“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” -Marcus Aurelius

How do you “fish” for frogs? 1. Get a long bamboo rod, about 12 feet tall and tie an equally long string to it. 2. Put a hook on the string and bait it with small fish or rip the legs of another small frog and bait the hook. 3. Using your hand, spin the last few feet of the string around like a fox tail and launch the bait towards the edge of a rice field. 4. Reel the bait in slowly and watch for frogs to hop after it. 5. When a frog bites the bait, yank your bamboo pole and pull the sucker out to the road. 6. Stuff your catch into a bag, rebait your hook if needed, and get back to it!

I finished the puzzle with the kids. We only ended up losing 3 pieces, which we replaced with pieces of cardboard and colored them to match. What a beautiful picture!

Finished puzzle

Since the concrete food stall in front of the house gets hotter than our breezy house, my mom, sister and the baby have moved up into the house to sleep at night. It’s nice to have the whole family around at night, it feels like a tighter family now! Plus, this means that they close up the food stall a little bit earlier, so now I eat inside sitting on a mat on the floor, and often times I can catch at least one of the family members to eat with! That’s all I’ve ever wanted!

Finally got to try eating field crabs. Small little guys with sometimes big claws. They are bright red after cooking like Maryland steamed crabs. Besides the top shell, you eat all the rest of the crab, shell and all…crunchy and delicious!

Picking water lilly with some village boys

On my morning rounds to visit folks and wander into houses I haven’t yet visited, I saw on of my villagers on top of a huge pile of sand. I climbed up to chat and check things out. They were using a large water pump to extract sand from a nearby pond. The water and the sand together would get pumped to the top of the sand pile where the water would filter through back to the pond, but the sand would remain, slowly building up the massive pile. They then sold the sand to be used for construction projects. I got to hang out on the top of this massive sand castle with two villagers for about an hour talking about whatever with cool water running over our feet and playing in the sand. Not quite Ocean City, but a nice morning!

pumping sand from the pond

Now that the rice fields are flooding from the daily rains, all the children have carved small bamboo fishing rods. They bait the rods and stick them into the ground along the edge of the rice fields. They continue to go around and set sometimes 100+ of these rods, then go back and check the first one. They continue to make laps checking the rods, pulling out any caught fish and rebaiting as needed. Sometimes they will continue to make laps late into the night, my brother sometimes goes out for 10 hours at a time! This means they go through a LOT of worms. Everyday around 3:00 we break out the tools and get to digging pulling up earthworms. Worms as thick as your fingers and I saw K’nick pull up one that had to have been 3 feet long!

LONG earthworm

A village boy named Winh invited me to his house for a ceremony. The monks chanted and we ate some rice with the grandmothers and grandfathers from the village. Winh’s mother explained to me that her youngest granddaughter has been fussy recently and didn’t seem like herself. They thought that her spirit had left her, so they recruited 10 monks and performed this ceremony to call her spirit back to her!

My aunt and cousin were going to a meeting that the village chief’s house and invited me to join. We sat for a bit and a well dressed young man addressed the crowd after he had a chat with my Health Center Director. He explained that he, along with his partner, were doctors from the capital city of Phnom Penh and that they had come this day to provide free medical examinations to anyone who wanted one! How cool is that! I went to check out the examinations. The doctors opened up a laptop and set a small metal case next to it. They opened the case to reveal what was labeled a “Quantem Resonance Magnetic Analyzer” This device had a wire that ran to the computer and a wire that ran to a small metal cylinder about 3 inches long. The patient would close their left hand around this metal cylinder, the “doctor” would press a button on the computer and the examination began. The machine blinked with red and blue lights, on the computer more lights blinked, a timer ran from 0 seconds up until 56 seconds when it would stop. For the duration of the 56 seconds, clip art pictures would flash up on the screen of different body parts…brain, heart, lung, bone, muscles, etc, insinuation that at that moment, the machine was analyzing that body part for potential problems. After the examination was complete, the computer generated a results sheet which the doctor quickly ran through with the patient, marked the problems down on a paper, then sent the patient to the other “doctor”. The second doctor would take a look at the results sheet, then pull out from his backpack the medications that he recommended for those potential health problems. The medications were labeled in English, so I took a closer look: spirella pills, calcium chews, and fish oil pills. The doctors sold a 10 day supply of the appropriate medication for $10.00. A good sum of money considering the average monthly salary is under $100. Unfortunately, my Health Center Director, wanting to set a good example went first to show the villagers it was a good thing. At that point I felt handcuffed, I was pretty sure these two men were going around the country scamming poor farmers out of hard earned money, but at the same time, I couldn’t blow the credibility of my Health Center Director. I just walked away so that I wasn’t setting an example also, I told some folks my opinion on the way out that I didn’t think the machine was accurate, nor would the medications provide a cure.

medical exam scam

“It’s time to wake up, the time is 4:25am” said the British woman on my phone alarm. I rubbed my eyes and smiled under my mosquito net. In the dark, I put on my previously set out clothes and shouldered my previously packed back pack. Tip-toeing out of the house, I grabbed my bicycle and walked to the front gate. Dad was already awake and untied the gate for me to get out. With the stars above and my small headlight in my left hand, I drifted down the road. A hard rain through the night made the roads thick with mud, sloppy and sticky. A difficult ride during the day, but in the blindness of the night, I had to rely on every bit of my bicycling riding experience to stay vertical. After about 45 minutes of this, I arrived at my destination. A road crossing in one of the further villages to meet a man I met the day before. The only problem was, he wasn’t there! After about 15 minutes of standing at the roadside, getting some really puzzled looks from the early risers, I began to wonder…maybe I misunderstood the conversation were had…maybe we were meeting a different day…maybe a different time…maybe he hadn’t invited me to join him at all and was just telling me a story…Finally, Taan popped his face around the corner and said, “Let’s go!” We biked to his house to grab his fishing throw net, dropped off the bikes, and walked to the massive Ankor water resivour. I waited on shore, while Taan waded out and untied a half submerged boat, brought it to the shore, dumped it and invited me aboard. He ran to a nearby house to grab a paddle…he came back with a stick, he said they were not home. When I say stick, I mean just a wooden pole, about 1 inch in diameter at the skinny end and 1.5 inches in diameter at the thicker end and all about 7 feet long. The water was too deep to use the stick to push off the bottom of the resivior, but that wasn’t his intention…he literally paddled us for nearly two hours with just a skinny stick!

Taan rowing our boat with a stick

He wouldn’t let me help, so I mostly sat behind him alternating between watching his back muscles flex and watching the sun rise, holding on as best I could so as to not flip us over into the water. We got to talk a lot. Taan is a super friendly and respectful, 28 year old father of two. He was born in a refugee camp on the Cambodia/Thai border in the years following the Khmer Rouge. His father died from a landmine when he was just 2 months old. He studied until the 7th grade, when his mom tried to force him to continue to go to school, he got on his bike and cycled 160 kilometers over 11 hours to his Aunt’s house near the Thai border. Needless to say, it was a humbling conversation. He would stand with his feet together on a small platform at the nose of the boat, not a shake to his body as the boat rocked back and forth. He took the throw net in his arms and released it into a perfect circle. Then it was my turn…I got one foot onto the small platform, and as I brought the second one up, I fell backwards into the water! That guy has some balance, he has clearly spent a lot of time on the water! With some instruction, I tried my hand at the throw net several times, it came out as more of a skinny oval than a full circle, and always came up empty.

Gearing up for my first throw

Don’t be fooled, I didn’t catch anything.

After fishing for awhile, we walked the boat through the shallows to the island in the middle of the lake. The island contains an ancient temple which is currently under restoration. Taan and I walked around the perimeter looking into the small tents in which the workers were assembling the puzzle of stone. Following his lead, we walked right up to one of the tents for a close look at some of the men carving massive stone blocks to fill in the gaps of the restoration. Before I knew what he was saying, Taan told one of the workers to get up from his seat and let me sit down and take a turn carving! They were cool with it, so Taan and I, each with hammer and chisel in hand went to work chipping away at the stone! We thanked them, and continued to look around until a drunk police officer approached us and told us that no guests were allowed in the construction site. Fortunately, Taan knew the man from years prior and he let us cut back through the construction site to our boat.

Taan pushing the boat through the shallows

Chiseling the stone

At the time we headed back a slight drizzle came upon us. We still had a considerable distance to cover back to the boat and our phones and my camera were sitting out uncovered. We jogged back and skipped through the shallows, arriving just in time to put the electronics into plastic bags before the downpour. The rain came HARD. It stung our heads, back and face, the wind was cold, Taan paddled us with the stick as I used my hands to splash the rising water out of the boat. It was raining so hard, you could only see about 50 feet in any direction. When we got near the edge, the rains subsided, but the sky still had neat black cloud formations. It proved faster to walk the boat through the shallows. I pushed the boat along, while Taan ran ahead and threw his net for fish. Nothing big, but he continually brought up 2-3 small (1-2 inch) fish with each throw. Periodically, I would tag in and finally achieved my goal…I caught a single fish! Back at Taan’s house, he grilled some potatoes over open coals, I shared the bananas I had brought from breakfast. Taan fried up our catch with some dipping sauce and boiled up some rice. We ate like champions and the fish were fresh and delicious. We continued to talk for another hour or two and he mentioned how he killed a monkey the other day with his slingshot which they used in a stir-fry. An epic day with a great man, I will forever be thankful for his patience, willingness and invite on this grand adventure.

catch of the day

When men and women get married in Cambodian Culture, the man usually pays the woman’s family a dowry. In the countryside, that seems to be about $1,500. I talked with an older man about this and he mentioned that years ago when he got married he had given his wife’s family 12 grams of gold.

Some of the village boys were going to get their haircut. I wasn’t doing anything, so I decided to tag along. 10 of us on 6 bicycles. When the hair cutter wasn’t at his open air, thatched hut, we continued on to the pagoda instead to walk around and check out the old temple there. On the ride home, it began to rain on us and the roads got muddy. Someone made the call…RACE!!! We all took off blasting down the roads, Borah was standing on my luggage rack holding my shoulders. When we got back to our village, wet and exhausted we all jumped in a nearby pond to wash the mud off our clothes and horse around.

The time came when the cousins and village children had saved up about 5 dollars each over the last two months, so it was time to go into Siem Reap for a play day! Everyone contributed $1.00 towards the transportation and this round I rented two tuk-tuk’s. I’d say that with my Peace Corps friends, we can fit about 6 into a tuk-tuk if we squeeze, the most we’ve ever done was maybe 8. In these two tuk-tuk’s we had a total of 21…11 in one and 10 in the other! My host brother wanted to go this time around, but he and my mother were having a heated argument. I thought maybe he didn’t think there was room, but he didn’t end up coming and seemed very sad about it. Mom told me later that night that he had been drinking so she wouldn’t let him go, which I completely supported. First stop was the arcade, the love this Chinese game where you shoot fish with a tiny gun with a chance to make back your credits to continue playing.

Chinese fish game

arcade day

Next stop, the roller rink! You can probably imagine how it went. The kids sat on a ledge, I sat on the ground and laced up their roller blades, they stood up…BAAM!!! They fell so hard on their face/wrists/butts/hips/knees and only laughter came out. I walked them over to a pole so they could self support themselves a bit while I got the others going. At first only 4 of the kids were brave enough, then despite all the crashing, a few other worked up the nerve, then a few more, I think all but 2 of them gave it a try! In all, we skated for about 2 hours, and towards the end of it, a few of them were picking it up nicely! My cousin Ngaa is a daredevil, we decided to climb up one of the quarter pipe ramps around the edge and psyched himself up. I pulled the other kids aside and told them to watch what was inevitably going to happen. He pointed his toes down, kept his weight back, and it was like someone pulled a rug out from under him while he was walking down the stairs, he slid into a pile of ouch-face and laughter at the bottom. A braver man than I, and he tried another two or three times with the same success!

A sweaty, smelly ride to another arcade…more shooting of the Chinese fish game. I put a few dollars into the basketball games and let the 20 of them go wild shooting their hearts out.

The final stop was once again, the road 60 carnival. We played bumper cards, threw darts, shot BB guns and ate snacks. Some of the kids game me a prize from their winnings at the arcade for my birthday present. All in all, it was another incredible day, to watch how much fun the kids all have together must be what it’s like to be a parent. The kids were all incredibly well behaved and followed the buddy-system making it very easy for me to chaperon by myself. Back at the house, mom informed me that after the incident with my brother earlier in the day, he took a bicycle and ran away. She was worried, not knowing where he had gone, luckily, a friend of hers gave her a call that night and informed her that she had seen him. He rode about an hour away to the pagoda where he used to be a monk at to stay the night there. She could sleep easy because she knew he was safe, but she said if she had not heard about him, she would not have been able to sleep all night. He came home the next day and seemed apologetic, but my parents seemed to get it, he’s a teenage boy, these things happen.

On a morning walk, a woman was planting rice by herself. After exchanging hellos, I asked if I could help her plant, she welcomed me and was friendly, what a great way to get to know someone, shoulder-to-shoulder in the rain, planting rice together. When we finished, I thanked her and went to grab my shoes, she called to me, “Aren’t you doing to come see my house and meet my family?” Awesome! I got to meet her mother, her nieces, and her daughter. Her mother was super friendly and invited me back to the house to eat rice sometime. The woman I planted with was 26 years old. her husband lives away from home and works as a construction worker. She usually lives in Siem Reap, away from her daughter as a construction worker, and returns home for rice planting and for harvesting. Another humbling conversation.

After finishing 12th grade, all the graduating students take a huge comprehensive exam, similar to the SAT’s in the United States. Previously, due to a high percentage of corruption in Cambodia, students were able to pay off their proctors, peak off each other, buy the exam ahead of time from their teachers, etc. But this year, there was education reform and the rules were strict, no cheating and it was enforced. I heard as many as 88% of the students failed the exam….88%…failed…not good. So the Ministry of Education bumped the entire school year back a month and would be giving the students a chance to retake the exam and have an additional month to prepare for it. I’ll let you know when I hear the results!

Walking through a village, I observed a woman with a massive wooden hammer, slamming it into a huge wooden trough. I had to know what was going on, so went to check out the situation. She was super friendly and explained that it was an alternate method to stripping the shells off the tiny rice kernels. In fact, this was the method they used for years and years until the recent introduction of rice milling machines. She insisted that despite the time and hard work, the rice produced from this method was more delicious than machined rice because it doesn’t touch all the machine parts…it was all natural! She gave me a chance with mallet, something that would put Thor’s Hammer to same, it was so heavy. I have it a few hits, and each time she screamed at me to go harder until I was whacking that thing like the strong man carnival game. He pushed me aside and got back to it…she would have dominated me in an arm wrestle.

hammering rice

Sitting and chatting with a family, a mother was cooking with two infant twins nearby. Needing to occupy the kids while she was trying to cook, she gave them each a toy to play with. To one lucky baby, a two day old, half eaten cucumber. To the other lucky baby, an empty beer can!

I set up another exercise class for kids. I followed the same process as my previous successes, met the village chief, walked the village and gave out invites, interest seemed high. On the morning of the event, it was pouring rain. The start time, 9:00, came and went…no kids…9:10…no kids…9:30…no kids. Just for good measure, I waited until the finish time of 10:00 before I rode home. I passed a family with some kids who I’ve hung out with a few times and they invited me to sit. Upon hearing where I came from, the kids asked me to teach them exercise! So, we set up the relays in their front yard and had ourselves an improve event with the 6 of them!

movie night!

One of my village health volunteers is a 70 year old grandmother. A tiny woman with a huge heart. I ran into her along the road and exchanged the usual pleasantries: Where are you coming from? Did you eat yet? What did you eat? She informed me that she had in fact eaten, but didn’t have any food, so just ate white rice with salt. It’s hearing things like that which are some of the biggest challenges.

My cousin female cousin doesn’t have a job, she’s usually home with her 18 month old. When her mom can watch the baby she works as a recycler. She bikes from house to house and collects their cardboard and cans, then bikes her haul 4 kilometers into the nearby town to a recycling center which pays her 2.5 cents per kilogram. Imagine the time and effort it would take to go door-to-door on your bicycle, asking, sorting, and loading this haul. Even if she managed to secure 40 kilograms (88 pounds) to her bike, and make it all the way into town, then she could sell it for $1.00. And then have to ride back home.

Snake

My cousin, Rong, randomly asked me one day if I wanted to visit the ancient temple in our village…WHAT?!? I’ve been here for over a year and no one has mentioned an ancient temple in our village?!? Turns out not many people know about it, my mom had been there once, my sister didn’t know about it, and Rong and only been there once himself. We biked to one of my English student’s houses, and dropped my bike there. Then we walked through some rice fields behind his house until we came to a small hill and some trees. at the top of this mound, sure enough, there were some ancient, carved stones, mostly swallowed by the dirt from years of weather. It’s crazy to think, that 1,000 years ago, Cambodian’s were living in that same village and walking that same hallowed ground.

temple in my village

After the temple visit, Rong suggested we visit their family rice field so he could show me something, I couldn’t understand what it was though. Next to the rice field there was an “island” of dirt, a mound with a tree or two on it and some overgrown vegetation around it. He reached into some of the weeds and pulled them back revealing a large dug out cave under the mound, maybe 2 meters long by 2 meters wide and 1 meter tall. He said that during the Khmer Rouge, this is where his grandmother and her family would run and hid during bombing raids. Wow, seeing that made the stories so much more real.

This is the tree island where the bomb shelter was dug out of

the bomb shelter

The father of one of my older English students passed away. He was older, but I was also told he drank a lot of alcohol. The ceremony was typical chanting and eating together, but since my student was friends with many of the women in my village, it was nice to have a group of friends there to hang out with. As dusk fell upon us, the 15 of them jumped on five moto’s and bounced down the road back to our village. I followed along on my bicycle and let them lead the way with their headlights. It was fun to all go back together and poke fun as we traveled along under the setting sun.

I cut my cousins hair! I made sure he knew I’d never cut hair before, but he was insistent. I only took off a bit, and managed not to butcher it too bad!

Cutting Raan’s hair

One day at our local pagoda, one of the village boys told me that a dragon lives under the pagoda. During high winds and harsh storms, the dragon would go up into the inside of the pagoda and brace the walls with it’s arms as to protect the pagoda from blowing over.

K’nick and Ngaa wanted to bike into Siem Reap to visit their mother who has been studying to be a clothes tailor for the last 6 months. Tee began crying when we left, so we brought him along too. We biked about 1.5 hours into town, Ngaa and Tee on my bike rack, and K’nick on their small bike, holding onto my backpack as I pulled her…it was a work out! My Aunt’s room is nice, maybe 15 feet by 20 feet with a small bathroom, a bed, and a sink. We got to meet her roommate, and she later informed me that 4 people actually live in the room together and that two of them were just out for the day. Three of them share the queen size bed, and my aunt sleeps on a mat on the floor. We took a walk around town and went to an equivalent of a “dollar store” (65 cent store here) to buy a watch for knick. On the way home we stumbled across another roller blading venue and we just had to stop! Unfortunately, the place didn’t have any skates big enough for me, but I stayed and chaperoned the three kids while Aunt Lee went home. As we were walking around, we passed a large, beautiful, gated house and I commented on it. Aunt Lee mentioned that “a big person” lives there, meaning that a person of importance or wealth lives there, but Tee, taking the phrase literally asked, “a giant lives there?” I love that goof ball! The ride home easier, Tee sat on the top tube of the small bike, but kept nodding off after a long day, so we had to keep an eye on him. Near home, we stopped to buy some sugar cane juice to give to our families.

eating lunch at Aunt Lee’s house

My tutor is now living and working in Siem Reap, but I hang out with her mother on occasion. She mentioned that eventually, she wanted to live with her daughter in Siem Reap and work as a construction worker and they could rent a room together. She mentioned that she couldn’t go just yet because there would be no one to watch the cow. “Can you sell the cow?”, I asked. She said that when her son eventually married, she would sell the cow to pay for his dowry which they would pay to his wife’s family. Currently, her son is a monk, so won’t be getting married anytime soon. So she’s living at home alone working the rice fields and taking care of the cow until that day comes.

A fellow volunteer, Giani, and I took advantage of a long weekend to visit a town on the Cambodian/Vietnamese border which is famous for it’s casinos. The bus ride down first crossed the Mekong River on ferrie boats. Years ago, when I used to lifeguard at Fallston Swim Club, another guard had devised a gambling system I’d always been curious to try out. Luckily this casino was cheap enough, that I felt like we could try it out without too much risk. Played for hours, only betting when the odds were better and were slowly chipping our way up dollar by dollar. The other guests were mostly Vietnamese, so it was interesting not being able to talk to the folks around us, but they were friendly and we had a lot of comradery despite the language barrier. We also got free lunch and a buffet dinner for gambling. I was up about 66 dollars and Giani about 30 when the longest string of bad luck hit us towards the end of the night, as is bound to happen eventually. We lost our winnings back but still broke even, so got a fun evening for free essentially. I witnessed one man throw down a $345 bet on a single hand of a game which was basically 50-50 odds, he won! Going home from this town was a long day, first a 4 hour bus ride into Phnom Penh, then an additional 9 hour bus ride back to Siem Reap…with broken air conditioning! Worth it!

ferrie ride to Bouvet

Giani and I in Bouvet

“The year you were born marks only your entry into the world. Other years where you prove your worth, they are the ones worth celebrating.” ― Jarod Kintz

I turned 30 in Cambodia! It’s hard to believe I celebrated my second birthday in this beautiful country. I thought back a little bit about my 20’s…I turned 20 on this side of the globe when I was studying abroad in Carins, Australia…I graduated college…I worked many different jobs including: physical therapy, sales at a lumber yard, concrete structural testing, sales at REI, perennial plant nursery, analytically chemistry, and commercial refrigeration…I ran 50 miles…I had three wonderful long term girlfriends (not at the same time!)…I competed in over 30 adventure races ranging from as short as 6 hours to as long as 96 hours and was even lucky enough to grab a few first place finishes (thanks to my teammates!)…I hiked for nearly 2,200 miles over 171 days along the Appalachian Trail…and I’d spent a year living with a host family in rural Cambodia. I can only hope the next decade brings as much fun as the last!

Appalachian Trail

So, onto my actual birthday, I hadn’t planned anything, but I knew I wanted to spend it at my site with my host family. Birthdays are generally not celebrated in my community, so there were lots of questions about how we celebrate in America…one thing was apparent: they wanted to eat birthday cake!

Cake before the bike ride

First thing in the morning I biked into Siem Reap and hit the post office and was thrilled to receive a package Kathy, my adventure soul mate! Peanut butter cups, gum, candy, Betty Lou’s fruit bars, fruit snacks, letters and magazines…happy birthday indeed!!! In addition I also got a package form my wonderful Aunt Bonnie including: peanut butter crackers, Dr. Suess books, dried fruit, pretzels, and chocolates…wowzers, my family is the best!

Presents

I hit a few stores shopping for birthday cakes, and finally found a nice little Cambodian bakery. I bought two small cakes for $10 each. One was heart shaped, the other had two “angry birds” on the top! Now to get them home 20 kilometer away! I strapped one onto the luggage rack on my bike, and hung the other in a bag from my handle bar doing my best to keep it level. It was a hot day, and the road is bumpy, and I was riding a bike for an hour. They took some damage, but cake is cake, no one was complaining!

Chen with decorations

On the ride home I decided to take a brief moment for myself to celebrate with one of my long lost friends: quiet solitude! There is a large grove of shade trees along the road on the ride home, so I pulled off for a moment to sit in the shade and eat a Russell Stover s’mores from one of the packages…whew, how nice is that! Two women nearby were cutting some long leaves and tall grasses in order to take back to their house and weave sitting mats. They took a break from their work and sat in the shade nearby. I grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies from one of the packages and the three of us feasted on American cookies and got to know each other. When the sky was looking dark, they told me to get on my way, so I left the rest of the cookies with them and got back to biking.

K’nick and So-pee-ah-lie with decorations

A bit further down the road a moto pulled up next to me…it was the son of an English teacher in my commune. He invited me to the English teacher’s new school to visit them and sit for a moment. I figured the cakes couldn’t melt much more than they already had, so I turned around and got to chat with him and his family for a few moments. We shared tea and I invited them to my house later for cake!

Back home, the kids were bouncing off the walls with excitement after seeing the cakes. In the afternoon they wanted to decorate the house with balloons. Luckily, my super-duper grandmother from America had previously send me balloons to make balloon animals with the kids. Working together, we pumped up 50 balloons and the kids went to town setting up the house.

Decorations

At night, the village kids came over. We put 30 candles into the two blobs of cake and together we all sang “Happy Birthday”. After quick instruction, I counted to three and we all blew out the candles together! My Aunts cut the cake and mom supplied the party with three bottles of soda and ice! One Aunt who is in her early 40’s told me that was the first time she has ever eaten cake before, and it was delicious. My host mom broke out a large package of small candles and set them up all over the house, the property, the stairs and the tables…like little stars all around the yard collectively lighting the night. I distributed small finger lights to all the kids (thanks American mom and dad for bringing them on your visit!). We threw on some music and had a rave party with the multi-colored finger lights. When the timing felt right, I broke out a can of silly string and blasted the pack of children as they erupted with screams of excitement.

Lighting the candles

Things settled down a bit and they invited me to open the presents some of them had brought over. My host sister gave me a 3D butterfly poster, my cousins gave me a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap, snacks, 2 key chains, and a few washcloths. Some of my students got me washcloths, a shirt, and what I had requested…letters! My cousin, Chen, wrote it best: “My love will follow you wherever you go. I love you because you’re my uncle, my teacher, and my friend.”

Chen’s letter

Gifts

After the party, helped mom clean up a bit and she thanked me because she’s never seen a birthday party before. I asked her when her birthday was so I could buy her a cake. She didn’t know. With the help of my sister, we tracked down her family papers which had her birthday on it. Under location for birthday is said: “June 9th, 1968?” complete with the question mark. As it turns out that is just one day before the birthday of her only granddaughter, my little niece. I realized that as cool as it was for me to celebrate my 30th in Cambodia, that celebration may have meant even more to my loving host family and friends!

Party!

Finger lights!

“You can learn more about someone in an hour of play than you can in a year of conversation.” -Plato

School was out for the summer. We were in the midst of the rice planting season so all my counterparts and older villagers were busy working the fields. It was time to try something new! I met with the village chief to get permission to teach kids some exercise games at the elementary school…he was on board! The following day, I walked around my village door-to-door inviting all the children to attend, what a great excuse to walk into some of the houses far off the main road that i’ve never been to, or talk to that grandmother that i’ve only smiled to as I biked by her house. We were all set for the following day at 9:00am! The next morning as I ate breakfast at 7:00am a crowd of excited children began forming and asking me every 5 minutes if it was time yet! At long last, we walk to the school together! We started off with some circle games, passing a ball around over their heads and under their legs. Then onto a series of relay races: running, run backwards, sideways, 2 leg hop, 1 leg hop, team relays where they had to hold a ball between their backs or their faces while they walked the course. Long jump competition! My favorite was what I deemed the “Joel’s clothes relay”: The kids would run to a small pile of my clothes, dress into a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and a goofy hat, run the course, strip back down, and tag the next person. Oh golly it was comical! When it was my turn, just for good measure, I intentionally put the shirt on as pants, and the shorts over my head…dead silence…when I finished a 10 year old looked at me dead serious and said, “let’s not do that, it’s rude”. Whelp, lesson learned! One of my host cousins even said to me back at the house, “Joel, let’s do that every week! But not the pants on the head.”

While I’m still in disbelief that I’ve been here for over a year now, alas, the time came to say goodbye to more of our dear friends from the year prior to mine. Oh her last weekend, I biked up to Meghan’s house an hour away to meet a few other volunteers to attend her going away party. Her health center put on a wonderful party which included delicious food, important guests giving speeches and certificates and lots of dancing dispite the rain. At night we sat around and reflected with her host family while she put the finishing touches on her packing then all piled into mosquito nets and slept on the floor. Watching Meghan say goodbye to her host family of two years in the morning was heart wrenching and I already dread the day when I’ll have to do the same. To think about all the challenges we have overcome together, and all the help, support and love they have given us over two crazy years, then to walk away cold turkey…many a tear was shed. Yet it was a good reminder of why we are here: to form relationships that strong and bring our countries a little bit closer.

Party at Meghan’s health center

Slumber party!

Meghan with her host family

Meghan saying goodbye to host sister

I lost my cell phone crowd surfing in Siem Reap…it fell out of my pocket while I was hoisted up and doing leg thrusts in the air to the music. If I’m going to lose my phone, I’m glad that’s that way it’s going to happen. It’s since been replaced!

As previously mentioned, I’ve been doing a lot of rice planting, but usually for half days when I have free time. One day, my friend and village health volunteer, Soken, invited me to help her and the other villagers plant her fields the following day. What better way than to get to know my neighbors! I strolled over to her house around 7:00am and met up with about 35 villagers who were already hard at work. We were bent over planting until 9:00am, then took a 20 minute break to shovel down some rice before continuing until 11:00am. Soken invited me to stay for lunch, I showered at her pump well and rinsed the mud from my clothes as best I could and hung out. At 1:00pm, the troops biked to another field of hers and got back to work for another 4 hours. During the evening, a storm blew in…the winds whipped and the rain stung, it was POURING. Everyone was screaming in delight, hooting and hollering, men would tackle each other into the flooded field and throw mud at the women. One man, who was planting near me in the line, snuck behind me with two fists full of mud and began coating me head to toe…quite literally every inch of my body. That’s when I knew I was fitting into my village. In the calm following the storm, the wet villagers were shivering and saying how cold it was, I was loving the repreive from the heat! I still had one task in mind…sweet revenge! After the novelty of the storm wore off and we were back to planting like machines, I crept up behind my mud-buddy, lifted his shirt and piled mud up his back! Hard work, but they keep it light, good conversation, making the best of the situation, and strong community…that’s what Cambodia does! My first full day of rice planting, some 8 hours…don’t ask me how they do this day after day for about 2 months…I was sore for days!

In that hard storm while rice planting, the tall corn in my garden had been blown over. It was frustrating after all the time and work we had put into it. In an attempt to salvage the corn, we put down some wooden stakes and ran support strings along the rows to help them stay up. It seemed to work well enough, we had a decent harvest towards the end of August!

Corn after put in string supports

Corn blown over after storm

I was set to go down to the contries capital, Phnom Penh, for a meeting. This consists of waking up early, biking an hour into the province town of Siem Reap and catching a bus for 6-7 hours to the city. On this bus ride, I was positioned in the middle of a French family, two boys to my left, one to my right and the parents in front of us. The oldest boy to the left had a Rubiks Cube and could solve it in a minute flat without even trying, over and over and over again, very impressive. The two younger kids on the sides of me alternated between playing a shoot-em-up zombie game on their iPads and falling asleep on my shoulder. It was great entertainment watching them play the games for 6 hours, whenever they died or completed a level, they would look at me for some sort of validation, I’d nod with approval. It interested me to think that in America I may have been upset with these foreign kids falling asleep all over me on a long, cramped bus ride, but the mindset certainly changes after a year of Peace Corps, these kids were temporarily my host family and we were all on that ride together!

Coming home from Phnom Penh, I got a call from a woman who works for a local NGO in Siem Reap. She invited me over for lunch! I met her at her apartment, helped prepare some food with her neighbors, then we all sat down together and feasted on a dish known as “cow climbs the mountain”

Eating lunch near Siem Reap with my friend

Upon returning to my site from the meeting in Phnom Penh, I discovered my previously pregnant aunt was the proud mother of her third baby girl!

The new baby!

The khmer word for “mosquito” and “people” are slightly similar. When K’nick asked me what my mosquito spray was for, I mistakenly explained: “It is to prevent people from biting us!”

Borah and I are training for the circus

I was ready for another exercise event with the kids. This time would be in one of the further villages. Initially, I went to meet the village chief, but he was out plowing his rice fields, so I got to hang out with his wife and family for the morning. I went back the following morning…still plowing. This time, I was going out to him! I walked about 1.5km out into the rice fields, asking random folks along the way where his plot was. Finally, I spotted a few folks planting rice off in the distance. As I got closer, I could hear their conversation as heads popped up from planting: “What’s this Frenchman doing?”…”I think that might be Mr. Joel”…”Yup, that’s Mr. Joel alright! Hey Mr. Joel! Come help us plant rice!” I had a quick rice field meeting with the chief who was onboard with my activity, then got to show off my rice planting skills for a few minutes before the 72 year old chief hoisted his giant wooden plow over his shoulder and I followed him 1.5km back to his house. Once again, inviting kids to join this exercise event was an incredible way to meet the folks in this village, I can walk into anyones house and they greet me with a smile. I made sure to tell the children to spread the word to their friends, and half the village already knew by the time I got to their house to invite them! On the morning of the activity, I was curious about how big of a turn out I would get…as I turned the final corner, I could hear them before I could see them! Some 70 kids were rilled up and ready to rock! Similar relays as I did in my village, but worked in some fun games with beach balls also, it was a little difficult to manage all the kids even with my VHV in that village helping out. During one relay, an older girl said to me with a little attitude, “this isn’t fun, lets play a different game.” I asked if she had tried it yet…no. I grabbed a ball, set her up, she gave it a try…all smiles. Even the local venders and people selling things from their motos turned up to sell to the crowd of kids and spectators that had formed. I had perma-smile the rest of the day!

Following the village chief back to his house from our rice field meeting

K’nick bought a basket designed for dragging through shallow water in an attempt to sift out small fish. She invited me a few times to give it a try. As usual, after many attempts I got a lot of mud and one small swimmer. While K’nick was pulling up thumb-sized fish on every other try!

Knick sifting for fish

I’ve planted a lot of rice so far, but the bundles are always ready to go in the field, we just grab and plant. It was time to try my hands at ripping the baby rice up by the roots and tying them into bundles…it sounded pretty easy after all! My cousin Leak and her husband invited me to join them. After watching for a moment as the men tore the rice out of the ground in fistfulls with ease, I bent over and gave it a tug…RIP!!! I just tore the blades of rice clean in half…not ideal for replanting. With a little coaching, I gave it another try…PLOOP!!! The plants came up with about two pounds of mud attached! Then you need to wet the mud, swing it hard and kick it so the mud flys off the roots. This needs to be done HARD for any mud to come off…hurt your feet hard…and I’d have to do it some 5 times to get the roots somewhat clean. How could there be such a large performance gap between them and me for such a simple task? After many more torn rice stalks and mud bulbs, I think I figured out the trick: Yank the blades low to the ground, parallel to the dirt, hold them low to the roots, and yank with every ounce of energy you can muster. Think of it like pulling a table cloth out from under dishes, the harder and faster you pull, the better the result! The problem was that now I had to bend over really far and expend a TON of energy. After just 30 minutes my fingertips were raw with “papercuts” from the leaves, my fingers were blistered and bleeding. They tried to send me home, but I’m way too stubborn. Instead they gave me a small cotton glove…it was fingerless, so didn’t really help the situation, but I appreciated the sentiment. I sweat my brains out for 3 hours while they stared at me wondering how a grown man could be so pathetic as such a basic task. My forearms were fried from gripping the rice and yanking, K’nick and another little girl were picking up my slack and showing me up. We stopped for lunch, bathed and washed out clothes in a pond, then sat under a small thatched hut in the rice fields and ate rice together. I couldn’t go back in the afternoon, my arms had nothing left. My fingertips were like that of a spy who had peeled or burned off his fingerprints, I don’t think I’ve ever had scabs on my fingertips before. My toes hurt from kicking the mud off the rice, and my shins hurt where I missed the kick and would slam the bundle into my leg, and my feet hurt from stepping on thorns…why do so many of the plants here have thorns? I swear it’s got to be 70%. Hard, hard work to put food on the table. I learned humility and respect this day.

Plowing

I was told not to wear red shirts because cows might charge at me.

K’nick told me that one of her teachers practices negative reinforcement if students get questions wrong. She makes them hit their knuckles againt the concrete wall, she mentioned as many as 200 times. She has seen kids cry and seen them bleed.

The dog I tell the kids is my girlfriend

My cousin Ngaa and his older brother Raan had a lot of free time since school was out and they don’t have jobs. They scrapped together some money to buy string, cut down some bamboo and got to work making frog traps! This consisted of cutting the bamboo into small rods, weaving them together with string, assembling the whole contraption, then installing a small door on the top loaded with an elastic band. After 3 days of work, they were ready and invited me to go out trapping that night. We wondered the muddy rice fields by headlight looking for small water holes. After setting down a trap with the door side up, we built mud ramps along the sides so the frogs could climb up, put a mud blob on the top in front of the door and dug out a small cave in the door side of the mud blob. From a jug of rotten fish heads, we would stuff the bait into the small cave, and pour some stanky fish juice over the whole contraption to attract the frogs. When they climbed up the ramps, the would approach the fish heads, as what point they would step on the trap door and fall into the trap with the door closing behind them! After setting 20 of them, we would go back to number 1 and collect out bounty and replace any bait. We continued this circuit until we collected about 3 pounds of frogs! We went back at 10pm, I showered and went to bed, but Ngaa and Raan, continued to go back every two hours through the night to collect the frogs and keep the bait fresh. During they day, they would keep and cook what they needed for their family, and sell off any extra for a little money. Raan also taught me out to clean and gut the frogs and how to prepare them to be stuffed, then fill them with a mixture and roast them to make delicious stuffed frogs!

Collecting frogs from the traps at night

Frog traps

Prepping frogs to be stuffed

Almost daily, the kids and I go to a somewhat clean pond for a swim and to pick some small red fruits. Pretty sweet, but mostly seeds.

Jaap fruits!

One weekend night, I took my book and a bottle of water out to a pond in the rice fields for a peaceful sunset. Three village boys happened to come up who were setting small fishing rods up and picking some water lilly from the pond for dinner. They convinced to me throw down the book and jump in for a swim with them instead!

Collecting water lilly for dinner

My uncle the tuk-tuk driver woke up early at 5:00am to ride to the market to get some ingredients for his wife to cook and sell rice porridge in the morning. Riding along in the dark, group of water buffaloes was being escorted along both sides of the road to be put out to graze. As he followed the road between the buffaloes, one in the front turned into the middle of the road and hit my uncle, he crashed his moto and hit his face. In the morning, I went down to the health center in the district town to check in on him. Lots of villagers were there with him, bringing him whatever he needed. His face was very swollen and just off the side of his right eye were 10+ stitches and some cuts on his cheeks and mouth. I told him he was more handsome than before and he still had a sense of humor about it. He healed up well and was back home in a few days. Interestingly enough, he told me that the night before he went he had a nightmare and didn’t want to go to the market in the morning…coincidence?!?

Uncle Hooah

I met a woman from our village along the road one day. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She informed me that she left her husband and moved back home to her mother’s house in a different village because her husband was addicted to gambling and had sold their family moto to support his gambling addiction.

Chess

I acquired a 1000 piece puzzle, what a great thing for the kids to do I thought! I’ve never been closer to a brain anurism…firstly, I realized we were guaranteed to lose pieces which is never fun. Secondly, despite teaching them to start with edges and easy to follow features in the puzzle and gradually work towards the more complicated sections, they just jumped into any section before we even had the edge assembled. Thirdly, they would just cram pieces together to make them fit, pieces with huge gaps between them and not even the slightest color similarity. Fourthly, after every single piece they put together, correct or not, they would make me verify it, and with 6 kids around, it was constant nagging. Fifthly, it was a million degrees in the house. Sixthly, on day two, when we went back to continue the puzzle, we discovered mom had cleaned the entire thing up even though she gave us permission and one of the kids told her not to clean it, that it would take us three or four days. All that being said…we finished it with only 3 pieces missing, glued it together, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with it now. A really beautiful puzzle, it just was a little different than doing them with Chelsea on the kitchen table!

Puzzle!

After my sister had her baby, my mom moved down to the food stall to sleep with the young couple to help care for the baby at night. My dad usually falls asleep in a hammock under the house, and my brother is out with his friends at night, so the house was pretty quiet. Recently, my sister moved back up into the house for the first time since I’ve been here since it gets so hot down in the concrete food stall. Now we have a festive house again with mom, dad, brother, sister, brother-in-law, baby, and I all partying down!

During a storm at 1am, mom yelled to me through the wall, “Joel, if you’re afraid of the house blowing over, you can move down into the concrete food stall!” I decided to stay, the house hasn’t blown over in 16 years yet, and the breeze was rather welcomed in my opinion!

A village boy named “Winh” invited me to try my hand at climbing his coconuts trees. After seeing they were about 25ft high, I decided against it, but practiced on the bottom 10ft or so. After working hard without much progress, he put me to shame by scooting all the way to the top of one, hanging on with one hand and twisting off 4 coconuts before scooting back down. We hacked open 2 right there for consumption and he took 2 back to his family. I hung out with his family for a bit and his dad let me try to play their two stringed instrument. Winh asked me to teach him a few card tricks, then we ended up playing cards with his brothers. It took me a few games of watching and practice to figure out the games they were playing. Confused, Winh asked me, “Don’t they play cards in America?”… to which I said yes…”Then why don’t you know how to play?!?”

Letter from my tutor on our last day of studying

Another week, another exercise class! This time I set it up under some shady trees in the center of a far village next to a canal. We played the relays, I worked in some new games, we giggled and the kids were kids! After nearly an hour of goofing around working up a sweat, naturally all the kids immediately jumped into the canal for a swim…some of them literally jumped in off the bridge about 15-20 feet up! Of course I was going to join! I got up on the top of the bridge and led off with an atomic cannonball the likes of which that village may have never seen, it’s probably the reason they build their houses on stilts here! We played and swam for about an hour until a woman in the village biked by and invited me to eat lunch at her house. At her house, there were a few other people there already, they had been planting rice that morning and she was feeding them as part of their payment. Good food, good company. The woman who invited me came over, sat next to me, looked into my eyes and with dead seriousness asked me politely to touch my nose…I obliged. A quick touch and I suppose she was content. After lunch, I went and joined the gang of 30+ in the rice fields for an hour before I had to get home to get ready for teaching. The woman’s 8 year old daughter escorted me back to their house where she pumped the well for me so I could wash the mud off my arms and legs before getting on my way. On the road home, I stopped breifly with an 82 year old man who works on the dirt road for small tips. During our conversation, two women on bikes and one woman walking carrying a baby came from behind along the road. Just jokingly, I invited the woman carrying the baby to sit on my bicycle luggage rack and I’d drive her. To my amazement, she hopped right on no questions asked! To have a woman I’ve never met get on my bike rack with her baby on muddy, bumpy roads was an honor to have her trust me. So we bumbled down the road some 5km and got to know each other while her two friends followed on their bikes. She was heading to another village to her parents house so they could play with the baby for a little bit. I dropped her off at her house, we said goodbyes and I finished out the day with teaching, dinner and a movie for the kids. These are the days I live for, the days that keep me going when things are tough, the days that define Peace Corps for me, and the days that will one day bring tears to my eyes when I think about them.

Exercise games

Jumping from the bridge (here he jumped from the tree)

“The traveler was active, he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.” -Daniel Boorstin

My gardens did well and were a great learning tool for both myself and the families planting them. We harvested many pounds of cucumbers, corn, and string beans both for personal consumption and for sale. We harvested early enough to plow the fields down and still get rice planted in time for the rainy season!

Corn!

Probably about a foot and a half long

cucumber

Corns

I received Legos in a care package, they are like gold. The kids love to play and build with them, just like I did for years as a child. It’s entertaining to see what they create!

Legos!

Ngaa

Borah

Tee

After my American family returned home, my host mother told me one night how she was luckier than the other villagers because she had the opportunity to meet an American family. Small moments like that remind us how truly unique this experience is, not only for us Peace Corps Volunteers, but also for the people we meet everyday!

When my American family visited I gave the host cousins a brand new soccer ball which we played 4-square with. I don’t know what it is about the weather and the general treatment of things here, but the soccer ball was completely destroyed just 9 days later. We still played pick-up games of 3 vs 3 in the yard just kicking around the crumpled skin of the ball in the rain!

My friendly village health volunteer, Soken, invited me to attend a gardening training in one of the further villages. We stayed after the training to help the man who lived at the house finish planting a few rows of string beans. He dug us up some chili pepper seedlings and eggplant seedlings from his nursery for us to take home and plant! The man doing the presentation was friendly and invited Soken and I to visit his house in the nearby district town that afternoon. It was really nice to go somewhere with a friend for once! The doctor showed us around his house where he raises crocodiles and tortoises for sale and had a decent sized garden behind his property. He would dig up the crocodile eggs and bury them again in a hatching area, when the eggs were about ready to hatch, he would put a shirt over the ground, put his ear to the shirt and listen for the whimpering of the baby crocodiles under the ground to know if they had hatched yet! His son was studying to be a refrigeration mechanic! As we prepared to leave, the rains began to pour and the doctor sent us off with two quality ponchos to bike home together.

I take a lot of showers and do regular laundry, but the conditions here are hot, wet and sticky all the time. I developed a nice case of jock itch and “monkey butt” (as I’ve heard cyclists deem it). It subsided after a few weeks, but man-o-man, I could have scratched my butt cheeks until they bleed it felt so good!

My teenage brother and cousin have been getting into alcohol now that they are coming of age and hanging out with the older men in the village. One night, they were drinking with some folks and splitting a case of beer, when my cousin didn’t have $2.25 to pay for his share of the beer, the owner of the house made him put down his cell phone as collateral…the family cell phone. So of course in the morning, my aunt inquired about the missing phone and got rightfully upset, she spread the word to the rest of the family and soon everyone was berating him for his decision. My aunt went to the owner of the house, a younger man, and asked for the phone back, he wouldn’t give it to her until the money was paid, so she eventually went home and scrapped together enough money to get their phone back. My host cousin seemed to understand his mistake and told me he wasn’t going to drink anymore…that lasted until the following week…

Chen mixing up some rice flower in preparation to make snacks.

I tried durian fruit. A strong aroma, not too unpleasant, but strong indeed. The taste and consistency were foreign, so it took a few bites to get used too. Light and creamy and tastes like it smells with a little sweetness. It was worth trying, but don’t think i’ll be buying it anytime soon!

Cow cart

One of my host cousins moved home from Thailand during the recent in-statement of martial law. She moved to Puok (the nearby district town) with her husband. Occasionally, the younger cousins and I will bike down to visit her and pick some small fruits from a tree in their yard. These small, green oval fruits are very sour and have a tiny bit of flesh around a large pit. I can do one ore two at a time, but the kids scarf them down with piles of chili-salt! The woman next door remembered me from some months ago…she was the woman who met my American family while I Skyped home for Christmas from the grass field! She still remembered meeting everyone and was upset I didn’t bring the family to visit her since she invited them all over back in December!

Uncle Bin plowing our rice field

I walked to Labark Village about 3km away to meet one of my VHV’s to arrange a health activity. She was not at home, so I started heading to plan B for the morning. A bit down the road, I ran into a friend from a local NGO who was actually heading to the same VHV’s house, she invited me to go back and we’d track her down. After a few phone calls the VHV answered, she was out tending her rice field in preparation to plow. So, my friend and I set off sloshing over a kilometer through the rice fields and periodically asking other folks where her field was. The view was beautiful, small raised edges of the fields, filled with still water reflecting the blue sky, peace and quiet, water on the feet and mud between the toes. When we met with the VHV, we all sat on a small strip of raised land between two fields and had a meeting there for about 30 minutes before we all walked back together. Not such a bad place to have a meeting!

Walking through the rice fields to find my VHV

Rice field meeting

Walking back from the rice field meeting. Not a bad place to work!

Some of the village kids invited me to go grasshopper hunting with them. They had crafted small wooden guns, equipped with elastic bands and bamboo spears with forked ends on them. When a spear was loaded and the band released, it would shoot a small distance, and if lucky, spear a large grasshopper about the size of your thumb! Then you’d reach into the sticker bushes to get your spear back out while hopefully not losing the hopper. They had built a small belt out of string and wore it with a water bottle on their hip. They stuffed the grasshoppers into the bottle, capped it, and went off searching for the next one! I took a few shots and came up empty handed, but all together the 6 of us probably went home with about 15 bugs! I never got to try them, but I was told they fry them with some seasoning and they are good good eating!

Hei with his grashopper “gun”

Grasshopper hunting

Hei stalking his prey

Hit and sunk!

Since my health center chief retired in June we have been short one staff member. However, we just recently received our new replacement! A local 24 year old nurse who studied in Battambang province for the past few years. She seems to be well taken to by the other staff, and it’s nice to have a younger staff member around to liven things up!

Monks walking around the village in the morning to collect food or monetary donations

I transplanted a lot of rice this year…some 25+ hours bent over essentially planting blades of grass by hand! It’s been an incredible way to connect with people, an interesting place to talk health education, and great cultural exchange…and they get to laugh at how slow I am! After studying Khmer one afternoon, my tutor invited me to help in her village, the water was deep and rumor had it the field had leeches. Khmer people will grab snakes with their hands, let 2 year olds hack open coconuts with a machete, and free climb 40 foot palm trees…but when it comes to leeches there is lots of running and screaming. After a few leeches were spotted, most of the helpers in my area fled to the opposite side of the field where the water was shallow. About the same time the woman next to me asked if I was scared of leeches, I felt something prick my foot, I said “no, look!” and lifted my foot out with a big dangling leech! She screamed, I slid it off my foot and she splashed it out into the dirt road to die. “Now are you scared?!?” she asked…at the same time I felt a prick on my other foot, “no, look!” and promptly lifted my other foot from the water revealing another finger-size leech. By now, all 40 some people were watching, screaming and laughing! Those were the only two I got that day, but it was fun to watch as periodically a random person would take off running and splashing after spotting a leech. A nice way to break up the monotony of the task at hand!

Planting across my house with some cousins

Tee practicing planting

Tee and Borah

The Health Center renovated their bathrooms. The old and not so clean squat toilets were replaced with western-style pedestal toilets which one would sit on. One day a nurse asked me to draw pictures to post in the bathrooms instructing people how to use the new toilets. Apparently, some villagers had climbed up on the toilet stood with their feet balanced on the edges of the bowl and squatted over the toilet! While I laughed at the hilarity of this mental image, I then remember hearing from my American mom and sister about how they used the squat toilet at my house…rather than squatting directly over the hole with their feet on either side, they kept their feet out front and put their hands on the back wall making something of a bridge over the squat toilet. Just goes to show how these things go both ways. Now that’s good bathroom humor!

Rice bundles after pulling up by the root.

The host cousins taught me a new game which is surprisingly fun! Each player brings their own collection of rubber bands to the game. Every time you want to play every puts in an equal amount of rubber bands, in our case it was 5 each. Then we all play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to play in what order. The first person takes all of the rubber bands and tosses them a small height in the air. Then you try and separate out pairs of rubber bands which are overlapped. If just two bands are overlapped with nothing else touching it, then you collect those two bands and take another turn. Each turn you are allowed to flick a single band with a single finger to try and either separate groups of bands or overlap two individual bands. Play continues to each player until all the bands are collected, then everyone puts new bands into the pot for the next round. Hard to explain, but like I said, surprisingly fun!

Door-to-door mattress sales!

My tutor one day told me how much she as learned about health since tutoring me. She said she had washed her hands with soap 6 times that day already including before meals and after caring for the cow. Go health!

Don’t you love the feeling of cleaning your ears with Q-tips? Without having q-tips around, I haven’t cleaned my ears this way in a years time. Usually it just takes care of itself, or just clean them out on an old washcloth as best you can. But after staying in a hotel with my American family, I brought back a small thing of hotel q-tips. After a shower, I dug in there enjoying every second of the ticklishly feeling…that is until I couldn’t hear anything out of my right ear. As if listening to a foreign language wasn’t hard enough, not it was super frustrating. I called out Peace Corps medical officer and she explained that I had compacted ear wax up against my ear drum, she sent up some medication on a taxi and I was able to pick it up the next day. Twice a day, I had to lay on my side and put a few drops into my ear as the solution bubbled up and softened the ear wax. After about 3 frustrating days, my hearing was back, man was that a good feeling…maybe even better than that of cleaning your ears!

After 11 months at site I just learned that my neighbor, whom I thought was my uncles sister (uncle through marriage, so she wasn’t my immediate host aunt), is really his oldest daughter and in fact my host cousin!

My tutor, Ratha, finished her 12th year of schooling and so she took her final exam and began living and working at a hotel restaurant in Siem Reap. Thus, we had to part ways! As I wrote in my journal, “She’s always been a gift, an escape, and a constant in this crazy life and it breaks my heart to see her go.”

My tutor, Ratha

Looking for something to do with the host cousins one day, we picked up some small objects and I taught them boccie ball with pieces of bricks, concrete and stone!

My retired health center director stopped by the commune one day to visit, he always greets me with a handshake then feels my arm hair with his free hand. This time, after the hand shake we held hands, complete fingers locked, arms at our sides while we had a full on conversation!

Bunya

My cousin Law was teaching me a neat new trick using a leaf that grows around our houses. Make a fist with your thumb and index finger facing up, make 1 inch hole with these two fingers, place the leaf over the hole, then smack it hard with the open palm of your other hand…POP! The center of the leaf blows out and makes a loud, satisfying popping noise! My little cousin, Tee, came up and inquired what we were doing. Following my lead, Law and I convinced him that you roll the leaf up, stick it into your nose, then smack your nose to make the noise. Law and I were on the ground in tears watching him fully concentrate on smacking himself in the face with rolled up leaves in his nose. Eventually we stopped him and taught him the right method and even he was all giggles!

Plow

One night we were out of electricity in the car batteries, so couldn’t watch a movie on my laptop. Instead, Ngaa, Aaron, and I exercised up in the house after they told me they wanted big muscles! We goofed around doing handstands, push-ups, two person rows, planks, and whatever else. Randomly, Aaron stopped and asked me, “Does Barack Obama raise ostriches?”…with a smile on my face, I replied, “Maybe, but I don’t think so.” Then we worked on some back bridges!

View from my bedroom window