Christmas in Cambodia

Finally we’re having some cool weather here to ring in the season. Cooler meaning maybe low-80s. I even broke out a sweater the other day! I’m spending Christmas day here in my village so I can go to a big (non-Christmas-related) party my family is having. So far my celebrations this year have been limited to listening to some very cheesy holiday music (what, so I had a big crush on Donny Osmond as a kid because he was the voice of Joseph in the recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat I listened to and memorized after it was the first musical I ever saw, and his holiday album just happens to be one of the few I have on my computer) and enjoying treats and decorations from a care package from home (Thanks Mom and Grandma!). I have this tree that cracks me up every time I see it, but just why might take a little ‘splaining...my family is awesome is all. Here’s my little personal holiday display.


Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Time for a shameless plug... A couple people have asked if they can financially support what I’m doing here. Well, not so much directly, but there are plenty of ways to get involved in international development. If you’re still looking for last-minute gifts and have world-exploring/charitably-minded friends, donations are about as easy as they get. A lot of organizations will even give you something you can print out for/email to the recipient. BUT, although it can feel great to give to anything, it’s good to put some thought into your giving. There have been billions of dollars worth of aid poured into the developing world. Arguably, much of it has done more harm than good by making communities reliant on aid without providing any long-term solutions to problems, e.g. giving away mosquito nets that are then sold for less than they are worth, providing incentives for parents to sell and/or exploit their children to be the recipients of aid, or gifting supplies to a school or health center that quickly disappear to the homes of higher-ups. Unfortunately, (I read this in a study once though I can’t remember where) people who donate to charity are much more likely to give money to a specific individual or to buy a specific item. Think of the organizations that send you a personalized profile of the child you support. Those tactics are much more successful than an appeal for aid to a community of 4,000 people. Now, emergency aid is quite different, but in the long term, giving things to people doesn’t accomplish a whole lot.

From random reading of my own and seeing some aid work here, I have three ideas about what can potentially work in aid to developing countries:

1. Education. A couple much-discussed studies found that every additional year of secondary education a girl received substantially raised her age of first child bearing and lowered the number of children she would have (see here, this is fascinating stuff). Certainly not least, educated citizens are more likely to be able to effectively recognize and object to things gone wrong in their societies (notably corruption, which is a huge drain on almost all if not all developing countries). Education can also be outside of the formal education system, for example simple health education about hygiene or birth control. On a personal note, I can already tell you of more than a handful of people I know here who didn’t get picked for one of the few-and-far between scholarships they would have done well by. Sometimes these people are the most heartbreaking for me, since they saw a potential future for themselves beyond what their parents have but are often stuck following in their footsteps.

2. Women’s empowerment. See the first bit above. Also, aid provided to women is much more likely to be put to use to improve their communities, since women are usually the ones walking long distances to get water or raising their children without access to good education. Men in developing countries are often – though of course this is a gross overgeneralization – more likely to spend expendable income on themselves, frequently in forms like beer or buying sex services. Often violence against women is rampant in developing countries too, but you can’t give away freedom from domestic violence or sexual assault. Women need to be able to get themselves out of these situations.

3. Microfinance. This is the lending (not giving) of small amounts of money to people who might otherwise not be able to get cash for small business or self-improvement projects. Often, the loans are given to groups of people in a community, especially groups of women, because social pressure to repay the loans means low rates of default. Many microfinance institutions have incredibly good rates of repayment and are financially viable businesses. There are potential drawbacks to microfinance, for example this recent article about microfinance-related suicides. But combined with two areas above, it is a substantial way to allow people to make a difference in their own lives in the ways they want and need. In the end, aid is a drop in the bucket compared to the possibilities of the free market.

With the number of nonprofits out there today, it’s easy to find one doing work that jives with your interests and doing it well (check out www.charitynavigator.org to search through and see financials-based ratings of different organizations). A few I can think of that jive with my own thoughts above or that have well-thought-out strategies towards development are The Acumen Fund (microfinance focused on fueling enterprise to benefit the communities they serve) , The Huger Project (women’s empowerment with targeted initiatives in different countries), and Kiva (microfinance that is fun for gift giving, since your investment can be ‘tracked’ and re-applied after loan repayment).

Two Famous Things

Cambodia is famous for two things: Angkor Wat and the Khmer Rouge. I’ve been in Cambodia for five months now. Angkor Wat is everywhere – on the flag, on the most popular beer, and in a surprisingly large number of the examples my students use in English class (Yesterday...Dara went to Angkor Wat. Next year...Sopha will go to Angkor Wat. I have never...been to Angkor Wat). The Khmer Rouge arguably has a much more pervasive influence on 2010 Cambodia, but I’ve talked about it probably less than 10 times since I’ve been here. I’ve never had someone ask me if I ‘sgoal’ (know about/recognize) Angkor Wat – it’s presumably universal knowledge – but I’ve been asked several times if I know about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. This is striking to me, since everyone over the age of 40 has memories of the Khmer Rouge era (1975-1979), and everyone over 30 or so lived through the very tumultuous times in the following decade.

My language isn’t really at a point yet where I can effectively understand people’s memories about the Khmer Rouge, so my conversations about it have been limited. It’s easy to forget what people have been through, because Cambodian people are very happy, at least outwardly, if not always actually. They place a lot of value on not losing face, and getting angry or upset in public would be doing just that.

What I’m getting at – the other day one of the lower-secondary English teachers at my school came over to try and chat. Because of his language level, our conversations are limited mostly to “How are you?” and “What class will you teach?” I was also talking to two teachers who speak better English (lower-secondary teachers make about 65 cents an hour, so the better English speakers teach other subjects in public high school and English in private schools). They were teasing him a little for trying to talk to me, but then they seemed to feel bad. He and his family are very poor, and the other teachers at my school have told me they pity him. Suddenly, one turned to me and asked if I knew about Pol Pot. Yes, yes of course I do. Well, this teacher, they wanted to tell me, had lived in a refugee camp. They explained about the refugee camps on the Thai border (assuming I didn’t know) and said he’d lived there for a few years. 15 years, he said. He answered them in Khmer that I could understand better than his English. He grew up there, and his family waited a long time for their turn to be relocated to America. Their chance never came, and eventually they came back to Cambodia, where he now struggles to make a living to support his five children. It was a quick reminder to me that there is more to many of my acquaintances than I know, and that, while I ‘sgoal’ the words Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge, I probably don’t begin to understand the toll it has had on the people who are around me every day.

Cutting Rice

I know the Northeast US is starting to get socked in with snow, but around here, it's rice harvest time. Cambodia is chock-a-block full of rice fields, and about two weeks ago, they all turned from bright green to straw-colored in about the same day. Now the entire country is going about the business of harvesting the rice by hand. The other day I asked a few of my students who had invited me to their village if they could show me how. It wouldn't be for those who don't like to get their feet dirty (literally, I was shoeless in mud up to my ankles), but I had a blast.

Khmanglish of the Week

(From a clothing tag)

Certificate of inspetion
SLLM FET
MADE BY BERllUCCi

THE clothes have been carefully Tailored by craftsmen to combine elegance of cut with Comfort and quality. A classis statement for a modem life.

Guest Post: Letter from Sam Orn

(*Note: Sam Orn is possibly my favorite student. Literally for the first three weeks of school, he was the only person whose name I knew. He wrote the letter below to send to my classroom in New York through the PC World Wise exchange program. I've edited it to make it more readable. If this doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will.)

Hello everybody! How are you? My name’s Tunn Sam Orn. I come from Cambodia. I’m a student at Hun Sen Taing Kork [High School]. I study [in] grade 11 “C”. I’m 18 years old and I have 7 brothers and sisters. In the future I want to be an engineer. Although I [want to be] an engineer, [I like studying English]. English language is my favorite language after my own and I like speaking with foreigner[s] although I can speak [only] a little or a bit, but I still try to speak with them. Furthermore, I’m so very happy that [we] have a foreigner [who] came from America. Her Name’s Cher Lin. She teaches students in my school and she is friendly with all the students and people in Cambodia [who] she [meets].

First, I want to tell you about my school. My school is in Taing Kork Village, Soyong Commune, Baray District, Kampong Thom Province in Cambodia. You know in my school there are seven [buildings]. One [building] is two floor[s]. In the second floor there is a good view because [it is] rich in trees in [the] school. In 2010 to 2011 there are 64 teachers and 1405 students, secondary and high school. All students in the school must wear a uniform when they come study. [The uniform is a white collared shirt with blue pants for boys and a blue skirt for girls.] If students [wear] a [different] color shirt, they would get [in trouble]. [In] one week they study 6 days except Thursday [they] study a half morning. In [...] one day they study two times: in the morning and the afternoon. In the morning all students start learning at 7:00 and finish at 11:00. [For] one hour they have a break. After [they] finish at 11:00 they go home and eat lunch, [they don’t] eat at school. In the afternoon, [they] start studying at 1:30 to 4:30, and they go home [and] eat dinner. But some students, they study extra school when they have free time. The subjects which they [study] are Math, Physics, English, Chemistry, and Biology. [At] 7:30 they come home and when [they] arrive at home some students teach themselves. Furthermore in my school there are 26 Red Cross students to help [if] some student [is] sick and [they] look after students. [The Red Cross students] wear a uniform that [is] different [from the other] students in school.

I hope you will write back to me because I want to know [about] there and about students in America, [student] activities, [and what the students do] when they [are] studying. If I know about something there, I would go to visit when I finish at University. I want to study there about English and I want to know about [the] view in America.

I wish you good health, good times, and success [in] all your studies and job.
Sincerely,

Tunn Sam Orn

Pictures! (My School)

My school is on the older side. One of the buildings was destroyed by bombings of Kampong Thom in the 80s and some of the others still show damage. But it's got a lot of charm.
1. The main high school building, grade 12 upstairs and grade 11 downstairs.
2. Some of my 10th-graders.
3. Another classroom building. All the schools I've seen in Cambodia are painted this yellow color.
4. Some 11th grade boys. Sam Orn, whose letter I'm posting above, is in the middle.
5. A cow on our school campus. They roam around along with the chickens.

A bowl of dessert

After being awake since 6am, reading and putzing around, eating my banana-and-peanut-butter breakfast in my princess tent, I finally ventured out of my mosquito net at 8:20am, grudgingly even though I had most of the morning off. This gave me about 25 minutes to dump cold water on my head and pull on a sampot before hopping on my bike and down to school.

I took up my usual place at the female teacher’s table under the big tree, saying hello to some of my coworkers. I looked through the lesson I thought we’d probably be teaching (I’ve given up trying to pin down things in advance) while they gossiped in Khmer. About 5 minutes before class was to start, I realized I hadn’t seen my co-teacher come out of the class where he should have been teaching the first hour. I ventured around to see if he was running late. A group of students approached: “Cher, uht kehrn crew Chart dtee.” Teacher, we haven’t seen Mr. Chart. Ah, so my co-teacher is sick, or at least absent. I should be disappointed, I know. This means of the 9 hours I should have taught yesterday and today, all of them are cancelled. A lot of those hours were for one teacher’s vacation, but also two for a school soccer game, then this. It’s not unusual. We’ve only been in school two months so far, but I haven’t yet had to work a whole week with all of my classes as scheduled. Rain, holidays, soccer, funerals, general unexcused teacher absences...well, there are a lot of reasons not to come to school.

So I didn’t actually do any of my real job for two days. But, as they liked to remind us during training, Peace Corps is a 24-hour gig. The most important thing I did today was eat some dessert. I went to the market on the thin pretense of buying a scrub brush for my laundry, knowing that if I wasn’t teaching, the best thing I could do with my time was just to hang out and chat. Usually the market affords ample opportunity to do that. Even though I knew roughly what section would have what I was “looking for,” I stopped and asked a few of the market ladies I’d previously chatted with where I could buy a clothes brush. As I made my way inside, one of my grade 11 students overheard and offered to take me to the stall herself. My scrub brush safely in my bag, she asked if I wanted to eat dessert. Now, it’s only 10:30 in the morning, but I’m never one to turn down some dessert if it’s part of my noble Peace Corps mission to reach out to the youth of this community.

I think we’re going to get some kind of nom, the ubiquitous Khmer word for practically any type of junk/snack food. Instead, she leads me to a stall just next to the meat section of the market. She pulls out a stool for me, and I sit with my back to some slabs of pork fat and a pig head laid out on a picnic tablecloth. I try to block out the smell of meat as she dishes me up a bowl of what turns out to be my favorite bong aim, shaved ice and chunks of chewy morsels covered in condensed milk and syrup. Even though she’s not one of the students I recognize as being a good English student in her class, I start asking her some of my stock questions to help her practice speaking a little. To my surprise, she’s anxious to speak English (the majority of students are too shy to answer even my simple questions) and blows me away with her complex answers. She has been holding back on me in class. I move beyond my basic “What time do you usually eat lunch?” and “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” to ask her about her family and the dessert stall they have at the market. Her parents make the sweets themselves early in the morning in their village, about one kilometer down the dirt road nearby. She helps them sell the desserts when she’s not busy with class, she tells me as she washes some bowls and uses a plastic bag tied to a stick to swat away some flies.

Soon enough the meat vendors at my back start asking her questions about me (in Khmer). Some of the women who are up on their gossip start to answer for me before I chime in and everyone realizes, excitedly, that I can understand them. I now have the rapt attention of all the shoppers and vendors within my field of vision as I answer their questions about my family, my salary, my marital status – the usual. I chat with them, and alternately in English with my student, for about 20 minutes before I need to be heading home to lunch. As I get out my wallet, my student motions to me to put it away. “I give you free teacher.” I hand her what I know is the usual cost for a bowl of bong aim and tell her thanks but I want to be able to come back and eat her dessert again. She gives me back 500 riel of the 1500 (about 37 cents) I gave her, shaking her head. “Thank you so much teacher.” I ask her why she is thanking me. “I’m so happy. I feel happy to talk with you teacher.”

As I walk home, I think to myself...it’s a good thing class was cancelled.

From My TV

Many of you in America, it seems, have heard about what happened in Phnom Penh.

I was not in Phnom Penh this weekend for the Water Festival. Instead I watched the boat races, floating barges, and fireworks on TV with my family. Last night, I went to bed around 9 after watching the packed concert live from the capital city. Then today, we sat and watched on TV the aftermath of last night's stampede. All-day news coverage showed interviews with survivors and families of the deceased, government representatives visiting the bridge, and the hospitals. Everything at the hospitals. Cambodian television news, I learned today, is a fair bit more graphic than what we see in the states. They showed the many wounded lying packed into hospital hallways, placed close together on mats. They showed an interview with a survivor in the hospital ward who, between grimaces of pain, talked about what had happened to him. And they showed the dead, the bodies laid out in rows with narrow aisles between. At one location, they were outside, under an awning to protect from the midday heat as much as possible in Cambodia, and each was covered with a sheet. Another location where they have the bodies seemed to be inside, and the cameras panned over the faces in the rows, mostly young people still decked out in their party clothes. The camera crews rolled on as the families came through to identify and collect the bodies. In the background, I saw crowds of curious onlookers pressed against a fence, watching the bodies as they were wrapped and placed in caskets, then pushed three across onto waiting green trucks.

We watched through the afternoon and through dinner, too. The dishes from lunch went unwashed in the sink, an unprecedented event in my time here. I could understand little of what was said on the news all day. My host mother occasionally tried to explain in more basic words so I could get an idea. -This girl they are interviewing, her father and mother are both dead.- -They say the Prime Minister is going to give 5 million riel ($1200) to each family, money they can use to pay for the funerals.- As we saw the grieving families, she explained how they are identifying the bodies. She said that most of the people had cell phones with them. When family members call, the police, who have collected the phones, answer and inform the caller that the phone owner has died. Over and over, she just repeated ‘Ahnut nah,’ meaning roughly ‘Such a shame, such a shame.’

I couldn’t understand her explanation or the news stories about what had actually happened at the stampede. I’ve been able to read the English-language news online, but it’s clear that there are competing versions of the story being tossed around, particularly regarding the role of the police in what happened last night. To state a fact, on this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Transparency International scored Cambodia, tied with several other countries, 154th out of 178 countries. The countries ranking lower were Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Chad, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Venezuela, Kyrgystan, Guinea, and the Congo. While I’m not sure what the truth behind the stampede is, I can tell you that what was shown on the state-sponsored television station seemed to be different from what was shown on the other channels, and the initial government reports seemed to be different than what has been reported by most of the large news agencies. Yet another reminder that things are, well, different here.

The 'Aha' Moment

I was sitting in my school’s office during a break between classes this week, like you do when it rains and the teacher tables are wet. As usual, the chatting between the teachers was in language well beyond my comprehension, so I was zoning. As I looked around the office, I noticed a board on which a chart had been meticulously drawn (using a ruler, it must have been, as is a favorite pastime in Cambodia). I started reading the only part of the chart I could understand – the numbers. I could also make out the words ‘students’ and ‘girls’ at the top of the columns. The rows had the grades numbered 7-12. I been told earlier that we have 1400 students at our school. As it turns out, the upper grades have many more students; probably the students from further villages attend another school until grade 9 or 10. Now, I’ve started teaching in all of the classes for grades 10-12. Only one hour a week in each, but I teach them all. That’s 18 classes – 6 grade 10, 7 grade 11, and 5 grade 12. I hadn’t really thought about the sum total, having 40-50 kids in a class. As it turns out, I have about 900 Cambodian students.

Striking things I saw today

1. Snake as roadkill. That was a first.

2. A refrigerator. I know, I know. I was shocked too. It magically appeared at my house in the middle of the afternoon. Upon questioning my host mom, it turned out that it was a gift from ‘the people who sell medicine.’ I asked if it was because my host dad is a health center director and would need it to store medicines. No, it was for buying a lot of meds to sell to people. (My parents run a bustling clinic/dispensary out of our house.) Even further conversation revealed that the drug company (?) has also given my family two motorbikes, two TVs, electric fans, a laptop for my sister, the wall clock/thermometer/calendar, 5 huge flats of Coke, 5 huge tubs of laundry soap... As it turns out, most of the valuable items in our house are swag. Oh, and there’ll be a new motorbike coming in a few months, the 2010 model. I know pharmaceutical companies in the states are pretty messed up, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t go over well if they went around giving doctors TVs and motorbikes. (Incidentally, the motorbike model in question is $1500, more than the base yearly salary for a full-time upper secondary teacher at my school [and, moreover, I should be clear that all of the details contained herein – salaries, compensation, etc - are considered matters of public record in Cambodia]).

3. A funeral pyre. Last week, an elderly woman who lived two doors down passed away. There have been a lot of rites surrounding her death, most of which have been mysterious to me. (I’ve been to one funeral here, but it was a three-month funeral - in Cambodia funerals consist of multiple occasions.) I heard monks chanting next door late one night, and not on a loudspeaker, which I found strange since so far I’ve only seen monks come to people’s houses for big, very public, events. I thought at the time that perhaps someone was very sick. I’m still not sure if that was immediately after she died or if they were issuing some sort of last rites. For the rest of the week, from what I saw and heard, there were lots of visitors, lots of chanting, lots of singing in a mournful/wailing voice. (Possibly professional funeral singers? My language is not advanced enough to ask about these things yet.) Today, I passed by the house and saw that the front yard was roped-off with everyone dressed in white smocks, standing in a large circle are the fire in the center. A drum was playing a steady single beat. In India, there was a special place where cremation occurred, and it was not a place that women were allowed to go. This was happening in the middle of the morning on the side of one of the busier roads in Cambodia. I didn’t want to stop and stare or start asking questions just now, but it reminded me that I still have a lot to learn about Cambodia.

Club Sandwich

Big day yesterday - the first English club day in the history of Taing Kork Hung Sen High School. High schools in Cambodia don't really do clubs, so it really was something bizarre. I had mentioned the possibility of starting one to a co-teacher in passing conversation on my second day at school. Since then, I've been getting When? Where? What? from students every day. For a week and a half , I conducted interviews for anybody interested in joining, about 120 kids in all. Some students couldn't even write their names in English. The most advanced 5-10 students understood all of my hardest questions (things like 'What is the weather like today?' and 'What will you do after school today?'). Given the range and the number of interested parties, I was...excited. You could possibly say I was freaked out. Just a little bit. But excited too.

Anyway, about 80 or 90 of the students had free time Thursday afternoon, so I decided on 1:30 Thursdays for club time. Since I can't even buy a snut of jake (bunch of bananas) without the entire town knowing, I figured I could rely on word of mouth to get things around. I told a few of my classes and maybe a few dozen students who asked me, hoping I wouldn't be TOO inundated.

Convinced there would be 150 men, women, and small babies showing up to gawk at my little experiment, I went to school half an hour early to be ready...

1:05 - Ok. Breathe. I'm on time. Planned activities? Check. Extra bag full of books and supplies to allow for spontaneous lesson changes should my planned activities sink like a can of Anchor in a rice paddy? Check.

1:18 - Whew. Nice, I've been able to meticulously write my entire lesson on the board as neatly as possible in peace and quiet without anybody staring at me.

1:22 - Ah, nothing like some good old PC-camaraderie texting to get the mind off what is sure to be this impending clusterbumble.

1:25 - Hmm, only five minutes until class, I guess I should look outside and let people know it's ok to come in.

1:29 - Huh? Hello??

1:33 - CRAP. I hate EVERYTHING.

1:36 - 'Hi Cher!' 'Hi Cher!' 'How are you Cher?' 'Did you eat rice yet Cher?' A line of 20 students files into the room from out of nowhere, all at once. 15 more kids soon join them. What's this? A manageable class size? Students eager to participate? They can actually speak some English? And they understand me?!

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

On Living in the Fishbowl

Today I arrived at school for one of my classes to find my co-workers having a heated debate. The question at hand: how much money I had changed at the market the day before. Apparently there were competing rumors. You know how word gets out. The paps have also been keeping close tabs on how often I drink a coffee from the coffee shop. To give them some credit, that actually IS a bizarre thing, for anyone who knows me. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, but I drank a few that my host mom bought me, not wanting to be rude, I figured out that the sweetened condensed milk they put in everything actually tastes pretty good with something bitter.

I hate to be a disappointing foreigner, but my everyday life is, well, pretty average. I wake up and take a cold shower, eat some bananas, go to school, do some laundry by hand, eat some lunch, go back to school, maybe study Khmer, go exercise for half an hour, eat dinner, then maybe read a book before I go to bed. If I feel like splurging, I might add a packet of drink mix to my water.

Actually, right now I do have some pressing business. There is a particularly pesky mosquito in my room, so I’m going to go hunt the bugger down with my Peace-Corps-issue electrified bug-zapping tennis racquet. And that’s my life.

Getting Started

I’ve been ‘Cher Lin’ (Teacher Kaitlin) to my students for a while now. Somehow they seemed to all know my name before I even arrived. It wasn’t until this past week that I actually started teaching. Things move slowly around here.

That’s not about to change anytime soon, either. Take, for example, the fact that my school doesn’t have electricity. First thing in the morning, it means no PA system, so the entire student body has to gather for flag raising and announcements, eating into 20 minutes or so of first period each day. It also means no projectors, tapes, or videos can be used in class. Copies are a possibility only if the teacher can plan in advance and pay for them out of pocket, so they are usually reserved for very important things. Instead, whole lessons – in our case vocabulary, grammar, and exercises – have to be written on the chalkboard, which takes a lot of class time, both for the teachers to write and for the students to copy. Partly, this is another shortcoming of the national English curriculum which, in addition to being WAY too advanced, also does not include any grammar explanations or vocabulary lists in the student books. I’ll have to reserve more explanation of the English curriculum issues for another time, but just believe that it’s pretty bad.

Also chipping away at class time is the Cambodian school schedule. Hours are grueling for students and teachers alike, with seven hours of state school six days a week and the majority of students studying 2-5 hours of extra classes each day. If teachers want to make a living wage, they have to either teach private classes or take on another job. Several of the teachers at my school have stalls at the market when they’re not in class. At least one is a tailor. One is a motorbike-taxi driver. The teachers who have private schools tell me they teach 10-12 hours a day. The private classes start at 6am before school, run during the lunch break, and sometimes take place after school until 7:30 at night. I think it’s partly due to this schedule that breaks between hour-long classes are set at 15 minutes, with the teachers usually waiting another 5-10 minutes after the bell before heading to class. Given the breaks, there are really seven 40ish-minute classes in a day, maybe about the same as the U.S. That’s before holidays (Cambodia has a LOT), rain (because who comes to school when it’s raining?), and teachers not coming to class (there are no subs here). I would say so far it looks like classes actually happen about 75% of the time at my school, and I actually have a pretty strict school director who doesn’t give extended holiday breaks and takes teacher attendance. We’ll also have to see how the year progresses, as December will probably see many students absent to help with the rice harvest and supposedly things will start to wind down after the month-long break in April. Cambodia’s education system definitely fits the bill of a developing country. There are lots of problems to tackle.

So yes, things are going to take a while longer than they might elsewhere. Who knows whether I’ll actually be able to accomplish anything. But the students seem genuinely excited to have me in their classes, and even that’s something. I’m starting an English speaking club this week, and I interviewed over 100 students who were interested in joining. It might just turn into one big catastrophe. Probably at first it will be. Still, we’re just getting started.

Sit-play

Mao, ankoie leng. Literally, ‘Come, sit-play.’ More accurately, this might be translated as ‘Why don’t you hang out and chill with me for a while?’ One of the wonderful things about Cambodia (and India, too) is that nothing is ever so pressing that it can’t wait for a bit, and even if the hours are long, work is hardly ever a solitary thing. There is always a friend to keep you company. In India, even the hairdressers who hung a mirror on a tree and put a chair on the sidewalk always had a buddy or two just hanging out with them. Ankoie lenging is an important part of life here, and not only for people who you’re already friends with. When a sudden downpour hits, you can stop at the nearest vendor’s stall/gas station/moto repair hut. You will undoubtedly be presented with some plastic chairs and invited to ankoie leng. Buying something from someone at the market? Mao, ankoie leng! And if you’re the strange new foreigner in town, you will undoubtedly be invited to ankoie leng well...everywhere.

For me, ankoie lenging sounds unappealing. Hey Kaitlin, want to go to a party with a bunch of people you don’t know and try to make small talk? It wouldn’t be my first choice. How about doing that AND trying to think of things to say in a language you can only speak a little bit? Umm...are there other options?
Today, I was off from school for the afternoon, so I decided to finally go take a piece of cloth I bought last week to be tailored into a teaching skirt. Since I was only going a few hundred yards, I decided to walk for a change. As it turns out, riding my bike around has been keeping me fairly isolated outside of school. On the way back from the tailor’s shop, I was invited to stop and ankoie leng at:
- the road-side stand where we eat dessert every night, where I chatted with my dessert ming and her three customers
- the beer shop where the son has been saying hello to me every time I ride by, where I was presented with a free coke and spent almost an hour chatting with the mom
- the market stall with grilled bananas, where I eventually was talking to a group of about 10 different vendors who came to ask questions of the foreigner and
- my neighbors’ house where one of the teachers at my school lives and where I also chatted with some of my students buying books from the book stall there.

I survived them all. I may have even enjoyed myself. Lucky, since I sense there may be more ankoie lenging in my future.

Khmanglish of the Week

(from the back of a bag of dried fruit)

Throughout the entire process in making the chips, no chemicals are added to the chips at all. The fruits and vegetables are specially processed in order to ensure that their natural flavour and goodness are retained.
These products have also a good smelling and crunchy feature which gives a good taste and provide more nutritive facts, vitamins, mineral salt necessary to the organism and protecting from the extra glucoza

Crash

Two things that do not exist in (rural) Cambodia: stretchers and police tape.

A few evenings ago, I was headed to exercise in the rice fields, as usual, when I came upon a even larger traffic jam of students than is usually the case at the 5 o’clock hour. As I got closer, I realized everyone was stopped in their tracks and gaping at something. Then I spotted a downed motorbike in the road, then another.

Moto accidents are very, very common in Cambodia. It is fairly normal to see three, four, even five people on the back of a moto, most often without helmets. My little nephew at my training host family was in a wreck during my first month here that scraped up the side of his face pretty well. Just last week, the big piece of gossip in town was a moto crash in the next town over that killed a brand new, just-out-of-college teacher. This was my first time seeing one up close.

My host mom motioned me over to the side of the road to stand and watch with everyone else. There were two groups on opposite sides of the street surrounding two accident victims (although I was told later there were actually four people involved) who had been laid in the dirt. I would guess the crowd of onlookers grew to about 200 in all, although traffic was still slowly moving through the scene, the cars weaving between the two motos that were left sprawling in the street. After we had watched for five minutes or so, a group of men helping one of the victims hoisted him up by his arms and legs, the man screaming in pain as they did. There was no attempt to stabilize his neck and back. There was no waiting for a stretcher, or even a doctor (like my host dad, who was at my house about 200 yards away). And where did they take him? Of course, to another moto. They plopped the man down, and he flopped against the moto driver. They had to pick up his legs to stop his feet from dragging on the ground.

Soon my host mom motioned for us to go, and as we left, I saw the police arrive and start drawing chalk outlines of the two bikes. That one still has me puzzled. We headed out to our jog. At the time, the accident didn’t look so serious, since both of the victims I saw were conscious and responsive, if uncomfortable. While eating our nightly post-exercise dessert, my host mom got a phone call and reported that one of the men had a broken leg (the word for which, eerily, I had just learned in a Khmer lesson two hours before). Later that evening, my mom gave me another update. Two people were seriously injured and were taken to the hospital in Phnom Penh. One had broken something in the ribcage area. My host mom said, “Mun tohan slap howie.” He’s not dead yet. I felt like a 7-year-old as I asked ... “Is he going to die?” ... “We don’t know yet. Maybe.” I had no idea.

K4s, be careful out there!

Niak Bora Tay (or, What are YOU doing here?)

Wednesday this week, I showed up to my school and quickly realized something unusual was going on. Too many of the classrooms were empty, and there was a big white van parked in the back school yard, surrounded by a group of students. I had been sitting down chatting with the other teachers (the normal thing to do for the 25-minute intervals between 40-minute classes) for a good while before someone casually mentioned that there were some people from Singapore at the school. I understood from a few vocabulary words and some gesturing that they were doing eye tests and giving out glasses. As it turned out, that was only part of it. They were a group doing community service, including English teaching. All of my teachers seemed to be in on it, but nobody had told me classes that day would be taken over by OTHER foreigners. Needless to say, my immediate reaction was to be a little territorial. Come on guys, I’m the foreigner teacher in this school. Even if I haven’t actually started teaching yet. As it turned out, the actual classroom lessons involved some Simon Says and charades, which I could tell the students didn’t really understand. (Even after 5 or 6 years of English, many of the students have little to no speaking and listening ability.) Afterwards, I asked the new foreigners to stay and talk to some of the kids who I knew would be excited to chat, even though they were too shy to approach the Singporean group themselves. Now, the students are still pretty intimidated by me, but faced with a group of 6 other foreigners, they suddenly all started turning to me for support/help/encouragement.

So it turned out alright. If nothing else, it was an example for me of how, although it really is and is going to be pretty tough sometimes, sticking around a place like this is very different from dropping in once in a while.

It was also a special treat to speak real (e.g. not extremely simple and slow) English for a bit. It’s the little things! If you would like to help me keep up my English skills beyond “What’s your name?” “How old are you?” and “What do you want to be in the future?” feel free to comment, email, write letters, Facebook, call, or even Skype me. Just think of it as an easy way to support international development work.

Top Ten

My top ten reasons why Cambodia feels like an alternate universe:

10. Trucks backing up noises. Of all the annoying Cambodia noises (roosters, hack saws, dogs fighting, blaring wedding music), this is pretty benign. But it is a very disconcerting noise because here, when trucks back up, they don’t go “BEEP BEEP BEEP” they go “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells” or “We wish you a Merry Christmas.” I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to hear Christmas music the same way again.

9. The meat market. Markets here are arranged by merchandise category, so all the people selling similar goods are in the same general area of the market. When the merchandise is meat, it results in a scene of carnage that would rival any horror movie. It’s not just the cuts of meat, it’s so totally normal that people are picking up chunks of fat or stretching rolls of skin like it’s nothing. The market in my town seems to be especially fond of pig heads.

8. The same weather every day. We’ve been here about three months; there has been no indication of the passing of time. It’s hot. It rains for a little bit every day or two. Apparently at some point it will stop raining and get hotter.

7. Nobody says “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Nobody says anything. The silence still weirds me out for some reason.

6. Power outages. They are fairly regular, but the power sort of fades out, so the tv image starts to shrink and the lights all fade until it suddenly goes dark.

5. It being perfectly fine to talk about me, or anyone else, in very crude terms. “You’re fat” is really just the tip of the iceberg. For example, my mom’s best friend’s daughter has Down’s Syndrome and Tee, the guy who lives with us to help out with the housework is almost mute/can only make a few noises. Both things were apparent to me immediately, but both things have been explained to me multiple times, in front of the individuals in question. It is fairly common for people to make fun of Tee’s speech problems to his face.

4. No one ever getting mad. Ever. See #5. People are not allowed to get mad at this. That would mean losing face.

3. Laughing at everything. See #4. Instead of getting mad, the appropriate response is to laugh. Or rather, giggle. I have yet to find a student who can talk to me for 5 minutes without breaking down into a fit of giggles. Also, anytime I start speaking Khmer to someone who doesn’t know me well, even if I don’t screw it up, it results in a fit giggles.

2. The Third Front Tooth. At first I thought it was just an anomaly on one old lady, but I soon realized that the solution here for having a gap between your two front teeth is apparently to put a third one in the middle.

1. Being stared at. All the time. Everywhere. When groups of students form outside the classroom windows to stare at me sitting and watching a class, it really does feel like I’m at a zoo, and I’m the one on display.

Mystery Meat

Besides the wats, the other part of this week’s Pchum Ben I have seen is that families all get together and come back ‘home,’ wherever that happens to be. Now that I have been here a week and a half, I have met five of my mom’s seven siblings and lots of cousins. It was quite a lucky break because a couple of my cousins who study in Phnom Penh speak quite good English. Being the only native English speaker around, it is a special treat to be able to chat about more than what you ate for breakfast and how many siblings you have.

The penultimate day of Pchum Ben meant a big get-together for my whole family. And, my family decided, there could be no better way to celebrate than to deconstruct an unidentified creature in the backyard. I came downstairs from my afternoon ‘nap’ to find my mom and assorted relatives all hanging out on the back stoop, chopping up various bits of anatomy. They told me a word in Khmer that I did not understand, and my mom assured me it was not pork, beef, or chicken, so it should be fine for me to eat. The concept of vegetarianism is very foreign in Cambodia, to say the least. To be helpful, one of my cousins fished into one of the bowls of meat and held up a severed head for me to see. At first I thought it was an eel. Eel is fairly common in the markets here, and we’d even had eel the other night for dinner. I had managed to avoid most of that, serving myself the banana flower chunks from the eel soup instead, until my mom said I hadn’t eaten enough and plopped a big slice of eel into my rice bowl. But no. I had told my cousin the English word for eel, and he assured me this was not it. Then I thought maybe it was some sort of reptile, although it looked awfully slimy. Then I spotted a ribcage tossed to the side. Less of a ribcage and more of a...shell. Yep, my dictionary confirmed it – it was a turtle shell. Oy vey...and what could I do but smile and nod. I will leave the rest to your imagination.
***
Khmanglish of the week

POP-UP
Brand
Interpolded tissue
Enjoy the best tendance extra soft facial tissue

Wat Outing

Today (October 8, I’m writing and posting later) is the final day of Pchum Ben, the second biggest holiday in the Khmer calendar (after Khmer New Year in April). This holiday is about ancestors and the gates of hell opening...well, Wikipedia can explain it better than I can. All I really know is what I’ve seen over the past week, and that has involved going to a lot of different wats. I’ve now visited four different wats (Buddhist temples) with my family. I think I’m finally starting to get a hang of the routine.

First, around 9am, my host mom tells me we are about to leave, so I should hurry up and get ready. If I’ve been given advance notice, I’ve already gotten into my wat-going attire – a white dress shirt and one of my two nicer sampots (traditional Khmer skirts). Then I sit around for maybe 30 minutes more while my family goes about the business of getting ready. It reminds me of waiting for my family back home to get ready for Church on any given Sunday. We all pile into the car, up to seven or eight people in my dad’s Toyota Camry. Here in Cambodia, it’s pretty typical to double-up the passenger seat and put at least four people in back. Luckily, the furthest drive this week was only about 45 minutes. (Actually, to tell the truth, I LOVE riding in cars here. I get to tour the countryside, and it’s one of the only times I get AC, so I don’t mind the crowding.) Once we arrive at the wat in question, we all pile out, grab an assortment of food from the trunk, and shuffle into the wat’s secondary building, sort of a dining hall for the monks. There are quite a few rules about eating in the monkhood. Monks only eat one big meal a day and are not allowed to eat anything between noon and dawn the following day. When they go out into the community to ask for offerings, they carry big silver bowls to collect their daily food. They are not allowed to take food into the main sanctuary building, so there is another area with a raised platform where the monks sit and eat and a lower area where everyone else can congregate. We take our shoes off at the door and claim an area of the grass mats on the floor by dropping off our assortments of offering items. I follow my host mom up to the altar area where we kneel and do three bows to show our respect to the Buddha. Somebody then hands me three sticks of incense, which I hold between my palms while somebody prays. Then I put my incense in a pot of sand to burn.

Now we start sorting the food and money offerings. We make a tray of all the items to be offered to the monks, and eventually we present it to one of the more senior monks who is in the hall accepting things. The seniority of the monks is very apparent, since they sit on their eating platform in descending order of age and/or importance. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the Buddhist establishment in Cambodia (in addition to the education system, the family unit, and so much more) was systematically destroyed, including disrobing and execution of monks, so the senior monks often appear to be fairly young. At each of the wats, probably 75% of the monks were actually young boys (maybe 8-18 years old) who often become monks either to receive schooling or to bring honor to their families. Anyway, the exchange of the offering involves some of the grandfatherly types who hang out at the wat making a presentation of our gift, including the amount of money, the name of the family, and where the family is from. Two of four times, this presentation has happened on loudspeaker. To actually give the offering is quite simple. Two or three people lift up the tray in the direction of the monk, and everyone else touches the people who are touching the tray. Then the monk touches the tray, and the transfer is complete. Now the monk can leave and the food can be set out with all the goodies brought by other families for the monks’ lunch.

At some point in the late morning, the wat grandpas start leading the whole ‘congregation’ in chants. Some are responsive, so I try to mumble along a bit. Others are recited, so I just sit in my feet-tucked-back, hands-together, head-bowed position. The chanting continues on and off, and closer to lunch time, somebody hands me a bowl of rice and a spoon. The first time this happened, nobody explained it to me, but luckily, I was pretty sure I was not supposed to start chowing down. No, the first bowl of rice has to get into the monks’ begging bowls. When I was in Thailand for the summer, we offered rice to monks two times, and they just filed past us while we knelt on the ground and put handfuls of rice into their individual bowls. Here, at least during Pchum Ben, it is more of a free-for-all. See, Khmer people are not really fans of the whole ‘standing in line’ idea. The monks’ big bowls are set out on the table, and people start to go down the row, putting a spoonful in each one. Getting started on the first bowl is the hardest part, since the end of the table is a mass of people all pushing to get to their rice spooning. After I have braved the crowd and spooned in my rice, I go back to sit. More chanting ensues. Eventually the monks arrive, and there is more chanting, now a sort of back-and-forth between the congregation and the monks. After maybe 30 minutes or so, the monks are finally allowed to eat, and I can finally break my sompeah (hands together in front of my face). Unfortunately, I have to leave my feet tucked to one side the whole time the monks are there. I’m working on building up the stamina of my back muscles. After the monks are finished and have filed out, the leftovers are redistributed to the crowd in a surprisingly orderly way that makes absolutely no sense to me. Then we get to eat! A whole array of dishes is laid out for each family, and everybody digs in together. I’ve had prahok, the pungent, disreputable fish-paste that is occasionally called the cheese of Cambodia, three times this week. And – I’ll tell you a secret – I might actually like the stuff. Finally, there is a blissful car ride home in AC and a mandatory afternoon nap to recuperate from hours of sitting and to sleep off the food coma.

First Day of School (or: Nobody Told Me the Prime Minister Was Coming!)

October 1 – Back to school day for children across Cambodia. First day of school as a teacher for me. Well, first day AT the school in that capacity. In reality, there was no actual school - no classes that is – just one big, very long ceremony this morning. I showed up to the school, as requested, at 6:45. Now, I am much more of a morning person here in Cambodia than I am stateside, but having to actually get up and moving at 5:30 is something new. Having to dress up in a sampot and try to ride my mountain bike in that long skirt was something of a challenge. Of course as I rode along the main road towards school, I passed herds of students headed in the same direction, just waiting to witness the awkward barang trying to ride a bike. I arrived, parked my bike in what seemed like an appropriate place, and ran into one of the English teachers I had met earlier. I asked where I should be going, and he motioned me into the school director’s office. There, I was plopped into a plastic chair where I proceeded to sit for the better part of an hour while preparations were going on around me. The head English teacher found me there and explained that I should wait a bit longer because in just a short while, the students would all come sit down to listen to the Prime Minister’s address. “Oh.” I thought, “Ok, I guess the Prime Minister must give some sort of radio address to the school children of Cambodia on the first day of school.” After all, our high school is named after the prime minister, as are many of the high schools in Cambodia. And, if I’m not mistaken, the largest single part of Cambodia’s national budget goes to education. I started to get suspicious, though. Security guards and fancy cars started showing up. The frenzy to stop the microphone feedback heightened. I started to wonder...is the Prime Minister coming to our school? Maybe he visits one school each year, and it just happens to be this one? Peace Corps Volunteers past have many stories of being left out of the loop, but is this something I could have missed? Oh crap. I’m all wrinkly from my bike ride. I only took 15 minutes to write my speech. Oh CRAP!

As it turned out, the ‘Prime Minister’ who was addressing the students was not the Prime Minister at all, but the district governor. The ceremony involved me sitting in front of, oh, I guessed about 800 of my school’s 1400 students who all squatted obediently in the dirt in their school uniforms. I got a plastic chair up on the school office terrace, the makeshift stage for the day’s events, next to some of the school officials. Then we had to stand up to listen to the national anthem. Trust me, if you are the only barang for miles and you are standing in front of 800 Khmer school children and you are so much taller than all of the other teachers that you look like a giant, 800 Khmer school children will laugh at you. And you will have nothing to do but laugh at yourself too. After that, it won’t seem so bad that you have to give a 15-sentence speech in broken Khmer. At least all the students will listen to you, which they certainly won’t when the not-actually-the-Prime-Minister gives a speech lasting more than an hour.*

Afterwards, I did actually get to talk to some of the students, which was exciting. For one, it was exciting that they were actually brave enough to talk to me in English. As we all quickly learned during our practicum teaching week, this is no small feat for a Khmer student. Two, the 5-odd students I talked to could actually speak some English! I mean, a little. And they were 12th graders are probably some of the best students in the school, if I had to guess. But hey, it’s a start. I guess that’s where I come in...

*No I’m serious. More than an hour.

Chamkar bai

First off, I’d like to say that I think everyone should have the experience of being an anomaly at least once in their lives. It is both a bit terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Here, I am an anomaly without any effort on my part. It’s pretty hard to hide the fact that I’m, oh, about 8 feet tall and have glowing bright white hair. Also my nose. In America, people don’t talk about noses nearly enough. While I was in India, it was never one of the things that people noted about me (those things being that I was giant and fat and had light hair). In Cambodia, though, I am acutely aware of the fact that I have a drowmah srooit (pointy nose). According to all the ladies in my village, it is very sa-aht. Sa-aht can mean both ‘beautiful’ and ‘clean,’ so sometimes I like to pretend they’re impressed that I manage to keep my nose hair tidy.

Anyway, in our training village, I was one of 18 other barang to be stared at and gossiped about and yelled “Hello!” to. Here, I am one-of-a-kind. That makes me pretty popular. When I’m out by myself, I seem to only get staring so far. Mostly people have been too afraid to approach me. I’ve been going around with my host mom a lot, though, and that’s a different story. People have no problem at all approaching her to talk about me...while I’m standing right there. Usually the scene plays out something like this:

Woman 1 at the market/shop/coffee stand: Who is THAT?!?!?!
My mom: Oh, that’s my new daughter. She’s going to teach English at the high school.
Woman 1: Where is she from?
My mom: She’s from America. She’s working with an organization.
(At this point a crowd is usually starting to form)
Woman 2, 3, 4, 5: How old is she? Is she married? Can she eat rice? Where does she live? Does she like it here? Is she nice? Oh, she’s very fat. How much money does she make? Look at her pointy nose!


Since yesterday, the spiel has gotten even better. See, in Khmer, the word for cooked rice (bai) is different than the word for uncooked/growing rice. Also, the normal word for field (chamkar) is not the word used for a rice field. We were in a the middle of a field full of rice paddies, and I couldn’t remember what rice fields are actually called, so I called it a chamkar bai. My mom has now mentioned that to at least five different groups of people. For example, today we drove about 20 minutes down a dirt road to go offer food to monks at this wat in the in middle of nowhere. It was a very long process – giving money to various people, dividing up the cooked dishes, spooning small bits of rice into different bowls, lighting incense, offering things to the head monk, then (when the rest of the monks finally came) lots of chanting back and forth and bowing and so on. I was barely keeping up trying to just copy what my parents were doing. Anyway, somewhere during a break in the chanting, while we were watching the monks eat, someone starts asking about me. My mom launches right into the ‘chamkar bai’ bit. It gets a big laugh. Then we go back to some more chanting. It seems like I will probably never live that down, so my plan is to just embrace it, along with the rest of my anomaly identity. I’m just the crazy, giant, pointy-nosed, chamkar bai lady!

At Site

This past week has been a blur of saying goodbye to my training host family, meeting with my school director and co-teacher at a Peace Corps Counterpart Conference, Swearing-In, spending lots of money in Phnom Penh on Western food and “I need this to help me stay sane at site”items, and saying another terrible round of goodbyes to the other K4 Peace Corps Volunteers. Can we talk about how stellar people in the Peace Corps are? When I first showed up to our staging (a day in San Francisco where we all had an introductory session together before flying to Hong Kong) and met the 50-odd other people headed with me to Cambodia, I was pretty surprised. I thought that the Peace Corps would be full of, well, a certain type of person. The group I met was not what I expected but has turned out to be full of people who I think will be my friends for a long time (even if we do ever leave this place). We’re not allowed to leave our provinces for the next two months, so I won’t be seeing most of them until Thanksgiving, when we’ll all meet up in Battambang. Until then, there will be a lot of texting. Did I say a lot? I think what I meant was oodles and oodles of it. Thank goodness for texting. Even just after we'd all left Phnom Penh, my friend Jane (one very awesome lady who I am lucky to have as the closest Volunteer to me and within easy biking distance) and I ran into our friend Lindsay who happened to be at the same bus stop. It had been about 2 hours, but you'd have thought it had been about 2 years. We were that happy.
As for my site, well, it will probably be a little slow getting started. My new house is pretty ridiculously nice and my host family is friendly and welcoming, plus my dad is vegetarian already. Score! He’s also a doctor who runs a small clinic out of our house and is the director of the health center in the next town, so I’m excited to see if that might provide some opportunities for me to learn some things about healthcare in Cambodia. Not to mention I'm in the Peace Corps in a tiny village in Cambodia and I have the internet. THE INTERNET. Woah. I miss all the women and kids who hung around the house at my training host family’s tailor shop, but as Peace Corps has told us over and over, a big part of my job these next few months is just to meet people. They even have coinced a special phrase for this: Intentional Relationship Building. I’ll probably have loads of time to meet people, because although school starts on Friday, it will probably be cancelled most of next week on account of the big Khmer holiday Pchum Ben. In fact, the word on the street is that I will probably have a whole lot of free time the whole time I am here, so I am off to work on becoming an IRBing master.

The Piti Niak Smah Jet

I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!

Tomorrow I'm moving to my permanent site for real. Not at all intimidating, no. Today was a free day off in Phnom Penh, so I have been shopping and interneting and eating lots of Western food. Now we're all on our own from here on out. Luckily with the help of my handy dandy internet phone I may just be able to share some stories from Kampong Thom. Here goes nothing.

Bong Srey Lin

Well I passed my final language exam, so that means this Thursday, I'll be swearing in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! (Until now, I've only been a Trainee, so I'm not actually in the Peace Corps just yet...soon.) It's taken a little bit over a year from when I turned my application, and it seems like it's been even longer.

Training finished up the day before yesterday, and just about three hours ago I was in my village saying goodbye to my training host family. The last two or three days have been somewhat bizarre and jam-packed. Yesterday, for example, I made an attempt to serve up some spaghetti and garlic bread to my family. They actually liked it more than I expected, but of course they said my tomato sauce could have used some sugar. (Sugar is included in the seasoning for almost every Khmer dish I've seen made in my house.) We also had gigantic extra jumbo shrimp for dinner the other night...at my house...in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia. I'm no expert of Cambodian geography just yet, but I'm fairly certain we're nowhere near the ocean where I live. Apparently my host dad bought them in town for $20/kilo. That's approximately 80,000 riel, waaay more than any other food item I've seen and/or eaten here.

Now we are just hanging out in Kampong Cham for the day before heading to Phnom Penh for the rest of this week. I'm going to see about getting up some more pictures up here soon and until then, I'll see what new stories I can cook up. Li howi!

Things that are not weird in Cambodia

There are many things that are not weird in Cambodia. One, for example, was that yesterday there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of pineapples in my aunt's driveway. (My aunt lives right next door and I spend a lot of time sitting in front of her house with my 'cousins' or chatting with them at mine.) There were three different minivans loading up the pineapples, and by loading, I mean packing the entire van from floor to ceiling, making a pile out the back tied down to the open trunk door, and making a mountain of additional pineapples on top. Granted, Cambodian manoa are a lot smaller than the pineapples we would buy in America, but still, they manage to fit a lot of those suckers in!



Some other things that don't seem weird:
- Not going out past 6pm. What could there possibly be to do in the outside world past dark?
- Extremely loud music. All the time. All day long. This is generally for some sort of gathering - a wedding, funeral, new house celebration, or other party. The exact volume of the music is hard to describe, but it usually involves speakers that start to sound very distorted. It also usually a some point or another involves the Khmer remake of that Pitbull song...One Two Three Four, Muay Bee Buy Buon, I know you want me...
- Meals being a bowl of rice with toppings, instead of rice being an accompaniment to meals. It just makes sense.
- Not having internet. Or newspapers really. Or any source of information. Life goes on.
- Stopping to chat with 3 or more different group of people on your way the 500 meters to the market. Relationships, they keep telling us, are the most important key to our success in Peace Corps. IRBing!

Just another day.

The Verdict

First, does everyone realize what a worldwide phenomenon Justin Bieber is? He is on the radio in Cambodia. No joke. There is a Khmer language remake of "Baby," but they also like to play the original. The original is really better. Maybe if you were in Cambodia for a couple months you'd start to like it. I'm just saying, it's a possibility.

ANYWAY....Kampong Thom! or K. Big, also affectionately known as the 'Nebraska of Cambodia,' is where I will be spending the next little bit of my life. You can Google it, I assume, but basically it's dead in the center of the country and is conveniently about halfway between the two big tourist cities of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. My site is right on the main highway between them, meaning it will be easy for me to get around. This also means a lot of foreigners are going to be seeing me riding my bike to school in my sampot while they relax in air conditioning and enjoy some Khmer music videos. I got to see my new town for a couple days last week, although I'm going to reserve judgment until I can get a better look around.

In other exciting news, as of today I'm now the owner of a phone that should allow me to access the internet from some various not-so-populated areas of Cambodia. We'll see how things pan out, but it should mean that I'll at least be able to check email a little bit more often...just saying.

Highlights of the past two weeks

*Disclaimer – since I’m without internet at my training village, I’ve been writing blog posts and have not been able to post them. I’m going to go ahead and post a few things for your enjoyment. Ready, set, enjoy!*

Hello again from Kampong Cham! It’s been almost two weeks since my last internet foray, but I’ve got the whole day off in the “big city” today, so I’m going to try and even upload some pictures. No promises. What do people want to see? Pictures of my host family and village, pictures of the other Peace Corps people, or maybe pictures of the giant horned beetle that was hanging out on my roof the other night? And what is interesting to hear about? Can I start taking requests?

A few highlights of the recent bit of training:

- Being on a bus that broke down for three hours on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. This might be more of an ‘important points’ highlight than a ‘best things ever’ highlight, but it turned out to be something of an adventure. About 8 of us were on the same bus coming back from our site visit, and we all found it at least moderately humorous to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia. An elephant being walked down the main highway passed our bus. Like you do.
- The plate of crickets that showed up at my table at dinner the other night. Now, I’d actually eaten a cricket when I came to Thailand and Cambodia back in 2004. A bunch of Peace Corps-ers also tried them (along with palm-sized grilled tarantulas) the second day we were here at a bus stop. For some reason, though, having them put in front of me at dinner was still hilarious. They’re really not bad.
- The spider that was wandering our classroom on Wednesday carrying an egg sack the size of a silver dollar that hatched tiny little spiders all over the backpack of another PC-er. Let me tell you, those buggers are FAST.
- My trip last weekend (by ‘weekend’ I mean our day off on Sunday) out to the fields around our village. With my family on a series of motorbikes, I rode my PC-issue mountain bike out through the big rubber plantation just outside of town to a series of dirt paths winding through a massive set of corn, soybean, and pineapple fields. (Pineapple fields, by the way, just look like very tidy rows of spiky pineapple tops. The pineapples grow underground. Who knew?) Because the fields are built on a higher patch in mostly pancake-flat Cambodia, you could see for miles. The soil around this province is supposedly notoriously rich, and, at least last weekend, it was dark red-brown and very moist-looking. Not too shabby if my food is actually coming from there. Anyway, the fields were beautiful, but we were actually headed out to a temple back in the forest. It turned out to exceed my wildest dreams, emphasis on the wild. What seemed to be the main temple was built inside of a mock pirate ship in the middle of a lake/moat where some children were playing and some ladies were washing clothes. On one side, a series of giant lily pads created a walkway up to another temple, this one in a more traditional form outside. Also part of the complex were a giant statue with one figure pointed skyward and an even more giant statue of a rabbit. Why the rabbit? I have no idea, and my family couldn’t tell me either. But we have some excellent pictures to prove it.

Normalcy

So now that I’ve been in Southeast Asia about a month, certain things pretty much normal, for example, seeing a pickup truck full of fish unloading at the market or having gigantic spiders wandering around the classroom without anyone flinching or watching 5 people riding a single motorbike or having children run to the road to scream Hello!!! Hello!!! when I ride by on my bike. A lot of ‘normal’ things from home are also now extremely rare. The big one here: Internet. Let me lump in with the Internet any source of general information. I could be debating with some of the other Trainees in my village about what exactly Dengue rash looks like, for example, but we can’t really Google it or have someone look it up on their iPhone or even go to a library with books on the topic. (Speaking of Dengue, yes, they have it here. Yes, three people in our training class have already had it. Yes, there is a fairly decent chance I could get it, but it is survivable).

Anyway, that said, the internet is magical for short period of time. When you’re sitting in front of a computer all day, even TMZ, Facebook, and Gchat can’t deliver enough information to keep you occupied. In Cambodia, I get to log on to a week’s worth of news, decide what’s really important enough to warrant loading with a 5Kbps connection (as opposed to trolling TFLN or MLIA for 2 hours), and then I get to forget it and interact with real people most of the time.

As you can imagine, things like hot showers, air conditioning, Pringles, ice cream, toilet paper, and going outside past 6pm are also luxuries to be had once in a while whenever we’re in the ‘big city’ (aka Kampong Cham, a town of about 60,000 people).

It’s flabbergasting (I maintain that I am supposed to be immersing myself in a new language and have no requirement to use English correctly) how quickly little things can make your day, really, when you’re even a little bit used to a routine. Sitting in my bed under my mosquito net listening to music and doing Sudoku in my sarong has become a treat a few times a week. A couple days ago, my little 2-year-old host cousin (my mom’s sister’s grandson who lives next door) came over and sat in my lap for about 5 minutes. That was the most human contact I’d had in one day since I left home, and let me tell you, it was awesome. Speaking of awesome, this week also led to the discovery of a little thing we like to call Ahvultihne tuk dah goh tuk gah (iced Ovaltine with), also known as liquid cake. It is roughly the tropical equivalent of hot cocoa on a cold, snowy winter night and is extra good because it is drunk through a bendy straw. I am not ashamed to admit that I spend a decent amount of time planning my afternoon trips to the ‘coffee shop’ to get a glass. Come to think of it, pretty much any delicious food can make my day – tropical fruits, occasional French-fry like potatoes at dinner, fried noodles, or maybe some grilled rice and bananas wrapped in banana leaves. Hands down the most delicious thing I’ve eaten here so far is this the pumpkin and coconut milk soup (baw baw l’peu) that I’ve had twice. The second time I got to make the coconut milk for it by soaking and squeezing shredded coconut through what I’m fairly sure was a pillowcase. Yeah.

Peace Corps now

In a bit of the bigger picture, training goes on. I’ve now been in the country just about a month. I’ve been living with my host family a little more than three weeks, and I’ll be with them another 4-5 weeks, until the end of training. After that, I’ll be moving in with another host family…somewhere in the country of Cambodia. Granted, Cambodia is about the size of Oklahoma, so there is not a whole lot of difference from one side of the country to the other, but there are big and small towns, big and small families, etc. A week from now, I’ll find out where in Cambodia I’ll be living for the next two years. It might seem surprising that I don’t that yet, but to me it actually seems very soon to be finding that out. I’ve had at least one dream this week about getting a placement hours and hours away from everyone else, although in reality, I’m pretty sure there aren’t many bad sites to be had. In western Cambodia there is Battambang (big-ish city) and the Thai border, towards the north Siem Reap and the Angkor temples, west is the border with Vietnam, and south could be one of the coastal provinces. We’ll see!

This week, the teaching trainees among us (about 2/3 of our group of 55) got to actually get into the classroom and do 6 days’ worth of practice classes. Teaching is pretty fun, but doing it every day is EXHAUSTING. Em and Andy, if you’re reading this, I have a not-really-newfound respect for what you guys do. Maybe it is especially tiring when your class consists of 60 Khmer teens crammed 3 to a desk learning from books that are far too advanced for their knowledge of English. Still, I only had to teach an hour a day - well, that and watch two other hours of teaching, speak slowly to the brave students during breaks, and pose for pictures one by one with a good portion of the girls in my class. Now next week sounds like a breeze. I just have to sit back and learn again.

Word of the week

My favorite word this week: playch chung. Playch means ‘to forget’ and playch chung as a phrase means something roughly akin to ‘oh man, I totally forgot, my bad.’ I learned this on Tuesday and proceeded to use it immediately in a variety of very important scenarios. Act I, Scene I: Kaitlin is trying to help her host mom cook dinner, like she does every night. We are having for the second time this week a half-vegetable half-herb that smells very fragrantly terrible when cooking but tastes yummy. Kaitlin has to ask for the umpteenth time what the name of it is. “Playch chung.” Act I, Scene II: Kaitlin’s language teacher asks her to report back on the homework assignment for last night – to ask a family member a few particular questions. Oh no! “Playch chung!” Act II, Scene I (the finale): Kaitlin’s family has finished eating dinner and is sitting casually chatting about the day. They start to look at Kaitlin expectantly. See, Kaitlin usually takes her second shower of the day (Why doesn’t she take three? That silly foreigner.) before dinner, but today she was busy helping to cook. Now they are trying to gently say, “Kaitlin, dear, we’re sorry, but you’re starting to smell. Please go throw a few buckets of water on your head.” Ahhh. “Playch chung.”
~The end~

Internet!

I finally have internet for a few hours! There are already plenty of stories to share, but I don't know where to start. To give you some orientation, here's an idea about a typical day right now with my host family in my training village...

5:30/6:00 - Wake up in my mosquito net tent/bed to some morning noises - pigs, dogs, loudly blasting wedding music. (Yes, they start at or before 6am, even though it isn't wedding season.)

6:15-ish - Crawl out of bed, put on a sarong and kroma (checked scarf/cloth) to cover my shoulders while I walk to the bon dub tuk. In the bon dub tuk, pour about 15 bucket dippers of cold water over my head, shiver, lather, rinse, and repeat.

7:00 - Hop on my gong and head the few hundred meters to my teacher's house for class. Along the way, encounter the HELLO!!!! HELLO!!!s of the local children, be laughed at for my funny helmet, and, if it has rained the night before, try to avoid getting too much mud on my sampot.

7:10 - Maybe stop by the p'saa and grab some noodle soup, fruit, or baguette for breakfast.

7:30-11:30 - Attempt to learn to speak Khmer. This probably involves sitting with my teacher and group of 5 students under the shade of some fruit trees and playing some memorization games, periodically taking breaks to have a (glass) bottle of coke from the little stand on the corner or have some fried banana chips from bananas farmed, harvested, sliced, dried, and fried by the family whose house we use for class.

11:30 - Hop back on my gong. HELLO!!! HELLO!!!

11:45 - Arrive home and be ushered out to the table at the back patio. A tray appears with 3-4 dishes, usually some sort of soup with veggies, a plate of little fish with very small bones, and probably an omelet or hard boiled eggs. Sit down with my host mom, a tailor, and Lai, a 21-year-old who is essentially apprenticing with my host mom and lives at our house. Spoon a spoonful at a time of one kind dish onto my bowl of rice, 1-2 large plates of which are eaten at each meal. (Apparently I'm lucky in this, since some of my fellow trainees are being encouraged to eat three or more!) Try to describe or answer some questions about what food/clothes/people/houses/families are like in America.

12:30 - (Optional, once or twice a week) Attempt to do some bow ka aow (literally "throwing shirts and pants") which involves a struggle between me and an unwieldy bowlful of soaking wet clothes and water and soap in my little bathroom. By the time I have scrubbed each item, rinsed twice, and wrung out my clothes, I'm usually soaked myself. I hang up the wet stuff on the balcony upstairs and try to remember it when the afternoon rains start to threaten.

1:15-4:30 - Hop back on my gong. Have some sort of afternoon session about teaching English or the like.

4:30 - Head to the local coffee shop for a tea with sugar and condensed milk over ice or a durian fruit shake.

5:00 - Maybe stop by the p'saa again to buy some of the fruit that is in season right now - pineapple, longan, rambutan, durian, watermelon, mini bananas, dragon fruit, mangosteen, etc.

5:15 - Arrive home after a strenuous ride the length of town the few blocks along the main road from the p'saa to my house. Try to ask if I can help with cooking dinner. Be told to go take a shower. Throw another 15 buckets of water over my head and change into casual clothes. Maybe get to help with some of the minimal food prep after I look a little less grimy. Visit with the neighbors, most of whom are family of my host mother's, who roam in and out. Say hi at least to some of the regulars - two of my host mother's nieces, my host mother's sister, and various children. These include a little host cousin who may be the most adorable child in the world after my niece and one I've named Uht Tmun (Toothless) who is a bit older and helps me with some Khmer by reading the phrases I point to and ask about.

6:00 - Sit down to another dinner at the table on the back patio consisting of 3-4 dishes of fish, veggies, and eggs to be spooned over a bowl of rice. Depending on the particular day, I might be eating with my 24-year-old host sister and her 5-year-old son or, on the weekends, my host father (when he is back from working in the city) in addition to my host mom and Lai.

6:30 - After dinner, try to help with the dishes. Will probably not be successful, since after we are finished eating, a stream of visitors suddenly appears. This probably includes some more family and maybe some neighbors curious about the barang lady living at the house. Usually we move up to the third floor to sit on the roof patio and enjoy the breeze and view of the 'mountains.' (Cambodia is very flat, but we are lucky to have two small hills near our village that seem to be the pride of town.) For the rest of the evening, I sit on the floor with Lai and my two high-school-aged cousins who are studying English. They practically force me to bring out my Khmer grammar book to do some practice while they learn some English in the process.

8:00/8:30 - Be asked if I am tired. Take this as my cue to go down to my room. Refill my water filter so I will have my very own clean water to drink. Try to arrange any wet items to dry overnight. Climb back into my mosquito tent and enjoy the clean feeling of the new mattress, new sheets, new blanket, and new pillow issued to me by the Peace Corps. I have to say, being and feeling clean is a wonderful feeling when you're a little (or a lot) sweaty and dirty all day. Review notes, listen to music, or do Sudoku. (I happened to have this Sudoku book when I moved out of my house, and I've suddenly become a Sudoku fiend at night in Cambodia. I can't explaing it.)

9:30 - Realize I can't keep my eyes open anymore and turn out the flashlight on my cell phone (WHY DON'T U.S. CELL PHONES HAVE FLASHLIGHTS?!) so I can get some sleep.


We've only been in our training villages a week and a half, but this routine seems like it will be more or less accurate for the next 8 weeks or so. After that, all bets are off. I won't actually find out where I will be placed in country for a few more weeks. For the next three days, though, we're headed out around Cambodia to visit some current Peace Corps Volunteers at their sites. Myself, I'll be going somewhere near Pursat for the weekend. I may not have internet for another fair bit, but I trust if you've managed to find me here, you can take a look at it on Google maps if you're interested. For now, li howi.

Dance magic dance

Synchronized aerobic dancing on the Mekong river at dusk with a bunch of Cambodian ladies and 8-12 year-old boys may just be the best thing ever.

We're moving to our (first) host families today! Lots to be done in preparation so things have been busy and everywhere has been soggy with the monsoon rain. Cambodia is beautiful so far.

Joom reap sua

Between started to learn Khmer and getting all the details of our upcoming training, my brain is crammed full of new information at the moment. I think a lot of it must be leaking right back out at this point, but I've got a few basics down. What is your name? How are you? Have you eaten rice yet? Supposedly, most everyone I meet here will ask me those questions in that order.

Luckily, for now my only real job is to learn for a while. Actually, other than trying to learn too much all at once, things in Cambodia are surprisingly easy. Sure, it is a bit warm, but for example, right now I'm sitting in a room with two fans and doors open to the cooling rain outside. Not too shabby.

what time is it???

I think right now it's Thursday at 10pm here in Phnom Penh. My body and my computer are telling me otherwise. At any rate, we made it! In the past couple days...

- flew to San Francisco and met 54 other new Peace Corps Cambodia folks
- made a last run to Walgreens and slept a few hours in a hotel
- flew 14 hours to Hong Kong
- took the train into Kowloon for three hours to see the view of the city and check out the night market
- got asked for my fist "picture with a white person" photo of this trip
- slept for a few hours in a hotel
- flew 2 hours to Phnom Penh
- cleared customs and was greeted by a horde of Peace Corps people with signs and cheering
- had my first Khmer meal
- had a welcome session and an intro to the diseases that will threaten to smite us over the next two years
- got a bunch of shots (sadly not camera shots but the kind with a needle)
- walked around Phnom Penh and learned some crucial information (e.g. the Khmer names of mangosteen and rambutan, which I will be buying frequently)
- got more Khmer food with a group of more than 50 new, old, and current Peace Corps Cambodia Volunteers


Jet lag has been remarkably manageable...until around 4pm Phnom Penh time today. I powered through, but I have now reached my goal staying-up time. Goodnight!

and we're off

Hello blog readers. Thanks for your interest in my trip to Cambodia. I've been keeping the identity of my blog something of a secret for a while. Now it's just about time to start my Peace Corps adventure, so I thought it would be more interesting from here.

To recap, I'm getting on a plane in about nine hours. First, I'll be in San Francisco for a short day what Peace Corps calls Staging. We (the 55 Peace Corps Cambodia Volunteers) will be on another flight - this one more than 12 hours - the next day. We'll spend a short night in Hong Kong before heading to Cambodia bright and early the morning after. (Well, morning Hong Kong time, which will be evening where I am now.) In Cambodia, we'll spend one night in the capital, Phnom Penh, and four nights in a guest house in Kampong Cham, a provincial capital a few hours outside of the capital. After that first week or so, I'll be living in a village close to Kampong Cham with a host family and having two months of training. Sometime in there, I'll find out where I will be placed - i.e. where I will be living and working for the next two years.

I will have little access to internet during training these first two months and will apparently be pretty busy, so bear with me while things get started. Stay tuned!

excitement

Less than a week out now. Not thinking about that.

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm excited. The easy answer? Yes! Of course! This is something I've wanted to do for years, and I know it will be an unbeatable experience. Realistically...sometimes I'm excited. No more jumping and squealing at the moment. This is something I've wanted to do for years. I know it will be an unbeatable experience, but it's not easy to comprehend the prospect of picking up and leaving the world I know for more than two years. I've got pretty a good thing going here in DC. I live in an awesome, huge (not to mention cheap!) old house in a perfect location with pretty sweet roommates, a veg kitchen, a treasure trove of nerdy boardgames and opponents, and one unforgettable cat. I've got easy access to work, volunteering, cheap groceries, a slew of free museums, plus trails through the woods and other outdoorsy things. I have friends who have ended up here from all the different places I've lived. I'm not in a hurry to leave. In Cambodia, I'll probably be hot and sweaty pretty much constantly. I'll probably have to eat meat after more than 7 years of vegetarianism. There is a high likelihood I will get Dengue Fever and/or other tropical diseases. I don't know a single person in the entire country right now and speak only a few words of Khmer.

Still, I'm fairly sure it is going to be one heck of a good time.

preparations

Some of the things I'm doing to prepare:

1) Eating tons of American junk food. I've been basically rotating through CVS's weekly candy and junk food sale items. Dark chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? Yes please. Oversize bag of Sour Patch Kids? Check. Kettle cooked potato chips? I think a bag of those can fit in my desk too. What would a Cambodian person think of the sheer variety we have available of differently labeled and colored high fructose corn syrup?

2) Watching Hulu like it's my job. Maybe it could be my job. Wait, that isn't part of my job? I mean really, reality television is good preparation because it lowers my expectations of society. But can we talk about how they're shipping us out on the day of the Tahiti episode of The Bachelorette? Yes, I've seen the spoilers and know what's coming, but that confrontation with Frank, the sensitive goofy playwright from Illinois, is going to be priceless. I mean what? What just happened, someone must have hijacked my blog.

3) Lying around in air conditioned places. It's 99 degrees in Washington at the moment (high of 101). The high today in Phnom Penh was 98. If you have lived with me or are my sister, you know that I have a moderate distaste for air conditioning. Given that I'm going to be hot for the next two years, though, I think a little air con won't hurt.

4) Oh yeah, and studying Khmer on my lunch break. I figured I should at least try to look like I was doing something responsible to prepare. For the record, Khmer is nuts! It's kinda cool, too, like how in counting it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then 5+1, 5+2, 5+3, etc. Also, there are a few small things I've noticed that are taken from Hindi. Yes! I told you my random language skills would come in handy someday! Also, Khmer has no verb conjugation, no gendered nouns, and no plurals. On the other hand, the alphabet has about 100 different symbols that look each look like small drawings. Imagine, in a few months, I'll be spouting off Khmer like nobody's business.