“Listen for the call of your destiny, and when it comes, release your plans and follow.” ― Mollie Marti

Hey friends, just stopped into Siem Reap for some races this weekend, but more on that afterwards! Time to get you up to speed on the happenings around my community!

-Random people help me every single day. I ask for directions, I ask how to say lots of words, I ask what I should wear to events, I ask how to eat new foods, and I get help even without asking for it. Last week I was in the market shopping for some materials to build a hand washing station and a seller literally left her shop to walk me around the market until I found what I needed. Then she invited me to come to her house sometime. I challenge you to help someone you don’t know this week!

Ants in my pants! Literally…in my clothes chest.

-Some of my cousins got a new puppy this weekend, they named him “Mickey”. The kids invited me to their house one night and we sat by the candlelight for hours in the driving rains picking fleas off the puppy. The next night they invited me to their house to eat dinner with them. It was a great meal and I appreciate the family sharing their food with me. My aunt told me about how her husband died in a traffic accident when her 5 children were 10 months-12 years old. She moved home to be with her family. Initially their entire house was the size of an average bedroom and the roof had gaping holes. She told me that when it rained they did not have a dry place in the house…it rains every day for 6 months+ here. She told me that their house has been blown over and destroyed 4 times in the last 12 years (once just a year ago). The youngest daughter “knick” goes to school during the day and still manages to help a seller in town for 4 hours a day. For 4 hours work she earns $0.50 which she gives all of it to her mother. The oldest three children live and work in Thailand because wages are higher, they see their mother twice a year.

Random sketchy tree house we found near Ankor Wat.

Climbing the tree house.

-I came into Siem Reap with some other volunteers for the “Water Festival”. This holiday signifies the reversal of the direction of water flow from a major river in Cambodia after the flood waters have receaded. It is celebrated with a paddling boat race in the major cities. Another volunteer, Jeff, had a friend of a friend who lives in a floating village South of Siem Reap. She graciously invited us to her families house by boat and showed us an incredible time. The family was absurdly friendly, as usual. The mother was a village health volunteer and the father was the village cheif. Jeff and I did some swimming down the “street” we were treated to a stupendous sunset on the boat ride home.

With some of my students in the tree house.

-One day a village health volunteer invited me to the village cheifs house for an event, I didn’t quite follow what it was for, but she was somehow involved with setting it up, and after I asked a few times, I figured out that she was inviting me to a dance! So the next morning I put on my shirt, slacks, and finest dancing flip-flops and trekked over ready to represent my dance troupe “The Epic Dance Circles”. Turns out it was a meeting about the amount of rice they had harvested this year…or something like that, it was hard to follow because of all the numbers they were throwing around…and obviously my language still needs lots of work as the lack of dance party demonstrated!

The gang waiting for a flat tire to get patched.

-I was sitting at the table out front of the house, you know the one, next to the road so I can wave to familiar faces. A man I met a few days earlier was driving home from work and we locked eyes…I gave him the “whats up, I remember you!” nod. He returned the favor. Time slowed down, we looked deep into each other souls for what seemed like an eternity…me sitting still at a table studying Khmer…and him speeding down a slippery dirt road littered with crater sized pot holes *BA-BAM*! He went into a pot hole that was the remains of the comet that put the dinosaurs into extinction. No longer locking eyes, but still in slow motion, his body soured over the handle bars for about 6 feet before he somehow landed on his feet in a full on sprint, but he stayed upright. His moto lay sideways in the mud, dripping gasoline. After collecting himself, he got the moto upright and off he went, no harm done, maybe just embaressed. Eventually, I picked my jaw up off the ground and couldn’t help but kackle to myself.

KING MONKEY!

-I ate fried duck egg for the third time just to test something out. I vomited in my pee bucket at night again. Myth confirmed…fried duck eggs give me a terrible stomachache and induce vomiting.

-At the Health Center we had a meeting with various school directors in the commune. It was music to mea ears, as I intend to work with the schools a lot. One school director in particular speaks decent English and took a liking to me, he invited me to his school the following week to check it out. Once at his school we sat in the back of a classroom and watched some first graders learn how to read and write, I got a tour of the newly donated library and one of his teachers spent the morning cooking up a huge meal (fried frogs, chicken, and rice cooked with the chicken broth) for me and the 7 other teachers. I was floored, as usual, by the generosity I receive in this country. Some people make my job very easy for me!

World Food Program and RACHA educating pregnant and lactating women on how to cook the food we distributed.

-I built my first tippy-tap at site. These is basicially a simple handwashing station where you hang a bucket of water and attach a branch with string to use as a foot pedal. Before I constructed it, the kids seemed interested. On construction day, just one kid helped, the youngest, and by helped, he insisted it was a punching bag and just kept boxing it. Oh well, it was a good trial run, I haven’t seen anyone buy me use it yet, but now I can streamline the process a bit and provide the necessary education.

English class?!?

Ankor Tome

-I wanted a neighbor to write the word “Thanksgiving” for me phonetically in Khmer so I could show it to other people. I asked him to write “very beautiful” so that other people would be able to read it. Later that day, I asked my tutor to read the word back to me to test how it would sound, she told be back in Khmer “very beautiful”. Whelp, miscommunication!

-A 50 year old, serious, well respected teacher spent 5 minutes stuffing her head into a way-too-small plastic bag so that her hair would not get wet when she biked in the rain back to school.

-One of my fellow volunteers and one of my best friends in Cambodia was sent home this week because they were caught riding a moto. It was terrible news.

-I teach some kids in town English a few days a week. We came up with the idea to bike ride to Ankor Wat one Sunday so that they kids could practice their English with tourists. And so it went down! We gathered one morning, biked 1.5 hours through beautiful rice fields to one of the ancient wonders of the world for class. Cambodian Nationals are permitted into the temples free of charge, however, I was not, and tickets are expensive on a volunteer budget. The kids asked a few guards if I could be let in, we pleaded that I was their teacher and explained the situation…no luck. We went to a back road, where I had heard they do not check tickets, but still, there was a guard. Feeling bummed, and hungry, we took a back trail to loop around and get some grub. The kids stopped at a side trail, left their bikes and went walking. I followed suit. There she was, beautiful and mighty…A tree house maybe 150ft+ high. I asked if the kids had been up before, and all said no, they did not know it was there, we just randomly came across it. It was sturdy, but sketchy, a few hand rails were missing, and it was certainly high! On the way up, 4 girls were coming down, while I waited I asked them in Khmer how the view was and I got back sign language! I know how to say my name (thanks to Mrs Becky and the after school program!), which I did, which let to a flurry of hands from them and I tried to explain that I didn’t really know anything more than my name. The top was a sensational view, I was stoked, I love climbing things. A little further and one of the kids had a flat tire. The women at the “bike shop” that patched it for us did a little trick I had never seen…for my cycling friends…after applying the rubber cement for the patch, she lit it on fire to speed the drying process! We got some Khmer food for lunch and I treated all the kids…a staggering $4.75 for 8 people. Afterwards, we found a back way into one of the temples and went around exploring. We met a few people willing to chat with the kids, but I was surprised by how quickly they blew us off. At the final temple, I waited at the base of the hill and all the kids went up to the temple for about an hour, I went to work on the 3 mangos I had bought that morning. As I peeled the first one, a kid from across the street was yelling at me, presumably to buy cold water from him as he had asked me a dozen times already. But his voice was a little different, and he was pointing near me, I looked to find a monkey standing at my feet with it’s hand out asking for my mango. I stepped back and gave him some peels, not good enough, he continued to approach, I kept back peddaling as now tons of people were watching what would happen between the monkey and the foreigner. We continued that dance for sometime, as I kept hoping this monkey would not attack me and i’d have to call our doctor and explain this story as to why I needed a rabies shot. Then one of my students came back from the temple, he said “oh a monkey” and put out his hand, the monkey jumped on his hand and climbed to his shoulder…well now I feel a little sheepish. I told him I didn’t realize they were gentle, he said half are and half will bite. I respected that. Around 3pm we biked 2 hours home in the rain and I got them to sing a couple songs. It was maybe my best day at site so far, I got lots of stares that day, but none from my group, I was just another friend to them and that’s how they treated me. I was very happy to have them in my life. We didn’t practice much English that day, but the kids got to visit temples they had never seen, and heck, as a health volunteer, I got them all to bike ride for 4+ hours that day!!!

English class

The girls with an Aspara dancer.

-My friend who is a returned volunteer called me the other day. It was so great to be able to share feelings and experiences with someone who has been there. Thanks again Meghan.

-My program manager came out to my site to check in and see how everything was going. We met with my HC director and gave me an outstanding indroduction at a meeting. We also met with a school director before festing on my host moms delicious cooking. He gave me fabulous insight, and helped me work out a few things for the future. I really enjoyed his visit, he is very inspirational. He also told me a cool saying in Khmer, “pure gold isn’t afraid of the flame” meaning that if someone has a good heart, then they shouldn’t care what other people think or say about them, just like pure gold won’t reveal any impurities if applied to the heat.

KITTENS!!!

-After the site visit from my program manager, I had the evening free, I went for a walk to see what I could get into. Only two houses away, a man told me to put on a long sleeve shirt and come back. There was a huge pile of freshly harvested rice, a large machine and about 15 people. We put the rice into the machine, it would strip the rice kernels off the stalk, put them out the bottom, and shoot the stalks into the air. There were lots of positions, several people to pick up the rice and put on a platform of the machine, one man to push it into the machine, one man on top of the machine directing the blown stalks, one man switching the full buckets with empty buckets as the kernels came out the bottom, two people bagging the rice kernels, and I was paired up with my friend “Mop” and we carried the huge buckets of rice from the machine to the bagging area, rapid fire for about an hour. My forearms were on fire, and everything was itchy like rolling around in the grass. There was also the kids to stood in the rice stalks and got covered, would jump from a tree into the stalk pile, so summersalts down the side of the pile, and just generally be awesome kids. It was super cool to help out with the community and see yet another step in the rice production process.

Before stripping the rice kernels.

During rice kernel stripping

During stripping the rice kernels

-This week, I once again helped World Food Program and RACHA distribute nutritious food powder to the 13 villages in my commune. I’m very lucky they let me help out, and I was able to understand a lot more of what was being said than the previous month. I also met some great contacts in both organizations and hopefully can help them out with future work in my community.

-On November 27th, in the evening, my neighbor and father of six fell to his death when climbing a sugar palm tree. On Thanksgiving, I went to his house, where I once sat with him and his family when I was first introducing myself to the community. This time, the entire village was there, preparing food, making funneral decorations, chatting, making more food. The body was laid on a table under the house and covered in blankets. Eventually, the body was hoisted into a wooden box and the box was carried about 1/2km with the villagers walking behind and taking turns with the carrying. We went to a small clearing where a ractangle was formed out of banana trees, and it was filled with wood. A few ceremonies took place before everyone walked around the rectangle 3 times before placing the wooden box into the rectangle and more wood was added around and on top. Then the whole thing was doused in oil that is used for oil lamps and was set ablaze. We all watched and waited, the family cut their hair, it began to pour rain, but hardly anyone left. Eventually it got late and I headed home with a friend. It was a somber day, I got to witness lots of culture that day, and was treated largly as a villager that day, and I was able to think about all the things I am so very thankful for. I didn’t dare take pictures because I didn’t want to offend anyone, most importantly a man who once invited my into his house to watch boxing with him. I am very thankful for my family, my gradparents, my opportunities, my village and host family. Please keep in mind that one day we could be doing a daily chore and not come home as well, never miss an opportunity to tell those around you how much they mean to you. You all mean the world to me.

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

I apologize again for the duration since the last post, before I came to Cambodia I was donated a laptop from my incredible cousin Laurie and her husband Todd, thanks again! I purchased a new battery off ebay since it had an extended life, however, it is now not working so unless I am physically plugged in, I cannot use my laptop for the moment. The challenge now is that I don’t get internet in my village, and there is gererally not free electricity around to plug into in the town, and I can’t really lug my car battery and inverter around with me to set up shop in town. So, since lots has happened since my last post, i’m going for a listing to get everyone up to speed rather than paragraph form, let me know what you think!

String bean walrus teacher

 

String bean walrus student

-Playing “keep away” in the yard one day I kicked a chunk of concrete and cut my foot like a large blister on the bottom. My brother in law fetched some gasoline to pour on the wound, I guess that would kill the germs, I just went with it, then cleaned it out good one my own with soap then antibiotic cream.

-A drunk man asked me to buy him a beer. I declined. He asked me to give him money. I declined. He pointed to the holes in his shirt and asked for my shirt. I declined. He continued to plead and tell me about his children, it was a hard moment.

This was in my soup one day!

-My brother-in-law’s father called me over with some of his friends to drink at 10am. I declined. One of them grabbed a 5 gallon bucket and played the drums on it while another sang, then they convinced me to dance with them.

-My 16 year old brother moved to Thailand with some of the other cousins for 1-2 months to work the rice fields. Working in Thailand can fetch around $7.50 per day as opposed to $2.50 per day in Cambodia. He does not speak Thai.

Career Fair

-When I have free time I bike ride to random food sellers, buy a snack to break the ice, then sit there until people talk to me. It takes a good 20 minutes to open up, but when I leave they ask me to stay longer or come back again soon. It’s very hard to work up the nerve to initiate these moments, but coming out of them is probably the best feelings I have in Cambodia.

goof balls

-I was able to skype with my family before Halloween, my sister spent the night so they could wake up at 4am in order to “meet” me. They are the best, I miss them greatly.

-I helped distrubute nutritious food powder to pregnant and lactating women on behalf of RACHA and The World Food Program. My health center chief introduced me to everyone through a megaphone and then a grandmother bought me a loaf of bread with ice cream in it (like a meatball sub with scoops of ice cream instead, try it!) from a passing motorcycle vendor with a cooler strapped to his back seat.

distributing nutritious food powder

-Two of the village health volunteers invited me back to their house for lunch one day. I got to meet their family and eat with them. They told me not to forget them in 2 years when I go home, and maybe send them 100 dollars a month!

-My tutor recently moved closer to the nearby town so she doesn’t have to make the 40 minute bicycle commute 4 times a day any longer to get to school (now about 10 minutes). However, this turned my 7 minute commute to study into 20 minutes each way. Not too terrible, but I miss our original set up.

photo op

-I taught the cousins to play “swizzle sticks” and we played for hours one night. The loser had to crab walk, had to sing, had to do push ups, had to bicep curl the little cousin by his feet. Finially, all the cousins went to bed except 2 (8 years old and 11). I broke out the laptop, we blasted music and had a dance party while my host dad cracked up.

Movie night

-A young cousin (6 years old) came to visit for a week, my mom told me his family is not well off. I believe he has some severe growth stunting, but is a wild child, think of the tazmanian devil cartoon character. One night all us cousins were up in the house playing a game, he had to pee, he dropped his pants, sat down, and peed through the slats in the floor. Hilarious, but seriously?!? There is lots of stuff stored under the house. I did not care for him at first, but he grew on me and I saw some of his calm sides. The night after he left, our family got a phone call, the cousin asked to talk to me.

“Ah-ka-tee” the Tazmanian Devil and my lost dog

-A neighborhood 16 year old boy named “win” has been asking me to teach him English for some time. I finally picked out a time slot to teach him until I get a little more established in teaching health. I teach him and 5 of his friends in our house 1 hour a day.

-The school director at the middle school asked me to teach English to her and the other teachers from 5:00-6:00 everyday when then finish teaching. I get to help the children by teaching the teachers, I practice teaching, I learn more Khmer, and I am building relationships at a school when I foresee a lot of future work. Some school children also attend the class.

playing soccer at the middle school

-I run 1km to the middle school around 4:00 to play volleyball with some local police officers and construction workers. They are competitive and about the same skill level as myself, great fun. At 5:00 I go to teach english and 2 of the police officers join my class. I then run home and race the school children on their bikes.

-A man in town loves to sit and chat with me and watch me eat. I know his whole family well and enjoy his company. One night, after playing solitaire on my computer with the kids, I showed some pictures to my mom, including some pictures from the Khmer Rouge Museum we visited during training, my mom had been there once before many years ago. The man in town had never had the opportunity to visit the museum, so my mother invited him over one night and I showed him some pictures of the museum. Pictures of the high school turned into a prison for torture and the killing fields where massive amounts of bodies were buried. I sat and listened as best I could to my mother and this grandfather talk about their experiences.

beautiful rice fields

-A K6 volunteer up the road (Meghan) invited me to come help teach ultimate frisbee to the students at her high school with the help of her friend Jared from Phnom Penh. The kids really seemed to enjoy it, and Megan and Jared had such incredible energy, the kids certainly enjoyed themselves and picked it up quicker than I have ever seen before!

-My parents sent me a package, it was such a morale boost. It had some new books, dice, playing cards, a batman towel, pringles, almonds, LCR, and some hard candies. The hard candies have been a huge help as I have been using them to reward myself when the times are tough, or when I muster up the courage to face an awkward situation.

Playing LCR

-My family also sent me a joke in the package, get a load of this: What does a nosey pepper do?…get Jalapeno business! I have it posted on the wall and it continues to crack me up, I wish I could share it in Khmer, don’t think it would be as funny.

-My next door neighbor has a nice little farm up the road where she grows corn, string beans, and bananas. It is very cool to check out, it even has an old single stone carved from the remants of an ancient temple in their banana tree patch! On my second visit, the corn had really started to come in, but the string beans were the same size…I inquired why…because the cows ate the seedlings!

-One Sunday I was on a bike ride when I heard some loud music. When I went to check it out, I was invited to come inside the building. It was a christian church, the band had 3 girls back up singing, 1 man singing and playing the guitar, and one man rocking out on a homemade drumset made of pots and pans, complete with a 5 gallon bucket kick drum, it actually sounded really good.

Homemade drum set at a Christian church

-I recently taught a formal class on nutrition and the 3 food groups in Cambodia at the middle school. Six seperate classes, each 50 minutes long. It went pretty well, the kids showed me some energy. I still can’t believe that only 4 months ago I had never heard a single word of Khmer, now I am teaching classes completly in Khmer.

-I crossed an item off my bucket list. I played 4-square in Cambodia. The kids loved it and we played for hours until the last twinkling of daylight.

-I set out to explore some of the ancient temples in the commune one day, two of my little cousins had never seen the remains either so they rode along with me, my little cousin on my luggage rack. We had a wonderful time. I got a flat tire, but a man patched it at his house in record time for $0.25. Seriously, I have patched my share of tires, but this guy was in the zone. We then rode to a massive man made lake to have a swim. Neither of the kids can swim, so they hang on my arms and I motor boat them around like my father used to do with us.

Temple ruins

Singing and dancing at the temple ruins

The three musketeers!

swimming in the baray

Temple ruins

Ah Tee and I with some temple ruins (around 1000 years old)

Temple Ruins

-I love our dog, he will follow me and the cousins around town. I treat him will, and throw him all my bones. One day he followed me to the health center and laid at my feet in every room I went into. The doctor inquired who’s dog it was and I had to fess up, when it was time to go home, he escorted me home as was our usual doings. I had not seen our dog (red dog, as the family called him) for several days and inquired to my mother. She said that he followed me and the cousins to the temples the other day and never came back. It has been 3 weeks now and no sign of our dog. He was my best friend in Cambodia.

-I often eat alone, then the family will eat together. I have expressed several times that I would like the eat with the family, yet it has not come to fruition yet. One day at lunch, I was eating alone, and my dad was eating alone, halfway through the meal he came over and sat with me.

-One morning at the Health Center, the director asked me to attend a meeting at the Commune Center. I got there to find it was a monthly meeting with the director of police, health center director, all the school directors in the commune, all 13 village chiefs, the commune chief…and me! I was asked to introduce myself to everyone and give a short blerb about what I was doing. My heart was pounding out of my chest as I tried to remember Khmer words, but afterwards my health center director filled in the gaps for me and spoke highly of me, I am lucky to have him.

-Our two cats love my room for some reason, when I enter, I frequently catch them sneaking in behind me. I end up locking them in until later in the day, they don’t seem to mind. One night, as I settled into bed, I heard a noise, I used the light of my cell phone to look over, and see the gray cat sound asleep on my bed on the outside of my mosquito net. In the middle of the night, he was getting into my trash bag, in the morning, he was not in my room. I investigated, and am still not sure how he pulled off this Hudini act.

-I biked into Siem Reap to meet some other volunteers for Halloween. It was fantastic to catch up with the fellow K7 volunteers, and meet some K6’s. I went over to check out Ankor Wat for the first time and caught a beautiful sunset, but did not have time to enter, pretty cool though! I found a bag of garden salsa sun chips in a convenient store, my favorite flavor…and the last bag. I ate them all in one sitting.

Ankor Wat

Random friends at Ankor Wat

At Ankor Wat

-People love to stare at me. I’m afraid i’ll do more damage than health here because of how sore their necks must me as they bike by and turn to watch me a complete 180 degrees. Then it finally happened, the moment i’ve been waiting for for so long…A kid (maybe 12) rode into a ditch on the side of the road and tipped his bike because he was watching me, oh man did I laugh.

-One bike ride around the commune ran me into one of my favorite village health volunteers. He is 75 years old and was hauling an enormous piece of bamboo over his shoulder down the road. He invited me to his house for a bit. His bike was still at his friends house where he got the bamboo, so we rode my bike over to get his. Me, riding my bike down a bumpy dirt road with a 75 year old, grandfather of many, survivor of the Khmer Rouge, sitting on my luggage rack. Then we went for a casual bike ride around town to meet people. Epic.

-In Cambodia I use a bucket (called a “chamber pot”) for when I need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. In the morning, I walk it out to the outhouse for disposal. One night, I bumped my pee filled chamber pot on my mattress. I flipped the mattress and went back to bed.

-During an evening of movie watching on my computer with the kids, I felt two drops on my head. I know our roof has a few leaks, but it was not raining this evening…weird. A minute later, something else hit my head, I looked down to see two little poop nuggets. A large lizards had pooped on me.

-A random kid called me “boo” (uncle) one day instead of “barang” (foreigner). I can’t explain the elation I got from this split second, this one word. A small sign of fitting in.

-A group of French doctors has been going around Siem Reap and helping at various Health Centers for one day at a time, doing check ups on children and giving out medication. Although very temporary, it is great for the kids to be getting quality care to ensure that basic symptoms are not deeper routed problems. The doctors did not speak Khmer, only French, so they had two translators with them who spoke French and Khmer and a little English, then there was me who speaks a little Khmer and English. So, as I tried to help them with simple tasks, the hilarity of the language soup between French, Khmer, and English was very entertaining to me. One of my jobs was to ask the birthday of the child, i’d say over 50% of the patients did not know the birthday or month of the child. One patient simply told me the child was born on a Monday!

French doctors who helped out at our Health Center.

-One of the nurses invited me to her Wat for a holiday called “Bun Katin” where people offer money and assorted other things to the monks. The villagers had on beautiful outfits and carried elaborate boxes for the offerings. There was much dancing, singing, and general happiness.

Bun Ka-tin in Siem Reap

At the Wat with my doctor and her husband

Bun Ka-tin

-I’ve been at site for over 2 months now. I remember leaving my training host family after 2 months and thinking how much I wanted to be at that point with my family at site. A point of time where some of the awkwardness is behind us, we have slight routines and work together, and we know a little bit of what to expect from each other. It’s good to be here.

-My host sister is 3 months pregnant!

Too adorable

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ― Marcel Proust

Hello friend, take my hand and walk through a slightly average day at the office! I’m awake at 6:00am because of the roaster, the people outside, the motor to pump our well, or whatever else it may be, but I look at my phone and know I have another half hour to sleep…SCORE! I don’t know what it is about that mosquito net, but it’s like my own little piece of America, my only personal space, when i’m inside, i’m cozy, maybe it reminds me of my tent on the Appalichian Trail. As I begin to drift off into neverland the female Brittish voice on my phone comes aloud and reminds me, “It’s time to get up, the time is 6:30”. Poop, I take a deep breath and peel out of my comfort zone. I throw on some clothes and walk down the stairs of our stilt house to the outhouse 20 yards away, I brush my teeth, shave if I have to, maybe pop a squat over the toilet hole if the mood strikes me. Back to the house to change into my work clothes, a tucked in collared shirt, slacks that I roll up to my calf so they don’t get muddy on my walk to work and my flip flops. Now it’s around 7:00am, and I slap on a smile and saunter to my mothers food stall in front of the house. There are lots of people around for breakfast. My host mothers famous rice porriage which has come to be a highlight I look forward to every day, think of a thicker and spicier version of chicken with rice soup which I eat with fried dough, pretty excellent. At 7:28 I make the 300 yard walk up the road to the Health Center. I strut down the dirt path, doing my best to exude friendliness to everyone outside waiting for the Health Center to open, saying good morning and flashing a smile. In America I think it would be slightly rude to stare, so we pretend not to, although we’re all actually looking. Here, jaws are on the ground and people stare at me like I wore spiderman face paint to a funneral. In the Health Center, I hang up the wicker basket we use to weigh small children, set up the chairs and fill my water bottle from the USAID water filters. Then I pick a target, some unlucky sucker that I get to practice speaking Khmer with. I scan the room, 11 pregnant women and 7 women with new borns, hmmmm, who will I scare the least? I try my hand in the waiting room for awhile, not really my scene, once I get fed up, I head outside to the gentlemen who bring their wives to the HC. Due to cultural gender norms, i’m better received with them, but they still take a lot of warming up to, but it’s nice once I have my foot in the door, and I usually get to practice my “stop smoking” speech. Towards the end of the morning, sometimes I will teach the doctors a little English if the patient load has ended, otherwise, I try to eves drop on everything to practice my listening skills…they need a lot of work still! Around 11:00, I grab my water bottle and books and saunter 300 yards back home to my house, exchanging friendly smiles and a few words with the local women selling food from the wooden food stalls in front of their houses. Back at the house, I change into shorts and a T-shirt before eating a heaping bowl of white rice with some Khmer soup and perhaps some small local fish. I’m pretty happy with the food here 85% of the time, it’s a lot of rice. Now, I have 45 minutes or so to myself, at the moment, I fill this void reading the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (currently on the first book). At 12:30, I pack my bag and ride my bike 20 minutes to my Khmer Tutors new house, she recently moved a bit closer to her school (and further from me) so that she doesn’t have to make the 40 minute bike ride 4 times each day any longer. I ask her new words that I have recorded in a small booklet I keep in my pocket, ask her any cultural questions, then we make some examples, and I ask her to make conversation with me and incorperate the new words. It has been going good, and I certainly know a disgusting amount of Khmer for only haveing been here 4 months, but I get lots of practice outside of tutoring! At 2:00ish, I bike 20 minutes back home and tutor a small group of 16 year old boys in English. One of the kids had been begging me for a long time to teach him and his friends, so while I continue to build relationships, I have obliged. We roll out some rice mats and sit on the floor in my house and I teach them random things from their English books. It seems like they have a strong vocabulary, but actually putting it into sentences is a struggle. After tutoring I get a quick breather to do anything around the house that I need to take care of. At 4:20 I strap on my running shoes and jog one kilometer down the dirt road to the middle school. I play some competitive 3v3 or 4v4 volleyball with some men who are constructing a new building at the school, and a few police officers. They are pretty solid, and I’m stoked to have some consistent volleyball coming to fruition now that the dry season is upon us. At 5:00pm I step off the volleyball court and into the classroom where I teach the school director, a few other teachers, police officers, and assorted school students English for an hour before we can’t see anymore. As bad as I am at teaching English, it’s all pretty basic, and for now it’s a great way to build relationships at the school (relationships are everything here), impove the knowledge base of the teachers and community, and I get to learn some Khmer and teaching skills from them. At 6:00pm, I jog the one kilometer back home, dripping sweat, I grab a change of clothes and trek to the bathroom. A shower in Cambodia is a concrete square filled with water and a bowl with a handle on it. The rest is straight forward, scoop water, pour on yourself, and repeat as necessary. Sounds easy, but there is certainly some learned tecnique there to soap and rinse certain areas, like armpits! Afterward, I grab a waterbottle and head to mom’s food stall for one more meal. I typically eat by myself around 6:30 with people still coming and going and watching me eat and chatting, or the kids asking me about what they want to do that night. Occasionally the family will eat together, and i’m still trying to convince them that i’m a family member, but we’re getting there slowly. After a (usually) meal, I head up into the house with 2-10 cousins for assorted activities. Recently, we watch animated movies I have gotten from other volunteers, but video games, swizzle sticks, LCR, listening to music, and photo ops have also been a big hit. Around 8:30 my mother usually kicks all the kids out and tells them I need to get to sleep, which I do. I jot down thoughts and events from the day in my journal, maybe study a few Khmer words if I can keep my eyes open, then crawl inside my mosquito net for another night on the trail.

The HC waiting room

In the HC, where we check in the patients

Health Center emergency room

Water buffalo!

Jumping off the bridge

Hei

“Teary” being funny

Looking to jazz up your bike? Give it a shot!

I love riding the kids around town

 

“The zombies were having fun The party had just begun The guests included Wolf Man Dracula and his son” -The Monster Mash by The Misfits

Halloween, one of my favorite holidays: carving pumpkins, costumes, friends, family, free candy, and who dosen’t love scaring strangers? My first attempts to explain the holiday to Cambodian’s resulted in me simply laughing a lot for two reasons. Firstly, trying to explain a hiliday i’m so familiar with to someone who has never heard of it makes you realize how rediculious it is…we carve faces into large squash’s, put on goofy clothes, and give out free candy to strangers…and for what purpose they ask…I don’t really know! Secondly, trying to explain these aspects in a foreign language with 4 months of studying is just comical, i’m becoming a cherades master.

Eating pumpkin seeds

On Tuesday the 29th, I had a day off from work, went to the market and purchased 2 pumpkins and some candles. At the house, I grabbed a few kids and got to work. They watched me do the first one and let out some ohhh’s and ahhhh’s. Once they got an idea of what they heck I was trying to accomplish, they kicked out a beautiful Jack-O-lantern! We had to improvise a little due to the more circular and less spherical shape of the pumpkins here, but we nailed it. A previous verbal servey told me that they had never eaten pumpkin seeds before, so with the help of my cousin “K’nick” we cleaned the seeds, fried them up, did half with salt and half with sugar. The salty seeds went first, but it was a scene similar to a shark feeding frenzy, the seeds were gone within a minute or two of hitting the table, not too bad for my first attempt!

Cooking pumpkin seeds

The crowd dispersed to their houses for dinner and showers as the sun set over the sugar palms. When night showed her beautiful face, the kids came trickling back for the main event, here comes the candles! It was more than I could have hoped for and one of the moments where you step back and realize, “Holy crap, am I in Cambodia carving pumpkins for Halloween in a countryside village? How did I ever get so lucky?” While the pumpkins did their thing on the road side and attracted other visitors, us kids played games for hours into the night. Hide-and-seek, the human knot, tail-whip, and my new favorite: spin-in-a-circle-then-make-funny-faces-in-funny-positions-and-hold-it-until-someone-laughs-first.

Freeze in funny pose game

On Wednesday the 30th the cousins asked me for candles so they could light the pumpkins again. We did the same on the 31st, Halloween night. For this event, we crafted paper masks, cut out ghosts, drew pictures, and I gave out candy to everyone. Some of the kids are very talented and atristic, it gives me half a mind to think about starting an art club! Of course, I missed everyone back home and always love going to Aunt Bette’s house for the most epic Halloween’s ever (not to mention she cooks the best food on the planet). Now all I can think about is doing it again next year and how much crazier I can make it!