Missing the comforts of home

Hello all you readers of my blog!  And my "readers" I of course mean the 6 of you that actually read this.  Maybe 7.  On a good day.  Anyway, my life is going pretty steadily right now.  I haven't had to teach for the past 2 weeks.  Chinese New Year took out 3 days of school, the day after hardly anyone showed up so I went home early, and I only had to teach for 2 hours on Friday.  This week they are doing testing all week so I didn't have to show up for that either.  And next week, Tuesday is a holiday.  SO MUCH FREE TIME.  This free time is both a blessing and a curse.  On one hand I have a lot of free time to read extremely long books in very short amounts of time.  On the other hand, I read all the good books and now I'm stuck with shitty ones.  I mean, bad ones...sorry Mom.  I get to sleep in until whenever I want to, but when I wake up I have absolutely nothing to do other than read copious amounts of literature.  And not anything that will expand my mind or anything.  I don't want to waste my free time learning stuff.  That would just be silly.  I want to read trashy romances and sci fi books to alleviate the sucky-ness of both the boring-ness and lack of love in my life. So to sum up this paragraph of rambling, I've been reading a lot lately. 


I'd like to make a list of things that I miss from back home.  So I will.
1. People having the same manner standards that I do.  I miss it in the U.S. when it's very rude to ask people how much they weigh.  It's not rude here to ask, it just gets on my nerves.  And when the children will follow you around screaming HELLO at the top of their lungs and their parents think it's funny.  In America, if your kid is being obnoxious, you'd probably take it away and apologize.  Nope, not here.  Also, when I'm walking down the street, people like to ask if I want a tuk tuk or a moto.  Instead of just letting me walk by when I say no, they stand in my way, try to talk to me, then when I don't, they make jokes to their friends about me.  Not polite in America, totally acceptable here.  I'm not saying that I think it's wrong.  It's just annoying to me because I've been brought up differently.  It's just their cultural norm to do things the way they do it and I understand that but it doesn't mean I can't get annoyed with it all the same.


2. Having a police force I can trust.  I've never had to deal with police in America, except for when I got my one speeding ticket.  But I know that if I was ever in danger, if I ever got in a car accident, etc, they would be there to help.  Here it's not the same story.  If you get into an accident here they'll show up, but no matter what happened it's always the foreigner's fault.  You could be stopped at a stop light and someone rams into you from behind and it's your fault.  Their reasoning "If you weren't in this country, the accident wouldn't have happened".  It's completely true and logical, but complete bullshit too.  I've heard that this happens from several different sources but have never experienced it, thank goodness. But it's nice to know that if i'm on my bike and I get hit by a moto or a car driven by a Khmer person, I'm going to have to pay for all damages.  Sorry, if this sounds a bit bitter.  It's just they way it works, or so I've heard.  Also, you can drive at night without headlights and no one says a word, but driving during the day with your headlights on will cost you $1.25 in fines.  One of my friends got pulled over on his moto for driving with his headlights on during the day.  Just another example of ridiculous laws that the police here enforce.  Oh well, I just hope I never have to deal with them. Corruption is very real and it can be very dangerous for a foreigner. 


3. I miss being able to earn my own money.  It's difficult to know that no matter how hard to work, you will never get more money.  It's difficult when you've always been able to afford the things you want and if there was something you couldn't afford, you could work harder, put in more hours, find some outside work, etc, to get the thing you want.  Here, I can't do that.  It's the same small allowance every month and you have to pull from outside money if you ever want to do more.  I've been very fortunate that my parents have been supporting me while I'm here but I don't want to have to rely on them.  Oh well, I guess I just need to get better with my money and learn to live even more modestly. 


4. I miss training.  I miss being around all my friends and other people who are going through the same thing as I am and being able to talk to them and hang out with them on a daily basis.  It's hard to be alone, especially in the city that I'm placed in.  I feel very isolated.  I don't fit in with the tourists but I don't fit in with the people that live here either.  It's very lonely sometimes.  Hopefully that'll be alleviated a little bit by my new family.  Right now my family has stopped talking to me completely and we only exchange maybe 2 sentences a day.  It's very frustrating and depressing to be at home now.  So I try to get out of the house as much as possible. I feel like this post is getting to be a downer.  I'll try to wrap it up soon.


5. Along the lines of missing training, I miss my training host family.  They mean so much to me still.  I feel so guilty that I haven't gotten a chance to go back and see them yet.  I was so spoiled there and I absolutely love them.  In those 2 months that I lived there they showed me so much love and my host mom especially made me feel like part of the family.  I've been living with this new family at site for 4 months now and I don't feel even the tiniest bit of love on their part.  I don't feel like part of the family and I don't think they know how to make me part of the family.  I'm moving to a new host family with a mom that reminds me of my training host mom so I hope that this new family will be better.  The new house will be a downgrade but I'm willing to give up my comforts that I have now in order to have a family that accepts me and treats me like one of their own.  


Some other things I miss include
Air conditioning
BAKING CUPCAKES!!!!
good spaghetti
watching tv
the YMCA
not eating rice for every meal.


Oh my goodness...the rice.  Every time lunch or dinner rolls around I'm dreading eating.  The amounts of rice i've consumed in the past 6 months has been insane.  I hate it.  I wish I never had to eat rice ever again.  I'm going through a major rejection phase of it.  It makes me want to cry looking at it.  I wish rice would die.  Even talking about eating it is making me angry.  So I'll stop.


So I realize that this is sort of a negative blog post but I promise they won't all be like this.  There are many things I do like about site and I definitely want to be here.  I miss the comforts of home and I miss my family and friends a lot but I know that this is where I should be and where I need to be.  I hope I can find a productive routine to get into and start to feel a little bit happier about my service.  My vacation in April to Malaysia will definitely help.  


I'm going to Phnom Penh this weekend so that should be fun.  I'll keep you updated! 

Chinese New Year - Karaoke Bar

 So Chinese New Year was last week.  Most of it was uneventful but there were a few moments of interesting-ness.  On Sunday my host brother slaughtered 2 chickens in the morning to make soup with later, and then they prepared a lot of food and left it out to the ancestors or something.  All I know is that a ton of food was on the floor for a long time while the incense burned.  And I almost died. The incense was so strong and they burned about 20-30 sticks of it at the same time.  I feel like they were trying to smoke me out of the house.  I woke up and my eyes were watering and something smelled funny and the longer I stayed in my room, the more pain I was in.  I finally left my room and saw the food on the floor and the incense so I decided to stay away from it for a while.  The house finally aired out and then it was time to eat all the food that had just been sitting on the floor getting cold for an hour. And this was food that should be eaten hot....room temperature chicken...not good. and probably not healthy either. Oh well,  I eat a lot of questionable things in this country.  If I was picky about the health standards of everything I eat, I'd never have anything to eat.  So we ate and we started drinking beer. I had about 3 or 4 at home....it was 11am.  Don't judge, everyone else was doing it too.  Then they all got tired and went for their afternoon nap and I wasn't tired so I went to go get internet.  On my way, I walked by a restaurant that I eat at sometimes.  There were tons of people there and they all called me over to come sit with them.  I politely said no but one woman grabbed my arm and pulled me down to sit with them so I felt like i had to.  Then they gave me a beer.  Then they gave me three more.  So I was on my 7th beer at this point and I think I got a Khmer boyfriend during this whole thing.  They would just talk to me in Khmer, laugh, blabber on some more, and then sometimes someone would translate a little for me but not usually.  My Khmer boyfriend spoke a lot of English and he convinced himself by the end of me being there that I was going to be his girlfriend.  Crazy Khmer boys.  So I eventually left and when I came back later they were all drunk and had passed out.  The next day, I saw them again, and they called me this time.  They kept asking when I was coming back.  I told them i didn't know and they kept saying that they were going to sing and dance.  At this point I really wanted to go sing and dance with them.  I was thinking we'd go to a bar or a Khmer club and do these things and I would be around some women that I trusted so it would be ok for me to go and I really wanted to integrate more. This was my chance.  I finally went back and they said they were going to Karaoke.  I was a little worried but I decided I needed to integrate and do this with them and I'd probably have a good time.  Boy was I wrong.  I was miserable the whole time.  We went to this place and you rent a room and you and all the people you come with go in and pick songs to sing.  They are all soooooooooo slow and boring and khmer.  And they kept pressuring me to dance but I can't dance to something that slow.  The music was just awful.  And there was a creepy old guy sitting next to me that would keep making me carry his lap top bag around and he would just say things to me that made me think he was just an ass.  He actually said "You have a beautiful face, too bad you're so fat" and then started talking to me about genetically modified organisms and the green revolution.  I have no idea why.  And he made me read the letter he got about getting a Japanese visa.  Like I cared about any of this.  He was probably just thinking he was impressing me by all of this but it just made me extremely ticked off. And then he sang a terrible song to me in English and that was my cue to make up an excuse to leave.  So i told them that i had to go talk to my mom in America and I got the heck out of there.  I walked home and I've never felt so relieved to be out of a place.  Note to self: Never NEVER go to a karaoke bar.  Oh, and all the Khmer people kept calling me hot dog because they thought that's what my name sounded like and they can't pronounce my real name so they decided this would be funny.  I was not amused.  Here are some pictures of me and the people I went with.  Also a note: Khmer men should not touch women, at all, but they do it to me because they think they can get away with it.  I won't be letting it happen anymore.  

This is the woman I went with.  She's very nice and she definitely likes to drink.

This is the creepy guy who kept making me carry his bags and talked about the Green Revolution.  So creepy. During this picture he tried to sniff kiss my cheek.  So odd.  He should not be touching me.  I should have given him a good smack. 

One of the feet of the chicken in my Chinese New Year soup.  Looks delicious right?   

This was the karaoke room.

Karaoke room

Khmers, Russians, and Policeman, OH MY!

I have a lot of updates and stories for you but I won't write them all one at a time so you won't be stuck reading an obnoxiously long blog post.  This one will be long enough as it is. This first story happened yesterday.  It is a testament to how ineffectual and corrupt the police are in this country.   This is the story as I have come to understand it. I was getting bits and pieces from people while it was going on and obviously I'm never going to know exactly what happened from start to finish but I did witness some of it myself so I'll tell you the story as it has been relayed to me and you can decide for yourself.


So a Russian guy walks into a moto shop.  He already rented a moto from these people but it trying to exchange it for another one.  The owner says that there were 2 liters of gas in the tank and now they were asking for money for it (I originally heard the story that the Russian brought the bike back and it was damaged or broken in some way and he refused to pay for it or take responsibility but it was later revised to the gas story).  Apparently the Russian guy refused to pay and the Khmer man who owns the shop said they wouldn't give him his passport back if he didn't pay.  Things started getting heated I assume because soon punches were being thrown (I don't know who threw the first punch though) and the Khmer people closed the door of the shop and locked him in and took out an iron wrench and began beating the Russian.  This is when I started watching and a huge crowd formed around this shop.  I mean HUGE.


So after this point I pretty much know what happens for sure, the starts of this fight were just speculation from other people but at the point when he was locked in the shop and getting beat with an iron wrench is when I started witnessing the event. His girlfriend was outside the shop going trying to do something because her boyfriend was getting the shit beat out of him.  Finally, about 5-10 minutes went by and the cops finally came and made the Khmer people open the door of the shop.  When they opened the door, the wife of the owner tried holding the Russian back from running and the Russian out of instinct or because he was still scared he was being beaten or out of anger, hit the wife in the arm pretty hard.  So then the police came and were probably trying to sort things out.  The moto that the Russian initially brought back was smashed to pieces in the shop, I don't know if it was the Khmer people that did that while they were beating the Russian or if the Russian did it or a combination of the two things.  And the Khmer people started telling the police the Russian was trying to steal the moto and that the Russian threatened to come into their house and break everything in it but I'm not sure about the truth in this because this man is known to not be a good person.  So the police where there but then the owner's son drove up on his moto and apparently this guy is a psycho.  So he comes in and starts to get fired up and then about 8 Khmer men start beating on the Russian guy again, in front of everyone, with the police standing right there, in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The police couldn't do anything to stop it.  It lasted about 2 minutes or so before the police finally stopped it.  The Russian guy pretty much ran away and went to a doctor's office because he now had a huge gash over his eyebrow and welts and bruises and scratches all over his body from the iron wrench.


He was in the doctor's office for about 2 minutes and went next door to the police station.  He was is the police station for hours.  We heard from someone there that the Russian guy now had to pay 500 dollars to the owner of the shop.  By the way, the owner and all the people that beat the guy weren't arrested or even taken to the police station.   So this Russian guy gets beat, for whatever reason, by multiple people who have a weapon and have locked him in their shop and then beat him again out on the street where no less than 100 people saw and the police were standing right there, and the Russian has to pay 500 dollars to the Khmer people who beat him and the Khmer people are unaffected but 500 dollars richer. This doesn't seem right to me.


Most of this story is just guesses of what happened and gossip around the incident so I wouldn't believe everything but I did see this guy get jumped in front of the police by 8 Khmer men, I saw his bruises and wounds when he left, and I saw him go into the police station and then finally leave hours and hours later. I also saw the smashed moto and I saw the situation outside when he was locked inside the building getting beaten.  So those are the things I know for sure.


 Also, a lot of other Russians showed up at the scene after the first Russian guy left.  They looked around and hopped on their moto and left.  Apparently, according to some of the people that I hang out with, the Russian mafia is a big thing here.  You don't mess with the Russians here. They have tons of money and are scary mafia people that will kill and do anything to protect their own.  I don't know how much of that is truth either.  There do seem to be a lot of Russians and they seem to have money but I don't know about the whole mafia underground cartel thing.  And they said the police here were scared of the Russians and won't get in their way. So according to the people I hang out with, this isn't over.  The Russians will do something to retaliate.  But I'm not so convinced.  Oh well.  We'll see. I'm putting some pictures on here of the scene yesterday.  It amazed me how BIG the crowd got.  It was huge!  

This was the crowd right before the Khmer men beat up the Russian the second time.  They blocked off almost 6 lanes of traffic.  And the 2 police officers did nothing to break up the crowd.  They stayed there for a good 45 minutes total.  Insanity.

Well that's my story.  I'll be posting more shortly so stay tuned!  This was the most interesting thing to happen to me in months. 

Some Observations and an Update on Life

These are some observations I've made recently that I would like to share.


- Burning trash smells like weed - So, no, all my neighbors are not drug users, they are just getting rid of their trash.  I'm not sure which is better though, me inhaling all the burning trash and plastic fumes around my house or disposing of it the way my family does, which is by throwing it into the creek in front of our house.  So I'm living in front of a landfill AND inhaling toxic fumes.  Double win.


-If I randomly take 2 pieces of clothing and put it on in the morning, I'm usually much more beautiful than when i carefully plan an outfit that I think looks cute.  No matter what, it's always the tackiest clothes and hairstyles that I always get the most compliments on by my students and co-workers.  I've stopped trying.  Today I wore my hair in braided pig tails (I look like a crazy 5 year old) and I put on a floor length skirt and a polo and a random belt.  SO BEAUTIFUL.  According to them at least.  So I'm going to get dressed with my eyes closed from now on to maximize the "beauty".  


- ANGRY BIRDS are taking over the world.  Everything here is angry birds.  I was one heartbeat away from buying a pair of flats that had angry birds on it.  I had my students write their own advertisements and over half of them were just pictures of angry birds. I doubt most of them have ever even played the darn game. They just have all the paraphernalia.


-  Students here can sing all the words to an Akon song, but yet can't understand me when I ask "What is your name?"  I don't get it.


Those are just some of many things I've noticed here.  Overall though, I'm loving it.  I'm starting to get used to living with my new host family (which probably will never live up to the awesomeness of my old one but they set the bar high) and my co-teachers and I are bonding.  My 2 co-teachers, Socheath and Dany (male and female) are fantastic.  They are always there to help me out and teach me how things work and help me with my Khmer.  It's really great to have them around.  AND I might start teaching at the University near my house soon!  College professor at age 20! I've also started bonding with some of my community members more which is nice.  I made friends with the bon chaio (the most delicious thing here) lady.  I was sitting at her stand for a while and a lot of people were there and they kept telling me how beautiful my skin was and proceeded to ask me how much I weighed (which is a completely normal question for them) and when I said that I didn't know how many kilos they got into an argument with each other in front of me about how much I weighed.  It's an interesting site to see when 5 people are surrounding you guessing and arguing about how much you probably weigh.  No worries though, at least they didn't force me to get on the rice scale (which has happened to many volunteers).  But they summed it all up by telling me how beautiful I was and changing the subject to how many times a day I shower in this country. lol.  The interesting conversation topics never stop. 


That's about it for now.  I'll let you know if something noteworthy happens. 

Some Pictures

 This is my sister from training. She lived in Phnom Penh but would come to visit every now and then.  Her English was fantastic and it was so nice to have her around.

 This is my mom from training.  She was absolutely wonderful.  She's an amazing woman.

 This was my tree.  My host brother carved my name into it.  Well, they carved what they thought was my name, "Hether".  I almost cried when I saw it.

 This was during swear in.  I love that shirt more than any other possession in the world. 

This was my language group.  My LCF (language and cross cultural facilitator) Savin (the one in the middle) was the most amazing Khmer teacher.

These are my friends and my first LCF Sam On that was my first Khmer teacher here.  He was hilarious and tons of fun.

 This was the day that I climbed the mountain.  It was a pain in the butt to climb but it was so rewarding once we got up there. From where I was sitting I could see Vietnam. And I couldn't have climbed up this mountain without the help of my friends who encouraged me the entire way. 

These are my two best friends and some little kid that we stole to be in this picture.  Behind us is the view that I got to see everyday when I left the house.  It was amazing.

My first Khmer wedding

So I went to my first Khmer wedding.  I didn’t actually go to the wedding ceremony part but from what I’ve heard it’s not that exciting.  You just wait around while the bride and groom change outfits 20 times while performing various small pieces of the ceremony.   But I went to the reception part.  I was seated at a table full of people I did not know and proceeded to not talk to the people at all for the entire duration of the 6 course dinner.  The guy who was sitting next to me though did talk to me to find out if I spoke Khmer and then I told him I was a teacher here and he knew I worked for Peace Corps.  He actually works for the Provincial Office of Education, Youth, and Sports (POEYS) in Takeo so he works where we did training.  We would go to the POEYS every week during training and he knew my training village and one of the people who was our lead Khmer teacher.  Small world.  Anyway, we ate  a delicious meal which was served in about 6 courses and all of which were amazing.  The Khmer people laughed at me when I used chopsticks though because I guess they think foreigners are incapable of using them but I proved them wrong by masterfully using them throughout the meal (except for one time when I was trying to pick up something round and it just wasn’t working so I stabbed it with one of the chopsticks and ate it…they got a kick out of that).  After the meal, everyone at my table got up and left. So my host dad, who finally acknowledged that I was there, brought me over and sat me with some women.  They were awesome.  They treated me like I was an idiot and didn’t know how to do anything which is perfect.  I need some people taking care of me and making sure I’m doing things right.  They were leading me around telling me what I should be doing and it reminded me of my training mom which was nice.  My new host family leaves me pretty much alone and thinks I can do everything on my own which is good in some respects but I like it better when they help me so I can make sure I’m doing things right and not making an idiot of myself.   I guess I’ve never really been without a mom.  During my senior year of high school I didn’t live with my real mom but I lived with my friend’s family and her mom treated me like one of her children so I had a mom then.  When I went to college my mom lived 20 minutes away so I had her whenever I needed her.  During training my mom treated me like one of her children and loved me like one of her children so I had that, but now my new mom is only 28 so she’s not really a mom to me and, like I said before, they leave me alone for the most part. So I no longer have a mom.  I guess I need to grow up and be a big kid now but I’m only 20.  I feel like I’m entitled to a little bit more mommy time.  Oh well, back to the wedding story.  The best part is coming up so don’t stop reading.  We threw flowers at the bride and her father as they walked down and aisle.  Well, I threw flowers, most people pelted the flowers full force into the bride’s face.  I guess they thought it was funny but it was like this poor bride was running the gauntlet.  She was being attacked with these flowers.  Anyway, we did that and then the bride and groom walked around a table with fruit a few times and then they fed fruit to the bride’s parents and then fed fruit to the groom’s parents and then fed fruit to each other, hugged, and then kissed on the cheek.  All the while, the women who my dad sat me with had left and they were replaced by this super creepy guy that teaches at the same school I teach at.  He had talked to me before but tonight he decided he was going to follow me around the rest of the night.  So I went back to sit near my host dad and he sat with me and he was telling me things like “You are dressed like a Cambodian woman tonight.  I’ve never seen a foreigner wear Khmer clothes like you do.  You look like a real Cambodian girl…but prettier”.  So this is when he started getting uber creepy.  He put his hand on my leg which is really uncommon and forward for a Khmer person.  Girls and boys should not touch at all and even handshakes can be a little too much physical contact between a girl and a guy.  However, on a side note, touching within the same sex is completely ok.  The boys here touch all over each other.  I look at them and think they are all gay because they all wear super tight pants and glittery flowery shirts.  But that’s just the way the guys here dress and act.  The girls are a little touchy feely, especially older women touching me which I have addressed in a previous post.  But not to the extent that the boys touch each other.  Ok, so back to my story, this guy was being really creepy and then he asked me to dance and everyone around me told me I should go do it so I did.  It was really easy to get the hang of dancing.  The music is awful and the dances are repetitive and boring but it was fun nonetheless.  Everyone just dances in a circle so I wasn’t one on one with the creepy guy…until the song changed.  Then I was facing him dancing and it was super weird.  While we were dancing around the fruit table he picked up a pumpkin and told me that the pumpkin represents the king.  I just nodded and smiled.  Then he pointed to the eggplant and asked if I knew what that represents.  I didn’t know but I knew that I didn’t want to know.  I apologize in advance for the language I’m about to use but he leaned in and whispered “It means a dick”.  That would be out of line for anyone to say to someone they hardly know but it’s even worse in this culture. I don’t even know this guy’s name.  So I stopped dancing with him as soon as I could and just then my dad was leaving so I had a nice out.  My tuk tuk driver was sitting outside for me (this guy is so awesome, I might post about him later) and I got in and went home.  I called my friend immediately to tell him about the craziness and while I was on the phone talking about the creepy guy guess who rides up next to my tuk tuk and starts trying to talk to me while we’re moving…that’s right…the creepy guy.  Then he finally drove off and said goodnight.  Crazy wedding night. 

From Training to Site Placement

So far I have completed 9 weeks of training and living with a host family, been sworn in as a volunteer, and spent my first 2 weeks at my permanent site.  I’m approaching the 3 month mark of my service.  As of right now my date of return will be no later than October 3, 2013.  I have so much to share with all of you and I wish that you could be here to experience these things with me.  But in lieu of that I will just give you a brief (well, brief-ish) account of the last three months.

When I first got here I was jet lagged from over 2 days of traveling without much sleep.  The first day we got in we were already in meetings and orientations and tours of the city.  I really like Phnom Penh but at that moment in time I liked sleep so much more.  We only spent 2 days in Phnom Penh and then we headed to Takeo province.  We stayed in the provincial town for about 5 days and did a whole bunch of training things to get us ready to go our training villages.  So in less than one week of being in the country we were on our way to go live with a Khmer host family.  By the way, Khmer is actually pronounced K’mai but everyone spells it Khmer.  I don’t know how it came to be spelled so much differently than it is said but phonetics in this country are all notoriously bad.  So I found out beforehand that my host family did not have running water or electricity and that they actually wanted a boy.  I also found out that they have 4 cows, 3 dogs, and tons of chickens.  Needless to say I was less than thrilled at this news.  So I went to my family and they don’t speak a word of English.  Well, my 17 year old brother could say a few things here and there but nothing more advanced than “My name is…” and “I am …. years old”.  So I met my new mom (for future reference I will be referring to her as my mom and the guys that I lived with as my brothers just because it is easier to talk about my family that way).  I got blessed by the monks at the Wat which was cool but they make you sit in a super uncomfortable position for an extended period of time.  So anyway, I met my mom and we went home with another trainee’s family that lived next to my family.  My brother somehow managed to fit both of our bikes on the back of his little moto and drove 4 kilometers home with them.  It was one of the funniest sites I had ever seen.  So that night was perhaps the most awkward night of my life.  My family was sort of strange and they wanted me to eat before they did.  It was really uncomfortable.  And then I had to figure out how to take a bucket shower.  So my mom was just blabbering on and on explaining everything to me while I was just nodding my head and smiling for most of it. She did know what “I don’t know” means so I would just say that and laugh every few minutes.  But I finally figured out how to take a bucket shower and that night my brother and my mom basically hot-wired a fan connected to a car battery so that I could have a fan at night. It was the sweetest thing.  And my brother almost got electrocuted while doing it, that part wasn’t sweet, but the sentiment was.  And when I say that I had no electricity I don’t mean we didn’t have light.  At night they would hook up the lights to the car battery so we had 4 or 5 lights that worked throughout the house area.  So at first I was really bummed about the house I got because most people had electricity and most people had at least one family member that spoke a little English and most people had a better house than I did but all of my disappointments about my house and family were quickly forgotten.  I fell in love with my family and my house there.  They are amazing people and my mom there is an amazing woman.  She did so much for me during my stay there.  I had a mom and 2 brothers ages 17 and 19 that lived in the house. I also had a sister that lived in Phnom Penh and one that lived in the provincial town in Takeo.  Both of the sisters came to visit a few times and they were awesome too.  I lived in the middle of rice fields and outside my window I had coconut trees and a view of the mountains in the background.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The view from my front door was amazing too. I can deal with living in a shack on stilts as long as I can have that view every day.  My mom quickly discovered what food I liked and what I didn’t and she started feeding me really really good food.  Throughout my entire stay there I still ate first and alone but it became less awkward and time went on although I think I’m the only trainee whose family did that.   I asked them again and again to eat with me but I think the respect and hospitality is so ingrained in them that they considered me a guest the entire time I was there and wanted me to eat first to make sure that I got enough to eat.  The Khmer people have a preoccupation with food.  My mom would try so hard to force me to eat bowl after bowl of rice, and by the way, we eat rice at EVERY meal.  No joke. Every single one. There would be the rare exception when my mom would make me fried noodles (pretty much ramen noodles) for breakfast but that’s it.  And they don’t want you to eat just one bowl of rice, they want you to eat six.  And soup. And meat.  And vegetables.  They seem to compete with other families on how much their foreigner can eat. It’s insane.  My mom was never happy with the amount of food I eat and my brothers would always make fun of me only eating a little. I don’t see how these Khmer boys can force down so much food and still be so tiny!  

So now for my cat story.  There was a tiny cat that showed up at our house one day and my mom started to feed it and it was the cutest kitten ever.  One morning I woke up with it curled up in my bathroom.  It was adorable.  So one day I come home and my brother is sitting in the hammock (which are god’s gift to man, I’m certain) and he says “The cat is dead”.  I’m shocked.  I asked him what happened and he really didn’t understand me but explained in Khmer what happened.  The dogs ate my cat. I was devastated.  I almost cried! He seemed to think it was funny though.  I guess things like that happen all the time.  Maybe if my family fed the dogs and they weren’t so emaciated they wouldn’t have eaten my cat so I don’t know if I can really blame the dogs but it was a sad situation all around.  Just another day in Cambodia.  Don’t worry, I have much happier stories too.

Now a word about grandmas.  In Cambodia they are called yeeys…or yays…however you want to spell it.  They pretty much run the house.  No one messes with the yeeys.  They are hardcore ladies that wouldn’t hesitate to cut you if you cross them.  Probably because they all survived the Khmer Rouge which makes you pretty much a badass to begin with.  These women usually have no teeth, no hair, babble incoherently at you and they walk around doing whatever they want.  Some choose to walk around naked.  But no one says anything because you just don’t mess with them.  My yeey came around a few times.  My yeey was younger than most.  She came up to me and started grabbing me all over.  The old ladies tend to do that.  I think it’s because they want to know if a white person feels the same as a Khmer person or maybe they think I look extra squishy so they want to test the theory for themselves.  I really don’t mind though.  After a few weeks of not being touched by anyone we were all a little starved for affection so I take it where I can. My yeey was awesome.  I saw her again during Pchum Ben (a 3 day holiday here) and I went to the Wat with her. 

Here’s my Wat story.  We went to the Wat and for some reason everyone there thought it was hilarious that I rode my bike there.  Peace Corps doesn’t allow us to ride on motos  (which EVERYONE in Cambodia drives) so we all are issued bikes and told to deal with it.  Some families have cars but not usually the ones we tend to live with.  Peace Corps doesn’t like to put you with a really wealthy family because they don’t want us to be ostentatious.  They want us to live with a modest family.  Of course the family has to have some qualifications in order to house a volunteer but they aren’t very high standards.  Anyway, we went into the Wat and I was immediately surrounded by people.  There was a group of 10-20 kids that would follow me around but every time I tried to talk to one of them or ask their name they would run away.  It was the craziest thing.  Then I went with my yeey to visit the other old ladies that live at the Wat who are basically the equivalent of nuns but for Buddhism.  Oh, I forgot to mention, pretty much everyone in this country is Buddhist and so was my training host family and the Wat is the Khmer word for Pagoda.  So when I went to see these old ladies I got groped more than I ever have in my whole life.  They like to grab my butt for some reason and squeeze my arms and then I sat down and one old lady started to tickle my feet.  So I moved my feet to the other side and she followed and continued to tickle my feet.  This went on for a good 20 minutes until my mom saved me and we went to go give gifts to the monks.  There was a lot of chanting while sitting in an uncomfortable position for a long period of time.  Then they had me give something to the monk (which has to be done in a certain way which I wasn’t aware of so I think I pissed off a monk if that’s even possible and everyone had a good laugh about it) and we lit incense and candles and it was a big thing.  All the people at the Wat were really interested in me and they were all really nice and told me that my Khmer language skills were very good.  I don’t think a foreigner has ever been to their Wat before.  We all had classes in a Wat everyday but that Wat was in the middle of town and the Wat that my family went to was way out in the country.  But it was definitely a notable experience.

In the last few days of my stay with my training host family I really bonded with them. I was finally acclimated to living there and taking bucket showers (I’m the bucket shower master now) and using a squat toilet and not having electricity.  And my mom and I got into a routine.  Even though we don’t speak each other’s language we still managed to communicate and she learned how I like to do my laundry and how I liked to eat and spend my time.  We came to so many mutual understandings without even speaking.  We spent so many nights sitting under the house with the dictionary trying to have a conversation and that’s when I bonded with her the most. The last few weeks I was there were so smooth.  It felt like home. The last day there I gave them gifts and my mom gave me a shirt and a sampot (traditional khmer skirt) that she had sewn for me.  It was really sweet.  My family is very poor rice farmers and yet they still gave me all that they could and I was touched more than I can ever say.  Like I said before, my mom is amazing and caring and loving.  I found out that she had survived the Khmer Rouge as well.  She was very young when they were in power but she still has memories of the soldiers forcing her to do manual labor and she is deathly afraid of earthworms (because the earthworms here are monstrous) and they would make her step on them with her bare feet while she worked even though she told the soldiers she was scared.  It was hard not to cry when she was telling this story.  It was a very powerful moment and I think that also helped us get closer.  She always made sure that I was as comfortable and as happy as possible.  When I left she started crying which made me start crying and she gave me a hug (which Khmer people don’t normally do.  Hugging isn’t really part of their culture) which was really awkward because she’s probably 4’9’’ and I’m 5’6’’.  And she gave me a kiss.  Khmer kisses are super weird though.  They don’t kiss with their lips.  I’ve actually never seen anyone kiss each other on the lips here.  Maybe some of the younger couples do it but I haven’t seen it yet.  The kisses that they give are on the cheek and they aren’t so much kisses as they are sniffs.  They put their nose up to your cheek and give you a big sniff.  It’s super weird. So I got one of those on each cheek.  Well only one made it on my cheek after I bent down a little because the first one ended up on my neck because she’s so short. It was a really sad goodbye but I plan on visiting her a lot during my service.  Plus, her food is a lot more delicious than my new mom’s food.  So that’s reason enough to go back for visits. 

So now about the other parts of training.  We spent 3-4 hours a day learning the language and about 3 hours doing technical training and learning more about safety and the culture.  During week 5 we had practicum where we taught Khmer students in the classroom.  We were supposed to be teaching 10^th graders but our group somehow got a bunch of 7^th -9^th graders with absolutely no English skills so that was definitely a challenge.  But it all turned out ok in the end.  Sometimes the training sessions were monotonous and boring but some of them were very helpful.  It was like a 9 week crash course in everything you need to know to be a teacher and a 9 week language bootcamp.  At the end we had to have a language proficiency interview to determine if your language skills are good enough for you to be on your own at site.  I got a novice high which is the score we needed to get in order to pass.  We’ll have the same interview a few more times during our service to keep checking our language progress.  Training itself was not awful but it wasn’t always the most exciting thing in the world.  The best part about it was the friends I made.

I have 2 best friends here.  Gilbert and Les.  You’ll never guess what Les’s last name is…..it’s Miles.  Yes, that’s right, my best friend’s name is Les Miles.  No joke.  He’s from Iowa.  And Gilbert is one step away from being a GQ model.  They are what got me through training. It’s weird to have bonded so quickly with everyone.  We’ve only known each other for a few months and already I know that they will probably be in a part of my life for the rest of my life.  I guess it’s a combination of mutual goals, similar backgrounds, and being stuck with the same people for 9 weeks straight that builds such close bonds.

After training we went to Phnom Penh to do studious and cultural things that enriched our minds…hahaha….not really, we went there to party.  This was the weekend when we were going to swear-in as volunteers and finally not be trainees anymore. So we had a good 4 days of celebration.  I got an awesome shirt made (it’s blingtastic).  There are pictures of it on my facebook if you’d like to see it.  I love it.  It’s so Khmer and when I say that I mean it’s super gaudy and over the top which is what they love here.  Swearing in was fun and then I was off to my site.  My new site has electricity (that tends to work sporadically throughout the day but I have a pretty high powered fan that usually works all through the night so I’m a happy camper) and they just finished remodeling party of the house so now there is a bathroom with a shower head and running water.  AND I live at the BEACH!!!!!  I’m about a 15 minute bike ride from the beach and it’s amazing. I was sad because I thought that I would have to go 2 years without swimming but I ended up at the one site that has water that is safe to swim in.  Although no Khmer people really know how to swim so I’m going to take it upon myself to remedy that.  Swim lessons in Cambodia! I’m probably one of the luckiest volunteers.  Most people are in very remote villages and they have to wait til they come to Phnom Penh to get good western food of any kind but my town is full of it.  I have Western grocery stores everywhere and conveniences that no one else gets.  I feel like I’m not living in ‘real’ Cambodia though.  I’m not really a novelty at my site because there are so many tourists and all the Khmer people are really used to seeing them all the time.  And, because it’s so touristy, everyone speaks amazing English.  I don’t think my Khmer is going to improve much but I’m still going to try to resist the temptation to talk in English all the time.

I know I said this was going to be brief but I guess I lied. Sorry!  That’s about all that’s new with me though. I have tons of little stories of funny things that have happened to me while here but I’ll save that for my next update. 

Peace, love, and rice