“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

A few months back, I set off on a bike journey with some friends and forgot to write it up in the blog! The mission: We would bicycle 300 km (~180 miles) from Battambong to Phnom Penh over three days!

It all started when I biked into Siem Reap from my house and met Josie in town. We grabbed breakfast in town, then bought bus tickets to Battambong, plus an additional ticket to put our bicycles in the bottom of the bus. We arrived into Battambong and met up with Ann and Molly for pizza and tacos for dinner, a dinner of champions before a big ride!

Tacos

Pizza

On the first morning, Josie, Ann, Molly, and I met for breakfast sandwiches then loaded up our bikes to start our journey.

We didn’t have much, each a single bag which we strapped to the rear bike rack with an elastic strap and a water bottle in the bike frame.

We set out from Battambong over the river at a string, fresh pace and didn’t stop for the first 2.5 hours.

We made a pit stop for fresh coconuts, water, snacks, and to rest our hineys!

Following Molly’s idea, for the first time in my life, I finished an entire rendition of “99 bottles of beer on the wall” in my head! After 100 km, with sore butts and good attitudes, we pulled up to a guesthouse in Posat Province, our stop for the night. I was starving, so quickly ate 3 large dumplings from a street vendor to hold me over until we showered up and could get dinner. We hung out in the air-conditioned room eating fruit and stir-fried ramen noodles before an early bed time.

After tossing in bed for a little bit, I finally got up in the middle of the night and vomited out the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I don’t know if it was the dumplings or the ramen, but it wasn’t ideal to dispose of your energy source on the night between two long bike rides!

We woke up around 6:00am in an effort to beat the heat on day two. My stomach was still off, but I was able to put down some rice with pork, hoping that my system was familiar with rice by now!

Only a few minutes down the road Molly had the first and only flat tire of the trip, caused by a staple. We broke out our Peace Corps issued patch kits and pump and were able to fix it up in no time ‘flat’…pun intended.

Another 100km today and mostly uneventful flat riding. For about 30 minutes we battled a strong headwind, which the girls were nice enough to break for me to draft! It was hard to eat at lunch, but knew I had to get fuel into the tank for the afternoon.

My low for the day was between kilometers 70 and 80 when my stomach was in knots and I was throwing up in my mouth a little bit. The girls were absolutely crushing the ride and putting me to shame, despite me claiming to be a cyclist. They talk about being so tired, then take off like a cheetah to chase each other! We pulled into our rest location of Kompong Chhnang Province around 3:30pm and rested on the tile floors of the hotel while taking turns in the shower. We ate soup from a street vendor for dinner, then stayed up until 9:00pm telling stories and playing trivia together.

 

 

Day 3 started at 6:00am again to cycle our final 100km from Kompong Chhnang Province into Phnom Penh. The trip through Kompong Chhnang was beautiful, scenic plains, a cool tailwind, and even a few small hills to break up the monotony of the flat ride.

We took frequent short breaks this final day and it kept our spirits high. About 30 kilometers from Phnom Penh we stopped for lunch at a restaurant built over a lake and chowed down on rice, soup, and fried fish!

About 15km outside of Phnom Penh there was a lot of construction and we bounced our way down the final stretch of roads. During all that jostling, a zipper on Josie’s bag came open and she left a bread-crumb trail of important items down the road before we realized the problem…most importantly, her wallet. We back-tracked about 5km looking on both sides of the road, but besides some sunscreen and her phone, we didn’t have any luck finding it…just got in a few bonus miles! At long last, we ripped into the city following Josie’s navigation through the city streets and were elated to arrive at our final destination around 3:15pm!

For dinner we went to “Mike’s Burgers” which is a restaurant started by a former owner of In-and-out-burger in the united states. The burgers were huge, the drink refills were endless, and we were giddy with success following a successful adventure. We relaxed through the evening and soon after slept deeply from exhaustion.

We woke up early, at 6:30am, to watch the Super Bowl on TV. I was able to catch the first three quarters before my bike and I had a bus to catch back to Siem Reap. We only stopped twice on the bus ride, but it was still 8.5 hours. It was good to be home and nice to have some mini-adventure during this grand-adventure! Thanks to Josie, Ann, and Molly for the awesome ride, there was no shortage of excellent camaraderie!

Then we slept like dogs!

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

With a little more than two months remaining at site, all the Peace Corps Volunteers came together in Phnom Penh for a Close of Service (COS) conference. The conference was mostly logistics of how to stop being a volunteer and how to get back to the United States and about transitioning back as well. As thanks for our service, Peace Corps put us up in a beautiful hotel, full with a rooftop pool eleven floors up and included breakfast! I got to meet our incredible new Country Director, Sue, and ate some incredible eats with friends including a massive cup of ice cream from Dairy Queen! One of the days I had my medical check-out, dental cleaning, and a Language Proficiency Interview (LPI). Our Assistant Director even paid for us all to go on a small river cruise one evening with all the staff.

Raat breaking out a sick move!

After the COS conference, most of us stayed in the city for the weekend. In the morning, Josie, Jeff and I went around looking for Cambodian formal wear because that night would be the first ever OSCORPS! This was the wonderful idea of PCV’s Brett and Karen to make a spin off of the OSCARS and give out awards to outstanding people!

The hosts, Brett and Weston

We couldn’t end up finding reasonably priced formal wear for rent, so I went in a superman shirt and suspenders instead!

Siem Reap K7 volunteers

At night, everyone was dressed up beautifully and we hung out at a bar with a stage before the festivities began.

Formal wear at the OSCORPS

Weston and Brett did an excellent job hosting, eight awards were given out, there were talent show performances from Devin (hula hooping),

Devin hula hooping

Gianni/Amy (guitar and vocals – a hilarious cover of a rap song),

Amy and Gianni singing

and myself (juggling).

Juggling

After the show, we continued the dancing at a different bar. Spencer went to the bank and traded in a $20 bill for 800 sheets of the smallest currency Cambodian money (100 Riel), he then distributed out to many PCVs, we walked up to the second floor balcony, then on the count of three we threw all that money in the air and “made it rain” in the club. Baller!

Before making it rain

Finally we went to a bar where you can play connect 4 against the bartenders, if you win you get a free drink, if they win, you have to buy them a drink. I watched five people play and every single one lost.

Connect-4 with the bar tenders

Before heading back to site, I was able to Skype home with my parents and sister who had just eaten steamed crabs! Pretty awesome to hear their voices and see their faces. Thanks for taking always taking the time to Skype when we have the chance!

As usual, I was a little anxious to return to site after being away for awhile, but I was devastated to find out that Aunt Lee, Law, Ngaa, and K’nick had all left for Thailand to work while I was gone. They won’t be coming home until Pechum Ben in September…after I’m back in the States. Life just hasn’t been the same without my second host mom and my favorite cousins at home. After all that time together, these people who I truly consider my family are gone, and we never got a chance to say goodbye.

Our family pig, Mrs. Piggers

Our middle school hosted a volleyball tournament and had teams come in from five other communes in our district! It was only males, which I kept bringing up to people, but it’s a start for now. Our school’s team was just some rag tag kids who were the best around, but the winning team came in full with matching uniforms, a coach, set formations and tactics…they were awesome. One kid in particular, whose head only came up to the third string from the bottom of the net, could jump like he was on the moon and destroy the ball straight down, even if he was hitting a 10 ball from the back row. The teams were all awarded with new basketballs, volleyballs, and a volleyball net to take back to their schools!

VHV Chewie showing me the watermelons in her garden.

I was making my monthly rounds to all the Village Health Volunteers (VHV) to promote our meeting when I came across one of the grandfather VHVs, he is 74 years old. He was wearing a cloth around his waist and was standing near his well, apparently about to take a shower. He was still happy to stop whatever he was doing and talk. In Khmer, I asked, “Did you just come from the market?” to which he responded, “Yes, but I still have a hole in my penis!” followed by some hearty laughter. It was funny, but I didn’t understand, so I asked him to explain. We stood there for at least 10 minutes, using props, drawing in the sand, and pointing to our penises, but I just couldn’t understand the joke. Reluctantly, I gave up the effort knowing that my language just wasn’t to the point where I couldn’t follow along. Later that day, I called on of the Cambodian Peace Corps staff and asked him if he knew this joke and could explain it to me. Apparently, the word for ‘market’ and ‘welder’ is either the same sound with different spelling, or a very similar sound. So the joke the VHV was making was that he had indeed been to the welder, but they didn’t fix him because he still had a hole! Hilarious!

The shy lizard I share my room with. About 1 foot long from head to tail.

When our monthly VHV meeting drew to a close, a small, 75 year old grand mother, that resembles E.T., asked the director if she could have a few mangoes from one of the health center trees. The director agreed and this tiny woman jumped up, grabbed a low branch with both hands, swung her legs up, walked out on the branches, plucked some 15 mangoes, holding them all by the long stems in one hand, then swung down on a branch like a gymnast on the parallel bars. She’s still got it!

VHV Sar wearing a basket. She climbed a mango tree at our monthly meeting!

As things get a little closer to the end of service people have been getting a little sentimental with me. Sopeeahlie and I spend a lot of time smiling at each other and speaking baby-talk and Borah told me that she loves me like a real uncle. One of my neighbors told me that when I leave the village it will be as if one of their own villagers had left. A big compliment!

One of my better English students likes to text with me to practice her English. “What does it mean, ‘Keep your chin up'” or “Teacher I want to know this word (anxiety)”. I always do my best to explain in simple words and provide an example, and I know if I do a good job because I receive a wonderful text: “Thanks teacher now I understand.”

Jew cutting a banana tree to feed to the cows

After our wonderful Camp HOPE, the idea is that the students who attended will then come back to the community and further spread that knowledge. For my students, they decided to set up a small fair at the middle school, in pairs they would each teach a 20 minute session and five groups of students would rotate through the five stations. Our five lessons included: human rights, drugs and alcohol, goal setting, health issues in Cambodia, and team building! Soken, my counter-part, met with all the students on a Sunday when I was not at site and helped the students prepare and practice lesson plans. Then on a Thursday afternoon we all met at the middle school to teach!

Leak/Heeing

Lee/Tong

Whin/Sopin

Wvaut/Yawn

Thea/Sopin

This was the first time any of the students had ever taught before and the first two sessions were full of nerves and awkward laughter, but they stumbled through and learned as they went. Watching them hit their stride in the 4th and 5th sessions after they had lots of practice with the lesson plan was one of the highlights of my service so far. They were asking retention questions, making jokes and managing their time like seasoned professionals! By the end of their final session I had to practically force them to end the lesson after they were already over by five minutes and asking for just a few more!

Leak and Heeing taught team building

Whin and Sopin taught goal setting

Wvaut and Yawn taught about addictive drugs

Tong and Lee taught about health in Cambodia

Spoin and Thea taught about domestic violence

As part of our Camp HOPE grant, we were allotted $12 for the activity and we bought up lots of mixed fruits to share with all the participants. In fact, I was busy at a meeting in the morning and knew I wouldn’t have time to get to the market to buy the fruits, so I paid my 14 year old host cousin $0.50 to ride down to the market and purchase it for us, he did it perfectly! After the teaching sessions, the school students went home and we all blew off some steam joking around a table eating the remaining fruit. I basked in their glory with so much pride as they laughed at the mistakes they made and the tactics they used. It was then that I noticed all five of my female students had worn their matching Camp HOPE shirts. I could not have been any happier that day after seeing what those students and counter-parts had accomplished.

Decompressing after teaching

After finishing a lesson in my evening English class, I asked the students if they had any questions. They never do. So I put them to the test with a pop quiz! The students who failed had to dance in front of the class and the students who passed sang and clapped for them from their seats! It was about a 50/50 split so no one was too embarrassed.

A 52 year old villager passed away after fighting an illness for about a week. On the day of the ceremony, we all met at his house and had a walking procession to the small area where we would cremate the body. A rectangle of banana trees was already built. Upon arrival, some of the procession walked around the cremation pit three times. The surrounding area was a little cluttered, so the men that had been pulling the wooden cart instead picked it up on their shoulder for the walk around. The immediate relatives had all shaved their heads, as is customary, and one of the brothers got on the shoulders of the others for the walk around.

Pulling the body to the cremation site

Entering the cremation site

We all hung around as the cremation commenced and sat and watched. After an hour or two, they started to break down the banana tree enclosure for easier manipulation. They kept whacking something and I heard one of the village men comment that the man who died was too skinny and didn’t have enough fat on him to ignite and fully burn the body. Sure enough, they kept pushing around a charred spinal column with attached pelvis into the hottest areas of the fire and hitting it with bamboo sticks trying to break it down into more manageable pieces. When the cremation was complete, they threw water on the ashes to cool them down, then the man in charge of the ceremony shaped the ashes into a human figure and they covered it with a new shirt, pants and sandals, before offering it some water to ensure the spirit had left. Finally, all the people who attended the funeral helped to pick out small bone fragments and teeth out of the ashes and gave them to the family.

After lighting the fire

The same week that the villager passed away, my next-door neighbor had a death in the family, their two year old son. The son loved his little puppy, they even napped together regularly. One day the puppy went down to the pond behind their house to get a drink of water and the baby followed the dog and drowned. A horrible tragedy for the family, and even worse, neighbors told me that they previously had a three year old boy die from dengue fever.

I was surprised that there was no ceremony for the young boy who drowned. A villager informed began telling me about some traditions. If a child dies, up until around puberty, they will not have a ceremony for the individual because they believe that if they do then in the next life that child will die at the same age. For people in their middle-age, like the 52 year old villager, they will immediately take them and cremate them in a medium sized one day ceremony to appease the spirit. For people who die at an old age, there will be a large ceremony and the body will be buried for one or more years. After the body has been buried for an appropriate amount of time, they will have another large ceremony, dig up the remains of the deceased person, then cremate the remains and take the ashed to the pagoda in a funeral procession. Sometimes, the ashes of the deceased will be mixed with coconut water and drank by the family members. It was very fascinating to hear about the cultural differences and witnessing them first hand.

For the second time during my service, a chicken egg has fell through the ceiling of my bedroom and broken and dried up all gooey in the heat of the day when I’m not home!

It’s so hot in my room, you could cook an egg in there!

During one of my advanced English classes only one student showed up due to heavy rains, Sopin (10th grade). Instead of going through the lesson plan with just one student, we just sat and had a conversation. We were able to talk strictly in English for the entire hour and I took the conversation fairly deep into some topics and she totally rocked it! I don’t know how much credit I can take, since she’s always been one of my best students, but it was an inspiration to keep up the work we PCVs do everyday.

I told my mom I was feeling a little feverish one night with a headache and chills. She gave me a ripe mango and told me to eat it, that it would help. I felt better in the morning!

We watched ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ during movie night and the kids were jumping off the floor with excitement and yelling at the computer with suggestions and to look out behind them with their hands over their eyes and just viewing through small slots in their fingers. I don’t want to scare them to much, but they asked for more, so now were working our way through all seven movies in the series!

My host cousin, K’neat, asked me if I could chaperon her and the students to Angkor one Sunday. So we organized it and had the students ask their parents. When the day came, we all met at my house in the morning, I believe we had 21 people total. I gave mom a Tupperware and she packed me lunch full with rice, fried pork, a sausage, and fermented fish paste with vegetables! We all mounted our bicycles and headed, single-file, down the dirt roads for about one hour to the West entrance of Angkor Thom.

Riding out single file to Angkor Wat

These two are sisters and rode a long way holding each others hand. So cute.

Entering into Angkor Thom

As we pulled in, one boy had a soft tire…fortunately, I remembered to bring my bicycle pump…unfortunately, he was a little too excited and was pumping a little too violently and broke the pump. About five minutes down the road we had a different bicycle go soft. After scouring my brain, I took the bicycle pump and loaded up the broken portion with rubber cement from the patch kit. After letting it dry for a few minutes, it miraculously worked well enough to put some air into the tire and make it ride-able! First, the students went into Bayon Temple while I waited outside and watched the bicycles (because I didn’t buy a $20 ticket for foreigners to enter). Then we all walked around some Angkor Thom temples and sat in the grass and had a picnic. A very distinct boys circle and girls circle formed.

Boy’s lunch circle

Girl’s lunch circle

With some energy in our bellies, we biked over to Angkor Wat and took the back road to the tree house in the massive tree. The tree house had finally deteriorated to the point that I was legitimately scared for our safety and I instructed them to limit how many people were on a single platform at a time, but we all still got a change to go up to the top, for probably my last time ever. I was happy when we all left there safe and sound.

Tree House

Top of the tree house

Then we put the decision up to a vote and biked a short distance to a muddy canal for some swimming near a giant water wheel. I’m always surprised at how they kids dress up in their nicest clothes to go out on trips like this, but have no hesitation to jump in and fully submerge themself in the muddy water.

Swimming in the canal

While we were swimming one tire exploded and a chain had broken as we pulled in. We did some bicycle sharing and pulling to get the wounded bicycles to a roadside repair shop about a mile away and were able to fix it easy enough. As we began to make our way home, we stopped along the airport road and watched a few planes take off and land before pushing on to the water resivior for our next stop. A refreshing swim and a few snacks and we proceeded to our final stop: Puok Market, where we would stop to buy some treats to share with our families back at the houses. It was a good trip, and I’m always thankful that the kids are so responsible and well behaved. As we biked down one of the roads I remember wondering about which of these students will have married each other when I come back to visit in future years to come!

Snacking at the Barey

During a national holiday, my students still wanted to study. In an attempt to make a fun lesson plan for the holiday, I taught them the Hokey-Pokey…and failed miserably! I put everything I had into it, singing over and over and dancing around the front of the classroom like an idiot, but when the time came, they were so cripplingly shy that I couldn’t get the sparks to catch fire. There were a few attempts, and we got close but without everyone on-board, the individuals were willing to be stared at by themselves. When I finally threw in the towel, we had about ten minutes left and they wanted to play another game, but they didn’t have any suggestions. I reached waaaaayyyyy back into my head to a game few of you have probably ever heard of that I was taught at a place called Genesee Valley, where we used to have a lacrosse camp as a kid: Zoom-Shwartz-Pafigiliano! A slightly complicated game to teach in English, but I threw my best Khmer at them and they instantly grasped both the language and the concept and we played a competitive round. Sometimes you just never know!

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard

On a long weekend, Jeff and I decided to head West and check out the town of Poipet on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. The night before I had a few midnight dashes to the outhouse, so I was a little concerned in the morning to pile into a Toyota Camry with nine people for the two hour journey! Luckily, they were all from my village and there were no incidences in that department!

Cambodia/Thailand border

The folks from my village were heading to Thailand for work. As we pulled into Poipet, we took some back roads and kept seeming to get further and further from things, then we cut through a construction zone and finally arrived at the edge of a forest where a woman was standing with her daughter, another villager of ours! All the villagers got out and grabbed their rice sacks of belongings, paid the driver, then the one woman got in with us and we turned around the way we came leaving them all there. I inquired with the driver (a man from our commune who I have ridden with on several occasions) and he told me that they would walk through the woods, across the border and a man would be waiting with a truck on the other side who would take them somewhere to work. I finally got into town and met up with Jeff for some lunch and we walked around the neutral zone along the border and watched people gamble in the casinos. It is illegal to gamble in Cambodia, and also in Thailand, but in this neutral zone anything goes! It was mostly Thai people gambling, and so a lot of the staff was also Thai. Being as we don’t speak any Thai, it became funny when we tried to find a bathroom and when the language barrier proved too much, I had to charades pulling down my pants and sitting on a toilet in the middle of a casino floor! I have a host uncle who works as border patrol police along the border and he and his wife came to meet up with us in the afternoon. They picked us up in their car and we drove back to their house. They are currently building a new house which is going to be large and beautiful.

Host uncle and his new house being built

Jeff climbing the house

Surrounding their property is a small snaking river, and on the other side, some 20 feet away, Thailand!

Across the river is Thailand

For dinner they drove us out to one of the casinos and we feasted on a Cambodian specialty, cow-climbs-the-mountain, which is where they bring you raw meat and you cook it on a charcoal grill on the middle of the table. It was delicious and my uncle insisted on picking up the check.

Aunt and Uncle at dinner

Jeff and I walked around the casinos for a little longer at night before turning back to the hotel. In the morning, my uncle and his wife came and picked us up again and took us to a restaurant for breakfast soup, and again he insisted on picking up the check. From Poipet, we would be heading down to Battambang and my uncle even drove us to the taxi station and negotiated a cheap price for us!

When Jeff and arrived in Battambang, we met up with a few other volunteers who were also in town, and even had the pleasure of meeting Josie’s mom and sister from America! They were awesome, I see where Josie gets it from! Her mom even told me that her father-in-law hiked the Appalachian Trail back in the 60’s! We hung out at the rooftop pool for the afternoon, then hopped on a tuk-tuk in the evening to head to the famous Sempu mountain.

Tuk-Tuk ride to the bat cave

We arrived at dusk and waited with several others under a large cave in the side of the mountain. The spectacle started slowly with just a few bats flying out, but before long it was a thick, black, stream of bats flooding out of the cave for well over an hour, I head mention of maybe as many as two million bats!

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na…BAT CAVE!

We all hiked up a staircase to a massive carved Buddha head for a different perspective. In the morning I ate apple cinnamon pancakes…it was a pretty good trip!

From Battambang, Jeff and jumped a taxi back to his site, which he shares with another PCV, Wilson. I got to meet his host family and check out the house for a bit. In the afternoon we biked to his school, checked out his school garden, and I sat in the back of the classroom while he taught English to a class of eighth graders with his Cambodian co-teacher.

Remnants of Jeff’s school garden after harvest

Jeff teaching English

After meeting up with Wilson and their friend, Vary, we all decided to bike out to a nearby hill and try to catch the sunset.

Before setting off on our bicycle adventure!

We didn’t get to the hill in time, but went to a large resivior instead and rinsed off with a bucket because they claimed there were biting fish in the water.

Vary and Jeff cooling off before the return trip

On the ride back to the house, Wilson hand connected with the side of a rice tractor and it took him down to the dirt. Nothing too terrible, but he we pretty shaken up and it would have been difficult for him to bike with the swollen hand. Luckily, Vary flagged down a passing dump truck that was heading in our direction. We threw our bikes in the back and climbed aboard. Despite the circumstances, the ride was beautiful with the stars just coming out at dusk and a cool breeze in the hair.

Dump truck ride home

Due to the scorching temperatures in May, Jeff and I set up a mosquito net on the little upstairs porch as his house and slept on a rice mat. In the morning we met back up with Wilson and Vary and played some board-games, Settlers of Catan, then we ate cow-leg-soup for lunch.

Settlers of Catan

Biking over to Wilson’s house, we saw that the police station across the street had pulled over a foreigner in a white truck. As we biked by, the police called Jeff by name and asked him to come over and translate for them, now that’s putting our Peace Corps skills and relationships to work! That night, Jeff and I stayed up until 11:30pm playing video-games on his computer under the mosquito net on the porch like little kids in a fort at a sleepover!

Delicious dinner at Vary’s house

In the morning, it was time to head back to my site, I got into a taxi and Vary gave me an enormous bag of some 30 mangoes from his farm. Unfortunately, I got dropped off at my market, some four kilometers away from my house and was planning to walk back to my house, so I gave away the majority of the mangoes to people I knew around the market. On my walk home, I felt the love as countless people pulled up and offered me rides on their motos (PCV’s are not allowed to ride motos or it’s an immediate termination of service), one woman invited me to a ceremony as she rode by alongside me. About halfway home, a rice tractor from a nearby village offered me a ride and I jumped into the back with all the stuff they had bought from the market. As usual, I was a little anxious to head back to site after being away, but when the kids sprinted over to give me hugs and ask me to throw them in the air, I remembered why I love it so much!

Aunt Lee, Sopeeahlie, and mom

Little Ga’bow is at the house all day everyday, her entire life consists of those four houses in our compound. I try to liven things up for her with bike rides around the village. One day we went to Uncle Hooah’s house, only my cousin Heeing was home. He mentioned that Aunt Ya and cousin Chen were out in the fields picking goi fruits. So Ga’bow and I threw on hats, she climbed on my shoulders and we went on an expedition through the fields. We finally found them relaxing at a man’s house on the edge of the village and watched his son hand-carve a stool from a stump of wood! On the way home we stopped at Aunt Hee-ew’s house for snowballs!

Aunt Lewin was getting a new well drilled after her other one had filled in with some silt and was difficult to pump. In the states, that would mean a specialized truck pulling up to your house with a massive drill-bit to drill the well. At Aunt Lewin’s house, two men pulled up on a moto with a water pump, some PVC and some long metal rods.

Everything you need to drill a well!

They thew the intake of the water pump into a pond, and hooked the other end up to the end of the first hollow metal rod which had a large arrow head on the other end. They using a wrench, he hooked a handle onto the shaft. Once the water was flowing out of the rod at the arrowhead end, he picked it up by the newly fastened handle and slammed it into the Earth and twisted it, then he lifted it a bit and slammed it into the ground, and so on and so forth. When he got deep enough, he unscrewed the handle, slit it up, and continued. When the entire first rod was deep into the ground, they screwed a second one into the back of it and kept on trucking. The two men would take turns while the other rested and drank water in the shade, each one would do about one length of pipe and it took maybe 30 minutes. Using this method they were able to drill the well down to around 30 meters deep!

Well drilling

I sat and watched the amazing process for about an hour before they let me try my hand at digging, it was a pretty heavy apparatus after a few lengths of pipe were screwed together, these guys were pretty thick in the shoulders! After the hole was drilled, they slid some PVC down to maintain the hole, then hooked up more PVC above ground to form the hand pump. In all it took about six hours to dig the well by hand!

Well drilling

A woman who used to live in our village but recently moved to the next commune over invited me out to her house when I had free time. One Sunday, K’nick, Hei and I mounted our bicycles and rode out about 10 kilometers to her house in Mango-banana Commune.

Hei on the ride home

The woman works at a small market stall in the village and sells food and some other things. Two of my high school students were also there helping to sell on their one day off of school. The woman’s six-month old baby is so chubby, I haven’t seen that much in Cambodia. I asked about the father, and the woman told me that her husband died of “sick stomach and vomiting” shortly after the baby was conceived. I helped the girls cut up some vegetables for sale and we all ate a delicious lunch of dried fish, watermelon, and stir-fried veggies. Mostly we just hung out for the day!

The food stall

Cutting vegetables

On the bike ride home we stopped at my former tutor’s house, she is currently living and working in Siem Reap, but her mother welcomed us in for a rest and well all sat around catching up and eating delicious bring fruits from her tree! Closer to home, we rested at Aunt Ya’s food stall and when cousin Chen didn’t have exact change for the sugar cane juice I bought for K’nick and I, she just gave it to us for free!

Chen giving us sugar cane juice

My brother had a wart on his foot. He cut away the dead skin with a knife, then dripped some acid on it from one of the car batteries we use for electricity!

Last year we put on Camp LION, this year the other Siem Reap volunteers and I did the same thing, but called it Camp HOPE. The camp was 4 days and 3 nights and included a variety of topics taught by various local Cambodian organizations. I simply call it a leadership camp.

70 students from 5 high schools

This year, I had the duty of going into town a day early to verify all the venues, buy supplies, pay for the shirts, and miscellaneous other chores. Roger biked in to help out and we spent the afternoon cutting name tags before getting hamburgers for dinner. In the morning, I set up a check-in station at the guesthouse and patiently waited for the students to arrive and hopped that all the arrangements I had made for my students to get there were going smoothly. As the students arrived we gave them pens, water bottles, books, name tags, schedules, etc and then we all walked next door to the Siem Reap Teacher Training Center where our classroom work would be held. We did some introductions and created camp rules together with the students. Roger worked up some kick-butt ice-breakers including a group juggle activity for learning names, a shoe swapping game, and one where they had to pass a stick down the line holding it between their legs, but couldn’t use their hands!

Name game ice breaker

Shoe swap icebreaker

Pass the stick using only your legs

That afternoon we had the Khmer Youth Association come and do a lesson on drugs and alcohol. We had a slight hitch in the evening activities, but were able to improvise with some tennis balls and played some goofy exercise games. The best was the so called “grapefruit relay” where they had to pass a ball down the line, holding it between their chin and chest and can’t use anything else…during the passing of the ball, they have to get pretty close and comfortable with each other!

Vary and I demonstrating how to pass the tennis ball without using your hands

Jeff and Vary continuing the demonstration!

Winners!

On the second day, a teacher from PEPPY named Kimsru came and totally rocked her lesson plan for a full day teaching about life skills and goal setting. My favorite part of her lesson plan was when she stacked two chairs on top of each other and we did a “trust fall” right there in the classroom!

Trust fall before

Trust fall after

That evening we took about 80 of us Phare Cambodian Circus, thanks to an extremely generous discount on their part. That had been an idea we had since camp last year and to see it actually come together was simply incredible!

In the trailer riding to the circus

At the circus!

After the circus with the performers!

On day three, we had the Bantey Srey organization come and teach about domestic violence and gender equality. In the afternoon, us PCV’s split into five groups and each put on a unique session which the students rotated through. My counter-part, Soken, and I hosted a Jeopardy style game with questions about health issues in Cambodia.

Health Jeopardy

As day three came to an end, we distributed their beautiful, matching camp shirts and we got a beautiful picture of them spelling out HOPE with their bodies!

After the picture was complete we all jumped into trailers pulled by motorcycles and paid an evening visit to Angkor Wat!

My students, my counterpart and I at Angkor Wat

The PCV’s and counter-parts at Angkor Wat

Returning from Angkor Wat, we celebrated the last night with a pizza party full with strawberry soda and fried rice!

Pizza Party!

After the pizza party, there was still about two hours until our camp curfew and my female students wanted to head into Siem Reap and check out Lucky Mall for a little, Soken and I joined them on the journey! The seven of us grabbed a tuk-tuk into town where they giggled riding the escalators, played a few claw-drop arcade games and did some window shopping of grossly over priced clothes. When it was time to leave, we still had plenty of time, so we elected to walk the 2.5 kilometers back to the hotel. The girls were so funny, surrounding me on all sides and bombarding me with questions in both Khmer and English about my future wife and children and everything else. We stopped halfway and I treated them all to fruit-shakes. Those girls mean the absolute world to me and it’s moments like those that remind me why I joined the Peace Corps, why I think it’s worthwhile, and why I made the right decision to be here.

Tuk-tuk ride to Lucky Mall

On the final day we had a presentation from the Women’s Resource Center before a closing ceremony where we issued completion certificates to all the students. From there everyone cleaned out their hotel rooms and boarded transportation for home, but not after painful goodbyes to all their new friends. Seeing the bonds that form across school is a wonderful thing to witness.

Cross-school friendships went a long way in just 4 days.

After all the students were loaded up and headed out, I felt the huge weight of the responsibility of 70 students lifted from my shoulders! Jeff and I celebrated by meeting up with Kimsru (the teacher from day two) and her friend for dinner, conversation and a few games of billiards at a local restaurant before calling it an early night! Camp HOPE 2015 was successfully in the books…mission accomplished! Thanks to my fellow PCV’s for making it all happen!

My students getting on the tuk-tuks to head home.

My students and counterpart!

Group Chinese-get-up

Chinese-get-up in action

Ann, Queen of the castle!

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ― Thomas Edison

On the second day of Khmer New Year, K’nick wanted to go the water resivior to swim and a few of the village kids joined us for the trip. My cousin Law just came to watch the pretty girls, so he sat on the shore and watched our stuff as we swam. It was here that we witnessed a tragedy. The following is taken from my journal: “K’nick rented a life jacket and hung out with some friends. Borah, Ngaa and I swam around and they hung on my shoulders in the deep waters. We noticed the people on the shore all looking out into a certain area of the water near us. We heard people mentioning that a girl had been missing for two hours and the men in the water nearby had rented inner tubes and were feeling around in the water with their legs for her body. I hadn’t believed it. I guess I thought they were mistaken and the girl was just in the crowd with her friends somewhere. Suddenly, about 30 feet from where I was standing with Borah, a man began shouting and pulled a lifeless body to the surface. I’ve never seen a dead body so close, it was incredible how limp it laid as they brought her into shore, her head dangled and face flopped in the the water unsupported, her arms simply dragging behind in the water. A woman rushed forth from the crowd into the water where it was waist deep, screaming hysterically, crying, pointing, and jumping…I presumed her mother (although she looked young) or another close relative. Being as it’s Khmer New Year, I think many of the men had been drinking a lot and I was surprised at how violently they carried her body out of the water. One man threw her legs over his shoulders like she was a child riding on her parents shoulders, but her lifeless body just dangled upside down behind him and her shirt slid up to her chest revealing her stomach. The crowd amazed me by how quickly everyone sprinted over and crowded to catch a glimpse of the dead body. I was pretty sure that no one there was CPR certified despite a few police officers being present. I believe they loaded the body into a taxi and took it away, I assume to a hospital. Everyone cleared out of that section of water after that, the kids and I also decided to head home. I told mom about it back at the house and she mentioned that drownings used to occur every year there, but these days there hasn’t been one for a few years. What are the chances that I would be there at that exact place and time to witness such and event?”

During Khmer New Year, we danced five nights in a row. On the third night, as we danced around a table, one shirtless villager was using two metal pot lids as cymbals to crash them along with the music!

Walking home from a dance party at night

My retired Health Center Director came to visit my house during Khmer New Year, he gave me two packs of Ramen noodles as a gift. We hung out at the house for a little bit, then went to the health center to visit the staff. All the staffed doctors had left and were at the pagoda for a little bit, meaning there were patients there with no doctors. My retired director began distributing medication and changing bandages in the wound care room. What a guy!

On the third day of Khmer New Year, one my my neighbors, who used a trailer pulled by his moto to buy massive blocks of ice and sell them around the commune to sellers so they can refrigerate their food and drinks. He pulled up to our house, but the trailer was full of people instead of ice…we were going to Angkor Wat!

Hei and I riding in the ice trailer

My host sister, Pee, with Sopeeahlie and some villagers

I changed my shirt and jumped into the back with the 13 other people. The ride was a little cramped and hot, but I love traveling Khmer style now that I’m used to it, it’s a good bonding experience. The close quarters didn’t prevent people from breastfeeding, sleeping, having a water gun battle, and eating a cooler full of sticky rice with spicy salt for flavoring with our bare hands…we were covered in rice kernels from fingers to elbows!

Water gun battle in the ice trailer

Angkor Thom had several exhibitions, including a giant hat, a giant fish catching basket, a giant food strainer, and giant palm sugar collecting jars.

Giant hat!

Giant fish catching basket

Music blasted at one end of the festivities and a huge group of people began dancing around a water cistern. From the nearby road, large water tanker trucks would pull up, hook up their hoses, and blast water into the crowd making it “rain!” We ate some snacks and on the way home stopped outside the airport for a minute or two to watch some planes take off and land!

hosing down the dance party

Water tanker spraying the dance circle

She set her baby down on the edge of the stage for a second, then had to get up and chase her during the performance!

Aunt Lee bought a bag of candy to give out as prizes to the cousins for Khmer New Years games. We played in the shade behind my house and spent hours playing blindfold tag, tug of wat, jumping rope, and a pinata game with bags of water!

Ngaa and K’nick jumping rope during Khmer New Yeat

Ga’dee jumping rope

K’nick was blowing bubbles one day and we consulted on how we could make massive bubbles! We gathered up some rope, a Frisbee, shampoo and water and got to work. Tie the rope in a circle, soak it in the soapy water, open it up, and run!

Mega bubbles!

Thanks to a generous gift of 500 water balloons in a previous care package, we had a battle royale on a hot day. The problem is without water spigots, they were challenging to fill. Some kids painfully filled their mouths with water and blew it into the balloons, but this took forever and is energy intensive. The best method we devised was to fill an average sized plastic water bottle with water, put the balloon on the top, then squeeze the contents into the balloon! It still takes awhile, so if anyone has other suggestions, I’d love to hear them in the comments!!!

Mom and sister cooked up a delicious New Year’s feast for 13 people under my house featuring duck soup and spicy, stir-fried duck meat! Mom, sister and one of my aunts all split a single beer to celebrate the occasion!

Grandma and Sopeealie

One of my student’s grandfathers bikes around the commune twice a month to sell tickets for the Thailand lottery. I ran into him in a different village one day and we sat at a sellers house for a few minutes and joked around. He mentioned that he lived in Phnom Penh for 25 years and knew an incredible amount of English, but during the Khmer Rouge he didn’t dare let anyone know he know a different language, nor could he practice. Now, in his 80’s, he has forgotten nearly all of his English, but that didn’t stop him from pulling out a well timed, “She love me!” when a pretty teenage girl went by!

One of the grandfatherly VHV’s enjoys learning a phrase or two of English from me when we meet. He mentioned that he had studied French since he was 14 years old and at one point knew 95% of the language! Due to the Khmer Rouge period of time and old age, now he estimates he remembers only 90%! He also used to be in charge of all the education in the entire commune as the head director! Despite not yet knowing basic phrases like, “how are you?” on this day he insisted on learning, “I erase the chalkboard!”

K’nick and Sopeeahlie

Little Ghuy and Ga’dee wanted to shower so I poured the buckets of water over them in the bathroom. They had a good old time kung fu fighting the walls and laying down pretending to swim on the floor while I drenched them. They crack me up!

Care packages!!! I got word that I had two waiting for me in Siem Reap, so I threw on my ARMD racing jersey and biked into town one weekend morning. I was shocked to discover not two but FOUR packages awaiting me! It was a bit problematic, but somehow I managed to ‘Beverly hillbilly’ it all into a tower on my bicycle rack and secure it with a single bungee cord. The going was slow and I could feel the bike frame torquing under the weight with every pedal, but we made it home in one piece!

Care packages!

One package was from Darien Book Aid, an organization in the states that I simply emailed and they mailed me lots of books to supply to the middle school library…for free!!!

Free books for the school library from Darien Book Aid

Two of the other packages were from my parents and one from my beautiful Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bill. Thank you all for your generosity and support, it sure is a nice treat to indulge in the goodies you supply and to share part of America with my friends and family here!!! Trail mix, jerkey, cow tails, airheads, pringles, chex mix, games, balls, smarties, magazines, soap, old bay chips, airplanes, jelly beans, granola bars, duct tape, Easter egg dye, freeze dried ice cream, chocolate covered cherries, sugar wafers, peanut butter crackers, wasabi peas, cookies, boxers, a Beatles shirt, athletic shorts, a super man shirt, and two pairs of sandals!!! I’m spoiled in ever sense of the word!

Mom sent some of Wing’s soap for my host mother!

I took the package of wasabi peas back to Aunt Lee’s house and shared them with everyone. They all contorted their face, spit them out ans asked if they were poison! I assured them they were edible, and they kept trying, but weren’t having it! Eventually, they resorted to painstakingly chipping off the spicy coating with their fingernails and eating the dried pea inside!

The cousins and I all biked out to Takam Pagoda for an afternoon ceremony. My cousin Raan was home from working in Thailand so we both rode my bicycle out, taking turns as to who was pedaling and who was riding on the luggage rack.

Biking to the pagoda

At the ceremony, everyone had previously prepared water bottles full of a yellow root, which stains your fingers yellow when you peel it, and water. We burned a small hole in the lid, put a candle on top and an incense stick into the hole.

Preparing our water bottles

Inside the pagoda, we lit the incense and candle, did some chanting with the monks, then to my surprise, everyone grabbed their water bottle and sprayed the Buddha statue inside the pagoda! The statue is rather ornate and surrounded by beautiful cloths, pictures and other decorations…but we soaked the place from top to bottom with this staining liquid, probably some 150 people total!

Brown liquid in the bottles with candle and inscense

Spraying down the Buddha statue and each other…and everything else around!

Outside there were also five decorated sand piles that I was instructed to spray with the liquid. After spraying them, a woman nearby instructed me to, “thank the baby mountains.” I turned and thanked them.

Baby mountains

I was cycling around promoting a meeting at the Health Center when I came to one of the grandmother volunteer’s house. She had not been to the meetings for two months because she broke her wrist falling from her bike. I check in to see how it was doing, and it was obviously not healed correctly with huge bulges in her wrist and it not returning to it’s normal size. She cannot make a fist on that hand and says her fingers are all numb. She went to a Khmer traditional healer when she broke it and not to the health center or the hospital.

At the monthly village health volunteer meeting we went through our normal protocol, then the director opened the floor up to anyone if they had anything to say. One grandfather spoke up and mentioned that they as a group typically only keep the stats and do the minimum to be in their position, but don’t do any health education in the villages and ended with, “If Joel can fly a plane for three days and two nights to help educate about health, then we should be able to educate around our own villages!”

When I lay on the floor and write in my journal before bed, baby Sopeeahlie walks over and sits on my lower back and rides me like a horse.

My favorite puppy turned one year old and gave birth to two beautiful boys in the same month!

Aunt Lee told me a story about when she was 17 years old. The Khmer rouge used to fire artillery shells into our village from Puok a few kilometers away. Because of this, most of the villagers would stay in the next village over at night. One problem was that this other village didn’t have a water supply, so she would walk three kilometers round trip every day to carry two 5-gallon buckets of water from one village to the other. One time when an artillery shell came, she ducked for cover behind a sugar palm tree, the shell landed only and arms length away on the other side of the tree and killed a pig. She was covered head-to-toe in dirt, but the tree had saved her life!

Teary had a photo shoot and worked it!

Teary’s photo shoot

My mom had just finished grilling three fish and set them on a dish at the edge of a table to put something else on to cook. In that short moment, one of the dogs jumped up and grabbed two if the fish and took off into the yard. Ngaa and I both took off after it. It had rained a little bit this evening, so I took about two steps before hitting the mud, legs flying out from under me, and plopping on my side with a solid thud in front of mom, sister and Soken. I was covered in brown mud! We all had a good laugh, Ngaa got the fish back and I went for a second shower!

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” ― Winston S. Churchill

In mid-April, I went on vacation with some other volunteers. It all started when Jeff and I boarded a bus in Siem Reap at 9:30 am and arrived in Phnom Penh at 7:30 pm. It took 10 hours to cover the 320 kilometer distance (about 200 miles) which comes out to around 20 miles per hour…slower than your residential neighborhood speed limit…also meaning that a professional bicycle rider would have beat us in a race! Fortunately, Jeff brought his binoculars and were able to keep ourselves occupied looking at things and talking.

Jeff

Our first night in Phnom Penh, we met up with Gianni and Ann for a Khmer Food Festival! First we walked around Olympic Stadium and caught part of the lunar eclipse! The prepared dishes at the food festival were somewhat disappointing, being as most of them were just regular dishes we eat out in our villages, but the entry free came with a free soda and it was fun to walk around and hang out.

Khmer Food Festival from on top of Olympic Stadium

We later met up with Weston and Josie and the six of us all took a bus down to Kampot Province the following morning. We had lots of energy, so we rented bicycles and went for a ride trying to find some nearby salt flats that we had heard about.

Renting bicycles

After wandering down a dirt road, finally we saw a bunch of water in fields baking in the sun, the water a perfect mirror. Being as it was lunch time, there wasn’t much of anyone around, but it wasn’t long until Josie had met some of the workers resting in the shade and asked them if we could help out. It started slow with just her and one of the female workers raking some rice, but it wasn’t long until everyone was back to work and we all jumped in to try our hands at salt farming.

With the salt farming tools in front of the flats

The huge white crystals were sharp on the bottoms of our feet, and the water was quite hot to the touch. The idea was to use a raking device to bring the salt together into small piles, then come back later with baskets and a scooping device to load the salt into the baskets, then carry it on one shoulder to a large storage shed.

One of the men filled up two baskets halfway and let us try carrying it, it was very heavy, I couldn’t believe how much weight was in the baskets for that amount of salt, and they weren’t even full. How were these tiny women and stringy men carrying so much weight around like it was feather pillows?!?

Lifting the salt baskets

In the salt storage shed

All of the workers were extremely friendly and welcoming to us helping out. We finally decided to bike down the road a bit further until it dead-ended and on the way back we all pitched in to buy a bunch of cold drinks for the workers. Coming back, we said our thank-yous, and they appreciated the drinks. One man in particular was flattered that we all spoke Khmer and said that anytime we come back to visit Cambodia, even years from now, come to that village and ask for the 11 fingered man, that anyone could point us to his house. Indeed, he did have a small 11th finger budding off the side of one of his thumbs. A friend for life!

With the 11 fingered man!

The first night we went out for a firefly boat cruise! It sounds a lot cooler than it was, we just rode up a river on a loud boat, turned around and came home. We pulled over to the shore for about 5 minutes and had to strain our eyes to catch a glimmer of lights in the trees. Oh well, the other volunteers are excellent company!

In the morning we got pumpkin spice pancakes at a restaurant called Sisters II. They were probably the best western food I’ve eaten in Cambodia…perfect!

Our second day in Kampot we rented kayaks to go for a paddle. The company ferried us up-river to a small inlet and set us lose. We were free to wander a system of small canals which were a green tunnel of palm fronds in every direction! We enjoy splashing around for a bit and exploring some of the small side streams. At the end of the loop we kicked back out into the main river and had to fight a little headwind. We stopped for a few minutes to swim in the perfect temperature water and enjoy the scenic mountains near Kampot!

The tunnel of love!

Ann and Josie

For dinner we headed to a unique restaurant called the “Magic Sponge” which in addition to being a restaurant had free 9-hole mini-golf while we waited for our food. Gianni beat me best two out of three. They randomly had one of my brothers favorite bands playing on the television at the bar, Widespread Panic!

The following day we piled into a tuk-tuk and headed out into the country to explore a small mountain cave. The cave was beautiful and the temperatures were cool and we saw a few bats. What may have been even cooler though were the plethora of home gardens we saw on the way out to the cave, they looked just like the ones we had been trained to build and teach!

Vegetable gardens provide a stark contrast to the dried up rice fields

Spelunking

After the cave we continued our trip to a Duran farm, then to a pepper farm (Kampot is world famous for it’s pepper!). The pepper vines were very neat to check out, and we were informed that they take a very long time to begin producing fruit, sometimes up to 10 years!

Duran fruit

Pepper plantation

Fresh Pepper

Dried black pepper

After two days in Kampot, we took a quick bus ride over to Kep Province, grabbed pizza for lunch, then caught a boat ferry out to the small and exotic, Rabbit Island! Just like when I visited a year ago, the water temperature was perfect, the people were friendly, the food was delicious, and the sunsets were captivating. We relaxed most days, played cards, and played other games that we made up as we went. At night, when they shut down the electric generators, we jumped into the water to view the bio-luminescent algae. The first night was decent, but the second night was intense! The lights were so much brighter, the ambient light was darker, and the algae seemed more sensitive to light up. Even if you made a wave with your body, the tip of the wave would glow as it rippled away from you! Usually the glow is a neon green/yellow color, but we noticed some small blue glows that lingered on the beach as well. Upon closer inspection, they were super tiny jellyfish that were also glowing…magnificent!

On the boat ride to Rabbit Island

There is no problem with my camera, the sunset really had this wild color distinction in the sky!

After two days on Rabbit Island, we headed back to the Kep mainland to hang out for a night. After a short rest in the luxury of air-conditioning, we left our hotel room to hike up the 800ft peak in Kep Mountain Park. The hiking was mostly easy, graded for vehicles, but scenic and had some shade.

Hiking

Going off a side trail we found a free butterfly sanctuary and hung out speaking Khmer with some of the workers.

Butterfly Sanctuary

Leaving there, we scaled a steep short-cut trail in an attempt to find a large hollow tree with a ladder inside of it, but after being unsuccessful in locating it, we continued the steep short-cut up and over the mountain and back down the other side. Back at the hotel, we rode a tuk-tuk to a restaurant for dinner, but after slow drink service, we decided to bail on dinner and hike up the “Stairway to Heaven” trail to watch the sunset from the top of the mountain.

Gianni and I after climbing the “Stairway to Heaven” trail

At the top of the trail was a house where some nuns lived. After chatting them up, one of the grandmothers agreed to accompany us to the look-out point. This woman had no problem negotiating the rugged 300 meters of trail out to the rock outcropping! The sunset wasn’t much due to cloud cover, but it was a special experience being up there with the other PCV’s and this wonderful grandmother. We even asked her about a new word that we had heard but no one would tell us what it meant…she just cracked up and said she wasn’t willing to tell us. We later deduced from an animated tuk-tuk driver, that the word we had been asking so many people about translates as: Camel Toe…and not the animal!

With the grandmother on the rock outcrop, watching the sunset

Being as this was around the time of Khmer New Year, trying to get back home from Phnom Penh was crazy at the bus stations. I would say it is like traveling around Christmas and other holidays in the USA. We had to fight our way into and out of the bus stations with tons of people all flowing out into the streets. When we finally got a bus, it was 8.5 hours back to Siem Reap. We got in and stayed one more night in Siem Reap and got to hang out with PCV Kelley whose mother was visiting. They invited us to hang out in their beautiful hotel pool and her mom treated us all to Indian food for dinner! That night we all stayed out and danced until we shut down the clubs at 4:30 am. Being as it was close to Khmer New Year, everyone was dancing in the streets between the two main dance clubs, blasting each other with baby powder and spraying each other with water guns, what a festive time of year!

Khmer New Year decorations at my house when I got home

As usual, I was a little anxious about heading back to site after being away with other Americans for so long and having a great vacation come to an end. I took my time on the bike ride home, and when I was about 100 yards from home, one of the cousins spotted me and shouted, “Joel’s home!!!” and everyone began screaming, clapping, and sprinting to my house to welcome me home, it was certainly one of the best welcomes I’ve ever received in my life. The first thing mom said to me was, “Take a shower and eat rice…tonight you’re going dancing!” And so after showering and dancing we all walked over to the Village Chief’s house for a Khmer New Year dance party. Even little Ga’bow was throwing down sick dance moves in a beautiful, blue, open-backed dress! One of the village men randomly showed up in a skirt and a stuffed blouse which was hysterical and he played it up, squirming around as people poked his sides and pinched his butt!

Ga’bow showing off her moves

Dancing at the chief’s house