So it occurs to me that I have only posted here one time in the last 8 months... and its been about four months since that last entry. So might as well make it official. Due to multiple factors not worth going into here, I'm indefinitly suspending writing in this journal.

I want to thank everyone who has read it, commented on it, and had a window into my life through it. I hope it wasn't as irrelevant and ridiculously pompous as most online journals are, particularly those of people living abroad. It's possible I will resume writing in the coming months. Indeed I hope to make it a habit again, particularly because the general idea of being able to share Cambodia with other people is very appealing in theory. But for now email and such are better ways to get stories from me. And I'm sure I'll have plenty upon my return to the U.S. in 7ish months.

Best to you all, catch you on the flip side.

So February 2nd, 2008 marked one year since I first arrived in Cambodia for my two years of Peace Corps service. There has been so much that has changed in so many ways for me since I stepped on the plane out of Baltimore last January that to attempt any sort of cliché “recap” would be laughable. I’ve had 10 minute conversations worthy of many pages of writing, so how could I hope to come close to adequately summing up an entire year?

Nevertheless, such anniversaries do provide an opportunity for reflection, and to this end, I wanted to just try and briefly say how I perceive myself and my goals for service now as they compared a year ago. Truly some of these thoughts took the entirety of the time to develop, so it’s an appropriate occasion to air them.

I came to Cambodia to save the world. I don’t mean that I was actually that naïve, or that my intentions were so ignorantly starry-eyed and cocky that I expected to achieve this. But what that idea represents was in me. And the truth is that no matter what a Peace Corps Volunteer says to “play it cool”, there is this drive, this hope of making a difference that exists in them all. We want to teach, to listen, to give what we have to offer and in doing so “be the change” as my ridiculously arrogant BLOG title suggests. How it is manifested clearly varies on the person, but helping to be an instrument for change is inherent in all of us. It has to be, or else why would we want to try?

I can now say confidently that I will never save the world. In my year in Cambodia the realities of poverty, institutional corruption, disease, infrastructural deficits, and gaps in education in the developing world have been shown to me in a way that no book could ever hope to convey. For every bit of motivation there is a challenge to frustrate it, and even the brightest and kindest people will unflinchingly point out devastating setbacks to the best of intentions.

There have been (and will be) days when futility almost overwhelms me. In my frustration I railed against the problems in the system, the fact that funds that should be reaching my school aren’t, and the lack of a fair wage to the educators here (as in almost all countries). I vented about co-teachers being late or missing class, the general lack of application for English at my site, and the resulting conclusion that someone in Peace Corps must be getting a good laugh at the joke of me being out here. I even criticized the people that I live with, the constant watching of my every move, and the repetitious social interactions. These are just a few examples, for there are few things that haven’t felt my wrath at some point (often muttered to myself, often in the middle of a particularly heinous bike ride). All the bitching actually creates quite a warm little bubble of self-righteousness, in which I sit and pout.

I considered early termination. It’s a thought that passes through everyone’s mind, at least for an instant. I thought about picking up my bubble and other toys and stomping my way back home to stop “wasting my time”. It was certainly an appealing thought – friends, family, American comforts. Most importantly I would have the knowledge that I had left something that mislead me as to what it would truly be. This would give me a glorious shield against the psychology of not setting out to do what I wanted to do. I mean, I did all I could! I was let down by the experience, but you can’t help it if you give it your best shot and got screwed… right?

Then one day I was watching a neighboring boy stake his cows into the field next to my house to graze. He does this just about every morning, though the position of the cows changes depending on grass growth. And as dusk approaches, he dutifully reemerges to bring the cows back under shelter.

And this is when it hit me. I am a big, pathetic, whiney brat.

I am a healthy, straight, middle-class, white, American male. I come from a loving and supportive family. I have spectacular friends. My life is the kind many people dream of… literally, because I’ve met some of those dreamers here. Frankly, taking a look at my cushy resume, I could do with a little adversity. So I come across the world, and true, I find difficulties and challenges. There are more than enough to make the argument to people that I’m doing my part to fight injustice in the world. And yet along side these “problems” I meet some of the kindest, most generous people in the world. People that didn’t chose to be here; this place chose them. The difficulties I complain about are parts of their lives. There is no escape except in the slow push of reform and progress. They live their days and make them their own, not as some sort of artistic project of service and self-exploration that will end in two years, but because it is their lot in life. There is no passport, no shield of the most powerful government on the planet protecting them, and no ticket out in April 2009. They push forward because they must make the most of what they have, as we all must

And so it’s truly amazing to me that I have the gall to feel put-upon when that boy takes his cows out in the morning and in at night every day for perhaps the rest of his life. I can’t do for two years what these unbelievable people do for their entire lives? I would say it is humbling, but it is closer to what Kerry once said to me which is that “"humbling" is actually a much milder form of the very honest and unflattering perspective” that I have come to have of myself. It is quite a moment to realize how truly selfish you are.

And yet this is not a retrospective, for here I stand at the halfway point. Have storm clouds broken to show a new and radiant side of my time in Cambodia? Of course not. The artificial construct of human time cannot truly track how things move in our world, and change is a glacial process. But what can evolve is my approach, and it does every day here. I can’t fix the educational system, but maybe I can just have a conversation with a student they couldn’t otherwise have. I can’t alleviate poverty, but I can eat breakfast in a place that’s never had a big, goofy looking white customer. I can’t take anyone back to America with me, but I can have a conversation with someone that doesn’t want to be “saved”… they just want to talk. My time is here for them, and if my company is the best I can offer, then that’s what I’ll do.

I will never change Cambodia the way I had hoped. The delusion of an over-confident boy from the U.S. who landed in this country a year ago is good and dead. But there is not a doubt in my mind that Cambodia is changing me more than I could have ever hoped. It is a debt I can never repay. But I have a year to try.

So, most of my entries are about me having battles of wits with rodents, pouncing on fish out of water, and generally making a fool of myself and loving it. But believe it or not, I’m also an English teacher. That’s what all thirty of the original Cambodia 1 group came here to work at for two years. This job has many trials and tribulations, and doing the job in a foreign system in a foreign country only adds to said trails and tribulations. However, I want to share a moment of true success and enjoyment for everyone. And if you don’t like it, well then you are just a boring person with no sense of humor.

I teach 5 different classes in the 10th and 11th grade (though ages range from 14-22 in some of them…). There’s an average of 40 some kids in each class (more are registered, but they are never all there at once), so that’s about 200 kids total. One of my goals has been to learn all their names but this task is rendered nigh impossible since their names are so damn hard for me to remember. I can remember a few Sophal’s, Sophea’s, Rothana’s, etc but at the rate I was going I wouldn’t know half of them before my two years here were up. What I really wanted was them to choose English names. This wasn’t for any sort of indoctrination purposes, or to tell them their names weren’t good enough. In fact one of my own personal crusades is to somehow do this job without conveying a sense, at any point in time, that what I do is “right” and what they do is “wrong” because the last thing I want to be is a sort of language missionary. However, giving names from the language you are studying is a pretty common practice (in middle school Spanish I was “Jaime”, with a little accent thing over the A that I don’t know how to do in Microsoft word.). My first attempt to give names flopped pretty hard because they just don’t know enough English to pick a variety of names.

But unperturbed, myself and some of the other volunteers decided to just flat out assign names. We would write ten or so options on the board and as they were picked, we would add new choices and so on until the entire class had chosen names. Eventually they learned to pounce on preferable names or they would be taken before them.

This will go down in history as one of the most fun things I’ve done here. For one, it promised to make my job significantly easier with more familiar names to call them. I know, I'm an imperialist dog. Secondly, they were absolutely thrilled to have the names, asked me what they meant, and started calling each other by them almost immediately. But perhaps my favorite part of the process is that after running out of many normal names, I had to start stretching my imagination to further naming options… Here are some examples.

• Almost every one I am friends or family with is represented in my classes. I’ve got Jess, Jenni, Fommy (not Tommy), Nick, James, Brenna, etc etc. If I know you, chances are I call on you in class.

• I also have pretty much all the other Peace Corps Volunteers represented. I resisted naming anyone after staff, in case they visit my site and don’t approve of their avatar. Anyway, lets move on to the more fun ones.

• I have the entire cast of Seinfeld. In one class. I also have Putty and Mulva.

• Most of the key Muppets. Gonzo, Fozzie, Kermit, what have you. Bunsen and Beaker appear to be good friends already. Couldn’t really justify naming someone “Miss Piggy” though.

• The four ninja turtles. Leonardo and Raphael are sitting next to each other, in fact. Which is good because Shredder is in the same eleventh grade class. Bebop and Rocksteady, luckily, are still in grade ten.

• A series of Roman emperors: Caesar, Nero and Caligula. No one seemed interested in “Marcus Aurelius”.

• To accompany the emperors, I have a bunch of various gods too. Thor, Zeus, Anubis, Osirus, Neptune, BY ODIN’S HAMMER!

• The Thundercats. I’ve got a Liono, Tigra, Panthro, and even Snarf. Skeletor broods in the back of the room.

• A sampling of American Gladiators.

• Harry Potter characters. I feel like the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher that everyone is staring at and whispering about, anyway.

• Almost the entire Fellowship of the Ring (except for Merry, because I had already named a girl “Mary”). In an appropriate twist, the fellowship is “broken” across three different classes. I have faith Boromir will overcome fate this time around.

• Garfield and Nermal

• Calvin and Hobbes

• Laverne and Shirley

• Kent. Not spectacular in and of itself (sorry Andrew), but when he chose his name, my student came up to the front and wrote something in front of Kent on my paper… He then looked me in the eye and just said “CLARK Kent.” Blew my mind.

• Voltron (can’t believe no one wanted “Optimus Prime”…)

• Slash and Axel Rose

• Napoleon and Genghis Khan

• Sha-nay-nay (I have no idea how to actually spell it)

• Tony Danza

And finally, my crowning achievement in naming…

• The Fonz. It’s my goal to have him respond “’EYYYYY!!” every time I call on him.

Anyway, the kids seem just about as excited about the new names as I am (as hard as that may be to believe), and have been hounding me about handing out name tags next week. Unfortunately I don’t think my current salary will allow for the 200 lanyards and tag-holders they seem to want me to buy, but such are the breaks! Just having something that engages them is worth its weight in gold... And in this case, it just happens to be comedic gold as well.

As many of you already know, I can’t stand the dogs here. The dog lovers of our group would say that I am unfair in this judgment, not because of my hatred (the reasons for which are apparent to anyone who spends more than five minutes in Cambodia) but because they feel the dogs are but a product of their treatment. And I’ll admit they have a pretty raw deal. They are kicked and beaten pretty regularly. However, in a case of the chicken before the egg, at this point it’s hard to say if they are mean because they are kicked or if they are kicked because they are mean. And of course there is always the factor of them carrying disease/fleas/etc. I certainly don’t want them near ME.

I have had three dogs, and they all suck for various reasons. The first one is the alpha “Ki”, and while he had a relatively friendly personality he is the one who invariably barks the most which cancels out any positives. Plus he’s been in a lot of fights recently and… well let’s say wounds don’t heal well here. The second one, “Kul”, is probably the most annoying overall since he is constantly crying like a baby when Ki beats him to food. He also recently developed cataracts. So now he’s half blind and crazed, which is just great. The final one, “Ko”, was pretty unremarkable and definitely at the bottom of the pack. He kind of disappeared, and I was happy. He was really sick, moaning with eyes rolling back in his head and other less pleasant symptoms…I say “disappeared” instead of “died” because my mom seems to insist that he’s not dead, he just went to “find a wife.” Over 4 months ago. Yeah yeah, Rover went to live on a farm, I get it.

Anyway, we were down to two and I could conceive of Ki dying of infection and Kul possibly going completely blind and not finding his way home. So things were looking up when much to my dismay my mom brought home two new puppies… My god. My brothers wanted me to name them. Intriguing! As my friend Chris so aptly put it “I want to find a name that my family could never figure out but that I can yell with relish at the dog as I grow to hate them and their incessant barking.” I toyed with various obscenities, but then one of my brothers was like “we should name the boy puppy Doo-Doo.”

Best. Name. Ever. What a genius, I couldn’t have hoped for better! I now foresee the complete atrophy of all the Khmer language skills since I basically spend most of my day yelling “Doo-Doo, come here! Doo-Doo, eat rice! Doo-Doo, stop sniffing your sister’s butt!” My little brother adds to the festivities by just chirping “doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!” at the puppies. The other one has a name too but it was decidedly less entertaining, and therefore not worth my time remembering.

The problem is now that they have names and are small and cute, I am becoming attached to them. I feel like a old, sad, lonely man brought back to the joys of life as they frolic over my feet. This is not good. One should not come to care for what might become one’s dinner someday.

So over the past.. what, 10 months? yikes… of my life I have undertaken many things I have never done before. Of course I have talked superficially about many of them, in depth about some of them, and have yet to mention others. Yet undoubtedly one of the largest and most constant aspects of my living here is the process of learning and applying the Khmer language. Since I haven’t talked much about this very crucial part of living and working here, I think I shall a bit now.

Note: this journal entry should in no way be considered an actual study on language. No one should be duped into thinking I actually understand Khmer. This is just me touching a bit on how the language has impressed me during my learning process. So yeah.

1) Pronunciation: is very challenging at times. As with many languages, there are sounds using the lips, tongue, and throat that are made from a young age and are really, really difficult to do if your mouth has never formed the sounds before. In Khmer it seems to be primarily a series of back-of-the-tongue sounds that are hard as heck for us Americans to pronounce. Of course during training our LCFs were very patient with us. And good thing too, because a word mispronounced is a completely different word. At first we were annoyed by this in practice, figuring if we were getting it close enough to the word that people should be able to give us a break and understand it. Of course, that’s pretty unrealistic when it’s obviously the same in English where words like “tea” and “tree” are extremely different in meaning but structurally pretty similar I suppose. Some other examples of difficulties in pronunciation are

a. the use of a combination of b and p (Q: “is it blau or plau?” A: “Its neither. Or both…”)

b.The fact that W and V are interchangeable/the same sound in Khmer.

c.The fact that L’s and O’s are often hard as hell to pick out from each other (“is it ‘tal’? or ‘tao’? or ‘taol’?”).

Of course then we get to play the same pronunciation game when they try to speak English. They have a lot of trouble with ‘TH’, ‘SH’, ‘CH’ and the differences between F, S, X, Z etc etc. So we get to have fun exchanges sometimes. For example, the other day my brother got a huge kick out of the fact that I said the word for “confused” by saying “tro-lamb” when it is in fact “tro-lohm”. I then made him say “Thursday” repeatedly. We agreed to disagree after that.

2) Synonyms: I am told that the Khmer language has about 40,000 total words. Apparently English has around 400,000. That’s a big freakin gap. Seems like English has about 2352523 words for “big”, but from my experience here they just have one. Of course this can be made into the comparative and superlative “bigger” and “biggest” just like English, and there is a word for “very”, though to add emphasis in Khmer you can just say the word twice- “locrew barang tome tome!” (foreign teacher big big!). Of course they then have at least 7 words for the verb “to eat” while “wife” and “system” are the same word… but really most of the “to eat” variations are based on respect for your status, the person that’s eating status, or the relation between the two (you use different words for people older, younger, monks, the king, etc). Part of the lack of extensively descriptive vocabularly is that rather than have new words for things they put together existing words. In that way it is similar to a language like german, where a word like “familiar” in Khmer is translated as “seen/known already.” Well yeah, I guess that means familiar… one of the funniest instances of this logical word combination process I’ve encountered is that the oh-so-noble swan is rendered lovingly as “Moan Tuk.” That means “Water Chicken.”

3) Written Language: This is one of the few aspects of my life here I have been very stubborn about. I don’t want to learn to read and write. The alphabet has 33 consonants (all with either an inherent A or O sound after them) and like 20 something vowel sounds and not only are they difficult to remember and write (especially based on handwriting variations), but from my introduction during training I also found that a lot of it didn’t make sense in my head. “Kaw and Lo makes Klaw? Why not Klo? And if they have inherent vowel sounds, why/how does the new vowel fit in? I need a coconut…” and so on. I basically came to the decision that whenever I was studying writing/reading I could be using that time to learn to speak/listen better. But recently I've started taking some Khmer lessons two times a week from one of my co-teachers. He wants to teach me to read, so I’ve finally started to break down a bit and at least see it as a cultural exchange. Maybe I’ll be able to write “Colin wuz here” soon enough.

4) Grammar differences: There are a ton of these I’m sure, but there are some that have been particularly striking to me. First, there is almost no use of the word “to be”. They actually have 3 words for it, but they are used in specific circumstances and not thrown around like in English. Second, nouns come first and adjectives second. It took a little while to get used to saying “mango ripe” instead of the other way around, but now it comes automatically. Thirdly, there is a lack of excess words… articles, pronouns, etc if they aren’t necessary. They especially drop words in spoken Khmer to make things flow easier. Finally, and something that has been crucial to my success and sanity, is there are NO VERB CONJUGATIONS. After dreading things like the pluperfect tense in Spanish, there are no words for what a gift this has been. Overall most of these things make the language 100x easier to speak and listen to, as you just eliminate verbosity and have streamline sentences. Which definitely works in this blundering foreigner’s favor.

5) Awesome words: There are other cool parts of acquiring the language that I could babble about, but they’d only be interesting to me so I figure I’ll just write some of my personal favorite words I’ve found in the language. Some for their meaning, some that are just so fun to say I make ridiculous statements as an excuse to use them

Poot: This means “to lie.” Other words for lie include “co-ha”, “poe”, and “prro” but clearly poot is by far the best based purely on the amusement factor.

Leh-lah leh-lah: Used primarily in my household when my little brother doesn’t want to take a shower before bed, it sort of means being weird/bizarre in an immature way. It was a hilarious explanation to get.

Cowng: This word means “to hug another person with your legs while sleeping.” I learned it when I had to share the common room with my brothers because Nora/Michael came to visit and used my room. No better way to learn the Khmer word “to spoon.”

Spuk: This word seems to have a few connected meanings, but the most common is when you are describing the pins and needles feeling in your foot if it falls asleep. As in “Ahhhh, spuk chuung!” “Ahhhh, foot’s asleep!”

Man-tan: This phrase means "really" or "seriously", usually when adding emphasis to the truth of a statement. Like "wow, I am seriously tired" or "Man, I seriously ate so much rice I can't feel my face"

Poo-ee: Pronounced just like its written (Winnie The Pooh, then “EEEEEEEEEEE!”) it’s debatably my favorite word to say in the whole language. Unfortunately it means “blanket”, so I don’t get to shriek it nearly as often as I’d like.

Sloat: this means “laid back” or “easy going.” I’ve been harping on my family to find a water buffalo for me to ride, and my mom insisted I could ride the one at my grandmothers because “She’s really sloat”. Ha, a great application for something that perfectly encapsulates the Cambodian way of life.

And perhaps many things on any continent should be approached in a more sloat way. Sloat man-tan. With a poo-ee.

So I’m laying in my hammock on the lovely evening of October 16. There is really nothing remarkable about that opening statement. Well, maybe that I used the word “laying” instead of “sweating”, but actually the weather has been gorgeous for a few days in a row (knock on wood) at the time of this writing. Thus the suspended swinging that occupies about 80% of our time here as volunteers was especially pleasant on said evening. I was minding my business and reading a book about a Peace Corps Volunteer in China (because obviously the idea of living in an Asian country for 2 years is extremely alien to me). My entire family had disappeared to various unknown locations, and the rare pre-nocturne breeze was glorious.

Then a fish walked up to me.

Sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke. But it was all-too real, thankfully. I can only imagine I did an utterly ridiculous double take that would have made the makers of Scooby Doo proud. Even though I hate that show. But seriously, a fish about a foot in length had just entered my gate and was flopping/slithering/sliding across the gravel of my “yard” (it’s mainly gravel and stones, but details details). For a few seconds I just stared at it, than looked around nervously from side to side. Picture the sort of reaction you might have if you saw a five-dollar bill on the ground and expected somewhere just out of site there were three pre-teen boys with a piece of string tied to it… just waiting to rip it out from under your nose and guffaw loudly.

But since the fish continued its seizure-esque approach, I got up (a major commitment) from my perch and wandered over to him. He reminded me a bit of a catfish, and was propelling himself by thrashing his body from side to side. Each time one side out lash forward he would gain purchase on the ground with the appropriate frontal fin, and then throw the other side ahead. It was pretty slow going, and frankly looked exhausting. I could only imagine that he had been residing in the shallow canal in front of my house and had randomly decided it was time to go for a stroll at .00001 miles per hour on land. He paused by my foot, and when I poked him with a toe he jerked once more then lay still, gasping.

I think we would all agree there is only one logical response to this situation.

So I bent over and picked him up by his tail. He tried to jump away but… I mean, he was a fish out of water (HO HO HO!). After I had him aloft, I just stood there blinking like a moron. I guess I was still assuming someone was going to come claim their lost fish? Anyway, it didn’t seem to be happening, so I walked around the back of my house, filled a bucket half full of water, and plopped him in. It was then that reality suddenly struck me.

I am the greatest outdoorsman to ever live.

Everyday so many people all over our planet go out and work themselves ragged tilling, planting, harvesting, hunting, fishing, cultivating, etc for the purpose of getting food. I’ve seen my neighbors strip down to shorts and, with a large seine net stretched taut between them, wade waist deep through sludge to capture frogs and other water life. All of these people deserve commending that I have never earned and probably never will because of the privileged life I lead. And yet here I am, being a useless jackass in the middle of a quiet Cambodian afternoon, and a gift from the very bosom of Mother Nature just came moseying on up to me. I must say I’m a bit surprised he didn’t ask me if I’d “eaten rice yet”, or if I would teach English to him or someone he is related to. That’s what usually happens when someone enters my yard.

But really, the signs were clear: it was an undeniable testament to my prowess as a man of the wild. Through pure masculine hormones (some might say “musk”) I clearly drew this creature from the murky depths purely by force of presence. It leaving its aquatic territory and entering mine to lie subserviently at my feet was clear submission to my superiority. Thank you my finned-vassal, I gladly accept your delicious fealty.

Ultimately I gave it to my family. My youngest brother assumed I bought it and laughed when I huffily said I had caught it barehanded. Jerk. Still, I think I’m a shoe-in for Host Son of the Year Award. Yes, thank you, hear me roar.

I have a feeling this story seems rather pointless, and could well be boring. Because after all, the gist might to the untrained eye appear to be merely “an amphibious fish wandered into Colin’s yard and he actually had to haul himself upright to grab it and put it in a pail.” But really… well, there’s no but really except to say that yes, I’m awesome.

I suppose the moral is probably something like “Good Things Come to Those Who Wait”. Maybe “Even A Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut Once in a While”. Or perhaps even “Wow Colin, Get A Life.”

But personally I like “Fishing Rods Are For Suckers”.

So yes. In my large beard-oriented rant earlier that probably lost me half the people that were under the false impression that I am a cool person I mentioned that use of our free time is often a challenge out here. One of the common questions is “what do you do in your free time, teacher?”

“Well Little Sophorn, glad you asked….”

Of course, much of the following entry relates to my time when school was out of session because when teaching we are often occupied with various school related activities. Also, thankfully since I began to write this entry I have begun to work with a great grass-roots NGO that will give me my fill of other types of health and agriculture activities. So my time to come as the school year begins will be anything but vacuous.

But I am never one to let reality stand in the way of comedy. So here are some of the things I have done with the slower moments of my time here…

-Teach. Obviously. The job I came here to do. Wicked.

-Plan lessons for the classes I teach, usually by myself though I’m trying to convince my co-teachers to participate. Not holding my breath on that one, but they are good guys so I’m still excited to work with them this coming year. Maybe I can use my white-man voodoo.

-Think about how I can convince my school director that me painting a giant geography lesson for the World Map Project on the wall of a school building won’t ruin his current “dirt” theme.

-Go to my NGO. These guys are awesome and doing great grassroots work. I will expand more on this as I get back into the swing with them this year. Plus I don’t want to ruin the ridiculous vein I feel this might take by dwelling on something logical and useful.

-Hang out with my neighbors. This sometimes consists of literally hanging in a hammock. Or maybe we drink moonshine made from (prepare for the shock): rice (this may be a theme you notice in much of my journaling). There are many ridiculously awesome interactions that occur with “So then they broke out the rice wine…” I’ve chosen to overlook the fact that sometimes the alcohol arrives in plastic petroleum containers. Ignorance is bliss.

-Read Peace Corps manuals on development and English teaching. We have at least 30 pounds of books we have gradually accrued on many different approaches/projects/topics that we might find to be of use here, and more are coming in gradually as the months progress. As I finish reading perhaps I shall build an addition to my room with them.

-Read for fun – so far East of Eden, Dune, Life of Pi, half of The End of Poverty, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5… feel like I’m missing one? Most recently I have been working on a Cultural History of Russia to get a background on the literature of that country. Then on to Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace and other easy reads of that nature… I am also passing on some of my favorites to people for the first time: Zach read Ender's Game, Conor read The Golden Compass, and Fel just started Dune. Apparently when Jason asked her if she had sunblock the other day she said "you know, the Fremen? They don't NEED sunblock! They have blue eyes. And stillsuits." Freakin' awesome.

-Sumrah. Sleep. Nap. Count water buffalo. Check the inside of my eyelids for holes. You get the idea.

-Do situps/pushups/etc in my room. Also got some sort of elastic band I can use for upper body. Though frankly this sort of exercise I find almost more boring than doing absolutely nothing.

-Go running. This is usually me doing wind-sprints out in the rice paddies while passersby stop their walking/biking/driving to watch me run around for 30 minutes. As of yet I haven’t been able to find an effective way to do running of any sort of appreciable longer distance in the village. This is primarily due to the fact that there are about 23526 vicious and possibly rabid dogs in every front yard that seem convinced that simply by running past their house I am going to destroy everything they hold dear in this world. I’m thinking about just finding a good 4 foot piece of bamboo to go running with. The dogs seem to recognize such an implement as the international symbol for “I come in peace.” Or “@#%* off.” Either way works for me. I mean, people ski with rifles in that one sport right? Same deal.

-Cry because the mice ate something new of mine, and I just can’t do anything about it.

-Write emails on my computer.

-Write journal entries on my computer. Why did I even write those two activities out…I want those 30 seconds on my life back.

-Play a game which involves letting sweat run down my face and bead on the tip of my nose. I then calculate the precise moment the droplet has reached critical mass, judge the optimum angle of my head, and then blow air directly from my pursed lips towards the tip of my nose to see how far I can send the droplet flying. I anticipate being able to knock passing travelers clear off their motorbikes with this technique eventually. Another variation is my occasionally shaking my head vigorously to send a shower of sweat from my hair outwards in a circular halo from my head. Distance of spray as well as symmetry of the circle are important in this event. I see no connection between this activity and the fact that everyone gives me so much more personal space than the other volunteers get.

-Play guitar. Will be a white Jimi Hendrix in 2 years.

-Watch as every Khmer person wants to hold my guitar and pretend they know how to play it.

-Say “no, I don’t know how to play ‘Take Me To Your Heart’, ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’ or any of the other karaoke songs you want to hear. Would you like to hear an awkwardly played Radiohead song? No? Yeah, I don’t blame you.”

-Make French toast for my family. They mainly have small baguettes here so it was a little awkward, but it turned out sort of like little sticks which was nice. Also I could have probably put maple syrup on shingles and they would have told me it was delicious. Not because it actually would have been, but just because they are nicer to me than my blunderings would warrant.

-Think of ways to kill my dogs without being caught.

-Eat nome and bong aim. These are the khmer words for any sort of cake, and desert. I have eaten ones made from banana, bean, tapioca, peanut, rice (duh), coconut, palm sugar, pork… you get the idea.

-Constantly search for/buy these boiled banana and rice things wrapped in coconut. They are called “ansom jaet”. I fully intend to write an entry entirely on these glorious snacks soon. Don’t know the Khmer word for “junkie” yet.

-Plant rice. I had wanted to do it for weeks, but was constantly told it would be “too hot”, “too hard”, “there are leeches that can burrow into your brain through your ear” and other such minor details. Eventually my neighbor let me and while this was a totally awesome and unique experience… they weren’t kidding when they said it would suck. Along with giving me a true appreciation for what most of this country does to sustain itself and its children, it also gave me knew appreciation for what my spine was incapable of doing without mind-numbing pain the next day. And while everyone out there with me was so so kind and appreciative of my help and the novelty of it, I hold no delusions that I actually made much of a contribution. In fact, I didn’t realize that when you go in having no expectations that you can actually be WORSE at something than you originally thought. Can’t say exactly when I realized my impotence as a rice farmer… maybe it was when the 8 year old girl blew past me planting and laughing. Could have been then.

-Bond with my bike. Her name is "Kong" and she's a Virgo. Kong means "bike" in Khmer. I'm a genious. Sometimes she is good to me and I her, othertimes the opposite. Its a love-hate relationship.

-Yell obscenities at my "road", which is at the moment could better be classified as a "mud river". I have a similar relationship to the one with my bike. Except here, there is only hate.

-Come up with new and exciting ways to avoid teaching English when I am going full speed on my bike and a new eager learner holds pace next to me on his moto. Tried several tactics including actually practicing English 1.5 hours into a 2 hour ride, and telling them "sorry, I'm about to die. I can't practice speaking right now." My favorite response to that was "I know you don't want to talk to me right now, but I want to speak English with YOU." Ha. The best solution I came up with is to just say in Khmer "Sorry, I'm German."

-Stare at dust. There is a particular technique involved in this pursuit that I have to explain because otherwise it sounds deceivingly simple. First, pick your target area of dust. It depends on the individual but speaking for myself, I prefer a patch of beige-colored soil (though when pressed I’ll accept khaki. While not an ideal shade, it is tolerable) about 15 feet away from me in the middle of my front yard. Anything too close and you get distracted by minutiae (ex. Wind stirring your motes, dogs copulating on your chosen area, my brothers having caged death-matches with crickets, etc) and anything too far and you can’t truly appreciate the subtleties of the experience. Once you have found dirt that appeals to you, take several deep breaths (through the nose is best as it facilitates the best transfer of oxygen in the lungs. This is actually true. Seriously.) and allow your eyes to gradually lose focus. You can’t rush this process, but if done at the correct pace you will take on a glazed expression while not entirely blurring your vision. Once you feel your eyes submit, next turn your focus towards your facial muscles to coax them into relaxing. The goal here is not so much to actually relax your face, but your jaw. You will feel it gradually begin to hang slackly and you know you are following the path with grace and accuracy when saliva starts to build in your lower lip. This is the most crucial part of this undertaking – you MUST NOT DROOL. I can’t emphasize this enough. A balance of forces in essential, and nothing will ruin your chi like giving in to such a hackneyed expression of extreme boredom. You are Siddhartha, not Homer Simpson. Assuming you have progressed this far, the next and final stage can only be achieved by a true master – you actually fall asleep in this position. What glory there is in this accomplishment! I eagerly await the day when my efforts will culminate in this ultimate moment of fulfillment. Go forth and practice, Grasshopper.

-Stare at bugs.

-Stare at palm trees.

-Stare at my dogs.

-Stare at my family/neighbors. Though this does little good as they usually are already staring at me.

-Stare at passing bikes/motos/trucks on the village road.

-Stare at the amazing skies here (look, just assume this theme continues. I will win every staring contest I am ever in. Ever. Bring it.)

-Watch my brothers have caged matches with monstrous crickets they tie to the end of strings. The loser is then spun repeatedly in a big circle because this “makes him bite more.” And I believe it.

-Count the number of times Sting says “Roxanne” in the Police song. If memory serves I think its 17, though it depends on if you count the fading out ones and such.

-Try to move things with my mind so I don’t have to get out of my hammock. I swear to God I made the cat move a centimeter last Friday.

-Grow a beard. See the “Pogonotrophy!” entry for an unnecessarily ridiculous expansion on this topic. I can’t go into it more here; it gets me all hot and bothered.

-Text other volunteers. Topics range from beard growing strategy (surprise surprise), to music, to Lord of the Rings, to teaching advice, to ridiculous anecdotes, to discussions on amount of nome consumed, etc etc. This really isn’t doing justice to how key these texts are in my life here. The support/comic relief is invaluable.

-Perform Jedi mind tricks on various taxi drivers so they stop ripping me off. Plans for a bamboo lightsaber are in the works.

-Eat rice (who didn't see this coming).

-Eat more rice (ok, just wanted to reach 40 bullet points).

-Embrace the ensuing carb-coma.

Anyway, while there is plenty more ridiculousness I could probably pour onto the page, I’ll cut myself off here because… well frankly, my laptop screen is covered with insects that are attracted to the light and I can take it anymore. Time to count those water buffalo.

So... I haven't written this blog entry yet, but figured I'd upload a picture when I have the chance. And that would inspire me to eventually finish the thing. So yeah.

Did that word get your attention? Good. It should have. Because I wanted to write just a little bit about a major undertaking we PCV’s here in Cambodia have had the bravery (audacity?) to undertake.

It is a running theme here is that, while the Cambodian educational school system is on break, there is at times very little to do with ourselves. The stories told/personal accomplishments I have had during boredom may inspire a later journal entry. But what I want to focus on is the defining activity us men of Peace Corps Cambodia 1 have come to adopt.

Growing a beard.

What? That sentence doesn’t set all your sense afire with delight and expectation? Well! Then perhaps some background information is in order.

In a moment of extreme brilliance in May my friend Chris “Learning Khmer is Passé” Rates decided that, seeing as facial hair is considered unprofessional for a teacher, during the school break we should have a mustache growing competition. While the name “The Great Mustache Contache” was thrown around briefly, it was unanimously decided by Chris, Zach and I that it would be called “The First (Annual?) Mustachio Constachio.” We then proceeded to spread the word (our Country Director refused to send an all-PCV text, obviously failing to recognize the tremendous importance of disseminating this information as fast as possible).

The rules are simple. The contest was originally slated to start immediately in May and be debuted over Independence Day. But due to our attending the U.S Embassy 4th of July function, and the bizarre desire of some volunteers not wanting to look like complete idiots at said function, we decided on a postponement of ceremonies. So instead it was proclaimed that on July 7th we would cease shaving until the Peace Corps Inter-service Training Seminar in Phnom Penh the first two weeks of September. We would sport the beards for a week, shave around the 7th, and then have a judgment (yet to be entirely decided how/by whom). Everyone would sport their entries for a week, and the winner would be given some undefined prize (possibly a framed photo in the office?). As if any prize could outweigh the eternal glory and recognition such a victory would bring.

The response has been stellar on so many levels. There are multiple confirmed entries and anyone that isn’t participating has been assured that they need no further punishment than the innate emasculation they are bringing upon themselves. And of course the complete ostracization by all the other PCVs. As has been said ”if you thought the McCarthy blacklists were scary you haven't seen anything yet.” The hype/preparation has actually gotten completely out of control. I literally talked to Conor for 20 minutes solely about facial hair on the phone the other day (another 20 minutes last night as well...), and he said Joe had called him and talked for 30 minutes on the same topic earlier that day.

Here are some excerpts from emails/texts I have received during this epic endeavor. I will not state their sources, but rest assured their masculinity is beyond measure. Either that or we are the biggest jackasses to ever live.

o I ran into [name omitted for anonymity -Colin] in the office today and he greeted me with the ever witty comment "hey, you have something on your face", implying my illustrious beard, of course. I'm sure he just brought it up in a jealous rage since he's got nothing of the sort. but when I told him it was my entry for the contest he seemed thoroughly confused, as though he were- as shocking as it may seem- unaware of the contest.

o I think someone had brought up the idea of having the girls judge who had the best entries. But that's kinda like having a bunch of baseball players judge who gets the Heisman [the undertone here is that baseball sucks. Which I approve of. -Colin]

o Maybe the girls can have a token category like "least offensive to the opposite sex", or some other boring throwaway category for someone who's going to grow something reasonable and tame.

o I feel like Sally Struthers here, please get off the couch and donate to your mustache now. Just eight weeks of not shaving can save the lives of so many. What are you waiting for? So grow your imperials, your cookie dusters, your womb brooms, your burnsides, and mutton chops, your handle bars, your goatee's and mustachios. Insert pictures of cute toddler mustaches here. Or don't. Either way I'll see you in September.

o I cannot even come close to winning this thing due to my genes (participant is Korean –Colin), but I will still attempt it with all my heart. My facial hair will grow out whiskery like grotesque weeds but I will shun the razor for the next month.

o I truly feel, and I know others out there are of similar mindset, that this beard is the best thing I've got going on in my life out here.

o I find myself positively leaping out of the bed each morning and running to the mirror to check the progress of my growth like a 2nd grader with one of those potato spud-growing science projects.

o I took the leash off, carved out a proper stache. Can’t fathom the power this thing seems to hold. I can’t seem to look directly at it.

o I don’t know if I can lay hands on the pristine beauty of my beard that the locals have come to refer to as “God’s Country.”

o I'd say I devote a good 4-5 hours of my day to beard activities, whether they be planning my entry, discussing other entries through text message (and talking no small amount of trash), examining my progress in my convex mirror, or simply stroking it (it lowers blood pressure and stimulates follicle production while simultaneously making you look wise).

o Doing laundry just now, I leaned over the water basin and saw my reflection with the beard. Truly, not until now did I understand the tragic fate of Narcissus.

o It’s been 3 days and I cant stop checking mine in the mirror. I feel like Sam watching his mallorn seed grow. [If you are a woman and understand this reference, I will propose to you immediately –Colin]

o The beards and the contest are all we have to live for. Those who don't have them are pansies. Whoever wins should be praised without limit.

o And we really really need a great family shot with the moustaches. The best would be a laid back sweater shot as a family in front of a fire place drinking hot chocolate. As sweaters aren't easy to find here we may need to just have a well dressed coat and tie shot somewhere classy. Probably an expensive restaurant with cigars and cognac. After the picture we'll leave and not buy anything as we cannot afford to. It's that or cut offs and mesh tank tops. Both are well thought out and reasonable.

o So there’s this really little kid in my area, just started to walk and talk. Last 2 weeks he’s been fascinated by me, stumbling up, staring and laughing. Its dawned on me that mine must surely be the first beard he’s ever seen. The responsibility is staggering. I am singlehandedly shaping this boys beardly future. This could be like the first time Shakespeare read his ABC’s or the first man to play the dulcet tones of a piano for Mozart… I must tread carefully.

o "Male pogonotrophy (the growing of facial hair; i.e, beardedness) is often culturally associated with wisdom and virility." Gentlemen, it's time to be both wise and virile. Get your growth on.

...and this is still with six weeks to go. There really is no way to appropriately cover this topic. My heart is racing just writing about it… so I’ll stop here. Just let it be known that the other day I stepped things up a level and said to Conor “this facial hair thing is rapidly turning from the best thing in my life right now to the best thing in my life ever.” Truer words were never spoken.

So this is actually a story from my training villages one of the first weeks I was in Cambodia. In fact, I emailed to some folks a while ago, but I didn't post it for the general public for some reason. I think it was because I still had some semblance of... what's the word for it again... oh, right. Pride.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

In my outhouse, there is a simple set up. The building itself is like a small shed, and is made completely out of concrete with an aluminum door and roof... light only gets in through a series of small slits near the top of the three non-door walls, so it actually resembles a solitary confinement chamber and is about as dark as a prison inside even in noonday sun. The inside floor is made completely of tile. Because, you know, tile is clean and beautiful all the time. And is also one of the most slippery substances ever. But I'm ahead of myself...

Anyway, said bathroom has two main structures. One is a squat toilet (basically a porcelain hole in the ground. Not much to tell here.) and the other is a large concrete basin that stands about halfway up my thigh and is filled with water. You then use a scoop to ladle the water onto yourself in order to shower. I guess there is a third structure if you could the spiders the size of my hand that live in each of the upper 4 corners. At least there were all those spiders until one twice their size came in and ate them all. Keep in mind that these things, and the entry tile area, are all within this... I dunno, 5' by 5' structure...so there isn’t much room, or light. Or hope.

Any, one evening, my mammoth whiteness was walking out of my stilted house and into the Bahn Tope Tuck (bathroom) for my evening dousing (which I love, because it is the only time I truly get all the dust, sweat, bug repellant, and smoke off myself. And I remain clean for a whole five minutes. Max.). It is dark already, which means inside The Dungeon it is pretty much a shade darker than black, if that is possible. But not to worry, I have my Peace Corps issue flashlight. However, I have noticed earlier in the week that this fine piece of engineering often loses its cap spontaneously, and the spring inside tends to shoot the batteries and lens in all directions in a very impressive manner. This will become important shortly.

Anyway, I get inside, lock the door, place my shower things around, undress, and as I put my flashlight down BLAM it shoots apart. The first affect is plunging me into immediate and complete darkness. But I also here several key sounds. I hear two clacks.... two slow rolling sounds.... and then "PLUNK" ::brief, pregnant silence:: "PLUNK"

Those were my two D batteries, no doubt about it. Now there is only one place inside my Palace of Cleanliness that my two light-giving friends could have gone. From the clues of the sounds, and their precise order of occurrence, I use my Sherlock Holmes-esque powers of deduction to swiftly conclude that...yes, you guessed it... structure number one, the beloved squat toilet, is our perpetrator. The one place (perhaps in this whole country) that I would NOT go searching for them.

So ha.

Now I am in complete darkness, picturing a scene from "Aliens" when things are unhinging themselves from the ceiling and coming towards my head in the darkness to lay eggs inside my stomach. But I try not to panic, and I shower as fast as I can while trying not to move my arms very far from my body... because besides the spiders I'll be damned if I know where my clothes are, towel is, or the rest of the flashlight is. I then find the rest of the flashlight... with my elbow, and knock it directly into the shower wash basin. So now, in the pitch black, I have to go into this cold water that I have never really looked directly into. Because you know, ignorance is bliss right? And I have to dig in all the way up to my shoulder and fish around for the casing of my flashlight. Better and better. Thankfully I find it before I put my hand on something else, and pulled it out. I then tried to use the toilet brush to...well, why beat around the bush... shove the batteries down farther into the depths. The last thing I needed was them clogging up the toilet... let's just say the Cambodians would know who would be that stupid.

So I stumble out of my almost-tomb trying to look at normal as possible since my whole host family is sitting there staring at me, as always. I smile, say goodnight, and go up to my room congratulating myself on not dying/causing a massive chemical reaction involving battery acid and feces.

I go into my room (still in darkness from lack of flashlight...) and put my shower stuff down as I search for my spare flashlight. I check the floor, turn around, and promptly step directly on my bar of soap. Worst place to step... ever. Now remember please that my floors are about 50% bamboo and 50% thin air, and as I slide silently screaming across the floor I think to myself "my God... I am actually INSIDE a cartoon. I am going to go right through the floor and down into the chickens half naked, and there will be a comically-posed Colin-shaped hole as the only marker for my sad demise. I hope they bury me in the outhouse."

Thankfully I pulled from my bag of tricks a particularly well-timed flail, and caught myself against the wall. I could only stand there.... laughing as quietly as I could to myself at how I am, quite possibly, the most graceful person to ever walk this earth.

The end.

So after my last couple of ridiculous streams of consciousness masquerading as journal entries, I thought I would try to write a “serious one”. Not that this will be about Plato or quantum mechanics or anything, though it’s a long two years so those might be on the agenda. No, I wanted to talk about one of the little glories that is anything but little to me: mail. It is a way I can send back bits of my life to those that are interested. Blah blah blah. But more importantly (or “selfishly”) it is my window into the lives of the many people I continue to keep close even way over here. I have received a ton of awesome “snail mail” correspondences. Multiple letters on all subjects great and small. Drink flavor packets, CD’s, pictures, short stories to read, etc etc. It’s like a mini Christmas every time I get mail for while most things get to Cambodia in about two weeks, who knows when they get a chance to pay a water buffalo to bring it way out to my humble abode. But man is it worth the wait. Any and all the various offerings are not only appreciated but treasured. Almost pathetically so, at times. My host family also really enjoys seeing what I get, especially new pictures, and they always get a kick out of me laughing by myself reading a letter. Much to my chagrin, I haven’t written back as much as I wanted to, intended to, or really should have. I’m praying that this doesn’t discourage people from mailing stuff to me because I might shrivel up and die without those moments. But more on that in a few. I wanted to say there is a form of communication I’ve come to appreciate on a whole new level over here…

And that is email. Email is a much maligned system of communication. Because of the number of cubicle jobs out there, and its convenience factor, it is slapped with such labels as “impersonal” and “detached”. Technology, its true, has enabled many people to withdraw into a shell of social distance that is sad to see. But let me tell you something… I love email. It rocks my face off. I love it because even the busiest person (busiest can at times be translated as “laziest”, but details details) can drop an email with a minimal investment of time and effort, including attached photographs which are always fun to see if they can’t be mailed here. I love it because even if no one has written, I get emails from Target and Amazon.com telling me they still care about me, or at least the money they for some reason believe I have. But most of all I love it because it minimizes the huge time gap that exists when one lives on the other side of the world. As I said, I have sadly written very few letters by hand. This is definitely due in part to the pain in the ass it is to send them. My town has no post office (none that would be any use to me, at least), and while mail arrives reliably I am not as confident in the sending process. However, it is also because if there is any sort of specific issue being discussed, the delay in communication is absolutely ridiculous. Weeks to get something, and weeks to return. A question might be asked of me and by the time my answer arrived its relevance has long expired. Infuriating! But with my ghetto laptop alligator-clipped to a car battery, I can at least try to send responses in the same decade as the original letter. Internet communication isn’t instantaneous for me by any means (especially since as I am writing this, I haven’t checked it in almost a month), but it’s quite an improvement that’s for sure.

And one of the best days ever was a Monday in early June (how the hell is it July already? Must be a hole in the time-space continuum… Mom, you may be the only one to get that reference). At least I think it was a Monday. Maybe it was the 3rd… or the 10th? As my fellow volunteer Chris says “most of the time I wouldn’t know what day of the week it was if it wasn’t for the malarial pill box.” Anyway, on this particular day I had no school cause of exams (a story in and of itself) so I biked the 25 miles into town to go to the bank and check internet. Lo and behold, my Inbox of Joy held probably the best collection of writings everrrrr. I had emails of length, of substance, and of hilarity. I had emails from people that write me weekly, and emails from people that hadn’t written since I left the States. It gave me such a rush that I called Nora and when she asked “what’s going on?” I just blurted out “sorry, I just really wanted to babble about what a good day this is.” And I did just gush, feeling giddy about the phenomenon that strength can actually be zipped up and sent across an ocean to me from the people I love. And when Nora said “does it make you homesick?” I had to stop and think. Because it did. I deeply, from down in my stomach, missed everyone that I left behind to come here. And yet it served also as a reminder of the kind of people that have always led me to want to do what I’m doing and to be just where I am right now. A perfect balance, and I was renewed.

That’s what its like to get letters of any type out here. So if you ever say “nothing is really going on in my life to write about” or “this story is kind of trivial to send to Colin”, just picture me almost choking because I’m trying so hard not to laugh so loud that I get kicked out of the internet café. The Cambodians seriously think I’m insane. The idea that WWF, Britney Spears, and my giant, awkward white self are their only clues as to what America is like never ceases to crack me up.

So thank you thank you thank you for continuing to care about me. I’m spoiled by it and don’t know what I’d do without it. I love you all.

So in an early journal entry, I have mentioned a bit about my interaction with the local fauna over here in my corner of our wide world. I talked about how I hated my training village dogs, had fights with spiders the size of frisbees, and tried to barter with my father so I could purchase the life of my insomniac family rooster.

As a continuation, I am pleased to announce that now at my permanent site I have established an understanding (or at least a cease-fire) with the majority of the non-human inhabitants. For one, we have water buffalo out here. So awesome. If you have never seen one, they are impressive animals, reminding me of smaller rhinos with their tough hide and heavily muscled frames. They are rich grey in color with wide curving horns and are built like scaled-down tanks, and to be honest I really enjoy just watching them move about their lives… As I pass them on my runs they eye me over with a look that could best be described as “abject boredom and disinterest”. They clearly don’t see me as much of anything, as long as I’m not swinging a stick at them. Its hilarious though because I saw two of these immense creatures being herded by a 14 year old boy on a bike the other day… almost comical in that they could have crushed him in a heartbeat, but clearly aren’t the brightest bulbs in God’s bulb-box. I hope they don’t decide I am a threat at some point. I still have three dogs, and while I am often tempted to feed them some of the Raid coils we were given to repel mosquitoes when they bark at 3 am for some god-awful reason, I am also grudgingly fond of them. They often go running with me in the rice patties in the morning or welcome me back to the house when I return, and have even followed me into the school yard on my way to class, flanking me in a way that have caused my co-teachers to ask if they are my body guards. The bugs here are horrendous at times (depending on the rain/wind situation), and you would hardly believe the way I used to save struggling beetles out of swimming pools with the way I murder creatures with six or more legs here. I seem to be one of the few people bothered by being walked on constantly, and plucking tenacious weevil-like insects out of my hair. But my family is far more clever than I am at avoiding the brunt of them by eating earlier in the evening, using decoy lamps, etc so it could be worse. And last but CERTAINLY not least, my house is placed on higher stilts than my training house was, and my aforementioned feathered nemesis here at permanent site does his crowing near the back rather than directly under my head.

However, there is one creature here which I do not have any semblance of a peace with. In fact, our struggle has lasted many weeks and has reached a point that it bears recording for those generations yet to come. As the title (which I just couldn’t resist) would suggest, it is a mouse. But do not be fooled by the word “mouse”. I think it is entirely possible that some sort of ancient and clever evil has taken up residence in this small furry body. I can’t be sure of the nature of the being, and there is no exorcist handy… but no mere mouse is he.

It all started probably two or three weeks into site visit. My room is a great little space for me, and despite the war with the bugs (my mosquito net has proved to be a terrible X-factor for them, and the insecticide in it claims many lives some nights) I had nothing to complain about. In fact, my arm hair seems to be a perfectly evolved bug-snagger. Then one morning as I was getting dressed I noticed my socks had the remains of a beetle on them. Along with some mouse droppings.

I was not concerned in the least. After all, it was clearly mice, not a rat (an animal which many of you know the delightful characteristics of, perhaps thanks in part to my occasional nerdy ranting) and I had lived with mice during training with little incident. Heck, even in the States my dear feline friend Flash had the habit of catching mice and then releasing them into the house to create some sort of permanent gaming preserve for herself. So whatever, I had mice.

Over the course of the next week I found more beetle remains, and droppings. I also found a lot of fur on one sock that suggested they were using it as a bed. I just shook things off (quite literally. I didn’t want mouse junk on my clothes) and moved about my business. One day one of my students offered me a papaya-mango, an amazing fruit which is basically a mango the size of a small football. It was awesome though I needed to let it ripen two days. On the morning of the second day I arose looking forward to the awesome breakfast to find that my four-legged friends had decided it was ripe a few hours before I did: a third of my fruit had been gnawed away. I was definitely perturbed, but I just cut away the bitten area and finished the rest myself. Frankly I’m surprised I even bothered to cut away the gnawed portion, haha. But a trend had started, and there was no going back. They found the ziplock bag I kept my peanut butter in and promptly gnawed several holes in that though thankfully they were confounded by the jars themselves. I also had some candy in a bag they attacked in a similar way. The fact that my miniature roommates were starting to show interest in my peanut butter and the squeaking at night were certainly worrisome signs, but still, live and let live.

Then it happened. I went away for the weekend to use the bank and such in town, and returned to find two extremely telling, and disturbing, new developments.

The first was that half of my bar of soap had been eaten. Naturally, this was highly bothersome in that if I didn’t have soap in this country it could well cause an international incident. I told my host family, and my mom immediately glared at the cat and called it lazy. The cat seemed unconcerned. But on a deeper level, to me this was an extremely symbolic motion. It said to me several things. One was my mice were displeased that I had been so affronting as to keep what was obviously peanut-flavored mouse food inside thick, ungnawable jars. The second message this sent was that the conflict was being escalated. Besides the fact that some soap is made with animal fat, soap is not food. It is not human food. It is not mouse food. This was a calculated action done out of spite, and out of challenge. I had just had a paw backhand me across the face. And the third level to this action was based on the fact that this was the last bar of my American soap. So now we had an act of intolerance to the spirit of multinational cooperation. It was blatant xenophobia. They said “we ate half of your Stars and Stripes: now get out of our country before we take it all.”

The second new development was that on one of my socks (obviously their clothing of choice) I found half of a mouse skull. Could my soap have poisoned one? No, impossible, Irish Spring wouldn’t hurt a fly. With a chill, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t dealing with a group of guerilla mammals. What I had on my hand was a single adversary, a fascist rodent who would stand for no opposition from even his own people, and he possessed considerable wit and power. And he was a CANNIBAL.

That night, a noise startled me out of sleep around 3 am. It was a full moon, and a cool breeze whistled over the patties on a strangely quiet night. What in the stillness has woken me? Then I saw him. In the middle of my window sill, backlight with the full moons rays, he stood at his full height of at least 2 inches, stretching his formidable mouse muscles and surveying “his” domain. Our gazes met. I said (quite possibly out loud, it was 3 am and I’m not known to be at my finest at such moments) “enjoy these last fleeting moments of existence, my whiskered friend. The time for our reckoning is almost nigh. And it is I that will stand in the moonlight. Alone.”

I tried to peg whose spirit this remarkable animal embodied. Was it Hector? No, clearly I had yet to drag his body around the school yard behind my bike in triumph. Achilles? I don’t even know if mice really have heels. I couldn’t decide, but he was formidable.

So it was that my friend Fiona (a volunteer from New Zealand working in Svay Rieng) going to Phnom Penh, I asked her to bring me back a mouse trap. What she brought me back to me could best be described as a bear trap. It was monstrous and serrated and… perfectly suited for my foe. So I grudgingly set it with the precious peanut butter he craved, and went into town to use the bank again (so this must have been about a month so far… but I can’t be sure of that. In the heat of battle, I had managed to lose track of moments, hours, even days at a time. Dust, sweat, blood, squeaks, smoke, fur… it’s all a haze…). When I returned to site, I expected my biggest problem was going to be that it was awkward that a dead mouse probably the size of a small dog was going to have been dead in my room for several days.

My naïveté astounds me.

What I found instead was that he had eaten all the peanut butter off the trap without setting it off. To drive his triumph home, he victoriously ate half of my remaining bar of soap.

This was ridiculous. I text-messaged my friend Chris about what to do about the epic struggle I was in the throes of. He said “it’s only epic when you become a tragically fallen hero. That will happen when you realize the mouse is smarter than you. Then you’ll go mad.” I’m well on my way, I told him. It was when I told him about the mouse’s cheating of death that we finally settled on a name…

Lazarus.

In the space of a month and a half, Lazarus has eaten:

• 1/3 of a papaya-mango

• Peanut butter off my bear trap, twice.

• Half a Cambodian potato and then more peanut butter (twice) off the second trap my brothers helped me buy.

• About 8365324632 beetles, click bugs, flying ants, and the like. He generously left all the wings for me. Not unlike tribes where they put the skulls of their enemies on stakes as a warning to others.

• Several ziplock bags.

• At least one other mouse almost in its entirety.

• Part of my toothpaste tube, which I didn’t know until I squeezed a little too zealously one morning.

• Several water purification tablets. This was an attempt to poison him since supposedly Aquatabs are fatal to humans if ingested. Didn’t seem to work. I couldn’t be certain, but I think I heard a sinister, high-pitched, condescending laugh during the night…

• Possibly some of the students that have stopped coming to my English classes.

• Several chunks out of a few socks and a shirt. Clearly to show me that he had the power to leave me naked, but chose not to for his own amusement.

• The armpit of one of my shirts (which frankly should have killed him, as well.)

• Part of my soul.

NOTE: Some might argue that all that he has consumed has been “returned” to me in the form of mouse droppings. This is hardly a consolation.

I wish I could say there was a happy ending, a satisfying resolution, or a “dénouement” (which is French for “when we finish off the super villain”), but alas there isn’t. He has still foiled me at every turn, and I am starting to be jolted out of sleep by nightmares that upon waking I am unable to recall. I just know I am suddenly sitting bold upright drenched in sweat gasping... but but receiving cold silence as the only response. I am now in town for our Safety and Security meeting with the Cambodian Country Director and I fully expect on my return he will have eaten all of my shower products, my chair, most of my mattress, and the rest of my will to resist him.

Who would have thought my white whale would be a brown mouse?

One of the common sentiments I get mailed/emailed quite frequently is to “take care”, “be safe”, or “stay healthy”. I suppose that such comments could refer to any number of different levels of being that I can experience here. One is certainly a deeper level of mental health. Some of my deeper (AKA rambling) entries and emails to folks have embodied the various stops along to journey of mental fulfillment in such a new stage of my life. Overall this is going well, as each day may bring a new challenge but accomplishment as well.

However, there is also the more obvious view of the request to “please be well” which of course refers to my physical health. I can confidently say (I’m knocking on wood…) that I have rarely felt better. For one thing, my general health is great and it is only improving. Definitely due in part to the food: the diet here is far healthier than in the United States. There is more fruit and vegetables, and obviously no fast food. The food is salty, but I sweat such a comical amount that it is of no consequence; I could probably eat a brick of sodium and barely notice. I am also much more aware of my portions. This is partially due to the fact that meals here are eaten in smaller bowls of personal rice which you then add to by taking food a spoonful at a time from communal dishes in the center of the table. I really like this system both for the social feel of it, and that rather than having a plate with massive portions that you gorge yourself on you just measure everything you are taking as you do it. And being huge and white, I often monitor myself even further in not overeating. Though that is sometimes dangerous to overdo because if I don’t eat enough my family thinks I don’t like the cooking. Which is quite ridiculous considering my host mother is a crazy-good cook and makes hands-down the best food I’ve had here. Any snacking I do is typically either mangos, or rice with bananas boiled inside palm leaves (these are called ansom jaet… and let me tell you, they are sort of like small, sticky windows into Nirvana. I am convinced my leaving in two years will cause a massive crash in this market.). If there is one thing I have difficulty with here it is the lack of lean sources of protein. Here the meat is good and I don’t really mind about the closeness of the slaughterhouse (literally… my dad is one of the local butchers) but they don’t let a bit of it go to waste so I try to stick to fish and some of the leaner pork.

TANGENT: vegetarianism is cool, and I did it myself for several months and may do it again at some point. But I have nothing but respect for the way these people eat meat. They life with their animals and take care of them until their time has come, and do everything themselves… and waste nothing. Not to mention their animals roam free and are protected from predators and generally have a pretty decent life, you know, for a duck or cow or whatever said beastie might be. A lot more than can be said about featherless chickens grown in test tubes in many countries, and I find there is quiet dignity to it.

Also, I have been exercising like mad man. This has various causes and effects for me. For one, it has helped to pass the time. You can NOT sleep past 6 where I am, and I am basically up at 5 every day. Also while the middle of the day is brutally hot, things like yoga/calisthenics are pretty fun if in some sort of shade… and I’m sweating a river, so why not. Free time is something that you have in a lifestyle such as this (though it is notable that I don’t have a family/house to upkeep/farm to tend, so that helps). Also, its an amazing outlet for stress. I always have known this from playing sports, but seriously, now I’m an endorphine addict. When I was sick last week and couldn’t run I was a moody, bratty kid and not in the mood to be messed with, haha. Exercise is also just a necessity of my transportation here. Being forbidden to ride motos and having been given several examples of how you can’t rely on taxis at all, all my motion around this fine country is basically walking, running and biking. A few weeks ago I discovered I am capable of covering the 25 miles of “road” from my house to the district town by bike. I would say I “mastered the ride” (my most recent one was 1 hour 50 minutes, which is faster than my co-teacher gets there on his moto) but frankly it depends a lot on the weather. I got cocky one time and it rained… yeah, a 3ish hour ride and 15 kilometers of inch deep mud kicked the pride directly out of me.

And as for the tropical illnesses, I have been blissfully avoidant of them. Though as I told my medical officer, I’ve been sort of waiting for a malaria/dengue/food poisoning triple hammer to fall directly on my head every time I think “I haven’t been really sick recently”. Karma did actually sort of get to me slightly last week. With symptoms I won’t go into, I talked to my medical officer about being sick and she sent me to Svay Rieng Provincial Town to get some tests run. It turns out I had amoebic dysentery, a name which practically shouts “a good time for all”. And it is. My doctor said I probably got them when I was sick during training, and they have been preparing for a military coup of my digestive tract since then. The local lab tech was pretty straight forward, and told me “you have some of these bacteria, some of these bacteria, and you have a lot of amoebas” (well, actually he told me I had a lot of ‘trichomonas enforme mobiles’ because the results were in French. What was it like having a medical conversation over bodily functions between a Cambodian and an American in French, you might ask? Oodles of fun, that’s what it was like). My medical officer congratulated me particularly on the phrase “a lot of amoebas” because, apparently, when a Cambodian says “a lot of amoebas” that means basically “all the amoebas in the known universe.” But as Emily told me “I always thought amoebas were the cutest of the intestinal parasites” and I tend to agree that they beat out blood flukes and hook worms on the cute meter. And they were all mine! I named all the boys “Mobi” and all the girls “Les” from their French name, and to be honest it was kind of bittersweet to nuke my little buddies with meds earlier this week… but I take comfort from the fact that I’m sure they are in the great Petri dish in the sky.

...what was I talking about… oh, right, health. Yes, I feel good. And assuming the water buffalo don’t choose to stampede, I’m not worried about the local wildlife. The snakes in the area are all nonpoisonous from what I’ve seen (my neighbor caught a 4 foot one with his hands the other day, one of the coolest things I’ve seen someone do, you could practically smell raw testosterone in the air). Also scorpions are supposedly painful but aren’t dangerous, and I’ve been bit by basically every other bug and it seems to not do too much. Just today a jumping spider bit me for basically no reason while I was playing guitar. Poor little guy, maybe the fact I have arm and leg hair confused him.

And between working out for probably 2 hours everyday, drastically changing my diet, living near the equator, rarely using motorized transport, being under wild shifts of stress and mood, and of course the microscopic dance party in my abdomen, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I found a scale for the first time in almost 4 months at a local NGO the other day and I’m down about 35 pounds. It’s like things were before my body found out what college was!

So worry not about my health, good friends! In the words of my fellow volunteer, the illustrious Conor Cronin, we are going to be quite “svelte” by Close of Service.

There are several phrases that are used in Peace Corps so often that they are staples. People saying things like “just taking it one day at a time”, “when I get home I’m going to eat so much (insert awesome food here)”, or “I have diarrhea.” They span across countries and volunteers so that any PCV, Returned PCV, or staffer can relate to what you mean.

Yet of all these choice words of wisdom the one I think is perhaps the most cliché is the variants on “I’m doing alright, you know, ups and downs.” “Highs and lows.” “Good moments and bad.” This particular comment is made so often that, while it is a nice sort of group unity and badge of getting through the tough times, it’s almost a running gag because of how many situations it can be applied to here. Yet despite being overused, it is so true. Sometimes there are good days, sometimes bad, and it is ridiculous how often it can even change from hour to hour. Do you wake up well-rested and motivated only to be worn down by midday heat? Do have a class go poorly and you just want to crawl away, only to swing back with a nice interaction on your dust road? We end up laughing about it half the time because no the idea of having “plans” or “expectations” is an exercise in futility. Anything that can happen does, and you just have to roll with it or you will go more than a little crazy.

So anyway, I wanted to write about one of my biggest highs as well as one of the larger lows. You know, because after talking about the overuse of this phrase, I figured I would just beat a dead horse. In case you needed that, haha.

My low is pretty blunt frankly, though I think it will be something that revisits me from time to time for a long while to come. My friend and fellow volunteer Molli Barker, an Iowan girl of passion, intelligence, a bitingly dry sense of humor and a huge heart, resigned last week. The details of her departure and her reasons for it are private (to the point that I don’t think all the volunteers even know she is already back in the states), so I won’t go into them. However it does seem that it was a good decision for her, who she is, and what she wants out of life right now. Not to mention the fact that, in my opinion, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to admit that things aren’t right and to change gears away from this experience. Still, I feel terrible for the loss this represents or her community. Her co-teacher seems to be a really awesome guy (he’s the one who calls me “Rhino”) and to have prepared/hoped for a two year volunteer and have it change so quickly must have been a tremendous disappointment to many people in her village. And, of course, it was a tremendous disappointment to me and to the volunteers in our province as well. I have already written about the feelings of “wow, I could go home too…” from when Ryan left, but this was closer to home for certain. Part of it was losing a person that I hit it off with since Night One in San Francisco and had come to rely on and I knew she had my back as much as I had hers. But something Nora said that struck home even more was “I am just going to miss my friend” and that is the biggest thing. Forget pillars holding me up, I wanted to share two years of camaraderie with that girl because I loved who she was, and now that has changed drastically. It wasn’t the first and it may well not be the last, but sure makes you think of so many things… Yar.

Ok, ANYway… let’s end on a high note.

My high occurred in an unexpected way (unexpected?! What a surprise.). As a preface, I believe I have perhaps mentioned how hot it has here. If I haven’t, it is hot. I could say “scorching”, “boiling”, or “sweltering” but there really is no superlative to describe the fact that it feels like you are living on the surface of the sun. Autumn told me her thermometer was reading 102 degrees in the shade the other day… probably the same day I was sitting under my house with my brother and just said “wow, it is getting hotter. And hotter. How is this possible” and just started laughing uncontrollably. Of course I said this in English, but I think my brother got the gist since I did a personal remix of a Khmer song singing about how it was so hot I was going to die. It has in fact become a source of professional curiosity how I manage to sweat as much as I do. You would think I would eventually just revert to a liquid and sleep in a bucket, but so far it seems like my skin is satisfied to never, ever be dry. Ever.

ANYWAY, now there has finally been a break in the wall of heat – rains have started. Halle-freakin’-luiah. I typically am extremely vocal about how much I love the rain, talking about how I miss it and I want to lay in the mud with the pigs. My family tends to get a kick out of it, which in turn I find funny because I’m only partially joking. Storms often come up off the patties in the late afternoon and absolutely open up for at least thirty minutes. Often I stand around in the rain with just my kroma on singing “Thunderstruck” by ACDC and air-guitaring furiously while my brothers crack up. One of the local guys joined me in this one days, and while he was singing Khmer... it was a moment of true rock and roll.

So, on this particular day I had just finished working out and came down from my room as the rain started to pour. I am always eager for a chance to stand out in it and cool down/shower off with running water off the roof. My two biological (of course they aren’t really, but I find myself saying that out of reflex…) brothers and one of the lodging students were under the porch in dry clothes and just were laughing as I stood out Shawshank-Redemptionesque in the downpour. It was awesome, cold, and beautiful with the massive thunderheads shaking with lighting passing over us. I was quite content, and then suddenly my brother Tee said “do you want to run?” At first I didn’t get exactly what he was asking, but then as he gestured out over the fields with his hand with a broad smile on his face I said..

“Hell yes!”

So Tee and Tee-ah whipped off their shirts, we ducked the bamboo fence and the three of us went tearing across the patties in a dead sprint. Laughing and gasping we ran and ran and ran across the fields of Southern Cambodia through the sheets of cold rain, thunder, and lightning. I am almost ashamed trying to capture it in words because it was an experience that existed only in feeling and emotion. I thought to myself “was this somehow contrived? Or am I in a dream?” Language, culture, politics, money, the world passed away into a sense of raw being. All the down time, the various struggles, the times to think (or overthink…) anything and everything – it was all leveled by embracing this lung-burning sensation of connection. Connection with the weather, the land, my brothers, all of it. It couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, but was one of the most purely perfect moments of my life.

After all the ups and downs there is only life. And, man… who could ask for more?

From some of the responses I’ve gotten to this journal, and some of the personal emails I’ve received I realized that maybe my writing hasn’t accomplished what I wanted it to… I read things like “we are so proud of you”, “my problems seem so small compared your problems” and the like. I am deeply touched by both the effort to write, and the sentiments that are conveyed (especially considering some of the people who write to me are the ones I respect and love most in the world). I am also just so appreciative and glad to be thought of because I want to make people proud, and to do some sort of justice to the luck I have had in my life by choosing this experience. But one of the major reason I never liked these online BLOG things is that so many just seemed to be created to tout experiences and thoughts as if to say “look how great my life is, and how deep I am, wallow in your lack of vision.” It suddenly struck me that that is maybe what mine might come off as? Not good.

Because yes, I find a great many things to keep me motivated and loving parts of what I am doing. But at the same time, I am not without doubts, errors, and just being childish at times. The remoteness and isolation that are giving me many positives like the language mastery and cultural emersion have also given me some rough times. I have always considered myself an independent person, but I am OUT there and solitude is given a whole new definition when language and cultural barriers meet geographical remoteness. Can’t really be described appropriately…Also the pace of life is completely different than in the States. Not necessarily a bad way, just extremely different. As one staffer told me “you can just sit and stare at a flower for an hour if you want.” And how! This is compounded by the fact that Khmer New Year was a major holiday, and no one was in school… so the outside structure we might otherwise have isn’t there. Thank goodness I am a laid back person, because I have literally had times where I go out running, shower, play guitar until my fingers can’t take it anymore, sit in my hammock, study Khmer, doze, read, talk with my family, eat lunch… rinse repeat until bed. My mind, in all its tangential glory, has been having an absolute FIELD day with ideas, philosophies, memories, dreams, hopes, depressions, etc and there are times where I feel 90 years old and others when I feel 9… I won’t go into all that here, but wow.

My medical officer was calling me regularly and giving me some really good feedback (as well as sending me a book on anxiety, and generally continuing to be fantastic). However, she can also do a number on my brain with the language she uses. She has talked about how what I am going through is “almost like dying.” She encouraged me to write some about my experiences, and then had me read it to her over the phone so she could type it up for our in-country news letter… intense. She would talk about how so much of what I used to be was going to “melt away to leave the caring, solid guy you are underneath it all.” She is an amazing woman, but I sort of wanted to laugh and say “thank you, and that’s awesome, but what do I do while I’m melting?!?” My fellow volunteers are totally great as well, but we don’t have a lot of money for phone communication and also everyone’s site is providing different challenges that even those of us in the same country can’t entirely relate to. I am very far away from friends, and family, and the people I would bounce ideas off of (though I am of course meeting new great people). As I step out on my dusty path each morning, I know ultimately it is really just my legs and head that I have to face the day.

So the POINT is that while what I’m doing is unique, it isn’t all optimism and roses. It’s a Peace Corps cliché, but you seriously think about going home every day. I try to do my best and face the many things that come to mind and body in this chapter of my life. Even my fellow volunteers are telling me “if anyone can handle that site its you” and “you will definitely be the one fluent volunteer in two years”… people think more of me than I do of myself frankly and while it means so much to have the love and support, I don’t want to ever come off as a preacher. I never wanted my writings to become so epic that it seems like I am somehow boasting that what I am doing is better (however that is defined) than everything that is going on in the billions of other corners of the world. Including the very important ones in which my family and friends live.

If I were to ever become one of those holier-than-thou thinkers, writers, or people in general, please slap me across the face.

So the bane and boon of my first two or so weeks at site has in fact been a holiday: Khmer New Year. In fact it effected my last two weeks or so of training since kids stopped coming to our classes because it was “almost Khmer New Year.” But having been removed from our training villages and agendas, the free time was rather staggering without an outside structure.

However, there was also the fact that Khmer New Year is a major… well, party frankly. It technically lasts 3 days, which were the 14th-16th. But really, it was much more than that since when school “started again” on Friday the 20th only 50 out of 2000 kids showed up!

Now what is the best way to describe Khmer New Year… one side of it is religious, to be sure. Families get together offerings of food and bring them to the Wats (temples, or pagodas) to offer to the local monks. They also set up small altars/offering tables in their houses where they put drinks, fruit, a picture of the Buddha, and incense. They would also do some upkeep on the spirit houses that stood in their yards, and add new offerings. The Khmer society is extremely polite and sensitive to giving thanks to ancestors (they are terrified of ghosts, and seem incredulous that I’m not). They also often host group festivals called bons where they would set up canopies, invite monks to come and say prayers, and then eat and make merry afterwards.

Now this “making merry” is the second part of Khmer New Year. Part of it is playing traditional games. They play various card games, but overall a lot of them remind me of different versions of duck-duck-goose, or marco-polo, and other such activities that were awesome when we were kids. This is a big deal around here because game playing is often frowned on during regular life because 1) why are you playing games when you should probably be working to help your family and 2) EVERY game here is played for money. Even if it’s just for pocket change of those involved, it is all gambled on. I played a good bit of soccer with some of the local guys, and it was awesome, but literally as soon as people gambled the last of their money, they all just stopped and sat down and just talked until it was time to go home. Kind of demoralizing that they had no motivation once the wagers were done!

Yet perhaps the biggest part of this making merry involves the fact that the local Wats, on various days of the holiday depending on the Wat, host what can best be described as giant, equatorial raves… with baby powder. Basically huge, intensely loud speakers are set up and pump Khmer pop music (a lot I don’t understand, but I did hear a techno remix of “Jingle Bells/We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and a Chinese translation of “My Humps” by the Black-Eyed Peas. And I think I heard some DMX in the distance once… Hilarious). All the local kids come to run around, dance (lots and lots of this), play games, buy little snacks and drinks from the carts people bring there, and throw baby powder on each other. This baby powder can’t be emphasized enough, as everyone has it and the point of the game seems to be who can get the most powder squarely in someone else’s eyes. Luckily most of the kids seemed to be confused/scared of me, so I didn’t get it as bad as some of my fellow PCVs (in some villages apparently they would throw buckets of water on you first so it was like being tar and feathered).

But that doesn’t mean I got off easy. For example, one day at 7 am I went on a bike ride with my brother Tee to our grandmother’s house. It turns out this house is about 6 miles away, and when I got there it was one of the bon/festivals I mentioned. So from about 7:45 onward, I was offered tons of food, and tons of “white wine” which is actually rice moonshine, and sort of tastes like a cross between Mad Dog 20/20 (Angy will be celebrating right here) and turpentine (aren’t they basically the same thing?). But it was a blast, despite being blazingly hot, and there was lots of laughing and dancing and such. Not a word of English was spoken, but I liked it because after chilling under my porch for half a week I was pumped for anything! Then suddenly, at 11:45, my host mom says “ok, you can go back home to the Wat now. And take Tee-ah (my 11 year old brother) with you”.

So at dead noon I find myself biking down a South-Asian road with a Cambodian boy riding on the back of my bike (and trying not to think about where people thought I was taking him). And as home is getting near, he reminds me to go straight to the Wat. So at this point I’m completely drenched in sweat, deliriously singing, and pull into a Wat courtyard of easily 300 people. All of whom are having a ton of fun but I am suddenly the main event. It was such a Peace Corps recruitment video it was amazing. The staff has called it “living in a fishbowl.” I sat in a chair to drink some water, wandered around with some students that wanted to practice their English, and then danced Khmer style to Khmer music… all the time followed by an entourage of at least 15-20 children watching everything I did not even counting the 70 other people constantly watching me from around the yard. Absolutely out of this world.

Next New Years in the States, beware the baby powder.

So while I have now been at site for over three weeks at the time of this writing (which is staggering in its own right) I have yet to give an overview of my experience. Of course I wrote before about how rough the road is, and how that really challenged my thinking process initially. But let me expand some on the aspects of my site.

“Romeas Hek” literally translates to “Rhino Tear” (tear as in to tear paper, not tear as in crying), which has given rise to Molli’s co-teacher cheering “Rhino!” at me every time I see him. So weirdly appropriate… The Romeas Hek District is in the upper right-ish corner of Svay Rieng Province, which in turn is the south-eastern most province in Cambodia. The Cambodians call it the “parrot’s beak” due to the way that it juts into Vietnam. My town in fact is about 7 kilometers from the border. However, due to the fact that American citizens must have a Visa from Phnom Penh ahead of time and must cross at only one point, being this close to the border doesn’t effect me much directly (though apparently there are things at the border I can visit without crossing, which I’m excited to do). But it effects me a lot indirectly due to the culture/goods that seep into my area. People sometimes have Vietnamese slang for things, and I’ve seen motos stacked with goods from across the border coming into my market. It’s certainly interesting because Cambodians often really dislike Vietnamese people. I think part of it is biases in the urban areas, while out here near the border there doesn’t seem to be that kind of animosity. Though they often talk about how things are “better” in Vietnam, the government cares about the rural people more, there are better roads etc. I can’t quite pick up on all the ethnic undertones, but I imagine it’s a combination of history and jealousy… especially since Cambodia was for a long time better off than Thailand or Vietnam. Though of course that was before Pol Pot.

Anyway, while many of the other PCVs found their permanent dwellings to be slightly more westernized (lots of tile used in construction, and indoor plumbing for some) mine is still basically a traditional Cambodian house. Up on cement stilts it is built from wood and stands with a rice field on either side (I have no immediate neighbors, which is definitely unique to what I have experienced for the most part here). And behind my house, the rice fields and palm trees extend to the horizon… I have seen debatably the most amazing skies and sunsets of my entire life here, though there were some awesome ones in Maine, Ireland, and Naples too. Completely staggering and no picture can really capture it (and I’ve tried). Right now things are mostly dry, but when some of the rains start I think it will be a place of incredible beauty even more than it already is. Also, I am about 100 meters (trying to think in terms of meters and kilometers than feet and miles… which no one understands here, even if they do speak English) from the entrance to my high school. Literally, it is across the street. This is pretty cool in that I can just walk out of my house and into the school yard. Also it will give me a lot of visibility to the students… and the jury is still out on whether that will be good, or overwhelming/invasive.

My host family is fantastic too. I have a mother, father, and two younger brothers who, mercifully, all have exceedingly easy names to remember. My youngest brother, Tee-ah, is 11 years old. He started off shy but is always smiling/laughing along with me and I think over time he will be a major boost to my mood when that is sorely needed. Then my brother Tee is 15, and during Khmer New Year he has shown himself to be totally awesome and potentially a great friend these next 2 years. He tried to call me lo-crew (teacher) until I finally have persuaded him to call me Colin (though he actually calls me “Bong Colin”, which basically is a term of respect for an older brother, hilarious). During Khmer New Year he would bike around with me to the various festivities (which are wild, and I’ll have to write about them later), and on one day we biked out to the river near my house… just sitting under a tree, eating the fruit that was falling out of it, and he said when the rains come we can buy fishing poles for 25 cents and go out on a little boat to this stilted house in the river and fish. So awesome, I’m going to be a Cambodian Huck Finn. There are also two students living in my house also (I believe they are cousins of some type) due to them living too far away to be able to easily make the trek so school. There names are Doit (like “Just Do It”) and Dup, and are very friendly and a nice addition to things. There is also a third guy that I gather is some sort of cousin named See-pole, my mom said his father died somehow, he hangs out here a lot… he is cool too, and I teach English in the evening to the 5 of them. My father, Tha, is 40 years old… so there was some confusion at first as to whether he would be called “Dad” or “Mr. Tha” in Cambodian. They tried to make me do Mr. Tha, but I pretty much just have been stubbornly calling him Dad until he answers to it… I will not be given the status of a renter if I can get the status of a big white son! He speaks really fast Khmer and won’t slow down for me, so it will take a while until I can really get in with him, but he laughs all the time and is super friendly.

My host mother is an absolutely amazing woman. She never resisted the mom label even though she is only 38, and is constantly slowing her speech for me, and complimenting me on my Khmer. She has been an irreplaceable support in many ways. For example, a lot of times people ask about me in Khmer rather than talking to me. Understandable since so few foreigners take the time or effort to know Khmer. But I was having a conversation with her and said how people never ask ME about myself, and I like to practice speaking. So now every time someone asks her a question, she says “Speak slowly and ask him, he knows a lot and he can answer you.” She’s totally awesome, and keep in mind that none of the described interactions occur with a word of English… so my Khmer is just steadily climbing. While many of my friends are facing the challenge of no one wanting to speak Khmer and having to search out lessons to continue study, I certainly don’t have that problem. I didn’t come to Peace Corps to just speak English and eat Western food, so I really like I’m really out in it while others are struggling a bit with feeling too removed from that. I’ve already gone for days with the only English I speak being with myself… its awesome to feel things moving forward.

There have been some really tough moments… which I have written/talked to some people about, and while I may touch on it later I won’t go into it now. But overall I am trying to focus as much on the positive as I can, and I think over all I am passing over the hills and through valleys to some really solid stuff. Overall I am happy (though ask me that question again in 30 minutes and the answer could be slightly different, haha). I am taking a lot of steps towards building my personal life and health here, and that combined with the events and amazing people existing around me are moving things forward slowly. One of the most amazing people here I have met is the 78 year old head monk of my Wat. He lived through the French colonization, fled from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and has seen more of life and death that I have and probably ever will. And yet when I came to visit him and spoke some Khmer he was so openly joyful, laughing as I practiced words, complimenting my speech, and asking the word for “cat” in English. He was also full of praise for the fact I had come to such a poor area in a poor country to serve his people (something it always helps to hear considering we often don’t feel too impressive compared to the strength of these people as we are trying to keep our heads above the water.) At the end of our meeting he pressed my hands between his and said a prayer for safety and success in my time in Cambodia, and it was an amazing moment.

But as I told him I wanted to learn more Khmer, make my home here, meet a lot of people, he said “Drop by drop, water can make a hole in even the largest of rocks.” As if words were shaped just for me and the madness of this transition…

And so it goes.

Well, as usual there is so much to talk about and I find myself staring at the screen wondering what I should say. One of the interesting things I’ve almost always noticed about when I travel is that I gradually become accustomed to the amazing things around me, and yet my writings home are about small revelations, or personal thoughts, and other random stories. Then, often months later, a random occurrence or question will remind me of a story and when I tell it I inevitably hear “what?? Why haven’t you mentioned that before?” Well, I guess because when you live it, it becomes just… life. I am super profound…

Anyway, here is an even more extreme version of that phenomenon. But one thing I suppose I can point out as being a big deal was the day of April 4th, which is when we were officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. It was really important for the organization, for one. As the first group of volunteers to serve in Cambodia we are kind of poster children for recruitment and such, so there was a videographer from Washington that travels around the world interviewing, taking pictures of, etc volunteers and their sites. So while she was a nice woman it was kind of weird to feel associated with some sort of “glamour” when what we do hardly feels glamorous. That and I at least didn’t join the Peace Corps to be on a pamphlet cover… but in the end, if it raises awareness or the desire to serve those less fortunate, then I’m down for it. Also we were sworn in by the Director of Peace Corps who came all the way from DC. He had served in India many years ago, was a really open and genuine man, and read to us the oath of government service during the ceremony, which was also attended by the U.S. Ambassador (who is amazing, and makes me want to seriously pursue the idea of the State Department later..) and the Cambodian Minister of Education. Apparently the King of Cambodia was invited too but couldn’t attend, which our Country Director Van Nelson said was for the best since it allowed the focus to be on us “where it belonged”.

And just as importantly, the ceremony was attended by our future co-teachers, school directors, our past host families, and our future host families. Not to mention various members of our training staff, returned Peace Corps Volunteers in the area, and who knows who else, but overall a crowd of quite a few people. There were several articles written about particulars in Cambodian newspapers by the Associated Press… you can try a search online, I’ll see if I can a web address for anyone that is interested. In the end it wasn’t terribly long, and it was really both nice and exciting for us to feel like we have already gone through so much and yet are on the cusp of what we truly came here to do.

And with that were so many mixed emotions. For one, we were saying goodbye to our language trainers and all the temporary staff we had worked with for two months. Amazing people that I have mentioned that really gave me drive not only for my service but for what might come after it. We also had to say goodbye to our training host families and all the friends we had met in our villages. That was hard too because these people had opened their “houses and hearts” to us as complete strangers and had done it with smiles, laughs, and a staggering generosity of spirit. The last set of goodbyes were, of course, to each other. Though training village placement had pulled some people obviously closer than others, the majority of us got along so well and had come to enjoy and rely on the company of our fellow volunteers. Reminds me of college with the whole “make friends, get involved in organizations, play sports, make a life here… ok, graduation time, here’s your diploma and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.” But that’s what we signed up to do, and while I know we can still meet for support, ideas, and experience sharing we will really be out diving into the communities which will be amazing in its own right.

Last, but not least, before swear in we were asked if we were ready to reaffirm our commitment to service… so that made us think of course about everything at once. Was our commitment stronger, weaker, the same, how was life really standing now? It was kind of a hard question actually… I have ended up where I am right now for so many reasons, to be asked by our CD Van Nelson and our Training Officer Daulat Karki straight out about the oath and what lay before me was an interesting feeling. While it could have been quite a rambling answer, I ended up answering that while I think my commitment was different now, it was no less strong. I knew I wanted to come here, help as best I can, and hopefully teach half as much as I knew I would be learning from this amazingly different side of life. And I knew that its going to be hard as hell. Some days I’m still not entirely sure why I voluntarily left some of the best family and friends I could ever hope to find. But in meeting the faces and names of those I had you only hear about in books or statistics, my commitment just shifted deep inside me. I mean, yeah, its going to be hard as hell. Some days I’m still not entirely sure why I voluntarily left some of the best family and friends I could ever hope to find. But all plans and well formulated application essays go out the window when you see a child with the deepest brown eyes look at you and give you the most beautiful smile ever. You realize that by some colossal series of ricochets you are here now, and you will do whatever you capable of to give those eyes a different view of the future. So I stepped out of the Cambodian Ministry of Education assembly hall and into that new commitment. Here goes nothing…

So everything I have written about to this point has been absorbing, adjusting, floundering, reveling…and basically learning. Which, don’t get me wrong, has been awesome and exhausting and definitely important for both us and for our communities who are so enthusiastic about our attempts to learn about their language, culture, and lives. But hey, what about what I came here to do? Teach English, apparently, and finally in our last three weeks of training we were paired with a local high school teacher in Kampong Cham to get some practical classroom experience. However, we were also paired with a fellow volunteer as our co-teacher, as the high school teachers basically wanted to teach one class we could observe, and then wanted to observe us… so since so many of us are flexible and somewhat accomplished (ha) people with a lack of “teaching English” experience, the fact that we had another volunteer with us was definitely an airbag that we could rely on. I worked with my friend Liz for two weeks, and Josh for the beginning of the third, and while they both had different styles I found it really valuable to work with them and broaden my view of things. Then when we were finished we’d go and watch the other 5 volunteers from our district teach, and it was awesome to have such a pool of ideas. My friend Natalie, who lived next to me during training and has become like an older sister to me (SUCH an amazing person, and is a yoga instructor trying to help me find inner peace, we will see how that goes haha), has been teaching ESL for 7 years in a garment factory in Los Angeles, and it was invaluable to watch her work. It was also funny because Nora co-taught with her, and whenever she got kind of stuck she’d whine “Natalieeee” and it became the running joke she wanted to forget.

The teaching itself was definitely interesting. We had been prepped on what students knew, what classrooms were like, what motivated teachers and kids alike, and all that. But nothing beat actually stepping in there and realizing… there are no general rules. Reading and writing tended to be a strong point for the kids. It gave them a physical anchor on the language, and if they got lost at least they could search a paragraph for the answer. Speaking and listening… much less successful. We worked hard to slow down our speech, but often our accent just baffled them. And the fact that 95% of Cambodian children are extremely shy, especially of foreigners, didn’t help when we were pushing them to practice speaking and pronunciation.

Some teachers were motivated to learn and improve their methods, while others saw the chance of basically having a free substitute and just stopped showing up. Though really, in a society that pays most teachers around 40 dollars a month, I could hardly blame the ones that skipped out to work their second job a little more. Some students just had no clue… were either too shy to participate at all, or just didn’t get what we were asking,. This especially struck me with some of the older kids, where you can kind of tell they got lost a long time ago, and gave up on actually learning English way before we arrived. It was just a room they sat in once or twice a week (reminds me of how foreign language can often be in the U.S.) and they were coasting towards the end of the school year. But then again, some students were very clever and had an understanding of English that really surprised us. For example, I had to teach a lesson on heaven and hell in the Buddhist religion (I want you to notice how well qualified I am as a large, blundering American man to teach this to a classroom of 40 Cambodian, Buddhist raised children). A reading comprehension question asked if heaven and hell were easy to see, since they are in our minds. The answer was no, since they can’t actually be “seen”, but the girl who stood up to answer said she thought the answer was yes because what could be clearer to you than what was inside your head? I sort of stared for a second and then said “well, what if your friend wants to know about heaven and hell, what do you tell her?” to which she answered “well, I just explain it to her, and then she understands.” And I deftly said “oh…haha, there are TWO correct answers!” But despite how awkward I probably was in trying to decide how to handle such a rare occurrence of self generation by a student, I was so proud and impressed at the way she approached it. It was definitely one of “those moments” that made you feel like you were doing the right thing, that any frustrations and challenges across an entire week could have been lifted by that one quick-minded girl being brave enough to share her idea.

Good, because we are definitely going to NEED those moments. In our second week, it rained unexpectedly (since it is dry season), and apparently rain = no school because we had maybe 11 out of thirty-some students. On the bright side, “large class size” was a big worry for us as teachers, so while I wasn’t happy more than half my class disappeared at least we had a manageable sign. Then the last week it stopped raining… but it was worse. We would have about 20 students at 7 am, but at 10… it was a ghost town. What was going on, where was everyone going in the middle of the morning? And why weren’t they coming back? Well, we were told “the 12th graders had their regular exam, and Khmer New Year is in a few weeks, so it’s near vacation.” Oh, NEAR vacation, right, why didn’t we see that coming? This became sort of a point of great amusement to the volunteers in all three villages, and many of us commented that we wish we had had this policy when we were in school. Ugh, so frustrating that suddenly our last week of practice teaching was a wash, but overall it was definitely valuable and if nothing else it taught us what to expect… which is anything and everything.

St. Patrick’s Day has always been a holiday of multiple importances for me. For one, having a birthday on March 1st and being named “Colin Doyle” pretty much gives you a firm attachment to the Emerald Isle. And of course there is my love for the Black Stuff by Arthur Guinness. Then last year my attachment to St. Patty’s deepened with an 18 hour work day at Ryan’s Daughter with my awesome friends there just feeding off the madness - I thought about you guys a lot and missed the Daughter… And last but certainly not least my dear old Dad has his birthday on March 17th.

So Asia or no Asia, I wanted to celebrate. However, I knew I needed to handle it carefully… being the big white volunteer is conspicuous enough without wandering home yelling “I bought a bunch of beer, Erin Go Bragh!!” Lucky for me, my LCF Sokha totally got into it (I should have forseen that wearing all one color would be a cool idea here) and we planned to have the party on the evening of the 16th since he was going to be gone on the actual day, and I wanted a go between for explaination! It went off really well – another LCF, Sophal, came in from Prey Chor, Natalie and Erica came over. We wore green, ate food (including dried peas for the continued green affect…) and toasted with green canned Cambodian beer (I bought some folks a round of Guinness before at the bar in Kampong Cham run by Simon… he’s from England, but no one is perfect). And the party was a hit – we started off listening to a little Van Morrison, but it soon turned into a singing and dancing fest. We would play an American song, Sophal would use his MP3 player to play a Khmer one, and it was totally awesome. Especially since Sophal can do a wicked Michael Jackson impersonation… not the traditional St. Patty’s, but I have to say I was damn proud and satisfied of how we brought it to our little village of Tropiang Chrey.

However, the high was tainted by the fact that we lost one of our cohort. Ryan Perry, who had a stellar sense of humor and just last off day had been singing some great Bob Dylan in front of Simon’s bar, resigned and headed back to Wyoming. It was all very sudden, with him getting a call from the administration and he was in a van within an hour and gone to Phnom Penh, and flew out that Saturday. While privacy is respected as to reasons for ending service, Ryan gave us the impression that it was a family emergency that had caused him to leave. He said to keep in touch as he will have a “particularly acute empathy” for all that the next two years holds for us.

It’s rough to see him go, to see anyone go really… even after just two months we are very much a closely nit group having shared so many crazy times. He would have made a great volunteer and we worried about his family as well as the loss that he is here. But I think it also hit home with each one of us what it was like to see someone go back home. We have ups and downs, but constantly try to focus on the fact that right now our life is here, with these people we work with, live with, and serve. And yet there it is, we are volunteers, and in the down times you can literally say “screw this, I’m out” and off you go. Having the option, and being abruptly reminded of it, is quite the double edged sword… and makes you think. But as we stand now, though we will all miss our friend and colleague, our paths still head into the Cambodian countryside.

So yeah. While my entries before this have mostly been very positive with some challenges thrown in, this one is not positive. It covers some events that were scarring and completely devastating but are a part of Cambodia that must not be forgotten. Just a fair warning, don't feel like you have to read farther.

We returned from our site visits on Thursday March 8th and met together once again in the capital of Phnom Penh as I think I said before. On Friday we reconvened (though many of us were a bit late, as I should have been so I could have grabbed some damn breakfast...) at 8 am to debrief the visits. Many people had interesting stories about housing struggles, teaching classes for absent teachers, and one girl even had to change sites completely due to a massive problem with a school director. However, overall everyone had survived and were excited, feeling that what the faced could be overcome in time. We also had a visit from the U.S. Embassy's security director, who seemed to be so good at what he did (he's been here for 6 years) but was so approachable (he invited us to come play softball with the Embassy staff when we were in town) that it was a reassuring way to start the day.

Then we jumped in vans and headed across the city to the Tuol Sleng museum in downtown Phnom Penh. This used to be a high school, and in the 1970s it was turned into a national prison for Democratic Kampuchea (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge). Now it is a museum that documents this horrible time in Cambodian history, with the first signs upon entering saying "please do not laugh at any time while in the museum, for respect to the many who died unjustly here."

It was a stark, cold place with no pomp or shield from reality. The rooms were hardly changed at all from how they were found after the regime collapsed. Cells, manacles, implements of torture were in cases - the only deconstruction had been done by the Khmer Rouge when they knew they were losing and tried to hide the fact that it was a prison. Black and white photos were in every room, some displaying mug shots (because of course everyone was a criminal against the state), some death shots kept for K.R. records, and some that documented what was found when the prison was liberated in the end. In the examination rooms were beds, the same beds as in the pictures on the walls, and dark stains remained on the floors. I won't go into the details of many of these pictures because they were horrible and can't be truly described, but it shook me deeply. I saw the eyes of despair staring at out me from thirty years ago. I never went to any of the museums in Germany, or to places like Rwanda, or Darfur where such events are still happening, but it was a terrifying moment of seeing what human being are capable of doing to each other.

In a country full of welcome, love, and smiles, this lays just beneath the surface? We have walked directly into it with our eyes closed at times, that is how deceiving it is. For instance, one evening I asked my host grandfather how many kids he had. ''I had seven, but now five." "Oh, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Khmer Rouge."

We are such children, fumbling in a language and culture so deep and full and complicated. Everyone has lost brothers, uncles, daughters, cousins... everyone. In a country of around 9 million people, it is estimated that almost 3 million died in this time through purges, disease, famine. And yet here I come from the wealthiest nation on earth waving a flag of "I teach English"... and my host mother refuses to charge me for my bowl of noodles at breakfast because I am "one of her children". My thoughts on so many things threaten to crash into each other in the middle of my head.

I come here to serve these people, but what can I hope to offer a people that have gone through hell and come out smiling?

In a situation where moods can change by the minute and stress just becomes part of daily life, it seems ridiculous to say "such a stressful day!" but the Sunday of March 4th most definitely was... all 30 of the PCTs came to the Regional Teaching Training Center in Kampong Cham to meet our co-teachers and school directors that we had been matched with for the coming two years.

All of us PCTs were nervous... but wow, if possible our co-teaching counterparts were even more so. I didn't believe this at first until one of our staff pointed out "well, you are the first group ever, and represent if nothing else a free native-speaking English teacher for 2 years in their communities which have a great deal of need." Oh, ok, I guess I can see where the pressure would be on. It was a wild mingling of over 100 people as we went over a days worth of seminar material in various bi-lingual sessions. Everyone met their respective co-teacher and school director and had the awkward moments of ice-breaking. My school director seemed to be very motivated and kind, but didn't speak a bit of English and my co-teacher, Reach Savy, gave me a similar impression for while he spoke pretty solid English, he was very quiet. That's fine, quiet I can deal with, and while overall the day was long we all finished it with a feeling of optimism as we faced our first trip to our permanent sites the next day.

That night in Kampong Cham we went out to get food, and about 25 of the 30 of us filtered in and out of the same restaurant as we shared stories, ideas, apprehensions and dreams for the coming days, months, years.

And then the next morning came in a flash as myself and my three Svay Rieng compatriots were loaded into a cab with our colleagues to start the 2ish hour drive to our provincial capital. The plan had been for us to eat lunch as a group in this larger town and then split off to go to our respective sites, but as we approached Michael's stop we realized that a gap in communication (which shouldn't have surprised or phased us at this point) had us going our separate ways immediately. With a brief look of panic she said goodbye to the three of us, and was then out and off on her adventure... and I was next out at the Provincial Office of Education, Youth, and Sport. Hmmm, this isn't going to work chronologically... and will probably be very boring. So lets try to sum up the whirlwind first view I got of my permanent site.

My new host family: is awesome, surprise surprise in a country full of open people. A younger couple than my current group, the mother (Piep) was extremely warm, kind, and welcoming even by Cambodian standards. My new host father (Tha, who actually seemed to expect me to call him by his name rather than "father", so to each his own) laughs good naturedly all he time, and seems to be a really solid guy. They have two sons around 14 and 18 named Tee-ah and Tee, and while they are quiet I think I can get them to warm up to me eventually, probably by doing something awkwardly clumsy to make them laugh. There is also a grandmother, who is a massive cheerleader for me whenever I attempt Khmer. Also the family has two students from the high school who can't afford housing in the area living with them too. Such generous people (Linda our Medical Officer was right in talking so highly of them), easily one of the best parts of the trip.

My house: is about 100 feet from the high school, and I literally walk out my front door and am in a class room in 2 minutes. This is great on several levels, one of the biggest being I can stay involved in after school activities later and not worry about having to travel at night. My living standards seem to be slightly more middle class than my training house, but only in subtle ways as it is still a traditional stilt house (compared to some of my friends who have tile floors, cereal for breakfast, and indoor plumbing...). My room is still small, which suits me fine considering most of the socialization occurs under the house which is what I have had at training and love love love. Definitely may have been a reason I was placed at the site. The room is clean, with slightly more room for a writing table, and my bed is off the ground which is nice. From experiences in my Dorchester dorm room, I've no doubt I can play with the space to a ridiculous extent. And the view from my window goes to the horizon with rice fields and sprinkled palm trees... when wet season comes this place will take my breath away.

The school: consists of about 1900 students from grades 7-12, and about 85 faculty or so. It is rather big, with to school yards placed next to each other with 7-9 being in one square and 10-12 being in the other. I spent a good bit of time at the school in my several days there. I met the sub-directors, the faculty, and introduced myself to god knows how many classes (I answered questions, sang, got them to sing Khmer songs, drew maps, wrote the names of my family in Amer ca). My co-teacher only teaches grades 11 and 12 which I am kind of so-so about... some of the most motivated students are younger, and many of the 12 graders are just ready to finish school and be done with it. But this is just for the initial three months, and we can work with other/several co-teachers next year. Hmmm, and there is one particular moment that really stuck out...

The morning of my second day I was sitting on the school yard with about 25 other teachers just talking and smiling while my school director was addressing the student body. He was apparently talking about coming to class on time (so I was told) when suddenly I heard the Khmer word for "English teacher".

Crap.

Sure enough, my co-teacher says "ok, he wants you to introduce yourself." So here goes nothing... I then start a slow lonely (though my co-teacher came with me, thank god) walk down this parade ground-esque school yard, flanked on either side by about 1,000 Khmer children, and they suddenly all start to applaud. I hope that the insane and rather hilarious nature of this moment is not lost on anyone, because it certainly wasn't on me. I almost had to stop myself from laughing... the huge blonde man walking down the middle of the cheering masses of Cambodian children. I then gave a little speech over a mega-phone (in Khmer, of course) about my name, where I was from, what I was there to do, etc. I finished off by saying I was very excited to be here and they all laughed and applauded as I shrank down off my podium... Truly an unmatched experience in my life.

So that leads us to The people: Ha, well, just like in many other situations they are so welcoming, grateful, and eager for knowledge that there were times I reeled between excitement and anxiety. My co-teacher and much of the other staff I met were of amazing help to me, taking me to the market, checking on my happiness/transportation issues, and introducing me to so many key people.I met the directors of about a million things from District and Commune Health Centers to the Military Police, Primary School, District Office of Education Youth and Sport... you name it. I got invitations to meals, invitations to teach English, invitations to just sign guest books and tell them what I though of what I had seen. So much generosity of spirit, and yet at the same time there is such a desire to improve their English, their situation, their lives. I have to admit it threatened to overwhelm me at points - am I good enough to give these people what they want? And can anyone really do enough to give them what they deserve?

and last but not least... the Road: is terrible. I mean, I had been told by multiple people that I was one of the two most remote, it was a bad bad road, etc. etc. but... wow, I really wasn't aware of what a Cambodian means when they say a road is "very bad". Thought to be one of the worst in the whole country, when I left my compatriots and headed toward my respective village it was about another 2 hours of intense heat (it was now about 12:30 pm) on a road that alternated between gravel, sand, holes, and rocks the size of my fist. It was sort of long, but mainly it was just horrifically destroyed and the car at times couldn't go more than 10 miles an hour. And of course, we are forbidden to use moto bikes anywhere, so car was the only option. It was almost comically horrible if it hadn't been so hot and if I hadn't felt so utterly isolated and distant from everything ever. It is due to this road that I hit my lowest low since stepping onto the plane at BWI and heading to San Francisco. The "series of rocks" they called a street and the hot, dry rice patties that surrounded me were a physical representation of the distance I felt in leaving even the most recent of comforts I had been given (PC staff, my fellow volunteers, my new Khmer friends and host family) and being thrown into something totally new again. It was really rough, and messed with my mind quite a bit over the three days (it was a 5.5 hour taxi ride to Phnom Penh on Thursday...) but I tried to keep focused. Everyone had challenges, and some might be harder to overcome than my transportation challenges. I really hope, and am starting to believe, that once I live there and make that bubble MY bubble, this site could be amazing for me and the person I am.

Looking back on this weekend, I remember a specific moment when, around 3 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon I was introduction myself to yet another group of about 40 students (with another 20 looking in from the windows) and suddenly my teacher said "ok, are you fine here for an hour? I am very busy and need to go somewhere." and I said "ummmm ok... sure. Where is the teacher for this class?" to which he answered "oh these students are done for the day. They just wanted to stay and meet you."

In a country where school is so often an unavailable luxury because of the time it takes away from supporting your family... and these boys and girls stayed after to listen to me talk about what state I'm from. Blows me away.

Any challenges, second thoughts, doubts I might have are just constantly overwrote with my admiration of these people that I have come to "serve". They deserve me to do everything I can and even then... I know I will learn more than I could ever hope to teach.

Well, though it is now March 11th, the week of February the 26th held some big events in my life here. Yes.

First off, March 1st marked the first birthday ever that I spent in a place other than Baltimore or St. Mary's County. I turned 24. Yay, I'm old as hell. As PCTs, we have been trying to compile a list with everyone's birthday, so mine luckily fell at a great time for people to have time for well wishes. I got text messages from some of the staff/Cambodian friends, and my friend Michael even gave me a call to say happy birthday and hash out some details to come visit their village on the coming day off. Also my host family learned that my birthday was coming, and got very excited. However, while Cambodians know their birthdays, they do not celebrate them... primarily for money reasons. So while I tried to explain to them that I didn't typically spend a lot in celebrating ("I go out with friends, eat, drink, laugh, etc") I didn't really know what to expect.

However, it did not disappoint. At medical training in the morning, our MO Linda had... yes, that's right.... a jar of chunky peanut butter and a jar of creamy with baguettes. My PCT friend Natalie had texted her about my addiction, and they sung me happy birthday while i fought back tears of joy. Then later that afternoon, Sophea and Sokha (the two LCFs working with our village) had a cake for me! It had my name, two big candles shaped like a 2 and 4, and even a tiny pig on it (Chinese new year is the year of the pig, in case that made no sense). They and the 6 fellow PCTs in my village sang to me, and then shot me with the Chinese equivalent of silly string which was sort of projectile soap... it fell on the cake but no one cared since we had ate far worse, and it was awesome. However, it did stir up some drama since my host sister and a neighbor had promised to sing Khmer music, and then thought they hadn't been invited to my birthday, so gave me a cold shoulder for a few days. This was just explained to me yesterday because, of course, I am pretty oblivious and also can't speak enough Khmer to understand passive-aggression. The night ended with about 20 people under my porch singing various songs, as we traded Khmer and English music. I sing a lot here (they really love Jingle Bells), and "If Ever I Would Leave You, It Wouldn't Be In Springtime" or whatever cracked them up when I used my falsetto. Also I found out there is a Khmer version of "Play that funky music white boy". Truly a day to remember.

And it even continued two days later! I went to Tbong Kmong (the largest of the three training areas, which I think I spelled terribly) to visit my friends and had a great day off. We ate at Fel's host family's restaurant, and then biked to the POOL. Holy hell, this is why I called them Peace Corps Light, but it was a damn lovely afternoon of sitting around feeling like I was at an Asian version of Swan Lake (a reference lost on many people that may read this...). It was a huge village, but Michael lent me her bike when she went to meet with her co-teacher, and when she and Conor arrived at the pool, they had a present for me... a cake from Phnom Penh! It had gotten a bit jostled in Conor's bike basket, but was delicious and even said "Happy Birthday Doyle Colin!" in awesomely-Khmer fashion. Kudos to Michael and Samart the LCF for having such an awesome surprise for me! I am here with such a great group of people, and besides the three inch long aquatic beetle that tried to eat my face in the pool, it was the perfect end to my birthday celebration. I even got to pedal Derek's bike back to the market with him sitting on the back (a common source of dual-transport here)... as if people didn't laugh at us enough.

So yay, that was that. And yet probably even MORE exciting this week was that we had our permanent site announcement. These are the districts and provinces that, without any unforeseen tragedy, we will be living and working for the next 2 years. Yikes. The thirty of us are spread across 7 provinces (i think these are the correct spellings): Kampong Cham (where we have been training), Takeo, Prey Veng, Svay Rieng, Siem Riep (where Ankor Wat is), Kampot, and Battambang. They announced the placements by province, and my name was called for Team Svay Rieng Province, and I will be in the District of Romeas Hek (pronounced "Rome-ee Hike"). This is the site furthest to the South East of Cambodia and is called a "parrots beak" for the way it juts into Vietnam.

With me I was astounded and excited to hear the names of three of my favorite people in the group: Nora, Molli, and Michael. Molli and Michael I have mentioned before, two girls (from Iowa and Alaska respectively) that I clicked with well in San Francisco, with Michael organizing my birthday visit to Tbong Kmong. And Nora is an outgoing girl with possibly the loudest laugh in the country that has been in my training District with me. Three awesome people with great spirits, senses of humor, and different personalities. Any question of being able to seek support in each other is not a worry anymore.

It also turns out that Yin Dara, the Language and Culture Coordinator (head LCF), was born in Romeas Hek, knew my host families house, and just had glowing things to say about it and the people, saying that many of his family members still lived there and he may come down for holidays. Also the MO Linda said that it was one of the most beautiful villages, one of her favorite host families, and that the local doctor was so good that she would trust my health to him in a heart beat. A rousing review from two of the people I respect the most here. Then I was told by Vanesa Hughes (our technical training officer) and Cheryl Turner (our Assistant Country Director, basically, though I forget her exact title) that it was "probably the most remote site out of the thirty "and that they gave it to me because they "thought I could handle it".

We are leaving (well, left and have since returned, but I'm a bit behind...) on Monday March 5th. Remote, beautiful, challenging, and full of awesome people? Haha, bring it on Peace Corps.

Ok, so, up until now I have spent about five entries in describing maybe... a week and a half of my life. Not that this belittles what has happened, because the reason I wrote so much about each event was that they were steps farther into this rapidly expanding experience that is my Peace Corps Service. However, the fact that I have lived with my host family for over two weeks and I have said NOTHING of most of this monumentous occurance makes me feel like I am woefully behind. In an attempt to "catch up" as it were so that I can cover some facts and observations I've had, I am going to write a grossly truncated account of bits of culture, experience, and excitement that I've had. AFTER that is done, I'm hoping my week-ish installments will be less frantic, and I can better explore smaller occurances and my thoughts about them. Worth a shot, eh?

So...

my Village: is the most rural of the three training areas. I've spearheaded the movement where 7 of us there have started calling the 23 other people (only half-jokingly) "Peace Corps Light" due to the fact that they have internet cafes, electricity outlets, some even have indoor plumbing and one group... they have a swimming pool. Sorry, Original Recipe Peace Corps is a bit more hardcore than that and we take pride in it. Bring on the small village life, I personally am really enjoying it and feel like I'm seeing a side of Cambodia that I wouldn't get to in a larger area which is where my permanent site will probably be.

My Host Family: consists of (these are the best Western spellings I can come up with) Sriang my father (about 51), Kim-Toan my mother (about 48), Bun-Tone my younger sister (about 18), Bore-un my younger brother (about 17) and Pee-Rea my younger brother (about 15). They are amazing people, and that is probably the understatement of the century. It started even on my first night, where my father saw how awkwardly I say Cambodian style on the table and so brought a chair for me not sit next to it on, and then brought a chair for HIMSELF so that I wouldn't feel alone. My mother is a great cook, but would always ask what I needed and wanted to eat - when my doctor said more vegetables, suddently large salads and salsa-esque dishes began appearing. My Younger sister is shy, but when she saw me doing laundry (debatably the thing I am most innept at in this country, though its a tight competition) she came over and "helped" me (AKA basically did it for me and was the only reason my clothes got clean). My older younger brother also doesnt talk much, but is always willing to help me get water, set things up, etc. Pee-Rea on the other hand is more open, and whenever I crack a joke (which is usually mispronouncing something, or using the wrong word in what I hope will be a funny way) he always repeats it and laughs with me. In my recent illness, my family constantly checked on me, said they were sad I was ill and could only eat rice, and my father even when 9 miles to anther market with my Language trainer (who is a solid friend, the man Sokha I have mentioned) to see if they could buy me papaya. They never let me help them do things, and never except money for food at thier breakfast stand in the morning. Thier kindness and generosity is a source of constant astonishment for me.

The animals: Animals in this country seem to have several capacities. There are those with food uses - chickens, cows (though not dairy... i miss milk :( ) and pigs. Then there are "pets" that are dogs and cats. I suppose they are pets in the sense that they seem to attach themselves to humans that they get food from (by snagging it off the ground as its tossed off the chopping block), but by no means do you ever physically pet these...pets. The dogs aren't so much dogs as they are jackals or small hyenas, and they often beat the hell out of each other and can carry disease. The cats on the whole are doing slightly better, but our Medical Officer has warned us about fleas... so we avoid them too. Apparently dogs guard the house, and cats catch snakes? They can't catch the rats, because the rats are bigger than the cats I'm told (I haven't actually seen a rat yet, which is amazing to me.) The mosquitos and flies are omnipresent, but it's not malaria season so they are more of a hassle than danger. And my room is bug free (which I credit to the lizards I let live there and the giant orb spiders on the ceiling) which is awesome. There was one rather painful incident with about 50 fire ants making thier way onto my towel and me not noticing until I was drying off after my shower... ugh. I had a jihad with the insecticide after that (despite my loathing of spray-killers like that). The animal I hate most of all by a long shot is roosters. The idea that they crow at dawn is a complete myth. They crow at 3, 3:30, 4, 4:30.... etc. And they answer each other, so Sarah was saying we should just start a program to deafen them. I told my family that I don't like chickens but I'd like to eat that specific chicken, and they all laughed... but my nemesis remains strutting around the barnyard.

the Sports: there is a huge lack of kids sports programs here (well, programs of any kind) due ot various factors, and in fact that is a major request of the school systems - that we help to facilitate those sorts of programs. For recreation, kids seem to play some soccer, basketball, and this hackey sack game (which i havent seen yet) but mostly volleyball. HOWEVER, what is hilarious is that about 90% of this country seems to watch WWF Wrestling. I've been asked if I'm a wrestler, if I know the "Undertaker", etc. It never fails to crack me up that such a glitzy Hollywood thing made it over here.

the Food: is really, really good. Like I said before, the slaughterhouse is close (a good bit of it lives under my house, I think) but they are great cooks, and the vegetables and fruits are great. For breakfast I typically eat something called "bau-bau", which is a sort of rice porridge with bits of liver and what I THINK is squid in it. They tend to eat a lot of soup-based dishes and they drink a lot of tea (boo yah) and these two seem to be thier primary sources of hydration. I ate my first Dragonfruit yesterday (a big red thing with green hornish leaves sticking off of it, Nick and Patrick you better be reading this) and overall I'm finding my tolerance for new foods will serve me very well.

the Language: has ups and downs. There are no cognates, and the pronunciations are difficult, so there are times where Americans and Cambodians just stare across the table at one another, haha. BUT we are learning SO fast (immersion "ftw")and there are NO VERB CONJUGATIONS, PRAISE BE. I am finding I have a really good memory for vocab, so its a matter of just continuing to put in work and better grasp the grammar... but I'm feeling so much better about my two years here seeing the language come along. Woo!

the Weather: is freaking hot. They have two seasons, Dry and Wet, but in each season is a hot and cool one (cool being relative. its still high 80s) and we are just ending the "cool Dry" season. A group of us talked to an ex-pat from Pennsylvania who had been here 10 years and he said April gets so hot that he just closes his restaurant and takes vacation for a month. Oh, good. Great. Me saying "I'm very hot I'm going to die" in Khmer has become a staple statement to my host family, and they always get a kick out of it. If only they realized it wasn't entirely a joke...

my Health: actually took a downturn last week. I typically never get sick, but I was having some muscle aches, fatigue and stomach ache on Tuesday, and in the middle of the night I woke up with chills and a 100ish fever. As if I didn't sweat enough, my fever has been breaking almost every night just in time for me to lay in a puddle until the roosters start to wake up. Two days ago the MO put me on some heavier meds, and yesterday she recommended I come up to the Capital of Phnom Penh to be observed and finish recovery. I have started to feel better (took time and antibiotics), but this weekend we had a special trip planned - in pairs we were given various locations within 4 hours of our villages and we were to practice language, travel, money, and everything to get there on Saturday and back on Sunday. I was really excited, and was to head with Joe to the Odong District of Kampong Speu, which is supposed to be a gorgeous area...but I am in fact missing it... so really, being able to come to the capital rather than sit in my village and feel sorry for myself was about as important to my mental health as physical. Now Phnom Penh is my self experience, and I'm going to try to go exploring today! My family, the PC staff, and my fellow volunteers were sooooo amazing and supportive throughout the whole process, but really not feeling at the top of your game at a time like this is pretty devastating. However, the end is in sight and I will return to my village on Sunday.

the People: while there is probably more to be discussed, I have two years, so I want to finish on the overwhelmingly positive note (though maybe I already said this last week) that the people are some of the most overtly wonderful that I have ever met. They constantly ask how I am, where I'm going, where I've been. Smiles are everywhere, and just broaden when they hear me try to speak Khmer. They constantly tell me how much progress I am making and how much I know (which is just MORE of a testament to thier kindness, since I know I have so much to learn). The fact that we want to come to them, learn from them, and help them on thier terms rather than judgement/mission work just seems to make them so happy that it's awesome. It sounds lame, I know, but so far it has been nothing I expected but everything I hoped.