Life in Cambodia is good. We’ve been in the training village for over a week since my last post; during that time I taught English for 45 minutes for 5 days (with my own lesson plans) to students in the community, and continued building relationships in the community. Today is Sunday (I’m going to the Hub Site main town tomorrow and will get internet then.), so we didn’t have language class or any work or anything at all. I still got up at 5 AM, though! (Yes, if you know me well, you can insert your surprise here.)
I got up so early because I wanted to wash a buuuuunch of clothes before going to breakfast (I got these ‘khmer cakes’ which are actually basically waffles made with a waffle iron over an open fire with a batter made of coconut milk and flour and peppered with seeds that look like black sesame seeds but don’t taste like them at all.) and playing soccer with a few of the other Peace Corps Trainees (we’re not ‘Volunteers’ until after swear-in), several of our Language and Cultural Facilitators, and a bunch of the kids we’ve been teaching English. After that, I got water, went home, had lunch, did a little more laundry, and then went on a bike ride to a swimming hole with a bunch of trainees (There were kids from our English classes there, too.). After that, I went to my friend Sutjeeah’s house and then to her sister (who is incidentally one of the other trainees’ host parent)’s house to have a bite to eat. Then I came home, took my clothes off the clothesline, and had my actual dinner. It was a loooong day, but a good one.
Sutjeeah lives close to me and is really nice. She likes to talk a lot, and she is friendly and pleasant. She has a daughter who’s 17 named Chantrea; this upcoming week after I get back from the Hub Site I’m planning on teaching her and a few other kids English for a few days.
Both Sutjeeah and her sister work in the market here; Sutjeeah sells vegetables, and her sister sells coconuts. I always make sure to visit Sutjeeah when I go to the market and fill her in on stuff/at least say hi.
Oh, speaking of the market slash Sutjeeah, since I last posted I have been invited to eat meals at three houses other than my home: my Poo (uncle) Lai’s house with his family [We had frog as one of the options. It was pretty darn delicious.], a neighbor’s house with my mom [There were like 50 bazillion people there, and it was only lunchtime.] and Sutjeeah’s house [I went there for the special dinner they had Friday night for a Chinese holiday in honor of dead ancestors. I brought my Shabbos stuff with me and did the prayers there.] It’s really nice to be invited to other people’s houses because of the visiting/making connections factor, as deliiiiiicious as my food is at home [My host mom always makes tooonnns of vegetables for me.]
My back and neck are sore from all the exercise I did today, so I don’t want to write that much more. But I will definitely make sure I get to post more pictures when I post.
Ooh hey! In case you don’t know this and have been trying to call me, I never have my American phone with me during the day, and when people do call it only shows up as having received a call from either ‘007’ ‘008’ or something like ‘7017’. So, instead of calling my American phone, try texting me on it, and then I’ll tell you my Cambodian cell number and you can call that one if you really want to talk. (I think it’s cheaper for both of us that way, too,)
Monday, August 18, 2008
more photos!
This is a photo of me with some of the students I teach from when we were swimming at the water hole!
Some water buffalo. There are a TON of them in my town.
I tried to get into a photo with a baby water buffalo, but she was totally freaked out. I'm still kindaaaa in the photo with her!
This is from one of our language lessons. These are some of the feet of some of the other trainees.
Another picture from the water hole!
This is my house. It turns out the only people in it are my mom and I; the 'aunt' and her grandson are actually from Phnom Penh, and they went back last week!
This is from my district town---there's a crazy restaurant here with crocodiles in the back where you can go look at them. But then you have to pay them half a quarter.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
room poup (that means excited) to be in cambodia
Since I last posted, a lot has happened, most of which took place in the training village in which I am placed until early October, and it’s all very exciting! I moved in with my family last Wednesday, the 30th, and I have learned so much in my first week with them. I technically only have this really awesome host mom who is probably about 65 and a devout Buddhist. She goes to the wat (the temple) every day for a while, and she shaves her head to show her religiosity. She’s never been married, but she does have an adopted daughter (who’s actually part of her extended family) who studies and works in Phnom Penh. I said ‘technically’ before because a relative of my host mom’s, who I call Ming (Aunt), and her grandson eat every meal with us and spend every night at our house as far as I can tell, though they also have a house next door. All three of them are really cool in different ways, and none of them (well, obviously not Natou, the 2.5 year old grandson who super loves peekaboo) try to make me do anything unpleasant like eat millions of pounds of rice or only fold my clothes the way they think is right.
The food at our house is really tasty, too, with lots of fresh fish, little shrimp, and sooooo many fresh vegetables. There isn’t anything spicy because my host mom does not like spicy food, but we do get dessert with both lunch and dinner, which is—literally—pretty sweet. I’m trying all sorts of new fruits (some of which I’ve tried before in the states but never had as fresh or delicious as the ones here), all of which are ridiculously reasonably priced as compared to the fruit we get back home. For instance, a kilo of dragonfruit (2.2 pounds) is only 50 cents. And, let me tell you, it is delicious, really refreshing and full of little black seeds. Some of the other trainees say that it tastes like kiwi, which makes me happy to feel like I can have something like kiwi even if I can’t have kiwi. Another really cool fruit is Ankam fruit/Salá fruit, which is prickly/hairy on the outside, looks like a butt on the inside, tastes like sour blueberries, and is apparently shipped in from Thailand, where it’s in season right now. I made a relationship with a fruit seller woman, too, and always go to her, so she gives me good, cheap prices rather than ripping me off for being a Barang (their word for gringo, which technically means French).
In terms of language learning, I am learning soooo much every day; it really helps that no one speaks English in my family in terms of fully immersing myself in the language. We also have about 4 hours of language class every day, which is really nice. Oh! And there is the cutest kitten ever at my Khmer teacher’s host family’s house. He likes me and really gets excited and happy and purry when I pet him. And his owner, my Khmer teacher’s host sister, has an older sister who lives in Oregon, but whose daughter lives in Memphis! I talked to her (the older sister) one day when I was at the house, and she told me that she went with her daughter to buy a car at the Wolfchase dealership. Crazy! It really is a small world.
A bunch of us in my village went on an approximately 20 mile bike ride on Sunday, our day off, to go to this swimming hole. The road there was gorgeous, surrounded by rice patties and ridiculously peaceful. But I didn’t realize the ride would be so long, and thus did not bring my camera! I need to start taking more pictures in general, I’m posting a few today, but there are soooo many things that I want to share that I have yet to capture on (digital) ‘film.’
One little whine before I go---I’m taking Lariam, a malaria prophylaxis, rather than doxycycline, which most other volunteers are taking, because I am already on an antibiotic for my face. It’s making some of my dreams super vivid and crazy (aka in one I was disoriented and unable to really walk around, talked to the medical officer, found out I had malaria and a fever of 110 and then passed out…and then woke up and went to an amphitheater to meet up with everyone else and watch a movie with them), and I keep on waking up at like 3 AM and can’t go back to sleep. I go to bed early (basically between 8:30 and 9:30) and plan to get up by 4:45 so that I can go on a bike ride with one of the language instructors before class, so it’s not too bad, but I hope it does not continue forever. I like sleep!
I’m at the hub site, where there is internet access, only overnight, and then we go back to the training village for another week or so again I think. I will update this when I can!
The food at our house is really tasty, too, with lots of fresh fish, little shrimp, and sooooo many fresh vegetables. There isn’t anything spicy because my host mom does not like spicy food, but we do get dessert with both lunch and dinner, which is—literally—pretty sweet. I’m trying all sorts of new fruits (some of which I’ve tried before in the states but never had as fresh or delicious as the ones here), all of which are ridiculously reasonably priced as compared to the fruit we get back home. For instance, a kilo of dragonfruit (2.2 pounds) is only 50 cents. And, let me tell you, it is delicious, really refreshing and full of little black seeds. Some of the other trainees say that it tastes like kiwi, which makes me happy to feel like I can have something like kiwi even if I can’t have kiwi. Another really cool fruit is Ankam fruit/Salá fruit, which is prickly/hairy on the outside, looks like a butt on the inside, tastes like sour blueberries, and is apparently shipped in from Thailand, where it’s in season right now. I made a relationship with a fruit seller woman, too, and always go to her, so she gives me good, cheap prices rather than ripping me off for being a Barang (their word for gringo, which technically means French).
In terms of language learning, I am learning soooo much every day; it really helps that no one speaks English in my family in terms of fully immersing myself in the language. We also have about 4 hours of language class every day, which is really nice. Oh! And there is the cutest kitten ever at my Khmer teacher’s host family’s house. He likes me and really gets excited and happy and purry when I pet him. And his owner, my Khmer teacher’s host sister, has an older sister who lives in Oregon, but whose daughter lives in Memphis! I talked to her (the older sister) one day when I was at the house, and she told me that she went with her daughter to buy a car at the Wolfchase dealership. Crazy! It really is a small world.
A bunch of us in my village went on an approximately 20 mile bike ride on Sunday, our day off, to go to this swimming hole. The road there was gorgeous, surrounded by rice patties and ridiculously peaceful. But I didn’t realize the ride would be so long, and thus did not bring my camera! I need to start taking more pictures in general, I’m posting a few today, but there are soooo many things that I want to share that I have yet to capture on (digital) ‘film.’
One little whine before I go---I’m taking Lariam, a malaria prophylaxis, rather than doxycycline, which most other volunteers are taking, because I am already on an antibiotic for my face. It’s making some of my dreams super vivid and crazy (aka in one I was disoriented and unable to really walk around, talked to the medical officer, found out I had malaria and a fever of 110 and then passed out…and then woke up and went to an amphitheater to meet up with everyone else and watch a movie with them), and I keep on waking up at like 3 AM and can’t go back to sleep. I go to bed early (basically between 8:30 and 9:30) and plan to get up by 4:45 so that I can go on a bike ride with one of the language instructors before class, so it’s not too bad, but I hope it does not continue forever. I like sleep!
I’m at the hub site, where there is internet access, only overnight, and then we go back to the training village for another week or so again I think. I will update this when I can!
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