs," he says "we need a big stick." "Ok,"I reply "I'll go get one." But it was not to be. We have entered man territory, where girls, especially foreign ones, dare not tread. We've got some snake-killin' to do. He grabs a big stick and rubber boots and runs to the bathroom. He crouches into stealth position, with a gaggle of kids noisily trailing behind him (which seemed to me to rather defeat the purpose of stealth, but whatever). He slowly pulls the door back and wacks the snake on the back. The snake was not expecting this, and screamed (I swear, I didn't know snakes could scream). The only one screaming louder than the snake was my host dad. It came right at him and he jumped on the toilet and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of the snake. A few minutes later it was all over, and he had the snake's body on a stick and was chasing his niece around with it. I was exhausted just watching the whole spectacle. There were several men around and now they're all retelling the story like it was some sort of mutant python.

I also learned today that in some of the poorer regions men like eat fried cow and pig testicles when they drink. Yummy. Glad I am not their friend.

I guess I haven’t written in a while. It’s not so much that I don’t have anything to write about, more like the last few weeks have been a bit introspective, and maybe a little boring. While in the US I accepted a job offer to teach ESL at an elementary school in Kunming, China. It’s a school for expatriate children (expatriates are foreigners who reside in another country, as opposed to tourists who are just passing through). So I won’t actually be teaching any Chinese students. All the classes are in English, so I will be helping the non-native English speakers (Koreans, Indians, Italians, etc) to keep up. I am really excited, but as always when you leave a place that’s become home, feelings are mixed. I do love my village a lot. My friends are fun, kind, and generous. I can’t even imagine how much I will miss them. I definitely wouldn’t still be here if wasn’t for a few amazing people in village. However, Cambodia as whole is beginning to wear on me. In my village people know me. While they still do and say things that would be considered rude by American standards (ex. Stop eating so much rice or you’ll be too fat to find a husband!), I know that for the most part they consider me a member of the community and they look out for me. If someone is rude to me, someone will tell him/her off. No one tries to rip me off because I’m a foreigner. But that is unfortunately not the case when I leave my village. People are rude because they think I can’t understand them, and they are so certain I’m rich that they get angry when I refuse to pay double what the price would be if I were Cambodian. A cart-taxi driver tried to charge me double the price when I reach my destination, I refused and he tore up the money I offered him and threw it in my face. I taped it together and bought breakfast with it the next day, he basically gave me a free ride. He sure showed me. But things like that I think I can do without. They are really the hardest part about being here. The lack of electricity, running water, or internet isn’t really a big deal. It’s amazing how quickly you get used to it. But being treated like some sort of sideshow freak can become a bit annoying. But the flipside is that when you meet people who can appreciate you as an individual, and not as a source of entertainment, it means a lot. I’m sitting here in the disaster area that is my room, trying to decide what to do with all my junk. It’s strange going through two years worth of accumulated stuff. I’m doing good now, and haven’t cried in almost three days. I have less than three weeks here at site, soon I will go with some of my students to a pre-workshop training, stay in Phnom Penh to finish up paperwork and then fly to China.

The best way to describe my relationship with Cambodia is it’s like being part of a family. It can be irritating beyond belief, but at the end of the day they’re there for you. Before leaving America two years ago, I remember thinking “How can I go for two years? How much will I miss?” I did miss a lot of things. I missed my great-grandmother’s funeral, weddings, births, birthdays, and anniversaries. That was incredibly difficult. But the truth is I would have missed so much more if I had stayed. The Olympics, Heroes, the rise of Lady Gaga, aren’t things I particularly regret missing. But caring about people who’ve never really mattered to anyone, and having them care about me is something that I can’t imagine living without. Many of my friends in Cambodia are getting married, having babies, changing jobs, etc. So we’re all starting new things in life and it does make me sad that I won’t get to see them. I’ve done a lot of growing up here. I’ve learned a lot about myself. Not all of it good, but I guess 24 is a bit young to be perfect. I’d hate to make everyone jealous.

So basically I’m just trying to enjoy a brief break from teaching English, and spending as much time as I can with my friends, as well as reading. I think I’ve become a bit too Cambodian. I can sit on my porch with a book in my hands and never look at it; I can just sit there staring into space for hours. Seriously. I get annoyed when people expect me to show up to places on time. When I have to work more than three hours in a row I act like a deserve some kind of medal. Clearly this has no connection to what normal people would consider to be reality, so I’m sure it’s good that I’m going back to the real world now before this kind of behavior becomes permanent. But there’s just something so wonderful about just walking down the road and people stopping you to hang out with them. They’re like “Here eat this.” Cambodians are very uncomfortable being around people who aren’t eating. They feel like they’re somehow being inhospitable. If you show up when they’ve just run out of food they will buy you some more.

I went to visit my host family from training a couple of days ago. It’s always fun to go back, my language skills are much better, they tell me, but I’m still not thin. They are masters of the obvious. I was welcomed by drunk women meeting me on the road and kissing me. Well, in Cambodia kissing is more akin to sniffing, but whatever. One of them came by my house a little later with a two liter soda bottle that used to be full of palm liquor. Alas, by this time it was almost empty. Tragic. So this woman comes up to me and shows me that just a few drops are left in the bottle. This is clearly very upsetting. The woman is on the verge of tears, running around yelling “It’s empty! It’s empty!” and begging everyone around for money to remedy the situation. She comes up to me, and as politely as I can I tell her I don’t have any money. And she’s like “No, you don’t understand, my bottle is empty.” I offer to pour her some tea and she walks away in disgust. Then it’s time for the funeral. I have no idea whose funeral it was, but that’s not important. It wasn’t the real funeral; it was the seven day later funeral. Basically monks chant, neighbors come bearing gifts of money and incense, and then the family of the deceased serves rice porridge to guests. Traditionally white shirts are worn to funerals, but as long as you bring the money it doesn’t really matter. The best part of a funeral is that the monks’ chanting is blasted on a loudspeaker until midnight, and then starts up again at 4am. Fun. The real purpose of a funeral seems to be specifically for old people to get drunk. They are kind of the stars at funerals, helping out the monks and what not, sometimes they take over the chanting to give the monks a break. The best chants actually happen around 9pm, because the old folks are giving the monks a break, but it is sooo past their bedtime, and they’re really drunk, so they have no idea what they’re saying. I can’t really understand the chanting, because it’s done really fast, and they use a lot of religious words that I don’t know. But I think that sometimes the monks get bored and start chanting whatever pops into their heads because no one’s really listening. I swear they went on for longest time about fried noodles.

And that’s my life as of now. I will continue to blog from China, fear not. I love and miss you all!

Sorry haven't been able to write in a while, so here are some tidbits to tide you over until I can properly blog.

I fell of a buffalo cart. The water buffalo were rather perturbed at having to cart us up a mountain. We had a picnic of rice, fried pork, and raw beef, then climbed a mountain at noon, when it was prop 110degrees. Most of the students were wearing jackets. They're afraid of getting a tan. I don't know how they don't die.

When asked why I won't marry a Cambodian I responded because they're unfaithful and like to beat their wives. A woman told me you can't be angry at them for this, too many women, too little time. I wanted to throw up.

I had to explain to a drunk man why when it's day in Cambodia, it's night in America. He couldn't quite grasp the concept of the world being round.

Yesterday we had a ceremony to inaugurate a new Buddha shrine at the high school. There is already a shrine less than a hundred feet away, but technically it belongs to the junior high, so in order to ensure that we at the high school receive full benefits, we had to spend $500 (which is about the same amount putting walls in the classrooms would cost, but whatev) making a bigger and better shrine. Ours even had gold spray paint. That's how we roll. Honestly I think it was all just a big excuse to get drunk and have a party.

I was told that I would miss the heat when I get to china. That is definitely not something I will miss. Things I won't miss: People watching over my shoulder as I use the computer or text, Cambodian men, and the heat. I will however miss the cheap, delicious food, afternoon naps, and basically owning a small town.Love and miss you all

Hello again. I found myself doing real work for nearly two hours in row and decided that some procrastablogging was in order. I’m trying to prepare for the Foreign Service Oral Exam, so I’m basically trying to have some answers ready for the questions I know that they will ask. This mainly consists of telling the state department why I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread and why they’d have to be complete idiots for not hiring me. This should be easy, given my obvious attributes, but I find myself wondering, “Does the state department consider, say, the ability to quickly open a coconut with a machete, a particularly desirable skill?” What about the art of sitting around in a hammock? You must understand that this is not a joke. Anyone who comes here for any period of time will find themselves doing a lot of sitting around. Anytime you will be required to wait more than two seconds you be invited to angkui-leng, which means to sit down, just hang out and relax. When you go to visit people, this will be the principal activity involved. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent just sitting. Sometimes no one feels the need to make conversation. You can just show up at someone’s house, sit in their hammock for a couple of hours, and then go on about your business. It’s really quite fantastic. Sometimes you have fantastic conversations, and sometimes everyone just sits there awkwardly not saying anything. There isn’t really a word for “awkward” in Khmer, and I think this is because in order to have a concept of awkward, you would first have to have some not awkward experiences with which to compare. And I don’t think there are any not awkward experiences here. But the best way to avoid awkwardness is rice. People will always invite you eat rice. Always. “Have you eaten rice yet?” is the preferred way to start a conversation. If you haven’t eaten rice, that will shortly be remedied. Even if you show up at someone’s house as they’re finishing a meal and all the food is gone, they will still ask you to eat rice, and probably offer to cook more food for you. If you have already eaten rice they will ask you to eat more rice. If you show up unannounced at someone’s house at a non-meal hour, say 3pm, or even 3am, they will apologize for not having rice, and offer to make some for you. Any awkward situation can be remedied by giving people something to eat. Luckily it is mango season, and mangoes can substitute for rice at non meal times. In a given day I can eat anywhere from 3-12 mangoes. There are usually some at home, and you absolutely cannot go anywhere without being offered mangoes at this time of year. The problem is that Cambodians tend to like strong sour and bitter flavors, and thus eat a lot of green mangoes. This makes me kind of sad as ripe, yellow/orange, sweet mangoes are delicious and if you would just wait a while those gross sour things would become soft and delicious. And you can’t eat sour fruit without spicy salt. They mix salt and chili peppers to eat green mangoes. The best thing is that my host family likes to use Tony Chachere’s Cajun Seasoning instead of taking the time to mix the salt and chili peppers. I think this is hilarious.

Getting back to the point though. What does the State Department want from me? I have many mad skills, it’s true. Why just yesterday, after being fed a meal of rice and fried pork, at hiked up a mountain at noon, when it was probably in the high 90s/low 100s. Can you do that? Doubt it. Is it an advisable thing to do? Not really. I can understand ridiculously garbled Englsih. Ex “Yesterday me go party ghost grandmother for Sophea after face house for place sell cheese.” This means “Yesterday, I went to Sophea’s grandmother’s funeral. It was in front of the place that sells fish paste. “You go eat wedding?” means “Will you attend the wedding dinner?” “Where you from?” usually means “Where have you been?” I can avoid herds of water buffalo while biking, I can do local dances, I can use chopsticks for several different purposes, I can entertain myself for hours watching motos drive by my house. Clearly I am a highly adept individual. But will the government recognize this? We shall see.

In other news I was at the beach and didn’t actually get sunburned! Yay! Oddly enough I met up with one of my students there, this is odd because the beach is really far away from our village, but it’s a small world. So now all of my students will know that when I go to the beach I swim in my underwear (Cambodians don’t get the difference between underwear and swimwear, they swim fully clothed). But usually Cambodians buy new outfits for traveling and wear their nice, new clothes to go swimming. I’m just not up for that. The beach was a good time, but Katie (the volunteer who I was traveling with) had to get back to her village for a wedding. So I tagged along. Like all Khmer weddings there was plenty of alcohol, drama, and dancing. But this one had something special: FRENCH FRIES!! The fries were part of a dish called lok lak, which is sauted, peppered beef on a bed of lettuce, onions, and tomatoes. Sometimes they fry potatoes to go along with it. Sadly this dish was made special for the Muslims, as they can’t eat the pork dishes, so we didn’t get any. But we were not going to be left out, so we just changed tables and sat with the Muslims. We tried to make it look like we were just moving to be friendly, but I think they caught on when the fries disappeared and we started scavenging them from other tables. In our defense, no one else seemed to be eating them anyway. Katie has mad scavenging skills, and secured 3 two-liter bottles of sprite for me in various stages of fullness so I could have something to drink. The best part was toward to the end of the night when they brought a gigantic plate of fries to our table. The next day I came back to my village, where there was also a party. So my students taught me how to dance to Korean pop songs. Yet another unique skill that just doesn’t seem to fit on a resume.

So just trying to get through the next few days, which will be a total whirlwind. I really should get back to work. Thanks for listening to my rants! Happy Khmer New Year to everyone!

As I lay here under a fan I am perfecting a new skill. It involves opening a small chocolate snack; say a fun-sized kit kat, for instance, without spilling any of the melted chocolate, placing the whole package in my mouth, and then sucking every last bit of chocolaty goodness out of the wrapper. Some folks turn up their nose at melted chocolate. To them I say, “You are a bit of sissy.” It just takes a little more work, that’s all. You only wish you had mad skills like this. I’m pretty sure this ranks up there with sheep milking. But that’s a story for another day. The point is, I am a bit of a renaissance woman. Sadly, my many talents do not extend to the realm of music. This is unfortunate because the good folks of South Korea were considerate enough to provide many Cambodian high schools with electric keyboards. Mine was one of those lucky schools. What they did not provide was someone who knows how to play them. First I need to explain that Cambodians like noise. Things that we would consider annoying they think are fabulous. Whiney electric guitar riffs 24/7? Bring it. Playing whiney electric guitar riffs with your cell phone’s mp3 player at 2am when everyone is trying to sleep? Even better. Everything here, from weddings to deaths to purchasing ice cream must be accompanied by lots and lots of noise. There is so much noise that it does sometimes bother even Cambodians. But for the most part they grew up surrounded by it, so they don’t really understand the sanity-reducing effects if has on people who were not so fortunate.

This keyboard is possibly the strongest attack on my sanity so far. It sits in the teachers lounge, at a respectful distance from the Buddha statue. And it is loud. Riem can play a little. But no else one can. Not a note. Does this stop them? Absolutely not. It amazes me how they can persevere in their “musical” endeavors, but won’t go to class because it is too hot. These people are teachers. I would say they are grown men, but that would be true only on a physical level. The keyboard hadn’t been set up for ten minutes before someone compared the microphone to a penis. But the noise. Oh the noise. They pound away, playing with the settings (they really enjoyed the animal noises). What they really couldn’t understand was that I couldn’t play it. After all, the keyboard is foreign, and I am foreign, so clearly I have some mysterious foreign connection to it. Sadly no. Also, I was bit weirded out by them giving me the microphone after the penis joke.

I don’t mean to be crude, but when it comes to genitalia, people have the maturity level of middle schoolers. Everything that could even vaguely resemble a penis has to be remarked upon. A banana placed near two small round fruits will make for hours of amusement. And it isn’t just a passing remark. People will keep saying to each other “you know what this looks like? Hahaha?” I was at a meeting about improving poor people’s access to nutritious foods when a high ranking NGO staff member called his friend over to our table to look at his exciting (or maybe excited) fruit sculpture. And women can be even worse. I was teaching female NGO staff members when one of them came in with a bunch of bananas. Another immediately declared, “It looks like a man!” A really funny joke goes something like this “Women have breasts.” No kidding. It’s really funny. Sometimes when they really get on my nerves I decide to one up them by talking about periods. That shuts them up pretty quick. Yes, friends, sometimes it is difficult to have a mature conversation when fruit, water bottles, or ink pens are on the table. (Yes I said ink pens. I’ll leave that one to your imagination)

Completely unrelated: I’m 24. Almost a quarter of century. When I think about that it seems a little strange, and I don’t feel any more mature than the grown men who laugh at bananas. But my birthday turned out to be pretty fantastic. A few days before my b-day I got sick and had to go to Phnom Penh. I really don’t like Phnom Penh. I can’t really tell you why. Maybe it’s just that I like my village more, and being away from it seems like a waste of time. Anyway, my wonderful students planned a birthday party for me. And I was scared the doctor wouldn’t let me go home in time. It was a stressful weekend, because I was sick, my wallet was stolen, with the party money, my phone, and my bank card inside, and at first the doctor thought I had a really terrible disease (I didn’t, thank God), and I had no way to get money to my students for the party. But on Sunday some of the other volunteers who were in town took me out to an Italian restaurant and then some of us watched a movie in the hotel. It was pretty great. And Riem being the doll that he is paid for everything for the students’ party. I got back to site in time to watch the meal preparation (they don’t really trust me with knives, can’t say that I blame them) and have a fantastic party. I kind of wanted to get some Betty Crocker cake mix and make it for my birthday, but Riem assured me this was unnecessary. It was a good thing too, as very little of the cake was eaten; most of was used for a food fight. Which was fine by me. I had forgotten that no Khmer birthday party is complete without a food fight. Which makes for an unfortunate laundry experience, but totally worth it. I think the reason for this is because it is an acceptable way for boys and girls to touch each other (you can’t just throw the cake at people, you have to smear it all over them). And as fun as the food fight was, had they used a Betty Crocker yellow cake with fudge icing I would have cried.

And I received some excellent goodies from the states, so thank you everyone for your cards, chocolate, clothing and assorted other treats. They were much appreciated.

Today, as many of you sexist Americans seem to be unaware, is International Women’s Rights day. Because the UN said so. How do I know you are sexist? Because I bet most of you will go to work on Monday morning. Here in Cambodia, women’s rights are celebrated by not going to work and getting drunk. Unless of course you are a market seller, or a housewife. Then you still have to work just like any other day. What do housewives and market sellers have in common? They are women. You only get to take the day off if you work for a bank, a phone company, or a school. Basically, if you are man, you celebrate women’s rights day by doing nothing. And if you are a woman, well, you get to celebrate your rights to cook and clean and do laundry and pick up after your drunk male relatives. And all you American men are probably at work and sober at 9:00am on a Monday. Clearly you have no understanding of how to properly celebrate women’s rights day. Being the liberated woman that I am, I celebrate women’s rights day by typing this blog for you all, beloved readers. And I may do some laundry later.

Seriously speaking I have already attended two women’s rights day events. My students and I were invited to speak about our leadership workshops to people in remote villages. It was the first time such a celebration had taken place in either village. It very humbling, as much as I like to think I’m hardcore, I’m really not. My house has running water and electricity most of the time. I live across the street from the market, so I can easily get most anything I need. There is decent cell phone service and periodic internet access. The villages we went to were not so fortunate. The first one took an hour and a half to reach. We had to travel a road that was nothing but sand, over a mountain, and cross a river. In the rainy season it is nearly impossible to get there. Because of the transportation difficulties, the people can neither sell their goods outside the villages, or buy goods from outside. Most of the villagers who attended walked several miles because they can’t even afford bicycles. There is no school, so nearly the entire population is illiterate. I was glad my students were able to see it as well. Living in the market town, we may not have very much, but it’s a lot more than nothing, which is what these people have. Like all Cambodian “celebrations” a few important people sat at a table facing the audience and made long, boring speeches. They asked questions to the audience, and anyone who answered received a prize of soap or toothpaste/toothbrush. I’m not going to tell you that the audience cared about women’s rights. Most of them didn’t. They came for the free stuff. And I was a little disturbed by the way the NGO staff herded the people like cattle, gave them the stuff, and then yelled at them to get out of the way. Had I gone just for that, I would have been disappointed, if not a little sickened. But the truth is no one would have come just to hear about women’s rights. And maybe they didn’t pay much attention, but they did here ideas that they had never heard before, so I hope some kind of seed was planted. But what made it worth it for me was my students. The NGO staff was disappointed that the girls and I didn’t speak longer. But people tuned out the long speeches. They paid attention to us. Granted I am rather attention grabbing. But the girls talked about what they did and what they learned, and everyone really seemed to pay attention. The girls were nervous but they all spoke really well. I have never been so proud of them. Because we didn’t speak very long, the girls and I had a lot of downtime. We played sudoku, chided the monks for smoking, they asked the English word for “breasts” and we sized up the men. They thought the driver was very polite and handsome, but he was rather old. The other NGO worker was younger, but his cheeks were too puffy and he looked like he would be rude. Portraits from the two days of celebrating women’s rights: A little girl using a (needle-less) syringe as a pacifier. A crying baby placed in a cardboard box, he then becomes very excited and tries to eat the box. 9 Cambodians all speaking at the same time about the relative ripeness of mangoes and bananas. The deputy director of women’s affairs stopping the car to get out and collect leaves for soup, while still wearing her celebration finery.

This past weekend was rather busy. I went with my host sister and some of her friends to take a scholarship exam in the provincial town. The next day there was a soccer game, we lost 4-1 but I got an excellent tan, much to the distress of the Cambodians. I get home from the soccer game and my host mom tells me that I need to go to Phnom Penh with her and translate for some Indian guy who wants to buy wood from her. Well the Indian guy turns out to be Pakistani, who doesn’t speak English well. It was awful. We picked him up at his hotel, went to one house to get wood, and then went to another house to look at the wood, which he didn’t like. So went back to the first house (the trip to the second house was a complete waste of time) except on the way back to the first house we got lost. I couldn’t even imagine what this guy was thinking. If I were him I would have just gotten out of the car because clearly these people have no idea what they’re doing. I was quite visibly angry. And then when I tried to explain something to my host mom she told me to shut up. I was livid. And then the man wanted to start bargaining, except he had misunderstood when I told him that the wood was five hundred dollars a kilo and thought it was five thousand. So that took time to explain. It all worked out in the end and I calmed down after I ate a muffin. But he shows up at my house unannounced today wanting more wood. He shows up right as I’m getting out the shower to get ready to go to a meeting. So the grandma (the new one, who is not the brightest crayon in the box, not the old one) is telling me to come downstairs immediately, seemingly not aware of the fact that I am naked. I tell her I should put clothes on first, and she’s like, oh that’s a good idea. Anyway, he seems rather upset that I’m busy, but I’m rather upset that he just showed up without telling anyone, so we’re even. So I go to my meeting with an NGO director. Who is a no-show (probably too busy celebrating women’s rights). It was a rather infuriating morning. I think what made it even worse was the irony that had I been a man, most likely neither my Pakistani friend nor the NGO director would have treated me like that. Happy women’s rights day to me. I really need a muffin.

Small joys: I had two cups of coffee this morning. My spoiled little host sister yelled at me to get out of the shower (which while rude to us, is even more rude for a Cambodian as I am old enough to be her mother) so I took my time. Finding that my grandma is doing laundry so I have to wait til later to do my own laundry. Darn. The props accorded me by the construction workers next door as they watched me jump a fence since the gate was locked. A fan. Bathing up to 8 times a day. Discounts. Sugarcane juice. A soft pillow. Being the only foreigner for miles. Wearing my tried and true (which the unimaginative might call old and worn) flips flops everywhere to the embarrassment of my host family. Coconuts. Assorted vegetables. Cute dogs. Sudoku. Fried bananas. Pajamas. Silence.

One of the things on this list is being the only foreigner. Most people don’t understand how I can enjoy this. To them I ask, how could I not? I can do whatever I want. Clearly I am the most beautiful, and I speak the best Khmer, simply by virtue of being the only one. I would hate to have to compete with someone for those titles. I am the ultimate authority on western culture. Why are you wearing those old shoes? Well because in America everyone wears old shoes. It is also a fantastic excuse for when I don’t want to do something: Well in America women beat up men when the men get drunk, so it’s probably best if I don’t attend your drinking party, but thank you anyway. I am the undisputed princess. I have but to make a suggestion and it is obeyed. Wouldn’t it be excellent if that trash were burnt? Yes ma’am. And in a few minutes the trash will be burnt. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there were some sugarcane juice? It certainly would, coming right up. I think I need 3 boxes of thumbtacks, 20 bottles of bleach, and nail clippers. Why of course you do, one moment. I have a mystique. I see this as the payment for people staring at me and being rude. While many things, like calling people fat, aren’t as rude to Cambodians as to Americans, they do sometimes forget that foreigners are people too, not just circus attractions provided for their amusement. I’ve also noticed that some people seem view it as a way of getting even with me for being from a rich country.

I should say that I really do love Cambodia and Cambodians. But like all relationships that are truly loving, you have to be able to see the faults of the ones you love. After all, if a person were faultless, then they everyone would love them and it wouldn’t really mean much. Cambodia clearly has its faults. However, I myself have many faults and Cambodians seem to love me in spite of them. While hearing about how fat I am, how rich I am, and how I would be thinner and find a husband easier if I didn’t eat so much, are all extremely annoying, they really aren’t the point. Some people are just jerks. But I’ve discovered most of the Khmer people whom I dislike, are also disliked by the population in general. All of the my friends have at some point told me I’d be prettier if I weren’t so fat. But because I know that they are good-hearted people who are trying to give me useful advice I can deal with it.

I’m off to continue celebrating women’s rights with noodles and a nap, love and miss you all. Come see me in Tulsa if you get a chance!

First things first: Geaux Saints!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shout out to all of Louisiana, this is the most exciting that has pretty much ever happened. And if you’re a Colts fan you shouldn’t be.

Second: Exams are not fun. Period. Thankfully I was a bit under the weather so I didn’t have to proctor the semester exams this time. Yay! The students were quite glad, as I’m the only teacher that doesn’t let them cheat. And by that I mean I don’t let them get up from their desks to go look at their friends’ papers. It is ridiculous the cheating here. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll talk about it again. No one cares. Students yell answers to each other from across the room. They have conversations. They make paper airplanes with their exam papers and fly them over to classmates. I wish I were joking. They have all sorts of cheat sheets, many of them ripped pages out of their textbooks. And NO ONE CARES. I take away their cheat sheets and make them sit still. But it is impossible to stop them from talking. I can’t fail them, I really have no power over them. But they don’t like to make me angry, so that helps. But cracking down on cheating seems like a straightforward solution, so why isn’t there more of an effort to do this? It’s complicated. Number one, that would require more work of the already grossly underpaid teachers (if they’re paid at all). It’s much easier just to ignore the cheating. Another issue is that cracking down on cheating would need to be implemented nationwide. It would be unfair to judge the exam scores of students who freely cheated against those who weren’t allowed to. Well, they should just study harder. True, like many American students, some Cambodian students are lazy or unmotivated. But there is another side to the coin, and that goes back to the problem of teacher salaries. Often teachers’ already low salaries ($40-$80 a month) are a month or two late. And the teachers get paid this ridiculously low amount whether they actually show up or not. So often teachers choose the latter option. The problem is that they make tests based on the material they should have covered if we had school everyday and they showed up to class everyday. So sometimes students will have only had a couple of class sessions in a particular subject the entire semester, and are then tested over the entire book. So it’s kind of hard to tell them they can’t cheat, when the whole system is screwing them over. At my school, there is only one math teacher for grade 12, and the grade 12 national exam (basically their ACT/SAT) is on March 23rd. This math teacher is quitting teaching and going to work as a surveyor for the forestry service because it pays more. So with a little over a month left til the exam, the grade 12 students have no math teacher. And math is the most important subject on the exam. And then there are the questions themselves. I wrote a lot of the test, so it was a lot better than last year’s, but some sections were not run by me first. For example:

Have you seen a cup anywhere? We seem to be ___________ a) see b) missed c) lose d) found

What’s the correct answer? If you said e) none of the above – you are right! Unfortunately the students were not given option E. Having said all this, there are often comical aspects to an exam. This is what my students have to say about life:

When we fart in a crowded room, we feel excited. (It should be When we fart in a crowded room, we feel embarrassed)

The usually students play football on weekends

If she had become a politician that is why the police fined him

The boy was broken by the window (It should be The window was broken by the boy)

My daughter was cooked (It should be The food was cooked by my daughter)

I bought a bike. It was intelligent.

On Cambodian history:

Angkor Wat was attacked and decorated by Thailand.

Angkor Wat is one of the largest religious collapse in the world.

The king decorated the region

On the things money can buy:

Big clothes

A husband

A young womn

Honor

A good score on the exam

Modern (Modern what? Dunno)

Family happiness

A trip to the moon

And some of the questions on the exam weren’t exactly wrong, but certainly unusual. If the students filled in the blanks correctly, they would make these sentences:

If people did not die and leave the earth, the earth would be too crowded.

If the animals came when they were called, the people would have caught them easily without running.

So yeah. That’s examination Khmer style.

On a victorious note, I cleaned my room today. For those of you who are unaware of my tidiness-related habits, suffice to say they are non-existent. My dear mother spent 18 years of her life trying to get me to keep my room clean, alas with little success. That is not to say I am complete slob, I hate having food or anything that harbors mold and nasty bugs. But the simple act of folding my clothes and putting them away eludes me sometimes. This is not helped by the fact that I moved recently, and while I have a 5’x5’bed, I only have an 8’x8’ room. Meaning if I have a 1 foot wide walkway that leaves about 4 square feet of storage space. So today I went to the market and spent over $15 on storage items. That is almost a week’s salary.

But the problem is solved and now my room is clean, if not spacious. Walking back from the market, arms loaded with plastic storage apparati, every marveled at the sheer amount of things I bought. So now everyone knows that I have lived at the new house for four months and am just now getting around to cleaning my room. I know that I have integrated into my community because people now gossip about me in the same manner as they do each other. Sometimes people come through who don’t know me, and the only way I can think to describe is like the scene in Toy Story when Buzz and Woody land in the alien toy grabber machine and all the little alien toys are like “Strangers! From the outside! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” It’s kinda like that. And that can get annoying. But thankfully people are pretty used to seeing me. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been asked how much bread I eat (I’m white, which clearly means I’m French, and clearly the French eat bread all the time, so it’s a logical question). The locals even correct out-of-towners when they ask “Who’s the French chick?” and the locals are like “She’s not French, she’s American, they’re different.” The revelation that French/English/American are all completely different astounds many people here. All white people are called French and it is assumed that they speak English.

Getting back to gossip, the market is like high school for old ladies. Every goes around telling everyone each others business. One day two market ladies will be best friends, the next not speaking to each other. It’s like a soap opera, but better. I get to just sit there and sip coffee while it all happens around me. The other day, my former host mom, to whom ascribing the term vain would be a gross understatement asked a police officer who was prettier, she, or her friend the rice seller. The police officer, who was obviously not born yesterday, says they’re equally pretty. This enrages my former host mom. She goes on about how she buys expensive (and slightly slutty, though she didn’t say that) clothes, wears make-up, gets her hair done, gets manicures, pedicures, the works (side note, she always talks about how she has no money, but every day she wears a new shirt to the market). Given all this, she should be significantly prettier than the rice seller. The rice seller just looks at her own chest, pulls her shirt down a bit, and simply says “mine are bigger.” That made my morning.

I have to laugh when people talk about how rich Americans are. Yesterday the market ladies were all comparing their $3 shirts. I, on the other hand, was wearing clothes I’d found in the give-away bin at the Peace Corps office. The majority of my wardrobe consists of things found in the give-away bin or purchased for fifty cents from a thrift store. I wouldn’t be caught dead paying $3 for an item of clothing. It’s an upside down world over here. But I have learned to read, at least a little! The language has 33 consonants and 27 vowels. Most of those vowels have two different sounds depending on what consonant they’re with. And the vowels are written above, below, to the left, and to the right of the consonant. And each consonant has another form (like how we have capital letters and small letters) that can be written underneath another consonant to shorten the sound. So there are 122 possible phonemes. Which is why after living here a year and a half I have attained an approximately 2nd grade reading level. But I can read most signs, and I can write small words (an excellent party trick) so I consider myself successful. One last comment, the warning label on my eyedrops has informed me that possible side effects include bone marrow depression and/or newborn infants. What will happen? Will my bone marrow fall into a state of depression? Will newborn infants randomly appear? Stay tuned for more details. Love and miss you all!

First things first: Geaux Saints!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shout out to all of Louisiana, this is the most exciting that has pretty much ever happened. And if you’re a Colts fan you shouldn’t be.

Second: Exams are not fun. Period. Thankfully I was a bit under the weather so I didn’t have to proctor the semester exams this time. Yay! The students were quite glad, as I’m the only teacher that doesn’t let them cheat. And by that I mean I don’t let them get up from their desks to go look at their friends’ papers. It is ridiculous the cheating here. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll talk about it again. No one cares. Students yell answers to each other from across the room. They have conversations. They make paper airplanes with their exam papers and fly them over to classmates. I wish I were joking. They have all sorts of cheat sheets, many of them ripped pages out of their textbooks. And NO ONE CARES. I take away their cheat sheets and make them sit still. But it is impossible to stop them from talking. I can’t fail them, I really have no power over them. But they don’t like to make me angry, so that helps. But cracking down on cheating seems like a straightforward solution, so why isn’t there more of an effort to do this? It’s complicated. Number one, that would require more work of the already grossly underpaid teachers (if they’re paid at all). It’s much easier just to ignore the cheating. Another issue is that cracking down on cheating would need to be implemented nationwide. It would be unfair to judge the exam scores of students who freely cheated against those who weren’t allowed to. Well, they should just study harder. True, like many American students, some Cambodian students are lazy or unmotivated. But there is another side to the coin, and that goes back to the problem of teacher salaries. Often teachers’ already low salaries ($40-$80 a month) are a month or two late. And the teachers get paid this ridiculously low amount whether they actually show up or not. So often teachers choose the latter option. The problem is that they make tests based on the material they should have covered if we had school everyday and they showed up to class everyday. So sometimes students will have only had a couple of class sessions in a particular subject the entire semester, and are then tested over the entire book. So it’s kind of hard to tell them they can’t cheat, when the whole system is screwing them over. At my school, there is only one math teacher for grade 12, and the grade 12 national exam (basically their ACT/SAT) is on March 23rd. This math teacher is quitting teaching and going to work as a surveyor for the forestry service because it pays more. So with a little over a month left til the exam, the grade 12 students have no math teacher. And math is the most important subject on the exam. And then there are the questions themselves. I wrote a lot of the test, so it was a lot better than last year’s, but some sections were not run by me first. For example:

Have you seen a cup anywhere? We seem to be ___________ a) see b) missed c) lose d) found

What’s the correct answer? If you said e) none of the above – you are right! Unfortunately the students were not given option E. Having said all this, there are often comical aspects to an exam. This is what my students have to say about life:

When we fart in a crowded room, we feel excited. (It should be When we fart in a crowded room, we feel embarrassed)

The usually students play football on weekends

If she had become a politician that is why the police fined him

The boy was broken by the window (It should be The window was broken by the boy)

My daughter was cooked (It should be The food was cooked by my daughter)

I bought a bike. It was intelligent.

On Cambodian history:

Angkor Wat was attacked and decorated by Thailand.

Angkor Wat is one of the largest religious collapse in the world.

The king decorated the region

On the things money can buy:

Big clothes

A husband

A young womn

Honor

A good score on the exam

Modern (Modern what? Dunno)

Family happiness

A trip to the moon

And some of the questions on the exam weren’t exactly wrong, but certainly unusual. If the students filled in the blanks correctly, they would make these sentences:

If people did not die and leave the earth, the earth would be too crowded.

If the animals came when they were called, the people would have caught them easily without running.

So yeah. That’s examination Khmer style.

On a victorious note, I cleaned my room today. For those of you who are unaware of my tidiness-related habits, suffice to say they are non-existent. My dear mother spent 18 years of her life trying to get me to keep my room clean, alas with little success. That is not to say I am complete slob, I hate having food or anything that harbors mold and nasty bugs. But the simple act of folding my clothes and putting them away eludes me sometimes. This is not helped by the fact that I moved recently, and while I have a 5’x5’bed, I only have an 8’x8’ room. Meaning if I have a 1 foot wide walkway that leaves about 4 square feet of storage space. So today I went to the market and spent over $15 on storage items. That is almost a week’s salary.

But the problem is solved and now my room is clean, if not spacious. Walking back from the market, arms loaded with plastic storage apparati, every marveled at the sheer amount of things I bought. So now everyone knows that I have lived at the new house for four months and am just now getting around to cleaning my room. I know that I have integrated into my community because people now gossip about me in the same manner as they do each other. Sometimes people come through who don’t know me, and the only way I can think to describe is like the scene in Toy Story when Buzz and Woody land in the alien toy grabber machine and all the little alien toys are like “Strangers! From the outside! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” It’s kinda like that. And that can get annoying. But thankfully people are pretty used to seeing me. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been asked how much bread I eat (I’m white, which clearly means I’m French, and clearly the French eat bread all the time, so it’s a logical question). The locals even correct out-of-towners when they ask “Who’s the French chick?” and the locals are like “She’s not French, she’s American, they’re different.” The revelation that French/English/American are all completely different astounds many people here. All white people are called French and it is assumed that they speak English.

Getting back to gossip, the market is like high school for old ladies. Every goes around telling everyone each others business. One day two market ladies will be best friends, the next not speaking to each other. It’s like a soap opera, but better. I get to just sit there and sip coffee while it all happens around me. The other day, my former host mom, to whom ascribing the term vain would be a gross understatement asked a police officer who was prettier, she, or her friend the rice seller. The police officer, who was obviously not born yesterday, says they’re equally pretty. This enrages my former host mom. She goes on about how she buys expensive (and slightly slutty, though she didn’t say that) clothes, wears make-up, gets her hair done, gets manicures, pedicures, the works (side note, she always talks about how she has no money, but every day she wears a new shirt to the market). Given all this, she should be significantly prettier than the rice seller. The rice seller just looks at her own chest, pulls her shirt down a bit, and simply says “mine are bigger.” That made my morning.

I have to laugh when people talk about how rich Americans are. Yesterday the market ladies were all comparing their $3 shirts. I, on the other hand, was wearing clothes I’d found in the give-away bin at the Peace Corps office. The majority of my wardrobe consists of things found in the give-away bin or purchased for fifty cents from a thrift store. I wouldn’t be caught dead paying $3 for an item of clothing. It’s an upside down world over here. But I have learned to read, at least a little! The language has 33 consonants and 27 vowels. Most of those vowels have two different sounds depending on what consonant they’re with. And the vowels are written above, below, to the left, and to the right of the consonant. And each consonant has another form (like how we have capital letters and small letters) that can be written underneath another consonant to shorten the sound. So there are 122 possible phonemes. Which is why after living here a year and a half I have attained an approximately 2nd grade reading level. But I can read most signs, and I can write small words (an excellent party trick) so I consider myself successful. One last comment, the warning label on my eyedrops has informed me that possible side effects include bone marrow depression and/or newborn infants. What will happen? Will my bone marrow fall into a state of depression? Will newborn infants randomly appear? Stay tuned for more details. Love and miss you all!

A Cambodian take on accident prevention

Over the course of four weeks, four students at school were seriously injured, and tragically, one was killed. As you might suspect, rules regarding safety are enforced sporadically if they exist at all. Normally, we just joke about it, but sometimes the consequences are more serious. All the accidents but one involved careless driving. And the one exception was a girl who was refilling a gas canister (something prohibited by US law due to high risk of explosion). The thing is, there are some regulations here. There is even one speed limit sign in my town. But the only consequence of breaking the law is a fine. Which is handed to the cop right then so no need to mess with pesky paperwork and judges. The downside of basically bribing the police to let you off is that the police only work when they run out of beer and need money to buy more. So as long as you have enough money or the police are sufficiently inebriated you’re good. Until you crash because you see no good reason to drive at a safe speed.

But what is the response to this situation? More safety training? A call for better police enforcement? Nope. We will offer rice to monks. Clearly the problem is that God is mad at the school. So by offering food to the monks, we receive their blessing (they douse us with water) and all is good. This ceremony is called a flower ceremony, Each grade level made a tree out of gold or silver foil and hung money (flowers) from the branches. Then they took the trees for a walk around the school. Then they gave food to the monks. While I myself don’t think that this was the appropriate response to the situation (but who am I to judge, traffic accidents are the leading cause of teen death in the states, so we’re not doing much better), I have to admit the ceremony itself was a really fun day. Each grade took their picture with a money tree, and most asked me to be in the picture too. So then each student wanted an individual picture with me. And then one of them gave me a red scarf she had made in home ec class. The scarf is actually quite warm, which will be fantastic when I get home, but on 95 degree day it did feel like a bit much. I was already wearing the diamond bow-tie earrings that another grade had given me so I was looking quite stylish if I do say so myself.

Another exciting school related function was the soccer/volleyball tournament. It happened this past week in the provincial town. We played schools from all over the province. The students played surprisingly well, especially the volleyball team. They finished first in the province, the soccer team finished third. I was glad I was there, as I got to remind the other teachers to encourage the students and not be such jerks. It was a little ridiculous. Our soccer team played a team that had been practicing since the start of the school year. Here’s the thing, in Cambodia, practice happens during class hours, so the players don’t attend class. At all. Our team has only been practicing for three or four weeks. So their players may be better, but ours are smarter. It was fun to see them play, and the students were all very excited that I came. Whenever someone was like “What’s with the foreigner?” They’d be like “She’s our teacher!” I felt loved. The funniest part was when the soccer boys stole the first place trophy from the volleyball team so they could have their picture taken with it. They were so excited. Both teams climbed into the truck and cheered the whole way home. Whenever they saw people on the road they would beat the drum (a bucket) and start hollering to the rather surprised passers-by. And then there was no school on Saturday. So everyone was happy. Semester exams are about to start. Ironically this means students stop coming to school as they know they can learn more on their own than from class. So life pretty much stops for the students until after testing.

In other news, a word about foreigners. Being a foreigner myself has given me an entirely different perspective on what it means to uproot your entire life and move to another country. I have an excellent community that has taken me in, but if I didn’t have that small town atmosphere, the sense of isolation would be overwhelming. So I encourage you, whenever you meet foreigners, be as nice to them as you can. Because nothing makes you feel worse than when people treat you like dirt just because you can’t understand what they’re saying. I chose to live in foreign country for two years, and could honestly go back home whenever I choose. But many people who immigrate to the states left their old lives behind permanently, they can never go back. And now they’re in a place surrounded by things they don’t understand. So go easy on them, because this is tough. And for those of you who think that people who live here should learn English, please try to learn a foreign language yourself first. I’m not trying to be ugly, but it’s way harder than it looks. I totally think that people who live here should try to learn. But after two month of intense language study and a year and half of immersion, I am still not fluent in Khmer, a language that is ten times easier than English. So when people speak to you in broken English, appreciate the fact that they are trying. And when they don’t understand what you’re saying, be patient. While I know my readers already know these things, it never hurts to have a reminder. Being a foreigner is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. Because people treat you differently, and even though the people here think of me as a part of the community, I’m still not Cambodian and I never will be. And strangers either treat me either like royalty or like an animal. Hard to say which is more annoying. So life is hard for foreigners. Show ‘em some love.

That isn’t to say that being a foreigner is all bad. In many ways I can do whatever I want because people will just assume it’s an American custom. I can say whatever pops into my head because no one knows what I’m saying. I’m sure there are many habits that will need to be broken upon my return to the States. Like if I’m supposed to work at 7 then I should probably get up before 7. Here, no worries. 7:00 class doesn’t start til 7:15. What I really like is when I show up really late, but turns out I’m not late enough. I went to school at six thirty the other morning so I could ride the truck to the provincial town with the soccer players. I was half an hour late. Clearly I was confused. Should have been an hour and a half late like everyone else. And I probably should wear clothing other than my pajamas in public. And should probably not say whatever pops into my head. So if you see me when I first get back I say something very rude, I apologize in advance. My last word – Geaux Saints! Much love to all the Saints fans and if you are not one than you should be.

Love and miss you all

Brittany

Happy New Year everyone! While Cambodians don't really do anything for universal new year, never fear, for Chinese New Year is on the way, bringing with lots of firecrackers and all the fried noodles you can eat. And yes, no school. Well, it has started. We have put in enough school time, so the rest of the year will be looking for excuses to not have school. And we don't have to look too far. January 7 was victory day. It marks the official defeat of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It's a one day holiday, on a Thursday. But Thursday is just one day. Obviously we have far too much partying to do to just take off Thursday. So how do you turn a one day holiday into a week off from school? Well that's the kind of thing they turn into an art here. The first step was to have a follow-up party on Friday. They don't even bother to call it a victory party. They call it a drinking party. You have snow days? We have Jonnie Walker days. One day down. And then, you move the Victory Day Ceremony to Tuesday, so you don't have to teach on Tuesday, and still get Thursday off. Two days down. Just to clarify: a week of no class only means less work for the teachers, as the students still have to attend the ceremony on Tuesday AND spend Monday cleaning the school and setting up for the ceremony. There are no janitors/maintainence people here. Each grade spends a certain number of hours a week doing labor instead of attending class. Soooo now we have almost the whole week off! Because my school is better than most at actually having class, we put in full day on Wednesday just for good measure. Yes friends, a school is dedicated to education when they choose to only take four days off to celebrate a one day holiday instead of five. And I'm not being sarcastic. But on that note: I love grade 11A! (Here each grade is divided into levels, 11A, 11B, 11C, etc. and those students have one classroom and stay there all day. The teachers rotate from classroom to classroom)I showed up for afternoon class on the ceremony day because... it's my job. I got there right as 11A was getting ready to go home because most teachers didn't show up(if a class decides they want to go home, they just all leave. And no one cares). They hurriedly run back into the room when they see me. So I chat with them for a minute and learn that because the speaker talked for so long in the morning, most of them didn't get lunch (it is now 2pm). It is incredibly hot and they all look kind of pitiful. So give them the option of going home (I'm a little worried they'll pass out from hunger and heat, because I sure would have. But they say no. They want to study. They pull out their notebooks. They are serious. I was so proud of them! I just played a review game, but despite their previous lethargy they really got into it and enjoyed themselves. While it is frustrating to have school treated as such a joke, it's moments like that which make it worth it.

There are some things that will never cease to amaze me no matter how long I live here. One of those is pick up trucks. So Wednesday, around 5pm, I learn that I have a dentist appointment the next day in Phnom Penh at 11:30. I tell them this is incredibly optimistic, considering the distance and road conditions from my site to the capitol. Whatever. So the next was Thursday, the aforementioned Victory Day. There were no taxis. Only pick ups. To give you some idea of size of these trucks, the Cambodian word for pick up is 'nissan'. How many people do you think could be carried by a Nissan pick up? First off, let me tell you that there were 9 people in the cab of the truck, 6 adults and 3 children. So we leave town at a reasonable hour. That is to say the truck moves about 500 feet. And we pick up people and things. And then the truck moves about a mile. And then it picks up more people and things. This continues for about 40 miles. How long did it take to cover 40 miles? 2 hours. From my site to Phnom Penh is about 140 nmiles. The trip took over 5 hours. Why? Because we don't just take people, but the things they bring to Phnom Penh to sell. Most people have at least two fifty lbs feedsacks filled with stuff. One woman had 8. Because these people don't live in towns, they just wait along the road for a truck to come by. So we a person and stop. And then the person and the driver bargain for the price of passage. And then they have to load all the things. So the all the people in the back of the truck have to get out. And once all the things are loaded everyone has to climb back in and arrange themselves. Also, snacks must be purchased every time the truck stops. Every. Time. And then we have to stop for brunch. And then we stop for the bathroom. Do we stop at the place that has bathrooms? Nope. We stop about a hundred feet before that and pee in the bushes. I should mention the drivers are always men, and they don't really take into account the fact that their female passengers can't just drop their fly on the side of the road. We finally arrive in Phnom Penh. I have missed my dentist appointment and have just enough time to get my swine flu vaccine (with complementary juice box!)and hop on a bus to the provincial town. Thankfully the bus only takes about 3 1/2 hours. So I'm spending the morning in the provincial town, getting some supplies for my girls club meeting tomorrow, and also avoiding the drinking party at site.

Saving the best news for last: When I arrived in the provincial town, boxes from Mom, Maw-Maw, Nanny Joni, and Jeanna Rutter were waiting for me. Thank you all!!!!!!!!!! So much food! A sampling of my loot: Life 2000-2009, a french press, tons of coffee, flavor blasted goldfish, gushers, candy canes, books, magazines, tea, little debbies, pajama pants, chocolate covered coffee beans, pop rocks, mint oreos, beef jerky, dark chocolate, hot cocoa, chritmas stockings, a light up snowman, a wind up santa, tony's seasoning, make up(perfect for wedding season!) a puppy calendar,and a snoopy notebook. Seriously I had to hire a motorized cart to get it all from the provincial volunteer's house. But wait, there's more! I recieved lovely Christmas cards and letters from Ruth Ann Holder (LOVE the barking dogs), Pam Chinn, Rose Ann Johnson, Lois McQuitty, Anne Keeks (sorry if I misspelled it), Marilyn Hartung, Marilyn Schoonover, Vic Comstock and family, Dennis and Sharon Smith, Shirley Grant, Jeanna Rutter, Maw-Maw, Nanny Joni, and Nanny Jan and Troy. A huge thank you to everyone. I know that many of you don't know me very well and some of you haven't seen me in a long time, but it really means a lot to me to know despite this you are praying for me and supporting me. While the people in my life know are wonderful and supportive, it's good to know that people back home are still thinking of me. So thank you everyone!!!!!

Merry Christmas! I know this post is long overdue, my apologies for that. I’ll mention why in a moment, but first… I never told you about the girl’s camp! I have only recently realized that I didn’t actually give you a full account of the doings. My bad! So it was day and a half event. We met on Saturday afternoon. My friends Ratha and Lauren helped me facilitate (and when I say helped I mean they may have ended up doing more than me, there were fantastic) They broke into groups and talked about things like what leadership means to them and things they can do to be leaders in their own lives. Each group presented their ideas to the others. Then they made collages. They were told to select pictures from magazines that they thought represented something about themselves, and they were asked to write their names, using English adjectives that they thought described themselves. The idea being something like this

Bright

Resourceful

Independent

=BRI

There were just enough supplies for each girl to do a paper, but competition for their usage was fierce. Also, the part about using adjectives didn’t really get through, so they just used random English words. So it would be something like this:

Bread

Road

Inside

=BRI

Some of my favorites: Ranou = Run, Animal, Night, Only, Update and Nita = Need, Ice Cream, Temple, A doctor;

This was the end of day one. Things were going well. And then Sunday happened. First let me say that this one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever done in my life, but with my less than stellar organizational skills combined with Cambodia’s total lack of organization, chaos ensued. My guest speaker showed up an hour early, except that my one guest speaker turned out to be four guest speakers. He had invited his friends. And they were slightly annoyed because they went to the high school when I had told them to come to the elementary school. Lesson learned: always double check in Khmer when making arrangements. Thankfully it was all cool. My friend Lauren who is PCV in another province came to help out, and was a lifesaver. I couldn’t have done it without her. She entertained our friends until it was their turn to talk (and she did a thousand other amazingly helpful things). They were all experienced development workers, so they had really good things to say. We played another game and then had a lunch break. After lunch, a female development came and spoke about finding jobs. She is one of my good friends, and she was sooooo nervous. But it really seemed to give her a dose of confidence to be asked to speak. And the girls were really interested in what she had to say; they asked tons of questions. Then…. the straw game! Each group was given a bag of drinking straws and a roll of tape. The group that built the tallest tower won. It was an intense competition. There are no words to describe the noise of 30+ teenage girls screaming at the top of their lungs. Wow. It was hard battle. Losses were sustained on all sides. Towers crumbled. But in the end everyone ended up with some candy so it was all good. The game was followed with an intense photo shoot as each girl needed a photo with the foreigners. They don’t really form lines in this country, everyone just sort of jostles for position. So we introduced to them to this new and painful concept. And then we danced. All girl dance parties are possibly the best self esteem building activities ever. The girls absolutely let loose. I’ve never seen them dance on tables at normal parties before. Yes, there was synchronized table dancing. We know how party. Their only complaint was that the whole thing was just too short; they had a really great time. But the best part came at school on Monday. One of the camp participants who is really shy volunteered to present her groups work in front of the whole class. I almost cried. So thanks again to everyone who helped make it possible!

There isn’t really a lot to report since then. The reason I have been so long in writing is that no matter where you are in the world, how old you are, or what language you speak, sometimes life will just kind of suck. Yes, friends, even in a country where you are kind of required to nap and drink coconuts, life can take a dump on you. But I’m sure you have figured that out already, so I am going to keep this positive.

It’s Christmas! At least that is what my calendar says. The fact that the palm trees outside are withering from the heat and I’m still sweating while lying underneath a fan begs to differ. No, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. I’m carrying around a mini Christmas tree and a Santa hat to remind myself that it actually is Christmas. The thing is that the people here are pretty used to me doing ridiculous things. I’m foreign. Of course I do weird stuff. During the camp, when I would go to a vendor and say “I need 10 bags of drinking straws and 6 six rolls of packing tape” they’re like “Of course you do”. No one finds it strange because I’m already strange. So of course I’m running around with a Santa hat. I’m foreign. Why wouldn’t I be running around with a Santa hat? They wouldn’t let me wear it to school this morning, which kinda made me sad. It’s a special hat. It actually has a glittery Santa on the hat! I got it a, get this, at a Christmas party! The Lutheran World Federation has an office here, and while most of the staff is Cambodian Buddhist, the head of the organization in Cambodia is an American who came for an annual meeting. So we had a Christmas party. We even built a Christmas tree. Did any of you have a Christmas tree made from affixing mango tree branches to a bamboo frame? I think not. And instead of putting presents on the tree, they hung small presents from the branches like ornaments. I think they just put whatever happened to be lying around inside of these presents, as I received condoms. Merry Christmas to me. Today I taught my students Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. After school I was kind of feeling sad, so my co-teacher sang the Christmas songs to me. It was really sweet. But I don’t think it’s the weather or the food (I think I can safely say I’ve never eat rice on Christmas day before) that makes it seem that way. I think it’s being the only person who really cares that it is Christmas. In America, everyone knows and everyone is making preparations. People ask each other where they’re going for Christmas, have they finished shopping, etc. There are decorations in store windows, products are specially packaged in red and green, and it seems like there are just more people everywhere. It’s not something I was conscious of in the states, but when everyone is participating in something it makes a person feel like they are a part of a greater whole. And while it is annoying to have to wait in lines for hours at wal-mart, it’s something that marks Christmas. It’s those little things that make it hard for me to realize it’s Christmas. The small, subliminal cues that tell us Christmas is coming don’t exist here.

But I wouldn’t have you think that the lack of Christmas spirit means lack of party spirit. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the past week I have attended a wedding and a Christmas party, today I will attend a three-year death anniversary (the exciting thing about dying in Cambodia is that you get way more parties thrown in your honor than you ever did when you were alive, there is a funeral the day someone dies, one 7 days later, one 100 days later, and one 3 years later, some even do a 10 year one), and on Sunday one of students is having a birthday. Woot. And at least two more weddings are happening next month. So there will be no shortage of good times. Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. I’ve received cards from people I haven’t seen in forever, some from people I barely know, and some from people I don’t know at all. Your support has meant so much to recently. I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate it. I hope you all have a great holiday season!

Hi everyone, will post soon! Now just wanted to let you all know that the girls camp was a huge success. The girls told me they were sad it ended. They absolutely loved the shirts so thanks so much to all who donated. At school, the day after the camp, one of the shyest participants volunteered to present her group's work to the entire class. I have never seen her do anything remotely like that before. I think it really made a difference so thanks again. Promise more details forthcoming.

There are many things that I do in Cambodia that I never would have done in the States. One of those is to wear ridiculous things on my head. I have some wonderfully awful hats, and now, I have a Rastafarian headband. I have mentioned my sparkly hat and gold/silver billabong hat in a previous blog, but I haves since acquired several more. One is black and red with gold dots on the red part. Another is rainbow striped with a pink, silver-dotted brim. A few days ago my friend gave me a headband that Bob Marley would be proud of. I wore it to school. Much to the amusement of my students. I also occasionally tie scarves around my head to keep my hair from blowing in the wind. And I sometimes wear long, billowy, floral skirts. Sometimes when I think about what I’m wearing I scare myself. I first arrived in Cambodia with a wardrobe as low key as possible. Fail. Khmer people don’t like black and gray. I have since procured many colorful sarongs, surfer shorts, pajamas, and t-shirts. As long as it is a bright color, they love it. Matching and fitting aren’t really a big deal here. They just like things that are bright and shiny. I don’t think there is a word for “flattering” in Khmer.

Water Festival just ended, but not to worry, we won’t have to face the shock of getting back to working a full week yet. Now we have a three day weekend for Cambodian independence day. Water Festival is actually three festivals. There is a rice roasting festival, a boat racing festival, and moon festival. Cambodians show gratitude to the Mekong river for sustaining their crops. This is the reason for boat racing. The moon festival consists of making small paper shrines and putting candles on them and setting them afloat on the river. They believe that the moon, rather than the sun, is responsible for the growth of crops. They wait til midnight to thresh the rice. Altogether these festivals make up Water Festival, which is a really big deal. Hundreds of thousands of people descend on Phnom Penh to watch the boat races and get ridiculously drunk. Having already seen boat races in Battambang, I was content to stay home.

Water festival means the beginning of ambok season. To make ambok, they take grains of recently harvested rice, roast them, and then put them in a mortar/pestle to pound them into flakes. The reason I get so excited is that if you fry the flakes, they puff up and basically become rice krispies. Yum! I had that for breakfast. One of the downsides of water festival is the alcohol. Two young girls were seriously injured in a moto accident over the holiday. They were carrying a load of wood on the moto, and most of it fell on them when they crashed. The driver of the other moto was not from around here, visiting for the holiday and driving far too fast, probably drunk. He was injured pretty badly as well, but he went home so we don’t really know much more about his condition. Le’ak and Mey aren’t my students, but their aunt, whom I have affectionately dubbed my ‘dealer’ sells me Vietnamese coffee, so we’re basically family. The girls are back home and they are going to be okay, but they’re really banged up. I visited them today. They were both in good moods, but they have some pretty awful scrapes. They may be scarred for life. But they were joking around and talking about how they don’t ever want me to leave Cambodia. It was so sweet. I also learned that the Chinese doctor who has been here for six years doesn’t speak Khmer as well as I do. He thinks Khmer people look like the Vietnamese. Apparently Khmer people don’t like being called Vietnamese any more than I like being called French. They also told me that Americans are far more beautiful than the French. The French are too white and have too many freckles. I’m sure had I been French they would have said the same thing about Americans. But whatever, it was fun. They are so bored because their injuries prevent them from doing much. I brought them some oranges and magazines. I would have given them my checkers set, but I left it with my host brothers, because they had lost a lot of pieces anyway. It didn’t seem to phase them, they just invented a different game requiring fewer pieces.

Now I have host sisters, and went with one of them and a few of her friends to pick oranges. They hate the way I peel oranges, cutting toward my hand taking the skin off in one long strip. They always try and take the knife and teach me to do the khmer way. They are certain I will cut my hands. I have tried to learn the khmer way. It's hard. I am content to just pay attention when I peel fruit and thus avoid cutting my hands. They are certain this will lead to my losing a finger. I have assured them and entire nation peels fruit this way and the loss of limbs remains relatively low. I find that it is rather difficult to pay attention to fruit peeling while having this conversation, so I hope that one day I do not prove them right. During this fruit peeling conversation, there are chickens milling around trying to eat the orange peels. One of them has almost no feathers. This is not at all unusual, Cambodia has some of the ugliest chickens I have ever seen. My host sister informs me that when a chicken has no feathers, this means that it is gay. So apparently homosexuality is big among Cambodian chickens. She says that the rooster try to pluck their feathers so they will look more like females. So in case you weren't previously aware of the cause of baldness in chickens, here it is. I'll end on that note. Nanny vickie, thanks for the pix, Colebren is so grown up! And for those who have sent me packages, I have a rather difficult mail situation, so things may not get to me in hurry, but I will let you know when they do. Love and miss you all!

It’s been a while, I know. But I have actually been ridiculously busy. It was a good feeling for the most part. I have just started teaching at the public high school again. I’m really excited about this year. I think I have a handle on things… I think… Anyway, the students know me, and I know them, so that makes things easier. I love the first few weeks of class. The students don’t have books yet so I don’t have to teach with the ridiculous books they have to use. There is full attendance and everyone is super excited. Well, mildly excited anyway. The weather has helped. It has been relatively cool here, meaning that one shirt can last me an entire day, which is an extremely exciting prospect. Unfortunately, part of the reason it has been so cool is because of the typhoon that hit Vietnam. It also hit eastern Cambodia. I’m in the west, not too far from Thailand, but some of the eastern provinces that border Vietnam got hit pretty bad. At least nine people are dead. This is a really big deal in a country that doesn’t really have natural disasters. So keep Southeast Asia in your prayers, the weather here has been crazy. (Don’t worry mom, I’m completely fine).

What else? Oh yes, I have recently become slightly obsessed with jasmine scented soap. It’s fantastic. I want to take showers even when I am not dirty just so I can use said soap. And it’s in the local market. The best part may be the green package that has a woman who is obviously enjoying taking a bath far more than any human being should. I laugh when I remember packing for Cambodia like I was preparing for the apocalypse, thinking basic essentials could not be found here. There are so many fantastic things to be found in markets here. I recently purchased a gold Billabong cap with embossed silver flowers. This is my going-to-school hat. You can purchase cherry blossom toothpaste, rhinestone playboy bunny sandals, and button-down shirts with pot leaves on them.

And in big city markets it’s even better. I’ve seen flip-flops with ‘sperm’ written on them, and the T-shirts, oh the T-shirts. Some are kind of funny (Happy Speed Racer Jesus, Stupid Kiss Me). I like it when grown men wear a pink, rhinestone embossed Britney Spears T-shirt. Those are good. There are many that I have to wonder who designed them. The pot leaf is a popular motif, and in Battambang I saw shirts that said things like “I’d rather be snorting cocaine off a hooker’s a$$” and “Which way to the SEX?” People have no idea what they are wearing. One of my most prim and proper students (a 15 yr old girl) has a shirt that says “Save a virgin, do me instead”. Part of this awesome taste in apparel has to do with it being the kind of thing that falls off the truck from Thailand. But still, one has to ask oneself if the slightly apple shaped woman wearing skinny jeans and playboy bunny T-shirt couldn’t have found something slightly more flattering to wear.

The reason I saw the special T-shirts mentioned above was because I got to go to Battambang last weekend. Battambang is the third largest city in Cambodia. The regional boat races were held there. In November, all of Cambodia will descend on Phnom Penh during the water festival. During this time, boats ranging in size from 20-100 person teams race on the Mekong river. This is kind of like the super bowl of boat racing. What I saw was kind of like the division play offs. It was so much fun. I really like boats. I like to ride them, but since that wasn’t possible I enjoyed just watching them instead. They were long boats, and they were powered by men with oars. The boats were all painted in bright colors, and each had it’s own fancy spirit emblem for protection. The boats are just barely wide enough for two men to sit side by side. Some have traditional patterns painted on the sides, other are painted to resemble dragons, snakes, and waves. They even have races for all-female teams. My favorite boat had a man riding in front whose only contribution was to beat the spirit drum, presumably invoking the protection of the spirit. It was not a banner day for the spirit unfortunately, and this boat lost. Each race was short, less that a mile. They raced in pairs, and everyone yelled and cheered.

When I got back from Battambang I got to know my new host family. I moved recently. My old host family is great, but sometimes it’s hardest living with people you like. So I now live in a mansion. Literally. I don’t think there are many houses this big in America. There is satellite TV, a fancy water filter, ceiling fans, running water, and a butt blaster. For those of you who don’t know what a butt blaster is, allow me to enlighten you. Normally, when you need to drop a deuce, you clean yourself with a water scooper and your left had. Yeah. Well a butt blaster is basically the sprayer that many of you have attached to your kitchen sink. Except it’s in the bathroom. And it is the best thing pretty much ever. With this marvelous device, you don’t have to touch yourself in order to get squeaky clean. Hooray!

The family is cool There are 5 people, the parents, two daughters, and the husband’s mother. The mother runs a tight ship, and is very superstitious. She had to make sure that I wasn’t born in the year of the pig, because two people in the house were already born in the year of the pig, and three is bad luck. (On a side note, you will never see a picture with three Khmer people. They will always make someone else be in the picture to make four. Even if they have to pull a random stranger off the street. Another side note, I was not born in the year of the pig, but in the year of the tiger. This means that I am a strong woman who intimidates men and will have difficulty finding a husband). She’s such a change from my former host mother, who was always after me for money. The new host mom refused to take this month’s rent because I moved in on the second instead of the first. She also bought her and I match pajama sets. The floral print pajama sets are everyday wear here. I wore my new one to the market this morning and everyone told me how beautiful I was. Of course they also tell me I’m beautiful when I get back from an hour-long bike ride covered in sweat and mud, so I take this with a grain of salt. This family is sooooo rich. Between the family in the west and the sandalwood oil exporting (more about that in a second), I don’t even know how much they must make. My host mother spent a few days in Phnom Penh last week and spent at least $200. That’s 2 months salary for me. She couldn’t believe that I didn’t make $500-$1000. The father is adorable. He’s a roly-poly little fellow who is just very jolly. He extracts the oil from sandalwood to sell to Muslim countries. He also has a ton of family in the west, hence the pimp house we live in. The Grandma is cool but a little standoffish. The older girl is in high school and speaks some English. She is possibly the sweetest person I’ve ever met. We are currently engaged in laundry wars, as she wants to do my laundry whenever she has free time. She is also fascinated by the computer, and is watching me while I type this. The youngest is completely apathetic toward the presence of a random foreigner in her house. Which is quite refreshing, as it’s rather tiring when people get excited about you all the time.

On the subject of weird foods, I recently ate a live cricket. I quite enjoy crickets when they are sautéed with hot peppers, but I had never eaten one still alive before last month. Crickets aren’t that gooey, especially when fried, they’re just rather crispy and delicious. Recently I was having dinner with a few other foreigners in the provincial town and they were absolutely disgusted with the idea of eating crickets. I staunchly defended their deliciousness. Alas, one poor cricket was unlucky enough to alight on our table. The group wanted me to eat. Well, I’m not cheap, so I asked what they were offering. They said they pay for dinner. Well we had just gotten the check and I didn’t know beforehand that we were at a ridiculously expensive restaurant, so I gladly accepted the offer. They didn’t believe I’d actually do it. I will say that fried crickets are infinitely superior to live crickets, both in taste and texture. While the live cricket wasn’t bad, a strong pepper does help it go down. It was a bit scratchy. But I got a free meal out of it, no I considered it all-in-all to have been a successful evening.

What else, what else? Oh the girls camp! My students had so much fun. We spent a weekend in the provincial town focusing on leadership and empowerment. We also gave them practical tips on applying for university, scholarships, and jobs. They hadn’t ever done anything like that before, and it was the first time in a guesthouse for most of them. They were so cute I almost couldn’t stand it. And they made new friends from the provincial town. Most of the session focused on empowerment and decision making. In one session, they were asked to evaluate the roles of men and women in Cambodia, in another they were given conflict scenarios that they might experience in real life and deal with them. Many of these had to do with respecting family concerns while still doing what is best in one’s own life. It was something they really needed to hear, and definitely don’t here often enough.

They are all looking forward to the camp that we’re gonna do at site. The only problem is ….certain folks who think are so insecure that they have to make other people unhappy in order to feel good about themselves. Understand that most of the people who are in charge are members of the ruling party, and most of these people have at the most a sixth grade education. Whenever I have mentioned this camp to any high officials, the general reaction was one of scoffing as to why anyone would want to help women. As the (male) head of the women’s community group said to me “We aren’t really interested in helping women, just in keeping track of them.” Yes friends, generally an audience with anyone important leaves me ready to cry or hit people, usually both. One particular person has brought me to tears at least twice in the last week over this camp. He was angry that I didn’t ask his permission to send students to the camp in Pursat. The reason I did not ask is that there is absolutely no good reason to do it. I had informed ahead of time, but as usual he was too busy talking to hear what I was telling him. So his ego was bruised. Well, my co teacher wrote a simple letter asking for permission to send students to the camp at my site. But this wasn’t good enough. No, the this fellow got out this huge book of rules and made us rewrite the entire thing according to certain regulations. We can’t use the word leadership, we have to promise not to say anything bad about the ruling party, and we had to change the name of the project to “Women as Housekeepers”. I wish there were an emoticon for the profound disgust and rage that I felt. After this, he berated me in front of all the other teachers, telling me that I am always wrong and that he and the officialdom are always right. Gag me. And we have to go to the head of provincial education, who has made his views on the education of women very clear. He’s against it. So yeah, I may be in for a fight. But honestly I’m indignant enough about the way they’re treating my girls that I’m completely up for it. Ugh, the joys of a post communist state. But I did manage a small victory. I told the teachers at my school that when men go on ridiculous ego trips and generally make idiots of themselves to make other people miserable, it means that they are insecure because they are not very well endowed. Now, whenever certain people are acting like jerks, a few teachers extend their pinkies and giggle. I have made a difference.

So all in all life’s fairly awesome. Pray that I don’t hurt anyone in the next few weeks and it will all be good.

As native English speakers, we generally don’t take the time to think about the way our language is put together. Even when I taught ESL in college, I mainly taught to native Spanish speakers, whose language is nearly as complex as ours. But now I teach English to people whose native language has NONE of the following: Verb tenses, verb conjugation, plurals. It also has few words. There are maybe 50,000 words in Khmer. There are over 200,000 in English. ‘More’and ‘Again’ are the same word in Khmer. As are maybe, possibly, approximately, around, about, roughly, and perhaps. Also questions are very difficult for them. In their language, they just add the word no to the end of a sentence. Here are some literal traslations of everyday conversations one may have in Khmer.

Host Grandma: Go market no? (Are you going to the market?)

Me: Go. (Yes, *responding with a verb is more common than saying the word yes)

HG: Take basket come (Bring the basket with you * the market basket serves the purpose of a shopping cart)

At the market:

Random person: Come from where? (Where are you coming from?)

Me: House.

RP: know wear sarong too. (You can wear a sarong! That’s fantastic!)

At the breakfast stall:

Breakfast lady: Niece eat what?

Me: Niece eat rice (people almost always refer to themselves and others in the third person, usually by some sort of kinship term.)

Random Person: White person know eat rice! (The foreigner is capable of consuming rice. Excellent)

RP: have age how many already? (How old are you?)

Me: I have age 23 already

RP: Take husband yet?

Me: not yet

RP: Want you take husband when? Want take husband cambodia?

Me: No want husband. Want work want study more.

RP: Have older younger how many person? (how many children do your parents have?)

Me: 2

At school:

Student: In Cambodia how teacher feel? (Do you like it here?)

Me: Teacher feel happy.

Student: sorry late last morning feed cow feed chicken. (I’m sorry I’m late, I had to feed the cows and chickens this morning)

Me No anything No. (That’s fine, I understand.)

Me: Younger younger remember what from yesterday? (What do you all remember from yesterday?)

Student: Teacher student remember small small (I don’t remember very much)

Me: Have person which other more remember anything? (Who remembers?)

Student: Teacher, I remember sentence have noun have verb one more (I remember a sentence needs a noun and a verb)

Me: Time all aldready! meeting each other day tomorrow (Time’s up! See you tomorrow)

Students: Goodbye teacher

I haven’t heard dance of the sugarplum fairies man for a while, so I will assume theme from Titanic man has prevailed!

As summer draws to a close I cannot tell where the time has gone. I don’t even remember June happening weird. I am however, super excited to be going into a new school year. I now have some idea of what to expect. When I first came, I was overwhelmed by everyone’s expectations. I felt terrible when I had to tell my students that I couldn’t spend time with them individually for several hours a week. Setting boundaries was the hardest thing I’ve had to do. But it was worth it. People were disappointed, but they got over it. No one thinks any less of me for it. I have made a ton of new friends, and I am going to start teaching people whose English is more advanced, which means I have a wider variety of materials available to me. It should be good. I got to participate in a workshop on Gender and Development recently. It was really good. I was still slightly offended by many of the things that Khmer people laughed at (i.e. a husband not allowing his wife to go anywhere without him). But in the end they all seemed to have a decently progressive understanding of women’s roles in society. My favorite part was when I did a Q & A session on Gender in America. We had been discussing control over finances. I mentioned that money is a significant factor in American divorce statistics. This blew their minds. I was asked why, I love someone, I would leave him if he blew his entire paycheck on new car or tv. I replied that if he did this, he obviously didn’t love me. This statement received a standing ovation. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

On a side note, the word I translated as ‘love’ in the above story actually means pity, sympathize with, or have compassion for. They use the word pity to mean what we consider love. It is a platonic form of love, and there is a saying in Cambodian that pity is stronger than love. This blows my mind. Pity? People want to be pitied. Once, one person had some oranges, and was passing out orange slices. She missed on of the other people and that person said “Don’t you pity me?” Granted compassion and sympathy make more sense as far as translation goes, but I would never equate either of those feelings with love. Huh.

I would like to send the biggest shout out in the world to everyone who has supported the tshirt project. Thanks to my wonderful mother, who has been incredibly awesome in putting this all together, thanks also to the lovely Nancy Jarboe for her tireless efforts with tshirt prep. And also to JP and Marilyn Hartung for donating the shirts. I can’t tell you amazed and moved I am at the support of all of you, friends, family, and complete strangers. Thank you all so very much for helping these girls. I’m both overwhelmed and extremely gratified that a group of people halfway around the world cares enough to help out these girls.

Also, for those of you following popsicle wars, I haven’t been home much during the day so I don’t have any updates yet, but will keep you abreast of any new developments.

Some new developments elsewhere: September started out with a bang for Cambodia. For the first time in history, Americans are being charged for child sex crimes committed overseas. Guess which country? Yep, the ‘bode. This is actually a very encouraging development. I recently saw a public service announcement on tv encouraging Cambodians to report suspicious foreigners. Apparently the US DoJ and ICE have an initiative focusing primarily on Cambodia to crack down on sex tourism. Good job.

For some lighter fare: Great news. A new study indicates coffee is fantastic for you. Contradicting old studies that say it is bad for you. SELF magazine recommended four cups a day. Four! Even I, (for those of you who don’t know me, if there were a way to give myself a coffee IV, I would be down with it) try to keep it at or below three cups a day. What I don’t understand is why we listen to new studies, when, next month, they will be old, outdated studies, completely contradicted. Obviously everyone cannot be right. This month’s SELF also had the best moves for toning your abs, butt, and thighs. Last month’s issue said the same thing. So which one is right? Were SELF readers using only mediocre butt toning moves last month? Understand, I don’t get much in the way of entertainment out here. In the states I liked having SELF for workout ideas, but never really thought critically about the magazine itself. But really, if it (or any periodical of this sort) does what it claims to, we wouldn’t need it every month. If I had used only the latest issue, would I have the best abs, instead of the mediocre abs produced by the workouts of the previous months? Yes, I know it is slightly ridiculous that I had time to sit and write an entire paragraph about this. Don’t judge me. I’m off for my third cup of coffee. Only for health reasons, of course.

Do you ever wonder what exactly I do all day? I have the impression that some people think I lead a very adventurous and exotic life. I will let you decide for yourself. A day in my life would go something like this:

5:30am.: Wake up to the sound of my host mother yelling at her sons to get up. I consider getting up and doing productive things, and then promptly dismiss this thought as ludicrous.

6-6:30am: Make a concerted effort to get out of bed. This usually results in my enjoyment of watching hungry mosquitoes foiled by my mosquito net.

7am: Breakfast at the market. Catch up on the gossip, discuss how terribly tan and thin I have become and how this will make my parents not recognize me upon my return to the states. And when they finally recognize me, my darkened, emaciated state will cause them to weep. On a side note, black coffee with a scoop of ovaltine is pretty much the best thing ever.

8am: A bike ride. Ah yes... Good for physical and mental health.

9am: Fling cold water on myself with a bucket. Otherwise known as bathing.

9-11: Running around to various NGOs, working on various projects

11: Fling more cold water on myself

11:15: Lunch time!

11:30-1: Nap time!

1-2: Teaching

2: Another bath

2-5: Getting water from the well to fill up the basin in the bathroom, doing dishes, should be lesson planning, more often reading. This is also coconut time. Afternoons are not complete without coconut consumption. Also, for many people this is still naptime. This month is monsoon season. Or at least it should be. But it hasn’t been raining that much. I’m told there is always drought in the year of the cow. Who knew? But when it does rain, it rains in the afternoons. This is an awesome time to sip hot coffee and read a Henry James novel.

5-7: More teaching!

7:Dinner

7:30: bath number 4. After this we hang out and watch tv until bed. I usually read. There was major drama the other night because the tv went out completely. The family really didn’t know what to do without tv. It has been kind of repaired, but now instead of the two channels we got previously, we know only get one.

8:30: Bedtime!

In other news, there is popsicle drama. I may have mentioned that a guy straps a large orange cooler on his moto and drives around and sells popsicles. Like the ice cream truck in America. Like the ice cream truck in America, the popsicle moto plays a little diddy as he goes by to let neighborhood children know he’s coming. Unlike in America, these little diddies are usually from movies soundtracks or they are christmas songs. And they sound like they are being played on the kazoo. Every moto driver has his own unique sound. In my village, we have “Theme from Titanic” man. He passes by six or seven times a day. Six or seven times a day I am treated to a kazoo rendition of My Heart Will Go On. But the other day, what did I hear but “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”! What is this! Indeed, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” man is cutting in on the turf of “Theme from Titanic” man. What will happen? Who will win the money of the neighborhood children? Will I go insane from hearing not one but two kazoo medleys all day? Stay tuned for more details.

I wandered around a zoo in Cambodia yesterday while wearing a sparkly hat. What did you do yesterday? That’s what I thought. I win. Yes, there is a zoo in Cambodia. It is actually a wildlife rescue park. They have many animals that have nearly been poached out of existence. The problem with a zoo in Cambodia is that after nine in the morning it is so hot all the animals lie down for a nap. But it was fun, although we were charged $5 while the Cambodian visitors paid 50 cents. I’m still a little bitter. Why, you may ask, was I wandering around a zoo in the first place. The new group of volunteers (well, trainees for the next 5-6 weeks) arrived a couple weeks ago. Another volunteer and I got to spend the week hanging out with them. It was weird to see so many foreigners in one place. I probably spoke more English in that week than I have spoken in the past month. There were also Marines in town, building and refurbishing a hospital. They were from a unit based in Okinawa. I met them while buying a toothbrush. Apparently, they really like Fanta. The old lady who ran the small establishment which sells toothbrushes and Fanta was simply overjoyed at the sheer number of foreigners. She told me that she was giving us the Khmer price, not the foreigner price, which as I mentioned earlier is often 3-10x more. For this we were all grateful.

A word about my sparkly hat. For those of you who actually know me, you are probably aware that I tend to avoid things with glitter and sequins in much the same way a pothead avoids German Shepherds. Alas, in a great act of cultural contrition, I purchased a ballcap covered in silver glitter. The new volunteers have informed that middle school boys all over the states have taken to wearing these, so I am assured of my extreme coolness. Occasionally I like to wear it tilted to the side, just because I can. It also looks incredible when worn under my bike helmet. At this point I need you all to control your jealousy at my sweet headgear.

On a completely unrelated note, it’s funny how small things can set you off sometimes. I gave a list of things I have and haven’t gotten used to over the past year. But even the things you’re used can just make you snap sometimes. I visited my district office the other day. I needed some statistics about the district for a proposal that I’m writing, in hopes of getting funding for the girl’s camp. Every district is supposed to have a women’s community group. Every time have gone to the district office, they have told me our district doesn’t really have a women’s group. The conversation generally goes a little something like this:

Me: What do you mean by ‘doesn’t really’ have a group?

Them: We…er…uh.. don’t know

Me: Is this a community?

Them: Well, uh, yes.

Me: Do women live here?

Them: Yes, but….

Me: Well, if we have a community, and we have women, those seem to be the two elements required for a community women’s group. Right?

Them: Have you eaten rice yet?

The last time I went, there was a random dude. I got to have a whole new conversation:

Me: What do you mean by ‘doesn’t really’ have a group?

Random dude: Actually, we do have a women’s group.

Me: Really! That’s great. Who is the group leader?

Random dude: I am.

Me: You? You are the leader of a women’s group?

Random dude: Yes.

Me: (explanation of girl’s camp project), but I need some statistics about the women in the community so I can write a proposal.

Random dude: We sent all our statistics to the Provincial capitol. They haven’t sent them back yet.

Me: You don’t have copies?

Random dude: No. You see, we aren’t really concerned with helping women, just keeping track of them.

You can imagine that was a rather disheartening day. But the funny thing is, while I was unsure whether I had a stronger desire to cry or beat Random dude senseless, I very calmly walked away and went home. I was fine going home. I took a bath, read a book until lunch was ready and then sat down to eat. In order to attempt to understand my mindset, you need to know that Khmer do not take chicken meat off the bones. They take a meat cleaver to entire bird a just start whacking. While this makes a chicken soup more nutritious, it also means that it takes a few minutes to eat one bite of chicken because you have to suck all the meat off the bones. While I prefer to be able to just eat something without having to stop mid-chew and remove bones from my mouth, normally it isn’t a problem. Today was not normal. I saw what I thought was pork, put it my mouth and it was chicken. Mainly bone and gristle. As I have said, any other day, this would not be a problem. But today I didn’t want to pick out the bones. How hard is it to take the bones out before you cook something? I missed biting into a boneless chicken breast and just being able to chew without nearly chipping your tooth. I guess you learn how to deal with things, but on some level it still bothers you. Obviously it wasn’t the bone thing that was really getting to me. And I don’t think I would want to be sort of person who was okay with the district’s rather callous disregard for the welfare of half of its population. So I’m just going to have to bypass government sources completely. Oh well. It will work out. When all is said and done, I still got to walk around a zoo in a sparkly hat.

Thanks to everyone for all your support and prayers. They really do mean a lot to me.

I need a nap. Seriously. The air in Cambodia doesn’t like me very much. I never had allergies in the states, but for some reason rainy season in Cambodia does a number on my respiratory system. I am sneezey, which makes me grumpy and sleepy. I would go on with the seven dwarves references but that would be tiresome for all concerned. We had a workshop for student teachers at the NGO over the weekend. Some of the high school students teach the first grade students. It’s a really cool program. So I got to make power point presentations. I don’t know why power point makes me so happy. But it does. I always feel so productive when I make a presentation. Perhaps it is a false sense of productivity. Simply writing out the information would barely take up one sheet of paper. But put it in a power point show with a snappy template and I feel like I have accomplished something. Either way it makes me happy. And the snacks were fantastic. Couldn’t really ask for more.

Now planning for girls camps is the major task. I’m currently look up scholarship opportunities to present to them. But it should be really fun when we get it all taken care of. My girls are extremely excited. I really hope they get something out of all this. I also hope their parents let them stay away from home for a night! Someday I want to get the resume workshop up and going. The summer is going by fast. I don’t actually remember the month of June even happening.

We’ve been in country for a year now. It’s strange because in a lot of ways I feel like I just got here. But I’ve become so at home here that it kind of seems like I’ve been here forever.

Things I’m used to:

• Rodents scurrying about my room in the middle of the night

• Bathing 3-5 times a day with a bucket

• Sharing the back of a truck with 20 people and various animals while careening down the national road

• Finding animal anus in my soup

• Walking in ankle deep mud

• Sweating 24/7

• Chickens attempting to steal my dinner

• The loudest, most annoying music on the planet being blared across the street

• Being told yes when the answer is obviously no

• Being told no when the answer is obviously yes

• Littering

• Being yelled at

• Spontaneous declarations of love

• Being asked if I know how to eat rice

• The rather fluid interpretation of time management

• Eating bugs. They are yummy. No joke

Things I may never get used

• Being called French

• Staring

• Spontaneous cuddling

• When people yell “High lo, barrang” (hello French/white person) and then laugh like it the funniest thing they’ve ever experienced

• People thinking I only eat bread

• People who cannot speak English refusing to accept that I cannot understand their mispronunciation of English words. (Ex. ummen, rit, punning = ointment, “Raid”, banana)

• The confusion of fish paste with cheese

• The confusion of “hip hop” dancing with dry heaves

• The sad, 80s aerobic – like dancers on tv.

• The sheer amount of glitter

• Not being able to watch youtube because of copyright laws

Rainy season has arrived. Sometimes more properly referred to as monsoon season. Torrential rains cover the land with 3-12 inches of mud. This makes travel and laundry monumental tasks. Khmer people have this amazing ability to walk on the surface mud. It’s like how Jesus walked on water, only it’s mud. I don’t know how they do it. I’m slipping and sliding and my shoes always get covered with mud. But they delicately pick their way through the mudholes that they call roads. When I go to the market with my host grandmother, she always makes me stop several times to clean my shoes. And the market is even worse than the road. Wooden stalls floating in the mud. My feet get dirty yet again, which embarrasses grandma to no end. But I can now walk without slipping. Much. I think that is an accomplishment. I really wish there were words to describe all the mud.

The cool thing about rainy season is that it is considerably less hot during a monsoon. I bathed in a thunderstorm the other day. It was pretty cool.

I now have some access to internet, which is exciting. The computers are limited and people have to do real work on them so I can’t sit around writing this blog all day, but I hope to be in more frequent contact with people. Woot.

This new world of internet today showed me that people are unknowingly buying repossessed meth houses without knowing it. This has caused them terrible health problems and is very expensive to fix. How terrible is that? Various states have laws concerning disclosure of a house’s history, and some also require cleanup, but the expense is prohibitive. Very sad story.

I was cheered by the arrival of an envelope, thanks Nanny Jan! Hope you are feeling better.

And then I nearly cried when I saw pictures of the food. And then I ate my tobasco jelly beans. And my emotional roller coster was up again.

Love and miss everyone!

Well my first school year as high school English teacher in rural Cambodia has officially come to a close. It was definitely the most stressful and rewarding job I’ve ever done. The exams were a nightmare. I am known as the most evil of all exam proctors as I don’t allow students to use their textbooks or class notes. And I don’t allow them to switch papers. And I don’t allow them to get up and move to get a better look at someone else’s paper. I am cruel indeed. Understand that none of the other teachers do this. Most don’t even attempt to do this. The only ones who enforce rules are the ones who co-proctor with me. I guess I guilt them into it. But it would impossible to stop the copying. Absolutely impossible. One looks at the paper of the person in back of them, that person looks behind them, and so forth until the whole class looks like some sort of winding copy-snake. And no one sees anything wrong with this. They say they do of course, but it practice, they couldn’t care less. In a way, I don’t blame them. Teachers get paid the same amount of money whether they show up to school or not. And the fact that their salaries are regularly a few weeks (in some cases a few months) late, they really don’t feel the need to show up if they have better things to do. Thus, some classes meet maybe 3 times in a whole semester. (Not English of course, sometimes the students try to convince me to stay home so they can leave early). But the test is over everything they should have covered. And even if class met regularly, the tests are very optimistic about the amount of material covered. And it would never occur to a student to attempt to read the book if the teacher hasn’t covered it yet. There isn’t really an idea of self study. So it is hard to fault them for cheating, because in many ways it seems as though the ministry of education is trying to screw them over. But never fear, for if you have enough money you can buy all the grades you need. It will be okay in the end. This is the reason why I’m usually harder on the students whose families have money, because I know that they will probably just pay for good scores in the end, so they might as well earn them. And grading was fun too. I didn’t proctor the English test, but I did grade it. All of the essays were poorly copied from a book, but I did get some interesting quotes, for example “Everyone in Cambodia always has happy wet dream” (Don’t ask, I have absolutely no idea). On the subject of women’s roles in Cambodia: “Women have the weak sex” and “Women should have rights equal and babies”. Oh yes. Good times.

So now that school is out, I have time to do fun things like girls camps, business related classes, and reading basically all the time. But the Lutheran World Fellowship office is really cool. And the staff let me use their internet and want me to do some work with them as far as business workshops are concerned. So at least summer should not be boring. And I get to mentor an English camp at the US Embassy for a few days.

Miracle of miracles happened the other day: I had a pleasant taxi ride to Phnom Penh. Normally I hate taxis. The normal passenger count for a toyota camry is six adults, not counting children or the driver. Now, this isn’t a particularly comfortable arrangement for Khmer people. I am twice as big as them, so when I’m in the car, everyone suffers. Not only is uncomfortable but you have to wait for all the people. But the other day I found an awesome taxi dude. In fact, he was so awesome, he showed up on time. At 7! (when he said he would show up, seven always means eight here) Not expecting him for another hour, I wasn’t even dressed. So I hurriedly throw on clothes and get downstairs. I get in the car, and I am only one of three passengers. I keep waiting for us to stop and pick up more people, but we never do. I have my own seat all the way to PP!!!!! We only stop once. It really made me happy. The same annoying music was still playing, but I’m basically used to that now.

A word on music and culture. I will sum up two very popular songs, and let them speak for themselves. The first one is a lovely little diddy about a boy who falls in love with an ethnically Chinese girl. Because the Chinese have fairer skin than Cambodians, Cambodians perceive them to be more beautiful. She is very quiet and he knows she will be an obedient wife, so he loves her. But her mother wants $5000 for her. (An average wife costs about $3000) So he sells all of his cows. But alas, he still cannot raise the money, and her mother tells him to go away.

The second song is more recent, but sung by same person who sang the first. He wants a wife, but he has a dilemma: should he marry a foreign woman or a Cambodian woman? The question plagues him, for obviously there could be no question as to whether or not either of these women would actually want to marry him. The foreign woman has white skin, and she is good to look at, but the Khmer woman would be obedient to her husband. Decisions, Decisions. In the end, he decides on the Khmer woman. And as I explained to the fruit lady at rest stop, it wasn’t his choice really because there is no way a foreign woman would marry a man like that. This also led to the explanation of how because I want to work, my husband would have to do housework so I didn’t think a Khmer man would want to marry me. She said that I had a point, but also that Khmer men are lazy and probably wouldn’t do all the work they needed to. So we came up with a plan whereby I would marry 3-4 men, and give each one a task. I would have a laundry husband, a cooking husband, a lawn work husband, and so forth. And they would all have to compete with each other to earn my favor, and thus do their jobs well. I now have a plan for my life. Thanks fruit lady.

You know what makes a really good omelet? Insects. Oh yes. There these insects, that resemble wasps except they are brown and don’t have a stinger. And we eat them and their larvae pretty frequently. They are actually quite delicious. Sweet and a bit crunchy. You fry them up and put them in just about anything, you can even eat them plain. I actually like them a lot. And if ants get into them, not a problem, just fry em up eat them too. Better than fish soup, that’s for sure.

In other news, it has been a really long couple of weeks, first of all, to my family, I’m so sorry about Granny, you guys have no idea how much I missed you and how badly I wanted to be there with you. I am truly sorry. And to Erin: I’m so happy for you! I really regret not getting to see you on your big day, Congratulations!

This was one of those weeks that really made me not want to be in Cambodia. Several different things happened; I won’t go into all of it here. Suffice to say that both at school and at my house everything seemed to be about money. Cambodians think that all Americans are rich. And I really felt like everyone I was around just wanted to find some way to get money out of me. The school director wants my English club students to pay electricity costs for using the school building. Which is fine, except his reasoning was that the school was to poor to manage the cost. Well if they spent their budget on things it was intended to fund maybe it wouldn’t be so poor. He also made a huge deal about it in front of all the other teachers, which was embarrassing beyond belief.

I’ve come to detest even mentioning money. But here, it is all people want to talk about. They want to know how much everything costs, how much everyone makes, it just goes on and on. And they refuse to believe that my parents do not just have thousands of dollars lying around so they can come see me whenever they want.

The problem is that this society is built on patronage and reciprocity. What you do doesn’t matter at, it’s who you know. It is completely natural and not at all shameful to be friends with someone simply for what you can get out them. That has always bothered, although while a lot of my friends have asked me for outrageous, most have understood when I explained why that can’t happen. But the idea of liking someone for who they are isn’t the ideal here. It’s really tough to deal you, a lot of times I feel really taken advantage of. But despite this, the overwhelming majority of people are really good to me, definitely better than I deserve.

That’s all for now, oh Nanny I got your envelope, it didn’t cost much. Thanks so much!

Love and miss everyone

Air Conditioning and Economic Development. The two would seem to be completely unrelated. However, having lived in an underdeveloped nation void of air conditioning, I have developed a theory: People do not like to work when it is hot. People do not like to anything when it is hot. I do not think it is a coincidence that before the advent of air conditioning, most development took place in the cooler climates (i.e. the industrial revolution took place primarily in Europe and the northern United States). The truth is that when it is hot things pretty much shut down. It is easy to say that one can survive without air conditioning while sitting in one’s air conditioned home. That’s what I thought when I joined Peace Corps. And it is true, I’m used to the heat (in a very relative sense) and while I don’t enjoy it I can deal with it. And I usually deal with it by laying on the tile floor in the living room.

The thing is that there is a huge difference between living in the heat and being productive in the heat. This may sound lazy, but until you’ve lived in a climate that regularly exceeds 100 degrees, you can’t understand just how unproductive it makes you. You can’t get anything done in Cambodia after 10 in the morning. And you really don’t want to do anything. Of all of the obstacles to development I have encountered here, this one surprised me the most. You just don’t think about the real effects of things like heat when you live in a country that has air conditioning. It’s easy to say just tough it out, but it’s easier said than done.

Happy Mother’s day to all you mothers out there (Especially to mine:) Thanks for being awesome. Not a lot going on right now, due to the aforementioned heat. And the King’s Birthday. Tuesday-Saturday there will be no class so we can party in honor of the King. Woot. Some of the staff at one of the NGOs wants me to teach English workshops in the morning next week. This means I won’t be lying on my floor bored. Always a plus. And I just got ten more books. Yay. Between reading, teaching, and sewing (the darn Cambodian zippers...ugh) I should be fairly entertained.

Love and miss all of you! Have a great Mother’s day!

If you have never eaten four gigantic mangoes in one day, allow me to give you some advice: do not attempt. Mangoes are excessively filling, and if consumed in excess, render one unable to move. It is mango season here. Every two weeks or so some fruit or another ripens and then said fruit is everywhere. There are literally piles of if lying about. People try to give the fruit to one another, hoping that they will somehow reduce the amount in their possession. This doesn’t work, because people just end up receiving as much as they give. So anywhere you go, people are begging you to eat their fruit. The pile of mangoes on our table is larger everyday, as though they multiply during the night. I was even forced to eat one before I left the house this morning. And I’m sure more will come after dinner.

May 1st was Earth Day, and as with any day that has a notation on a calendar, there was no school. So one of the NGOs took some students to pick up trash along the main road. It was pretty stellar. I got to hold a sign and everything. As with any special event in this country, there someone with a megaphone there too. It was pretty much a perfect morning. We had rubber gloves, well glove I should say, there weren’t enough for everyone to have 2. We also got those cool little blue masks that make your face sweat. Sweetness. Mind you, picking up trash in Cambodia is kind of like collecting sand on the beach, the idea that one could gather it all is slightly ludicrous. But it was a step and a very positive activity for the students. People just throw trash wherever, and they really like to throw it in water, the same water people bathe in. Not pretty. Some of the ponds and ditches in my town would require a HAZMAT unit to safely clean up. But they filled six bags and that means six less bags of nastiness hanging out on the streets.

We also had our first Spanish class yesterday. It was super fun. I feel much less pressure when teaching Spanish than when teaching English. The NGO guys were unsure that this was a good idea, but everyone had fun and they seemed convinced in the end. Granted I taught them greetings and the alphabet, but it’s more Spanish than anyone around here knows. I don’t know if it is useful, and that is kind of why I’m excited about teaching it. These kids want to learn something simply for sake of learning. That’s really rare here and definitely something I want to encourage. I’m planning on giving them Spanish names and maybe teaching a little salsa *scandalous*.

Speaking of scandalous things: My host family found my dress. I bought a sundress in Malaysia. In Cambodia, sundresses are considered pajamas, while actual pajamas are considered appropriate attire for almost any occasion. Why, they asked, did I not wear my new pajamas? I told them it wasn’t for sleeping, but for nice occasion. We went back and forth for about ten minutes before I finally managed to convince them I was not going to wear the only decent dress I own to bed. They’re funny folk.

As always, I love and miss you all. Peace and Love and all that good stuff.

If you have never eaten four gigantic mangoes in one day, allow me to give you some advice: do not attempt. Mangoes are excessively filling, and if consumed in excess, render one unable to move. It is mango season here. Every two weeks or so some fruit or another ripens and then said fruit is everywhere. There are literally piles of if lying about. People try to give the fruit to one another, hoping that they will somehow reduce the amount in their possession. This doesn’t work, because people just end up receiving as much as they give. So anywhere you go, people are begging you to eat their fruit. The pile of mangoes on our table is larger everyday, as though they multiply during the night. I was even forced to eat one before I left the house this morning. And I’m sure more will come after dinner.

May 1st was Earth Day, and as with any day that has a notation on a calendar, there was no school. So one of the NGOs took some students to pick up trash along the main road. It was pretty stellar. I got to hold a sign and everything. As with any special event in this country, there someone with a megaphone there too. It was pretty much a perfect morning. We had rubber gloves, well glove I should say, there weren’t enough for everyone to have 2. We also got those cool little blue masks that make your face sweat. Sweetness. Mind you, picking up trash in Cambodia is kind of like collecting sand on the beach, the idea that one could gather it all is slightly ludicrous. But it was a step and a very positive activity for the students. People just throw trash wherever, and they really like to throw it in water, the same water people bathe in. Not pretty. Some of the ponds and ditches in my town would require a HAZMAT unit to safely clean up. But they filled six bags and that means six less bags of nastiness hanging out on the streets.

We also had our first Spanish class yesterday. It was super fun. I feel much less pressure when teaching Spanish than when teaching English. The NGO guys were unsure that this was a good idea, but everyone had fun and they seemed convinced in the end. Granted I taught them greetings and the alphabet, but it’s more Spanish than anyone around here knows. I don’t know if it is useful, and that is kind of why I’m excited about teaching it. These kids want to learn something simply for sake of learning. That’s really rare here and definitely something I want to encourage. I’m planning on giving them Spanish names and maybe teaching a little salsa *scandalous*.

Speaking of scandalous things: My host family found my dress. I bought a sundress in Malaysia. In Cambodia, sundresses are considered pajamas, while actual pajamas are considered appropriate attire for almost any occasion. Why, they asked, did I not wear my new pajamas? I told them it wasn’t for sleeping, but for nice occasion. We went back and forth for about ten minutes before I finally managed to convince them I was not going to wear the only decent dress I own to bed. They’re funny folk.

As always, I love and miss you all. Peace and Love and all that good stuff.

If you have never eaten four gigantic mangoes in one day, allow me to give you some advice: do not attempt. Mangoes are excessively filling, and if consumed in excess, render one unable to move. It is mango season here. Every two weeks or so some fruit or another ripens and then said fruit is everywhere. There are literally piles of if lying about. People try to give the fruit to one another, hoping that they will somehow reduce the amount in their possession. This doesn’t work, because people just end up receiving as much as they give. So anywhere you go, people are begging you to eat their fruit. The pile of mangoes on our table is larger everyday, as though they multiply during the night. I was even forced to eat one before I left the house this morning. And I’m sure more will come after dinner.

May 1st was Earth Day, and as with any day that has a notation on a calendar, there was no school. So one of the NGOs took some students to pick up trash along the main road. It was pretty stellar. I got to hold a sign and everything. As with any special event in this country, there someone with a megaphone there too. It was pretty much a perfect morning. We had rubber gloves, well glove I should say, there weren’t enough for everyone to have 2. We also got those cool little blue masks that make your face sweat. Sweetness. Mind you, picking up trash in Cambodia is kind of like collecting sand on the beach, the idea that one could gather it all is slightly ludicrous. But it was a step and a very positive activity for the students. People just throw trash wherever, and they really like to throw it in water, the same water people bathe in. Not pretty. Some of the ponds and ditches in my town would require a HAZMAT unit to safely clean up. But they filled six bags and that means six less bags of nastiness hanging out on the streets.

We also had our first Spanish class yesterday. It was super fun. I feel much less pressure when teaching Spanish than when teaching English. The NGO guys were unsure that this was a good idea, but everyone had fun and they seemed convinced in the end. Granted I taught them greetings and the alphabet, but it’s more Spanish than anyone around here knows. I don’t know if it is useful, and that is kind of why I’m excited about teaching it. These kids want to learn something simply for sake of learning. That’s really rare here and definitely something I want to encourage. I’m planning on giving them Spanish names and maybe teaching a little salsa *scandalous*.

Speaking of scandalous things: My host family found my dress. I bought a sundress in Malaysia. In Cambodia, sundresses are considered pajamas, while actual pajamas are considered appropriate attire for almost any occasion. Why, they asked, did I not wear my new pajamas? I told them it wasn’t for sleeping, but for nice occasion. We went back and forth for about ten minutes before I finally managed to convince them I was not going to wear the only decent dress I own to bed. They’re funny folk.

As always, I love and miss you all. Peace and Love and all that good stuff.

Singapore: Little India was fantastic. The rest of the city, not so much. But the cloth and spices people sold along the street in the Indian district were fabulous. Basically, all we did was go out to for drinks and pool. It was pretty cool. We met a random guy who used to work at the south pole. And then we went to…………………………

BORNEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really, there aren’t enough good things to say about Borneo. We arrived in Kuching, “the city of cats”. We wandered about. We saw a Hindu temple, a Catholic church, Anglican church, a Buddhist temple, a Sikh, and a Mosque within about 20 minutes. It was so cool. We explored a shopping mall and the Chinese food court outside. Someone taught us to say thank you in Chinese, which made this one guy laugh uncontrollably. That’s us, just spreading the joy. We went down to the ferry around sunset. The river made calming noises, in the foreground were palm trees and the background was the outline of a mountain with a mosque. The sky was just cloudy enough to make it turn all different colors. There were hues of blue, purple, red, yellow, and orange. It was so picturesque. And then it was five oclock. At least six mosques began the call to prayer. Regardless of a person’s religious beliefs, there is something curiously haunting about the call to prayer. Just the sound of it somehow carries your thoughts toward God. At the end, there was one crier who was just a little behind all the others. His lone refrain lasted about 10 seconds longer than everyone else’s. It was really an amazing moment.

Then we were hungry. We went back to the Chinese dude who laughed at us for saying thanks. We thought the night was over. We could not have been more wrong. We make our way to the guesthouse, walking past one of the many Chinese Buddhist temples in the town. This one happened to be having a party. And we were invited. For no apparent reason. We looked as we were walking by, and they invited to sit down. So we sat. And they gave us beverages, attempted to give us food, and explained what they were doing. Apparently the god of heaven was having a birthday the next day. So everyone got to together to set and eat and make offerings and eat some more. And drink. There was a lot of drinking. We sat there chatting with a few middle aged fellows. Then we learned that one of these guys was the mayor of the town. We met the mayor less than six hours after arriving in the town! The best part: he’s a Catholic named James. Go figure. When he left the party pretty much broke up. So we went to the only logical after-party spot: McDonalds. Understand that there are no McDonalds in Cambodia. And in most other countries (Including Borneo) Mickey D’s is a lot nicer than in the states. So we went for sundaes. While we were waiting in line, we noticed an African. We played a game that we had started in Kuala Lumpur called “Where is that foreigner from”. Kelsey voted Kenya, I said Nigeria. I won. Obviously the only way to know who wins this game is to ask. So Kelsey did. And the four of had ice cream together. They were students at the university, and they were celebrating his birthday. It was cute. Then we went back to the hostel. Surely the night was really over by no. Wrong again. Chinese poker and Bollywood movies. Oh yes, both of these things were happening. The Chinese use playing cards that are shaped like tongue depressors. The poker is also more similar to rummy. It was fun to watch. But not as fun as bollywood. We had fun at that hostel, but it didn’t have breakfast or a toilet in the room, so we shopped around the next day. That was a stellar decision. We found Tracks, a cool little hostel run by some really cool guys. They’re Iban, one of the many ethnic groups in Borneo. Traditionally, Iban men got tattoos to mark events in their lives. Since colonization by the British, many gave this custom up. But these guys also run a tattoo shop. They were on National Geographic’s Taboo: Tattoo. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. Anyhow, when they’re not tattooing folks, they just kind of hang out at the hostel and play the guitar. So we spent most of our time in Borneo hanging out and watching movies while the guys played guitar. It was very nice to be able to sleep in and do whatever we wanted. In Cambodia there are always people in your business, and so it was nice to just spend our days wandering around the city and nights chilling with our new friends. We did walk around a lot. We went to a lot of religious buildings, museums, and ethnic districts. We even saw orangutans. There is a rehabilitation centre where you can watch the feeding. There was a little baby and it was really cute.

After the orangutans, we went to the tattoo shop. We just dropped by and watched a guy get tattooed. There was a lot more blood than I expected. It was weird to be in the shop, there were posters and pictures of famous people he’d tattooed. If you want to check it out, the website is borneoheadhunter.com. So between tattoos (and there were a lot breaks) we watched movies and drank coffee. We got sharpie tattoos. It was a pretty cool day.

Borneo is an interesting place. It is technically Malaysia because Malaysia defended Borneo from the Japanese invasion. But most Malay people are actually Indonesian. The native people don’t particularly like them, because they took their land and tried to make them Muslim. Borneans are Malay in name only. Going to Borneo from Peninsular Malaysia requires a trip through immigration, even though they are technically the same country. According to Borneans, the reason Malaysia is so rich is that they take the oil found in Borneo and keep all the money from it.

Borneo was really awesome. It is strange coming back to Cambodia. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I found it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I was expecting everyone to live in cardboard boxes. I have gotten used to Cambodia, and leaving made me realize just how bad it really is. Honestly, I would have rather stayed in Borneo. I didn’t come to Cambodia for myself, but because it was what I needed to do. It was good to be reminded of why I’m here. I chose to be here, not somewhere else, because here, people need help. So now it’s back to Kravanh. A new school year will be starting soon, a new start for everyone.

Love and miss you all!

Brief rundown of the week (more details later)

1. Played pool in Singapore

2. Met the Mayor of Borneo's capital within hours of arriving

3. Had ice cream with Nigerians at McDonald's

4. Watched bollywood movies

5. Hung out with the most famous tattoo artist in Borneo (possibly all of southeast asia. Watch "Taboo: Tatoos" on National Geographic and you'll see him)

6. Had Turkish coffee

7. Listened to the call to prayer while watching the sunset over the river

8. Stayed up til after 3am listening to native musicians

9. Folder paper boats at a buddhist temple

10. Escaped from the rain in a Hindu temple

11. Realized the building by the police station is actually a Sikh temple

12. Had junior high girls tell me about Jesus

SO much more! Still love and miss everyone. Will write more when I have time

Malaysia PTII: Leaving the jungle was almost a cool as being inside of it. We decided to take boat instead of a train so we could see the river. It was pretty fantastic. We saw some native people swimming. The women were all shy and covered their mouths with their hands, and the kids all ran around splashing in the water and yelling hello. We got very wet, not because it was raining, but because a little French girl kept sticking her hand out of the boat and dangling it in the water, thus splashing everyone behind her. But she was super cute, and we knew we would totally have done that at her age, so we didn’t care. We got into Jerantut and had to wait for the night train to Kuala Besut, the mainland access point to the islands. While we were waiting, we played Yahtzee with Florian and Thomas, two German mathmeticians headed to the same islands we were. (I won the Yahtzee game, btw) We shared a taxi with them to the jetty and hung out on the beach, where they told us about math formulas for calculating probability, the German word for “a spiraling descent into hell” and other assorted awesomeness which I will never be able to remember.

The second day was all about snorkeling. Uber awesome. Swam with the fishies and the turtles. Some people saw lots of sharks, but I only saw a tiny one. Oh well. There was coral that kind of looked like a clam, but closed up when you came near it, schools of fish that you could just swim through. There was a fish feeding frenzy on one pile of dead coral, and a pink and blue fish the size of a microwave came and started running the other fish away. There were fist of all colors and sizes. Seriously, some were as big as me. The turtles were definitely as big as me. They got rather annoyed by all the divers, but they have to come up for air sometimes, so when they do, we can touch them. Excellence. Also, in the course of the day I found that my sunscreen had expired, therefore I have the worst sunburn ever. I didn’t know the back of my knees could burn, but it’s possible. Oh well, the burn was totally worth it. We left yesterday. On the boat, we ran in to too cool guys named Ben (English) and Aurli (French, his name is really longer, but I can’t spell it, sorry). We decided to share a taxi. (In Malaysia, taxis only take four people in a small sedan; unlike Cambodia which can take as many as eight, nine or ten if you count children). This was not as simple as it sounded. Because it was so late, all the taxis raised their prices. And there was a guy following us around making sure that no one gave us a lower price. Then they told us that there was no bus. Then, when the bus does come, the taxi people tell it not to stop for us. So Aurlie jumps on the bus, and tells the driver if he doesn’t take us to the place we want to go, he will call the police. So the four of us had the bus to ourselves for the trip. Then comes the fun part. We get to our destination. Kelsey’s bag was stolen, so all of her local currency was gone. I had to pay for things like the room and bus tickets, so I didn’t have enough either. We needed a bus to Singapore. But there was no one to change money for us. We left our bags with the guys and went frantically searching for money changers. We finally found a ticket seller who would accept US dollars, but he gave us a terrible exchange rate. He also gave us tickets to Kuala Lumpur because all the Singapore busses were already gone. So here we are, probably but not certainly leaving for Singapore very soon. More updates pending.

Love and miss you all!

Malaysia: Pretty much awesome. We arrived at the Kuala Lumpur airport about 7 o'clock wednesday night. The first thing we saw was a McDonald's. We were not in Cambodia anymore. By the time we got our luggage and changed money, it was almost 8. Realizing that the airport is about an hour away from the actual city, we resisted the urge to get fries, and instead took a bus to Kuala Lumpur. Once in Kuala Lumpur, we were slightly overwhelmed by things such as paved roads, traffic lgihts, traffic laws, etc.The city at night is beuatifiul. The twin towers sort of glow, but more about those in a minute.We took the monorail to the place that the lonely planet guidebook said had hostels. Unfortunately, we went one stop too far. So then we walked. It was fun. And tiring. And we met a nice Indian guy who tried to help us, but he didn't know anymore than we did. We still slightly in awe of being in a city with public transportation. Eventually, we found a hostel. We had rice and fried chicken for dinner (the fried chicken is fantastic!) The next day, we trekked all over town. We had curry for breakfast, then we headed for the towers. They are amazing. I bought a lonely planet calendar last year, and each month it has some pictures and a little blurb about a different city. After the month was up, I hung the pictures on my wall. The picture for Malaysia was of the Petronas towers. I always thought if would be super cool to see them. I saw them. And it was super cool. The building is beautriful. The first five floors are a shopping mall (the food court included A&W and Dunkin' Donuts) and the higher floors are offices. They let you go up to the bridge that connects them. You can see the entire city. It was kind of surreal to be standing in the Malaysian equilivalent of the statue of liberty, looking out on the city. Kuala Lumpur is encircled by mountains. It was overcast the day we went, and the fog was just starting to roll off the mountains. It was incredible. We spent the rest of the day trekking around the city. I found a starbucks, that made me pretty happy. Then we found a huge mall/foodcourt/spa/movie theatre.I can't even begin to describe it. really. I have never seen anything like it in America. After spending 8 months in Cambodia, it was really too much. We saw "He's just not that into you", ate popcorn, and then had subway and baskin robin for dinner. It was fantastic. It was a bit diffifcult to get used to things like crosswalks, and forming orderly lines, and not bargaining for everything you buy.

Then we went to Taman Negara. It means "National Park" in Malay. Their creativity with names is less than astounding, but it was really too wonderful for words. It was hard to get to, as no one could seem to agree on where the bus station was, but after many navigational misadventures, we arrived in Jerantut. This is the town with a bus that goes to the rainforest. And a KFC. And that was were things got really interesting. There were two guys sitting across from us at KFC. They stared and made kissing noises, but that didn't bother us because we get that in Cambodia all the time. We didn't think anything of it. And then we boarded the bus. One of then comes up to our window and points to a pick up. His friend is sitting in the driver's seat. Neither speaks English. We figure out that he wants us to get in the truck. He tells us that they will take us to our destination for free. At least we think that's what he was trying to say. After suspending sanity and consdiring it for moment, we decide that would be one of the most stupid and dangerous things we could do. So we stayed in the bus. They drove off (or so we thought) revving the engine as they went past the bus. After a few more minutes the bus takes off. Suddenlly, the two guys are behind us. Maybe they just happen to be going this way, I thought. Then the bus stopped to pick up another passenger. And the truck stopped too. Maybe they have arrived at their destination. Negative. They waited for the bus, and then continued following. It was funny for the first 20 minutes. Then we were a little creeped out. Thankfully, about halfway to our destination, they stopped. Then it started raining again. The windows on the bus were down, and some wouldn't stay closed, including mine. So one of the teenage boys who had been staring at us came over and held my window closed. The whole bus cheered for him. It was priceless. He continued to hold the window closed for a good ten minutes. His name was Azman; he didn't speak much English, but he was adorable. We were sad when he and his friends got off the bus.

So we get to the little resort town. We have no idea where to go. So we just look for a place to get out of the rain. We literally stumble upon a small hostel, ran by a Bob Marley fan named Zeck. Zeck was a pretty cool guy. He's Malay, but he has worked in Scotland for 7 years. He came back to help friends run a hostel. We played rummy with him. He usually lost. When he wasn't there, there was a kid name Ihi. He was a 19 year old from another city who had been sent to help family work at the resort. He was bored and lonely (as he repeatedly told us) being away from all his friends and family.He really liked us a lot. He didn't speak much English, but he taught us some malay words. Adorable. And then there was the jungle... We took in well over 11k (I've forgotten how to use miles, you figure it out) and that's just distance, not elevation. First of all, I can't even describe what it's like being in the oldest forest in the world. You are complelely surrounded, cut off from anything. everywhere you look there is green. We took a small side trail accidentally at first. Thankfuly it was a loop and we ended up back where we started. When we got there, there was a tour group. Knowing we had to uphold our reputation as Peace Corps Volunteers, we raced them to the next stop on the trail. They were unaware of this fact. And then they took a different (easier) trail and it didn't really matter. But we still felt good about winning. The whole point of this exercise was to get to a rope bridge in the canopy. Which meant climbing a really steep hill. But we did it. And then... the rope bridge. You know how on movies, people cross vast casms in the earth on rickety rope bridges? I did that. Except it wasn't really a vast casm. But we were really high up. We walked on a mile's worth of rope bridges suspended above the rainforet canopy. Wow. At first, I was pretty much freaked out. The first bridge (they were laid out in a series of about six) I could barely look down. They move a lot, especially when other people get on them. But by the third bridges it was really easy. I was hundreds of feet obove the ground, looking down at the Malaysian rainforest. Just wow.

And that was only the first leg of our trek. After that, there was a mountain. We didn't actually realize it was mountain at first. We just saw a said that said that there was something down the trail to our right. So we thought, "why not check it out?" Um...It was definitely a mountain. A REALLY steep mountain. It was nearly vertical in may places. We had to stop several times. But the view from the top was worth it. It was like being in national geographic. And then we had to go down. Going up a sheer mountain isn't easy, but getting down can be downright dangerous. But we are peace corps volunteers, and we don't let little things like mountains stop us. We slid down on our butts a couple of times, but we were victorious in the end. After that, we felt we deserved lunch. So we ate. And then we went to a cave. At first we were a bit worried. The trail seemed nearly vertical, and we were tired from the morning's adventures. But then it got remarkably easier. We even came upon a local village. We didn't go in because it seemed impolite, but it was super to see people just coming and going, from huts, in the rainforest. And when it isn't raining, the rainforest is a mudforest. And leeches like mud. I don't like leeches. I only got bit once, Kelsey twice. I think that's respectable. Thankfully, there are no leeches in caves. The cave was narrow, and we had my tiny flashlight (thanks Maw-Maw!). So we crawled around and I held the flashlight in my mouth. We are hardcore (not really). Anyway, we slipped and slid on the rocks. They were blue and metallic. But it was the bats that really made it special. They were all over the roof of the cave. We really shouldn't have been surprised, being in a cave and all. It seems sort of obvious really. But imagine yourself suddenly surrounded by bats. Hundrends of thousands of bats. Everywhere. Alas, were thwarted by bats. We got to a point where the bat poop was so thick that the rocks were too slippery to climb on. It was just a little gross. When we came back out of the cave, we were disgiusting. We were covered in mud and bat crap. But it was definitely worth it. Our last rainforest adventure was leaving it. We took a two hour boat ride up the river to the bus station. It was really realaxing. And we are not even halfway through the trip. At 1am, yes, in the morning, our train leaves for our next destination, the Perhentian Islands, which are supposed to be the most beautiful in the world. I'll let you know.

Also, for the family: I received Maw Maw's and the Nannies' birthday boxes. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much! AND I can recieve phone calls from Cambodia here in Malaysia, so it you want to try and call, you might get through!

Well, being in a Muslim nation there hasn't been much talk of easter. I didn't actually realize it was easter til I checked facebook and saw everyone's status'. So happy easter everyone! Love and miss you all!

So I celebrated my 23rd birthday in style; we had a cake and everything. My students and my coteacher bought me a cake and got me presents. They sang happy birthday, and afterward, we had a food fight with the cake icing. It was very exciting. I put some of the icing in one of the boy’s hair, and then all the girls thought that was an excellent idea. So they all started putting icing in the boys’ hair. At first the boys were upset; they spend way more time on their hair then the girls do. But they made the best of it and used the icing as styling gel. They came up with some pretty fantastic hairdos. It was awesome. My gifts included stuffed animals, towels, shampoo and children’s books. Definitely one of the best birthdays I’ve had. Then they went home and went to bed, because the 12th graders had to get up early for the final semester exam the next day.

About the exam: in America, they would all fail. It’s not because they are unintelligent, but because they cheat. There is no problem with students copying each other’s work, talking about questions, yelling answers across the room. None. Officially, they aren’t supposed to. But in reality, I’m the only one who cares. The only thing most of the other teachers do is take away some of their cheat sheets. I, being a mean teacher, made them give me all their non test materials, stay seated (sometimes they stand up to get a better look at their classmates paper) and keep the talking to a minimum. By the end of the three day exam process, students dreaded seeing me. Oh well. Grading the tests was a trip. They had to write about funerals in Cambodia. Most either didn’t write anything or copied from a book. There were some rather unfortunate misspellings. The main one was leaving the ‘r’ out of the word ‘shirt’. In Cambodia, people wear white shirts to funerals.

Also, there was hail. This was a huge deal. It started raining really hard during one of the exams. I heard a loud noise on the roof. I thought it sounded like hail, and then remembered I was in Southeast Asia. Probably just a coconut. Then one of students informed me that ice was indeed falling from the sky. We all went outside. The male teachers all ran out and grabbed ice so I could see there was ice in Cambodia too. They were exceedingly proud of themselves, as though they had created the hail themselves. One of them was drunk. He kept remarking about how cold the tiny ice chip in his hand was. I noted that it is ice, and by definition cold. This fact was lost on him. Anyway, they hail was tiny and didn’t do any damage. So it made me happy.

This keyboard is very difficult to use, thus I apologize for any typos. And my hands are tired. But I love and miss you all!

In case I haven’t mentioned it enough, it’s hot. Just had to get that off my chest. By the way, happy International Women’s Rights day to all you women out there. I realize that it was Sunday, and it is now Monday, but here in Cambodia, you can’t let a good holiday go to waste. Since women’s day fell on a Sunday, and that’s already a holiday, everyone took today off. Yesterday, all the students in Grade 10A had a party. It had very little to do with women’s rights, but it was extremely fun nonetheless. I take that back, there wasn’t enough room at the table so the girls made the boys sit on the floor. Women’s rights in action. We ate yummy food and then played games. We played the Khmer version of “duck, duck, goose”. In this game, everyone sings a song. The “goose” has a knotted up towel and walks behind everyone, just like in the American version. To goose someone, you drop the towel behind them. Then, that person, and the person to their right get up and run. The goose takes the place of the person who they goosed. The “goosee”grabs the towel, and chases the person to their right around the circle. But they don’t just chase, no, that would be boring. As they chase, they repeatedly flog the person with the towel. The goosee generally looses because the person to their right has a head start, but at least they get to beat that person first. Then we went to the river and threw each other into the water. It was so much fun. They had sand fights, they would throw each other to the ground and sit on each other and put sand in each other’s shirts. It was a very good day. The students really had a lot of fun. It is so cool to watch them playing and fighting and laughing. There was this big tractor; it must have been 40 years old. It no longer worked, so we all climbed on to see how many people we could fit on it. About 20. Granted, being Khmer teenagers, they were all really tiny. It was one of those days that reminds me why I came here.

On a completely unrelated note, for those of you “old fogies” who think that hip hop music is corrupting the English language, you are absolutely right. The story begins innocently enough. As I have mentioned, we showed an HIV prevention movie to the students. Afterwards, we made them discuss. It was pretty simple; we divided them into groups and gave each group a discussion topic. They had 20 minutes to talk, and then one member from each group had to present. Well, things were going along swimmingly, until the representative from the “What spreads HIV?” group got up. These are his *almost* exact words “HIV spread by f***ing a lot of partner.” No kidding. At first I thought I misheard him. Then I looked at my co teacher and saw he could barely contain his laughter. And this was not an anomaly. In every single class, as I was walking through the aisles, I would see the f word on at least one student’s notebook. It got to where I would have to write it on the board, cross it out, and write “sexual intercourse” next to it. The students were incredibly surprised to find out that this word is impolite. Finally, I asked my co teacher, “How do they all know this word?” Apparently, because the word is so prevalent in a lot of western music, many students look it up. Thus, they learn that it means to have sex. But they don’t understand the context at all. So if you come to Cambodia, and meet a seemingly foul mouthed teenager, give him or her a break. It is highly possible they have no idea what they’re saying.

Thanks to Mom and Maw Maw for their valentine’s packages, as well as the Leonard Caring Clovers for the awesome candy and first aid supplies. Miss and love you all!

Thanks so much to Rebecca for this picture! I have been wanting to find a picture of the poultry moto for weeks. Here it is. This is a very common site in Cambodia, but it makes me smile every time I see it.

With people having so much economic fun in the US, Cambodia is seeming more exciting all the time. Anyway, not a lot is new. The students just took their semester exams, thus many of them consider school to be over (it doesn’t end til April). If the atmosphere at Cambodian schools was relaxed before, it is nearly comatose at this point. But we still have fun with the students who do come. Since school isn’t taken very seriously now, we can use this opportunity to do fun things that are really educational. Peace Corps wants us to set up things like workshops and camps, but it is really hard to get people to come to anything that requires a time commitment. So my coteacher and I took class time to show the students a movie about HIV/AIDS. It’s really cool; it is made just like a movie, not a documentary. The students loved it. I think the most rewarding thing on the planet is the raucous laughter of 50 Khmer teenagers. The movie had English subtitles, so I could read it, and it could technically be counted as English class. We had to watch it in the school office, so a lot of the teachers ending up watching it with us as well. We even had some students wander in from other classes. It made me really happy. It is estimated that 70,000 Cambodians have HIV/AIDS, the highest infection rate in Southeast Asia. Many people were infected during the war. Most men were soldiers, living away from home. More recently, the infection rate has skyrocketing among police. Most police officers do not live where they work. They live in dorms at the police station, only going home once every month or so. Another problem is the lack of female control over the use of protection. Even if a woman knows her husband is sleeping around, it would be unacceptable to for her to insist that he use a condom. Because of this, the infection rate is just as high among chaste, married women as it is among prostitutes. The rate of new infections is declining, however. There is a ton of education available now.

In other news, I moved this week. Apparently, my host family doesn’t actually own the house we live in. They rent it from a Cambodian woman who lives in the States. She is back for a visit so we had to scram. We now stay two doors down, and my in my new room I can see the stars at night. So that makes me super happy. I have also developed a slight obsession with sugarcane juice. Known locally as ‘tug empoa’, it is possibly the most wonderful thing ever on a hot day. Because it is heating up, tug empoa stands are everywhere. The best part is that a glass costs less than 13 cents. I love this country. I’m not going to lie, it does kind of look like pee, but it is super refreshing at 3 in the afternoon when temperatures range from 90-100. I drink one everyday. Sometimes I drink two.

What else? Ah, yes. My hand sewing has improved a great deal since I’ve been here. One day I was bored, so I bought fabric and made a skirt. By hand. In one afternoon. I think it turned out quite well. Currently, I’m working on a purse. My creative powers are being put to excellent use. My family doesn’t understand why I don’t just pay someone to do it.

Another thing that was kind of weird was going to the US Embassy. During our recent training session in Phnom Penh, we were invited to eat lunch at the Embassy. There were polished tiled floors, heavy metal doors, glass everywhere. Things were shiny. I afraid to walk in, for fear that I would sully this immaculate place with my shoes that had stepped in God-knows-what in my village. The tables and chairs were beautiful and *get this* NOT plastic! The really funny thing was that our counterparts were there too. Picture 30 Americans, who had been living in Cambodian villages, dining in this air conditioned splendor. Now picture 30 Cambodians being given a tour of this place. The tour didn’t last very long, as the cubicle area was all we were allowed to see. But needless to say, they were awed by the grandeur. It was kind of cool to think that they all got a chance to have lunch in America, seeing is that is the only time most of them will ever set foot on American soil.

On our last night some of us took our counterparts to Nike’s Pizza for an American meal. They liked it, although they felt the pizza and pasta were a little salty. But you should have seen the way they gobbled up the ice cream. It was pretty fantastic. We were planning on going to the western market for ice cream, but it was closed. So we decided to just head back. Lydia and I, being the only girls, were walking ahead because the boys were slow. We spotted a western gas station across the road. We wanted ice cream. Without telling anyone, we ran across the road. We didn’t know if the guys would follow, but eventually they did. 7 people shared two pints of ice cream standing in the middle of a gas station in Phnom Penh. It was nothing short of stellar.

So this has been a rather hectic and exciting week. I found out I get to take the oral exam for the Foreign Service, and then I went to the embassy and got to talk to some Foreign Service officers. So that was pretty stellar. Speaking of stellar, my co-teacher used the word ‘stellar’ during the conference we are attending. It was possibly the proudest moment of my life. We have been in Phnom Penh all week. It has been pretty cool. The first couple days the volunteers talked about teaching problems and ideas, as well as ideas for other projects. Our co-teachers came yesterday, so we’ve spent today and yesterday hanging out with them. Tomorrow we start the big Cambodia-wide education conference. So I’ve basically been eating ice cream and planning projects. It has been an exciting week. Sorry if this is a short post, but we have had very little free time. I hope to provide more info before we leave Phnom Penh, for now, know that I love and miss you all (even those of you whom I’ve never met, I know you’re out there)

Today I ate an ice cream sandwich. Unlike the weak excuse for an ice cream sandwich you may be picturing, (two brown, paste-like sheets with ice cream in between) this, my friends, is the real thing. Seriously, it is like an ice cream sub. Imagine, if you will, a baguette, much like you would see at subway. That’s right, real bread, with a scoop of ice cream in it. It sounds weird and slightly disgusting. But believe me, it was yummy. I suggest you try it at home (although the bread needs to be kind of sweet). Another thing I suggest: fried breaded bananas. Cut a banana in half length-wise. Wrap it in plastic wrap, then use a rolling pin to roll it flat, about1/4 inch thick. Then, coat it in pancake batter and fry (remove the plastic wrap first:). These are fantastic and I am slightly addicted to them.

Yes, Cambodia is full of culinary marvels. I learned of the ice cream sandwiches today at a volleyball game. My students won, 3-2. I was extremely proud of them. It was a very close game. They handily won the first round, but when they switched sides in the second round, the sun was in their faces. So basically, whoever was not facing the sun won each round. By the final round, they had them switch sides halfway through so it was fair to everyone. My school is now eligible to compete in a national tournament in Battambang at the end of March. It will be stellar.

Also, it is hot. Yes, I know you are shocked. But really, I’m worried about April. The heat makes me excessively lazy. Perhaps I will build up incredible heat tolerance. One can only hope. I am concerned that I will return to the US with the cold weather tolerance of a Texan (friends from Texas, you know that while I tolerate your state, I really love you). And then all my Texan friends will make fun of me. I guess I have it coming.

Speaking of cold weather tolerance, I finally managed to get a Khmer person to understand why we don’t eat rice as much in the states, it was a miracle. They assume that since we don’t eat, we must not like it. Whenever I meet, new people, they always ask if I can eat rice. And they are very surprised when I say yes. Over the course of about three conversations, I managed to get my friend to understand that most states are too cold or too dry to grow rice, ergo, we don’t produce nearly as much of it. Understand that most Khmer people eat rice 3x a day, 7 days a week. I didn’t know that there was so much rice in the entire world. Well, I explained to my friend, when it gets cold, water freezes. Since rice plants live in water, they would be frozen in the ice, thus they would die. This was an earth-shattering piece of information, let me just tell you.

Other things they can’t believe: people choose to live on their own, when a couple gets married, they don’t live with bride’s family, weddings are only one day, there are poor people in America, that girls and boys stay in the same dorm, supermarkets aren’t wooden market stalls, we have traffic laws, we work forty hours a week, this list could go on forever. I miss all of you, see you in 19 months!

If marriages are subject to the proverbial ‘seven year itch’, then Peace Corps volunteers could be said to experience the ‘six month blues’. The honeymoon is over. What started out as an exciting overseas adventure has settled into the dull routine of everyday life. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We aren’t here to be adventurers. We are here to serve the people of Cambodia by living the way they live. That is a very noble thing to say, but the reality isn’t always that simple. A few other factors happen around the six month mark as well. One is that we have been here long enough to grasp the full extent of many of the problems facing this nation. One is that the people here do not seem to believe self sufficiency. The culture has operated on the patronage system for a long time, and they simply believe the only way to better their lives is through foreign donations. Some people would say that Khmer people don’t work hard. In a sense, yes, this is true. A teacher decided to have his engagement party during the week, so one day we simply didn’t have class because all the teachers were drunk. This is perfectly acceptable. Also, because of the heat, all real work tends to cease around lunch. And people don’t work if it rains. Or if it’s very cold (like 60 degrees, brrr). Now there are many people who work hard, but it is because they have to. And these people are usually poor.

You can really forget about getting things done after 11. (Although 10:30 is great because people will do whatever you want so you will stop bothering them and they can go eat) I think the problem is that they don’t see hard work rewarded. People who work hard have to because they are poor. People here who have money didn’t work for it (generally). They are either politicians or have family in America. This, in the Khmer way of thinking is how one becomes rich: have the right connections. I believe that will begin to change in the coming years, as there are many young people who understand that dependence is not going to help them or the country in the future. But for now, it is discouraging when people just want you to teach English to (or marry) their children.

But at six months, you feel like you aren’t making a difference, you just see the problems. This is compounded with another six month problem: relationships. In training, there were a lot of things we overlooked because we were only going to be living there for two months. But now, we have to make more clear decisions about what we can and can’t deal with concerning other people. We know have to deal with real relationships with real people just like we would in the states. As just like anywhere else, dealing with people (even those you generally like) can really suck sometimes. This deals with the third six month issue: culture. Basically, anything considered impolite in America, a Khmer person will say within the first five minutes of meeting you. ex. “How much do you make? How much do your parents make? Will you send me money when you go back to America? Why are you so fat? Don’t you want to be thin? How much do you weigh? I love you, do you love me? Will you teach my children for free?” Also, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about how much anyone makes. Everyone will tell you how poor they are (even if they have two cars and two motos). The sob stories begin to get on your nerves. The fact that women will just walk up to you and start petting you gets on your nerves. Mothers telling their small children to stare at the white person (literally) will get on your nerves. People messing with your bike gets on your nerves. Being a circus attraction gets on your nerves. Having a host mother who thinks she is the center of the universe gets on your nerves. People treating you like you are some fragile doll that will break if exposed to anything strenuous gets on your nerves.

Having said that; it is worth it. In general, I’m happy. And for as exasperating as people they can be, they really are the most generous people ever. The bike guy fixes my bike for free. People always want me to come to their houses just so they can feed me. The fried banana dude at school always gives me an extra banana, the other day I paid for two oranges and they gave me four. People are genuinely good hearted, it just looks a lot different than what I’m used to. There are some things that I hope I never get used to, like selling your daughter to the highest bidder so you don’t have to pay for school. So to those of you who talk to me on a regular basis: if you think I’m upset when you call, it’s not you, I’m just upset. But don’t worry; the good times outnumber the bad. My students are becoming more creative, which makes me super happy.

To any prospective K3s, this will be an awesome adventure. But the adventure will end, and you will be left with a life that is full of the same frustrations and disappointments that you had in the states. And that is a good thing. Because the most important part of this experience is realizing that other people are basically just like us. They get up in the morning, eat, do their thing, take care of their kids, and buy their groceries. People here love their children, get frustrated by traffic, put off homework, lament the loss of a sock, just like anyone else. That isn’t something you can really understand until you’ve lived here. But the simple things somehow add up to make it worth it. A friend and I were complaining to each other, and we agreed that as much as we do complain, we wouldn’t want to leave.

I’m also extremely excited about the upcoming soccer tournament my students are about to compete in. They will compete against three other teams. But the team from the provincial town has a lot more people, so we’ll see how it goes. I also have at least four weddings to go to this month, and two conferences in Phnom Penh. It will be pretty stellar.

Love to all

Sometimes I like to chase chickens. I ride by them everyday and everyday there are surprised to see me, and noisily try to run away. Perhaps they would be more successful if they simply moved to one side or the other. But no, they like to try to outrun my bike. It amuses me. Today there is a big party at my school. But, it is basically a self congratulatory bash for a certain political party. So I’m here, in my provincial town, to avoid it. In Cambodia, all teachers at public schools are required to join this party. Many of the younger people however, feel that the party simply gives people gifts so to appease them, so the people don’t notice that ridiculous amounts of money are paying for politician’s houses and cars instead of roads and schools. Two of my co teachers also left town for the same reason. The party’s main supporters are older people, who remember when a bowl of rice porridge was supposed to be a day’s meal for twenty people. They know how bad things can get, and know that things are better now, so they’re scared of change. Younger people, however, look at Vietnam and Thailand, (both about 20-30 years ahead of Cambodia as far as development is concerned) and feel like the government is holding the country back. I’m not supposed to comment on politics, as I’m technically attached to the official US Diplomatic Mission in Cambodia, but when you live in a place it’s hard not to develop opinions. Also, had I attended the party, I would have been trotted out like a circus attraction and expected to make small talk and dance with a bunch of drunk, middle aged bureaucrats who are used to being given special treatment. Yeah, no. Just no.

It’s the “rongia” season here. “Rongia” be translated as “very cold”, i.e. anything below 70 degrees. I love it. In the early morning it can get down 55, but they bust out the puffer jackets. It’s the best thing ever. I laugh a lot. This is mainly because it will be in 90s and 100s before long. Being the start of the second term, attendance has dropped significantly. My night class only had three students last time. The national exam is coming up for grade 12, they must pass it to graduate. They know school is kind of a joke so they just go to their private classes. For those who can’t afford private classes, they help at the farm. I’m starting to volunteer at an orphanage next week, so I’m excited about that.

Lastly, a word about dancing. I attempted to teach my students at recent party, which apparently was highly inappropriate. Teachers do not “disco” (any dancing that isn’t traditional Khmer). Well this one does, I don’t care what they think. But I did promise not to do it at school parties. The thing is, traditional Khmer dancing, when done by professionals, is kind of cool. I linked a couple to my facebook. However, when done by drunk people to loud techno screeching, it’s kind of boring. You kind of just rock back and forth and move your hands back and forth. But they get really excited when foreigners do it. So I try. I will try to get videos from the party’s to post. They’re really funny.

Also, my fruit lady has started selling muffins. This is proof that God does indeed love me. It definitely made my week. Granted, they aren’t the warm, crusty muffins that I ate in the States, but they are muffins nonetheless. Just thinking about them makes me hungry. I think I’ll go get lunch now,

Special thanks to Lesley Daniel and the Leonard Caring Clovers 4-H Club! Your gifts were much appreciated!

Word of the month: Khmerlicious. Definition: Remember that part in the movie Mars Attacks, when the Martian disguises himself as a hooker to get into the White House? He has huge hair to hide his gigantic head, now imagine that the hooker is trying to get into the Cambodian Royal Palace instead of the White House. That is Khmerlicious. This week I attended two weddings. Let me just say, I was extremely Khmerlicious. I’m not gonna lie, I was slightly scared of my own reflection in the mirror. Especially for the second wedding, they did my hair in a buffont that added at least 4 inches to my height. It was fantastic. These weddings are actually a series of about 8 different ceremonies, each lasting about 45 minutes, over the course of two days. The bride wears a different outfit for each one. Now, you have to understand, there is nothing plain, simple, or understated about traditional Khmer dress. The hair, the make up, the sequins, the clothes, the jewelry, seriously, drag queens would think it’s a little miuch. Btw, my buffont hairdo and face pavement (I’m sorry but to say they apply make up would be an understatement of infinite proportions, they do a better job of paving than the highway department) was done by a bleach blond drag queen. Happy New year to me. There were many pictures, and someday you will see them, but for now I have linked a few that I found on google so you can have some idea of what this is like. The night before, people arrange about 50 platters of food, mainly fruit, and place them before the ancestor shrine (every Buddhist Khmer home has one). The next day, when enough guests have arrived, everyone grabs a platter and takes their food for a walk. Literally. It is supposed to represent the groom bringing food as a gift for the bride’s family. There is a ceremony where people pretend to cut the bride and groom’s hair (I did that) and one where people tie a red string around their wrists (did that too). But basically, the whole thing is one big photo op. Most of the couple’s time is spent being posed by a photographer. The interesting thing is that most wedding guests don’t actually see any ceremony. The close friends and family will take part in the whole thing, but the majority will come for either lunch or dinner, eat, give money and leave. During the meal, the bride and groom stand at the entrance and greet guests. That is all most of the guests see of them. I was pretty excited that the last wedding had a cake. It wasn’t exactly like an American wedding cake, but for someone who hasn’t eaten cake in five months, it was close enough. The wedding costs the family over $5000 They feed between 50-500 people five meals over the course of a day and half. They also have about 10-15 different outfits made for the bride alone. The rest of the wedding party changes clothes quite a few times as well.

But I would hate to have you think that all I do is party. Not at all. The day after Christmas I harvested rice. By hand. In my pajamas. It was pretty much the best thing ever. The teachers and the students all went to some random person’s rice paddy (I still don’t know exactly who it belongs to) and used a sickle to harvest rice. It am proud to say that they gave me the sharpest sickle, and managed to not hurt myself or anyone around me. Apparently my stretchy capre pants were ´unstuitable´, so I wore pajama pants like everyone else. It is perfectly acceptable to walk around in pajama sets here. They are not suitable for traveling, but for everyday wear, totally acceptable. You have to get dressed up when you travel, which I don’t understand at all. Traveling involves cramped spaces and extreme amounts of either mud or dust. But you can’t really ask why things happen here. They told us in training that when your questions go unanswered, you simply aren’t asking the right question. Well, the right question isn’t why, it’s why not. Why not wear pajamas all the time? Why not have police carry AK47s when they don’t have the budget to buy bullets?

On Christmas day I taught my students Jingle Bells. It was slightly awesome. They really like to sing. I was also randomly given coffee four different times by people who didn’t even know it was Christmas. Merry Christmas to me. I breakfasted on the individual serving of Frosted Flakes the fam sent, and an oatmeal cream pie. Not exactly a king cake, but yummy nonetheless. Thanks again to everyone who sent me stuff. It is greatly appreciated. A belated happy holiday to all.

Phnom Kravagn, Pursat Province. It has mountains and waterfalls. About 20 kilos from the national road (easy biking distance in the right season) there is a well funded but understaffed high school. That is where I will be teaching for the next two years. I will be living with a market vendor, her 65 year old mother, and her 12 and 13 year old sons. Tomorrow, I meet my counterpart from the school. We will have conferences for the next two days, and then my counterpart and I will go to my site. For the next couple of days, I'll get to know my host family, the school staff, and the general layout of the community. Afterwards we spend a couple days in Phnom Penh, and then back to the training villages. There are currently no volunteers in Pursat province. Me and the girl who will be living in Pursat provincial town are the first. I think it will be a fantastic site, especially since I will be in one of the few non landmined mountainous regions of Cambodia.

I like being the first. I feel like some sort of explorer. Also, I will be close to Battambang, on the Thai border. It has all of the amenities of Phnom Penh, like western food, with fewer tourists. But I won't be there for a while, we have to be at our permanent site for 90 days before we are allowed to leave the province. I will do a lot of biking. I'm kind of sad that my friends won't be close, but they are in the surrounding provinces.

As excited as I am to be going to my permanent site, I will be sad to leave the training village. This is the most gangster town in Cambodia (in a good way) People here do awesome things like wear gold chains, hike one pant leg up, throw dance parties for no particular reason, and other assorted activities that are simply stellar. I will miss it.

One of the most interesting things about this place is how incompetent I feel. We are possibly the most educated people for miles, yet we can barely feed and bathe ourselves. The other day, I definitely dropped the family's bucket into the well. It took my host brother almost half an hour to retrieve it. Also, Khmer people tend to eat rice with a spoon and use chopsticks for noodles, which seems counterintuitive to me. I am working on the fine art of eating noodle soup with chopsticks and not having it end up all over my clothes. Thankfully, I am not the most incompetent person in my group! Just a few days ago my genius friends decided that they putting two people on one bike was a good idea. Understand that Cambodians do this all the time. Most bikes have a seat attached to the back for carrying things and people. The key to this is weight distribution. The larger person should be in front. My college educated friends forgot this little detail. It went down like this: Friend A was riding a bike, Friend B (anyone who knows the story about the guy with the sarong, this is that guy) was walking. Friend A thinks riding Khmer style would be a good idea. Friend B agrees. The problem: Friend B outweighs Friend A by a little over 50 lbs. Basically, the bike nearly flipped backward. Friend A managed to keep hold of the bike and land on his feet. Friend B, not so lucky. He fell backwards into barbed wire and cut his arm all the way up to his shoulder. He hasn't showered for two days in order to keep the bandages dry. Oh yes, we are a sharp group of prospective Peace Corps Volunteers. Pray for the people who have to put up with us for the next two years.

Thanks to everyone for sending me stuff and keeping me in your prayers. You have no idea how much it means. I should be near internet for the next week, so I hope ot keep you updated as much as possible.

Ice cream and pancakes. Yes my friends, within the past 24 hours I have had both. After a couple weeks of practice teaching in Cambodian high schools, the peace corps decided that we should all wander about the nation testing our transportation procurement skills. It is called an adventure, but really it is more of a field trip. Practicum was a lot of fun. I really loved the kids, although their enthusiam was a bit overwhelming sometimes. Once, a moto with 4 16 yr old boys came alongside my bike. The kids wanted to practice their english while an 18 wheeler came barreling down the road. But that's Cambodia. I didn't particularly enjoy the co-teaching portion. My co teacher was the head of the English dept. He had been teaching for twenty years. This translated to a reluctance to deviate from the book. Bear in mind that the book was published in Britain, and has a chapter with vocabulary such as: provencial (meaning uneducated), air ticket, working holiday, and non-finite clauses. The kids basically just read a dialogue full of words they will never need to use.

Since practicum, I've just been studying language, often while swinging in hammock. Yes folks, peace corps cambodia is hardcore. This trip has been pretty fun. Last night in Phnom Penh I had pancakes and a vanilla orange latte. It was pretty much made of awesome. Today, we wandered around the Russian market, I got some books and a muffin. Then, I discovered what might possibly be my favorite passtime ever. Bargaining with taxi drivers. Picture it: A loud, dirty, smelly lot, full of minivans and toyota sedans. Men come from every direction yelling and grabbing us to take their vehicles. We take our time, telling them they are dreaming if they think we will take that price, or if they think we don't know that 2 dollars is the same as 8000 riel. In the end, we cram 15 people in an passenger van for two hours. My field trip buddy and I finally arrive in our destination, Takeo. Takeo doesn't really have much to see. But the whole point of the trip was introducing to the transportation system (or lack thereof) in Cambodia. So here we are. We checked into a guesthouse that has a huge package of condoms at the front desk. The funny thing is, this is definitely the least shady one in town. The main attraction of Takeo is Telamart. This is a gas station that offers two indespinsible items: Pringles and ice cream. We're talking real pringles, not the random potato crisp knock off. So that is pretty much all there is to do here. But the room gets the discovery channel, and that's all that really matters.

At the moment, it is pouring rain. I'm just chilling in an internet cafe trying to relay all the information of the past few weeks. Next week we will find out where our permanent sites will be. The day after that, we have a two day conference with the people we will be teaching with for the next few years. The day after that, we have a four day visit to our permanent sites. I am very excited. That's about all there is. A few minor items: my little cousins are no longer scared of me, and now like to lead me around by my hand and teach me words I already know. The chickens here are not only the ugliest but possibly the stupidest in the world. Seriously, they look like starving vultures. And if you thought American chickens are dumb, the ones here actually make a game out of attempting to fling themselves into the spokes of bike tires.

Language learning is progressing, I can now have conversations about things such as how many times a day one bathes, when I will be back for lunch, as well as the many useful phrases for discussing diarrea. Oh yes, oh yes. Hopefully the next post will be when I have permanent site. Fingers crossed!

So I think my camera is dead. Sad story. Thankfully, my awesome family is sending me a new one! Yay! I love getting mail (hint). I've been with my host family in the village of Baribo for almost a week. The first night was a big awkward party. My host mother spent most of it relating every odd or unusual thing I did to the neighbors. I knew this from her acting out everything and then all the old ladies laughing. A typical meeting with an Om Srei (woman close to mother's age) goes something like this: They comment on how white and fat I am. Here, fat isn't necessarily bad, most people associate it with healthy. They rub my arms and talk about me as though I;m a piece of furniture. Then they laugh. It is actually pretty fun. It took me a while to figure out that they weren't mad at me though, as they tend to scream instead of talk. We had been told that Cambodian women tend to be conservative and quiet. These rules don't seem to apply when one reaches the age of about 50. They Oms (aunts) and Yiyays (grandmothers) sit around gossiping about EVERYTHING and dipping snuff (I think it's called pan). It's really gross. But they are cool people. After ab out ten minutes of trying in vain to correctly pronounce my name, they decided to just give me a new one. Unfortunately, as I couldn't communicate, I wasn't aware of this until several hours later. Everyone in the village now calls me Avi (which is much nicer than 'barang', the kmher word for foreigner).

There are three people who live at my house besides myself. My mother, her daughter, and the daughter's husband. It took me forever to figure out that this guy was my brother in law. At first, my mother told me she had three daughters, one in Phnom Penh, one who lived across the street, and one who lived with her. Imagine my surprise when she hands my bag to a man who then drives off in a moto (on which Im not allowed to ride). She the proceeds to tell me that he is my brother.

The longest Monday of my life...

San Fran was fantastic. the journey between there and Phnom Penh, not so much. But I love this country. It is a strange mix of poverty and vibrancy. I'm still not sure what to make of it. Phnom Penh is filled with color, and also sobering reminders of the past. We hadn't left the airport ten minutes before I saw a landmine victim. Here in Kamong Chhnang, the pace is a little slower. Weare revcieving training before we meet our host families on Wednesday. I'm ready to go. I still am a bit nervous about the language, but I'm good at charades so I should do okay. Some interesting thigs about this place: People shower with their clothes on (most showers are outside). A single moped is capable of transporting five people and pig at almost 60 miles an hour. In Phhom Penh, people take their elephants for walks, and don't clean up what the elephant leaves behind. The huge nationwide elections left things relatively unchanged, Cambodia is fill with plastic chairs, and the people are some of the nicest I've ever met. So far it has been relaxing. In Phnom Penh we had a dance party. Here, I've spent many mornings reading at sunrise while being serenaded by the Cambodian People's Party, and many afternoons lazily sitting about in the rain. I'm ready to get to my host family, to have my own space. I love the other trainees, they are all fantastic people. We've been getting a lot of help from some of the current volunteers, who are helping to calm many of our fears as well as laugh at us when we try to order food in Khmer. I ordered scrambled eggs and coffee with sweetened condensed milk all by myselft. I was quite proud. Wednesday we move to training villages, from then til october we will wait and see where we are placed. Until then, I love and miss you all!

Guess What!?! I can get calls for free! So feel free to call as much as you can afford. On Thursday I will be getting a phone. To call me, dial 011 855 17 790 246. The 011 part gets you out of the US, and 855 is the country code. You may have to call a few times before you get it right. In other news, we’ll be in Phnom Penh on the 23rd, from there we go to the “hub site” in Kampong Chhnang for about ten days. After that we will go to one of three training villages to meet our host families. One more thing, the mailing address is updated: PCV Brittany Rhodes Peace Corps (K2) Phnom Penh 3 Cambodia Not to fear, anything sent to other address will find its way to me, it just might get there a little faster with this new one. Other things of note, most vendors would rather be paid in US dollars than Cambodian riels, so no inconvenient currency conversion. All volunteers will be at least 50 miles from Phnom Penh when they get to their permanent site. We will be officially sworn in on October 4, 2008. We will come home on October 19, 2010. It has really been a whirlwind. I forgot my phone, so I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call any of you. I just want you all to know that I love and miss you already. It might be while before you here from me, be assured that I’m eating strange food and sweating and learning a lot. I will get in touch as soon as possible. Love again, Brittany

1 July, 2008.

My diploma finally arrived yesterday. It is the most expensive sheet of paper I am ever likely to behold. But it’s official, only two months after I walked across the stage. But two months of unemployment lead to boredom, and no money with which to alleviate said boredom, so thankfully I will start work soon. I’ve spent the last two months visiting people, and twiddling my thumbs. The frustrating part of boredom was that I knew there were things I had to do. However, the Peace Corps hadn’t given me any clue as to where I would be spending the next two years, making preparation next to impossible. I do, however, know where I’m going now. After being told I would be placed in Latin America, then the Middle East, then Eastern Europe, the Peace Corps has finally made up its mind. Cambodia. I couldn’t be more thrilled or freaked out. At the moment, I’m vacillating between “I’ll be in Cambodia in three weeks!!!!! *high pitched happy voice*” and “I’ll be in Cambodia in three weeks!!!!*super stressed out voice*

Most of the stress has to do with clothes. Boo. When I thought I was going to the Middle East, some of you might remember that I quite excited about the prospect of being completely covered. I mean, you don’t have to worry about clothes or hair, just roll out of bed, throw on a chador (the full body veil many Muslim women wear) and no one will know that you’re still in your pajamas. My mom said that if that happened, I would become a total slob. She didn’t want that to happen. So mom got her wish. Cambodia is a very formal country. I will be teaching in collared shirts in long skirts. These are quite possibly my least favorite items of clothing ever. Finding appropriate clothes has been pretty hard.

However, Cambodia’s other attributes far outweigh this challenge. Here are a few things I have gleaned from my research:

· RICE!!! Rice makes me happy. I will be expected to eat tons of my favorite food.

· A bike. I will receive my very own mountain bike. I don’t have to worry about buying gas or getting ripped off by local moto drivers.

· Hammocks. It seems that every home has a hammock, and that a great deal of time is passed reclining in them.

· Architecture. The Khmer empire was influenced by the Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Hindus, etc. Their buildings are a fusion of these styles, and they are magnificent. I can’t wait to see them up close.

Overall, I’m super excited. There are some things I will miss. I went to my hairdresser for the last time today. It was kind of sad. On the way back I had to slow down for the tractors and combines that are on the road, trying to get in the field and finish while the weather holds. I’m sitting in my mom’s garden as I write this. These pictures were all taken there. In a way, it seems like I’m crazy to leave my amazing family, but it’s definitely time to go. I’ll miss my dad singing along to the free credit report commercials and watching him scare mean cats with a nerf gun (don’t ask, you just have to know my dad, I swear, no harm came to the cats). I’ll miss hanging out with mom while she works in the garden and having debates with my brother.

It’s all a little overwhelming, but I think that’s a good thing. I know that I don’t really have a handle on it, and that the people I’ll meet in the next two years have just as much to teach me as I have to teach them. I’m not gonna lie, I feel kind of inadequate. While that expensive piece of paper says that I’m skilled in international relations, I’ve never really worked with SE Asia before. Latin America, that would be much easier (gracias a mis amigos bolivianos). I‘ve taught ESL for four years, but this is first time I’ve ever been out of the country. My family has been amazingly supportive, and school friends, I miss you guys like crazy. PLEASE keep in touch. I will try and get you all cool stuff from Cambodia, just tell me what you want.