It's amazing how quickly you get over your fears when you have no other choice. Back in the states I was terrified of geckos. TERRIFIED. I would have a panic attack anytime I saw one and I wouldn't be able to go near them. Here in Cambodia, they are EVERYWHERE. They cover the walls on restaurants and outside our door and one sneaky little fellow snuck into our room. Normally I would have freaked out but here I'm just like "Ok sweet, now we have a pet gecko, let's name him!" So I am the proud co-owner of a friendly gecko named Gordie.
On another note, I had a pretty sad day today. It was just a few little things that all added up and put me in a funky mood. My sampot (traditional khmer skirt) wasn't made of the fabric that I bought. I think it got switched with someone but whatever, I can get over that. I also found out that I'll be with a host family for training (which is 9 weeks) and they actually wanted a boy. And they are stuck with me. I feel bad that they didn't get what they wanted. And our language classes are 4 hours a day and today we had a 2 hour language class and I nearly passed out from boredom and exhaustion. And I have to shower outside with an outdoor bathroom and no electricity. I have to power everything from a car battery. It'll be ok though. It bummed me out today to find out all that stuff but I just need a positive attitude and get over it.
There are some positives though. I'm going to have 2 dogs, 2 cows, and 2 pigs though! So that's exciting and going to be interesting. I have the same language teacher as I have had for the past 2 days and he's super funny and cool. His name is Sam-on. Also, I'm in the district town that has a gas station with air conditioning and apparently they have cookies too! It's really bad that I'm getting so incredibly excited about cookies and air con. Also on the bright side, this country is absolutely beautiful. The scenery is so pretty, the people are really nice and helpful and willing to work with me and my awful pronunciation (more like butchering) of their language. My mouth just doesn't make certain noises that they can make, and they have about 20 words that all sound the same to my ears. Another positive, we found a place that make french fries that are slammin'. We call this place the Non-Brothel because there was a K2 (the 2nd generation of volunteers here, I am a K5) and for the longest time the K2s thought that this place was a brothel. Turns out it's not. Thank goodness because it has awesome fries. AND they have something called "Golden Fried Chicken" (a KFC knockoff) and it has pizza and fried chicken so I was in heaven tonight. Although the pizza tasted like nasty microwave pizza it seemed like the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. After finding legit chicken talons in my ginger chicken the other day, pizza, even nasty pizza, was heaven to me. Traditional Khmer food doesn't include cheese. They just don't have it. So finding a place to get anything with cheese on it is a gold mine. And they have amazing iced coffee stuff. So not all the food here is inedible. But I will definitely be losing weight here. They say that girls usually gain weight and boys lose weight but I'm going to make a conscious effort during training to lose weight and we'll see how much I can lose in 9 weeks.
Overall, I'm having a great experience so far. One week down! It's going to be a great adventure and I'm sure I'll have some fantastic stories to tell. Oh, and tomorrow we are going to the wat (pagoda) and we are getting blessed by the monks which involves sprinkling water and flowers over us and I'm super happy about that. We have to sit in a really uncomfortable position for a long period of time but the awesomeness of the experience will outweigh the discomfort I'm sure.
I'm posting my address so if anyone wants to send me a package or a letter (i LOVE letters) you can send it to me and I'll be able to get it. And if anyone has questions about life here I would love to answer them. Life is so different in many aspects and in other ways it is surprisingly similar to life in America. I probably won't be able to post much during the next 9 weeks because I'll be in intense training and not have internet access so this is the last time I'll be able to post until then. I'll definitely keep a journal during training so I'll post what I wrote when I get done with training.
I miss everyone so much!
Love yal
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