Friday, April 13, 2012

Malaysia Vacation

I just got back from my trip to Malaysia! It was so great.  I was in Kuala Lumpur for 3 days and then in Penang for 3 days.  I traveled to Kuala Lumpur with my friends Gilbert, Les, and Gilbert's friend Johnny and they were all great to travel with.  We went to the symphony, the mall (it felt like America in there!), and the Batu Caves.  It was really fun. Then I traveled by myself to Penang which is an island. It was interesting to travel by myself outside of Cambodia for the first time. It was a little stressful but ultimately is was a really good experience for me. I met a really nice girl at the hostel in Kuala Lumpur and then met up with her again in Penang.  She was great to do things with and we walked around all of the Georgetown area of Penang and saw all the colonial buildings and Fort Cornwallis.  We also ate AMAZING food. They have a lot of Chinese food and Indian food and I was staying in a hostel really close to both Chinatown and Little India.  When we were in Kuala Lumpur we ate a lot of Western food and we had to get our fix of McDonald's but when I was in Penang I really wanted to eat local food and I'm so glad I did.

The first thing I noticed about Malaysia is the diversity there. There are girls in short shorts and there are girls wearing headscarves and there are Muslims and Christians and Hindus and Indians, and Chinese, and Westerners, every different type of person you could imagine was represented. It was great to see. Cambodia is so homogeneous so going to a place where there are so many different types of people was really awesome.

Two really crazy things happened to me while I was traveling though. First, a girl got mugged right outside of my guesthouse. I heard screaming and then two girls from Whales came in and one had her purse stolen by a guy on a moto.  This girl grabbed onto the front of the moto to get her purse back and was dragged down the street a little ways.  She came in the guest house bruised and scraped up.  It was pretty bad. But she got her bag back with all her stuff still inside of it so her injuries weren't for nothing. And they caught the guy who did it right down the street.  The police came and they wanted the girls to go to the police station to fill out a report but they were really shaken and scared to go so they asked me to come with them. I was shocked, but of course I said yes.  So here I am, at 3am, riding in the back of a Malaysian cop car with the sirens blaring going 100 miles an hour through the streets of Kuala Lumpur.  It was a pretty interesting experience. I waited at the police station for them to fill out their report and then we went back to the guest house.  It was a very exciting night.

The second thing that happened to me was the earthquake.  The day before I was leaving to come back to Cambodia there was an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra and we felt it in Penang.  My whole bunk bed was shaking and I didn't know what it was at first until someone told me it was an earthquake later. They issued a tsunami warning and they closed the bridge off the island for a while but later in the evening they lifted all the warnings and reopened the bridge. No harm done. It was just an exciting experience.  I love natural disasters and I think they are so interesting so it was nice to finally get to experience one.

So that was my trip in a nutshell. I love traveling but I'm so glad to be back home in Cambodia.  It was weird because I couldn't wait to get out of the third world but once I got away from Cambodia I realized how much I missed it.  I finally realized and accepted the fact that Cambodia is my home now.  And it's really nice to be in a place where you know what's going on, you can converse with everyone, you know how to get around easily, and you know exactly what to expect.

New Family, New Outlook

I'm so bad about updating this blog and I apologize.

My life has changed dramatically in the past 2 months. It's been such a positive change and I'm so happy. There are a few major things that have happened that I'd like to share with everyone. First of all, and most importantly, I moved to a new family!!!! Things were starting to feel a little hopeless with my old family and I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to move. I was starting to get into a pretty bad depression and the thoughts of leaving and going back home were becoming more and more prevalent.  My old host family wasn't bad, my host brother and sister were really good people but they just never talked to me and it was very isolating and lonely to be in that house. They also had three very young children that were very loud. I was getting irritable and angry all the time being in the house and I needed to get out for my own mental health.  However, after about 2 months of searching, I finally found my new family. They are related to my old family and they are absolutely wonderful.  I now have a mom again, which I really needed, and all my "siblings" are around my age. I have a host sister that is 21, and two host brothers, 20 and 23 years old. My mom is an amazing woman too. She's helped me so much and I can tell she really cares about me and is happy to have me in the house with them.  She's a crazy woman though.  Not like my mom in training at all.  My new family likes to push my buttons and they get on my nerves a lot but I think that's how family should be. They are definitely not what I pictured a typical Khmer family to be like but I love them just as much as I loved my training family.  We all sit around and talk a lot and my mom likes to get drunk every now and then which is hilarious.  They are just a fun crazy family and I'm constantly laughing and having a good time with them. I feel like I can be myself and that they've really accepted me into their family. It's nice living with people that you know have your back.  I could probably go on and on about them because in the 2 months I've lived with them so many funny/crazy/weird things have happened that I could talk about but I'll cut this short and just let you know that I am so happy with this new family.  No matter how much they annoy me and drive me up the wall, I'm so glad and I feel so lucky that things worked out and I'm in such a great environment now.

Also, in this new house, my room is huge, I have wifi, a refrigerator, my own bathroom, and an awesome fan. I'm living the high life in Cambodia. I almost feel a little guilty because I probably live better than most volunteers AND I'm in a city with a ton of Western conveniences.  But I feel so lucky and so blessed.

Another big thing that has happened is that I've lost 26 pounds and counting! All my clothes are too big for me now and I'm going to have to get them tailored.  It's such an amazing feeling.  I just hope it keeps going so that by the time I come back to America I'll be able to surprise everyone.  I'm finally starting to look in the mirror and see myself as beautiful. However, it's a little scary to be getting down to a weight that I haven't been since freshman year of high school.  The security blanket is finally being shed. This is all pretty new to me but I'm just so happy that I'm just going with it.

So overall, my life is going fantastically and I'm happier than I have been since training.  The only thing I'm a little bummed about is my work.  I haven't taught in so long, there are so many random holidays that keep preventing me from teaching and I feel like a slacker. I'm not used to having so much free time. Hopefully when school starts back up I'll get up the motivation to work again and give the students my full attention like they deserve. I need to find some other things to occupy my time as well.  I really want to be productive and make a difference and so far I've been slacking. But now that I'm in a good place with my family and my environment I think I can start doing some good work. Cambodia deserves my best and I intend to give it.