Life is good, filled with people and smiles and learning all the time. The school year is winding down, now, because there's a two-week break for Khmer New Year in April after which people apparently only trickle in, and it's March now, so it's close to April. So they're already trickling out. In previous months, the days with lower numbers of students could be attributed to patterns in the rice-farming schedule, but now it's plain old not feeling like coming. Even so, there are still a good number of students (usually 25+ in each class), and none of my co-teachers have given up coming, so that's good.
My relationship with my family is developing--my Big Brother and Big Sister now like to 'ni'iyay leyn,' joke around, basically every day. It's nice that they're close to my age because then a lot of our joking comes from topics that might be considered inappropriate if they were older. Li-Di and Li-Ching are as awesome as ever. Li-Ching is talking a little bit now and running all over the place, and they both like to dance. We have sporadic, but intense, dance parties at our house that all started because one day Li-Di and my little neighbor See-you Mai were messing around, and See-you Mai said 'Hey, Macarena!' instead of peek-a-boo. This led into questioning of whether or not they knew the dance, then a promise to teach the dance, then the super awesome dance parties that involve spastic dancing with 6+ of the neighborhood kids that is so creatively far from the typical khmer dancing that goes on at weddings, usually in a circle, with repeated motions that don't necessarily go along with the music.
Speaking of weddings, I've been to a bunch in the past few months as soon as wedding season started. My first two were free (and I wasn't really invited to them) because I went as my neighbor-Poo's plus-one. I'll make sure to put in a bunch of wedding pictures in right here when I do another picture post. It's a lot of fun to go, as long as the guys don't get too drunk and the dancing space is big enough. My friend Bong Nan who sews in the market made me a traditional silk skirt and a fun/hip-ish (hip for my town) sleeveless tube-topish green shirt that you can see me wearing in some of my wedding pics.
Since I last posted, I've had a few visitors from Americ! My friend Ben (who's currently studying Bengali in India with another federally-funded program) came in for New Year's, which I spent in my provincial town with a bunch of other volunteers. It was really nice to see him and play again. Sadly, he couldn't hang around long enough to come back to my site and attend the great and amazing 7th of January celebration that we have in town here every year (incidentally held this year on January 3rd). It's basically a Khmer version of a county fair. There's a singing competition in which I participated, singing a Khmer song (basically Can't Buy Me Love, but from the woman's perspective, so more like You Can't Buy My Love) and giving everyone a good laugh/something to talk about for weeks. As you can see in the picture I'm going to put up, they sent the dancing girls out to accompany me when they saw me moving to the beat, which helped ease me up. It was actually pretty fun; when they ask me to get up and sing at weddings, though, I tell them that one time a year is enough and to wait for the next 7th-January-party.
My other big Americ visitors were my uncle and aunt Mark and Jan, who are traveling around Asia on a sabbatical. I met them in my provincial town mid-January and brought them back to my rural site for a few weeks. Now, months later, everyone's still asking when they'll be back! It's going to be next week, I think--they've been traveling around other parts of the country (namely Siem Reap and Battambang) and loving it. When they were here, we had a really nice time, participating in a fundraiser at my school, a typical someone-died ceremony/party, and doing my favorite free-time activity, going around and visiting people at their houses, some close to the town center, some in the middle of rice fields. They also got me a mattress! So if reading this makes you think about coming to visit, there's a mattress in my upstairs 'sitting room' with your name on it. What was cool about their visiting was that they had such a good time just wandering around on their own and that the community really embraced them. Which is why everyone's looking forward to their return!
I started a girls' soccer team about a month and a half ago, and now we're about to head to nationals (at the end of the month), for which we automatically qualified because there are no other girls' soccer teams in our province. My girls are actually quite good, but I'm sure it's going to be terrifying for them playing against another team for the first time. Think of us at the end of March! I'm really happy that they're getting into it and getting aggressive when they play--in a place in which many girls are scared to answer questions in class, it's fulfilling to give them something of which to be proud and something to make them smile. Last weekend a couple of the volunteers from the first PC group (K1s) came in to help do a soccer workshop with them, which was really cool and gave me some great ideas. Now I'm working on getting them complete uniforms before the national tournament. So far I've figured out a shirt donation, and I think we're going to make some kind of 'nom' (Khmer cakey sometimes always starch-based category of goods) and sell them in order to buy shoes for the girls who don't yet have any, as well as shorts.
I'm also thinking about doing something with the local health center/healthcare providers, but I haven't decided on which issue I'm going to focus. That's something I'm going to be thinking about more and more as the students peter out.
In terms of my Khmer, I'm working on learning how to read with this really awesome woman who sells sugarcane juice and school supplies right by the gate of my school. I teach her English for 45 minutes once a week, and she helps me with Khmer for the same amount of time. I like her a lot as a person, and I'm enjoying getting to know more about her. I can read a little bit now, too, which is nice!
Also in terms of learning, I've been teaching some of the teachers at my school (plus my school director and the chief of military police of our district) conversational English for the past few weeks. It's a fun class to teach, because there are only 6-8 students every time, so we can really get everyone talking a lot. Plus, either they're really smart or they actually study between classes, since they're picking it up really quickly.
I just got up off my bed and wandered around the house in my sarong in the dark looking for my camera so that I could upload all the photos I've taken since the beginning of January and really do it up good, but I can't find it anywhere. It's getting close to 10 now, and I'm going to get up tomorrow at about 4 so that I can be up and on my way super early to go to Sihanoukville (Kampong Saom) tomorrow morning, which is where I'm going to use the internet to put up this post. I know I showed my Big Sister Ann pictures on it at midday today, but then I went outside to finish washing my clothes. I'm hoping she put it away somewhere and she'll be able to tell me where that somewhere is early early before I go so that I can at least take pictures when I go there! If you know me, you know how I am about not knowing where I am/where things are, so this is no surprise. So now, off to at least make the ones from November-January small enough to work.
