"Well, at least you're pretty..."

A lot has happened since I wrote my last blog and I’m going to do my best to pull out the best of my anecdotes from my daily life in Cambodia. As I have quickly learned here, and will probably reiterate again and again over the next two years, every day is an adventure: not necessarily a bed of roses or a pleasure cruise every moment, but even a struggle bus of day or the oh-so-familiar run in with a cultural or language barrier is something that makes every day note-worthy on some level or another.

Alright, so where should I start? Well, traveling back to the days of yore at my training village Tbong Kmoum (it feels so long ago!), our families celebrated our time with them by throwing a good bye party for us, which of course meant that we ate a ton of food, danced around a table and between songs tried to keep ourselves from suffering from heat stroke and hearing loss from the speakers that were physically moving from the vibrations of the unnecessarily blaring music that we have learned as a Cambodian tendency. The good thing about parties, besides being able to dance (although I hold back from getting too crazy in front of the village elders) is that women are allowed to publically drink. My grandpa kept filling my glass every time I was half empty and banged glasses with me at every sip. After a few hours of dancing in the blankets of sweats we accumulated from the unbearable heat, we all gradually snuck out and had our own volunteer-oriented goodbye party of sorts, seeing as in just a week we would be going to our permanent sites far away from most of our friends.

I didn’t think I would cry leaving Tbong Kmoum, seeing as I would still be stationed in the same province for the next two years and was good friends with the volunteer who would be living there as his permanent site. However, when our breakfast Ming (aunt) began to cry as she served our last bowls of bol bol before we left on our van, it broke me down. Then, as we all gathered to put our bags in the van to take us off, I was pulled into the group hug of hysterical women with whom we’ve been interacting for the past two months and their tears were contagious. The scene didn’t last for too long, however, because it was interrupted by swift, dramatic unfurling of events that left most people speechless. One of the volunteer’s sisters did not want him to go and decided to hop in the van with us, and like a cat on the way to the vet, she dug her claws in the upholstery against attempts to pull her out. Eventually, her father, with the help of some other men, pried her out as she protested by punching him in the face and knocking his glasses to the ground, and kicking him where the sun don’t shine. Jaws dropped at the Jerry Springer scene that quickly went from sympathetic to psychotic, and for all intentsive????? Purposes we decided to get the heck out of dodge and waved with nervous laughter as we pulled out.

The rest of the week in Phnom Penh involved meeting with our counterparts at the schools or health centers and then swearing in. It was all really a blur, mostly because we were fed the same information we’ve all heard before, and although it was helpful to have our counterparts to officially hear all that information, it’s not really worth going into here so I won’t bore you with the details. Swear-in was apparently broadcasted nation-wide so it basically made us overnight celebrities. The US Ambassador to Cambodia, Carol Rodley, was present but I’m still a bit bitter about Hun Sen not attending because of a meeting with Obama the exact same day as our swear-in. Anyway, we had speeches. We swore an oath. We were given hats. We became official Peace Corps volunteers. Woot!

After some pretty hard goodbyes to friends living in other provinces, most of the Kampong Cham crew left the next morning. At one of the bus stops, Sam and I decided that eating a spider leg was not enough and that we should go for the full-blown experience. So approaching a stall with a metal basin full of living tarantulas, we asked the stall attendant to buy our own fried arachnid for the tasting. I sampled a leg first to remind myself that with the spices it didn’t taste much different than fried chicken. However, in a mind-over-matter situation, as I was eating the actual body of the spider, the matter won over the mind and I remembered what I was doing and had to spit it out.

Upon returning to Chamkar Leu the first time after site visit, I was greeted with my 5 year old neighbor girl singing Happy Birthday to me and my host mom helping me with my laundry as she realized that I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing.

The Health Center staff has been really welcoming for the most part. I think some of them still didn’t understand that I was actually going to be there for two years. One of the male staff members introduced me to his family already and invited me on a day trip to Kampong Cham where he and his wife helped me shop for most of the settling-in items I needed for my room and I bonded with his 6 year-old daughter in the car. He’s also offered to let me use his internet and make international calls from his house (a God-send because he is one of two people in the entire commune with such amenities!). He’s also been helping me translate some of the words in my English to Khmer medical dictionary, and I’ve been helping correct a few of his English mistakes. I’m a little intimidated to teach English in the Health Center, however, because it’s already become clear that (1) they really want me to help improve their English, (2) they all have very different levels of English, (3) along the same lines, some of them are very proficient and know huge words but then don’t have some basic grammatical structures solidified, and (4) I have no real-life experience teaching adults who are my superiors, as I’ve only taught children and my peers. I’m planning on asking some of the volunteers with more experience on the subject, but still a bit nervous I won’t meet expectations because I can’t magically bestow the fluent English tongue on anyone with whom I come in contact through teaching.

My duties as a Health Education volunteer are still undefined in the Health Center, so I’m just observing for now, mostly until I become more proficient in the language and thus more capable of convincing community members of behavior change regarding their health habits. It’s a bit awkward, though, having the duty of just observing because I feel like I’m hanging around like a creeper and sometimes unintentionally scaring children. And occasionally I’ll be praised or criticized for my Khmer vocabulary, all in one breath: “She knows a lot of Khmer. Oh, she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know a lot. Well, at least you’re pretty!” I’m not kidding, I’ve heard this at least ten times.

On that level, I think I relate to my favorite patients at the Health Center- the babies! Some of them want so badly to be able to talk so they squawk and make faces and hopes someone understands them and if no one does, they cry. I’ve seen two newborns at the Health Center thus far: one mother had to check the genitalia at least eight hours of delivery to affirm that indeed her child was a female, and the other, a baby boy, melted my heart yesterday. The tiniest little bundle wrapped in a pink, flowered towel with mittens to keep him from scratching his newly exposed skin, gave the largest yawn with his toothless gums and kept his eyes shut tight as he unknowingly waited for his vaccines. After the sneak attack of a shot from the doctor, the baby kicked out and stirred his bobble-head of a neck, and whimpered as if to say, “I didn’t sign up for this pain! I was comfortable where I was!” And then he opened his eyes and remembered that this new place is so much more exciting than where he used to be… and he could get used to this.

Along with being away from anyone who speaks enough English for me to vent to, and not being able to call my folks or friends at home anytime I please because of the time difference, I have been dealing with some “relationship issues”, which is hard enough to explain in my own language let alone Khmer. Not to get into details, let’s just say that I’m thankful for you, dear reader, for keeping up with my experience. Let’s just say when I asked if a particular someone had read my blog (as an example) he gave me a “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give damn” sort of response, and I’ve been trying to recover from the sucker-punch ever since. Anyway, the point of me laying this backdrop is to prelude yet another explanation of the differences of living in the U.S. as compared to Cambodia. When dealing with heartache in the U.S., I usually hit the gym hard and work on a revenge body for the benefit of my own self-esteem and mental health by distracting myself with something else to think about. Maybe I’d even get checked out by a few muscle-y hunks and then watch a comedy with some friends while eating dark chocolate. Instead, while I do still work out every day, (mostly out of boredom and the desperate urge to not feel like such a giant while surrounded by people that are not only shorter than me but who also weigh a good 15 or so kilos less than me and can actually fit into the clothes they sell at the market) I tend to draw unwanted attention as people stare and call out to me running past in baggy clothing because literally no one else in the community works out. I also had to substitute the chocolate routine of the “mend Lauren’s broken heart” pre-determined plan by going on the hunt for a cold Fanta and nail polish instead (which I thought about the tactic of using the “pity me, I’ve just been heart-broken” plea to help me bargain for the price, but considering it was 25 cents anyway, I decided not to open my bleeding heart to a stranger just yet). At least the movie part of my plan worked out: Sex and the City 2 was my movie of choice, in case you wanted to know. Don’t judge me.

So I guess a few final notes before I sign off and see what awaits me in the next few weeks that I can convey to you again. Hmm, I’ve lost five kilos already: 2 of which I attribute to the diet and climate. My family no longer follows behind me on their bikes as I go running, in a half-coach/ half-stalker fashion, which is a bit of a triumph. And I’ve also learned how to ward off the dogs that have chased me up and down my route to the pagoda (usually after I get the adrenaline kicking in my workout routine, I’m in a no-mess kind of mood and I act like I’m going to punch them in the snout. This comes from a dog-lover at heart, but some of these dogs are not canine but monster, through and through.). I’m thinking about starting an aerobic dance class, seeing as it is a popular activity in the cities, I’ve got plenty of experience to teach a stepped-up version of jazzercise and it would be a good way to eventually segway Into hydration or nutrition education, plus I can (in some ways) transcend the language barrier. Um, I chase the chickens around my yard for fun, and sometimes threaten to throw rocks at or hit the roosters if they have the nerve to crow next to me while I’m reading in my hammock. I’ve stopped shaving- no one in my village does it anyway. I started wearing just my bra around my house at night as a sort of bonding experience between my mom, sister and I, since it’s just us girls…and that led to a discussion of how big I am on top too. An elephant lives in my village! I saw it yesterday and will make it one of my goals to find out where it resides. I miss fam and friends, American music played in public spaces (other than anything Pitbull, since he seems to be very popular here), American fooooooooood- mostly my mom’s spaghetti and meatballs, and every cheese under the sun, but I also miss my native tongue and relishing in my own language that rolls off my tongue so effortlessly…and words like “relishing” and “effortlessly” because the Khmer language, at least from what I’ve run across, doesn’t have specifically descriptive words such as these. And thank you again to anyone who has sent me letters thus far! I’m sorry I’ve been taking so long to respond to some of them, but my schedule has started to ease up and I’ll be taking a break from chasing chickens for a while to respond to all of them.