Thanks so much to Rebecca for this picture! I have been wanting to find a picture of the poultry moto for weeks. Here it is. This is a very common site in Cambodia, but it makes me smile every time I see it.

With people having so much economic fun in the US, Cambodia is seeming more exciting all the time. Anyway, not a lot is new. The students just took their semester exams, thus many of them consider school to be over (it doesn’t end til April). If the atmosphere at Cambodian schools was relaxed before, it is nearly comatose at this point. But we still have fun with the students who do come. Since school isn’t taken very seriously now, we can use this opportunity to do fun things that are really educational. Peace Corps wants us to set up things like workshops and camps, but it is really hard to get people to come to anything that requires a time commitment. So my coteacher and I took class time to show the students a movie about HIV/AIDS. It’s really cool; it is made just like a movie, not a documentary. The students loved it. I think the most rewarding thing on the planet is the raucous laughter of 50 Khmer teenagers. The movie had English subtitles, so I could read it, and it could technically be counted as English class. We had to watch it in the school office, so a lot of the teachers ending up watching it with us as well. We even had some students wander in from other classes. It made me really happy. It is estimated that 70,000 Cambodians have HIV/AIDS, the highest infection rate in Southeast Asia. Many people were infected during the war. Most men were soldiers, living away from home. More recently, the infection rate has skyrocketing among police. Most police officers do not live where they work. They live in dorms at the police station, only going home once every month or so. Another problem is the lack of female control over the use of protection. Even if a woman knows her husband is sleeping around, it would be unacceptable to for her to insist that he use a condom. Because of this, the infection rate is just as high among chaste, married women as it is among prostitutes. The rate of new infections is declining, however. There is a ton of education available now.

In other news, I moved this week. Apparently, my host family doesn’t actually own the house we live in. They rent it from a Cambodian woman who lives in the States. She is back for a visit so we had to scram. We now stay two doors down, and my in my new room I can see the stars at night. So that makes me super happy. I have also developed a slight obsession with sugarcane juice. Known locally as ‘tug empoa’, it is possibly the most wonderful thing ever on a hot day. Because it is heating up, tug empoa stands are everywhere. The best part is that a glass costs less than 13 cents. I love this country. I’m not going to lie, it does kind of look like pee, but it is super refreshing at 3 in the afternoon when temperatures range from 90-100. I drink one everyday. Sometimes I drink two.

What else? Ah, yes. My hand sewing has improved a great deal since I’ve been here. One day I was bored, so I bought fabric and made a skirt. By hand. In one afternoon. I think it turned out quite well. Currently, I’m working on a purse. My creative powers are being put to excellent use. My family doesn’t understand why I don’t just pay someone to do it.

Another thing that was kind of weird was going to the US Embassy. During our recent training session in Phnom Penh, we were invited to eat lunch at the Embassy. There were polished tiled floors, heavy metal doors, glass everywhere. Things were shiny. I afraid to walk in, for fear that I would sully this immaculate place with my shoes that had stepped in God-knows-what in my village. The tables and chairs were beautiful and *get this* NOT plastic! The really funny thing was that our counterparts were there too. Picture 30 Americans, who had been living in Cambodian villages, dining in this air conditioned splendor. Now picture 30 Cambodians being given a tour of this place. The tour didn’t last very long, as the cubicle area was all we were allowed to see. But needless to say, they were awed by the grandeur. It was kind of cool to think that they all got a chance to have lunch in America, seeing is that is the only time most of them will ever set foot on American soil.

On our last night some of us took our counterparts to Nike’s Pizza for an American meal. They liked it, although they felt the pizza and pasta were a little salty. But you should have seen the way they gobbled up the ice cream. It was pretty fantastic. We were planning on going to the western market for ice cream, but it was closed. So we decided to just head back. Lydia and I, being the only girls, were walking ahead because the boys were slow. We spotted a western gas station across the road. We wanted ice cream. Without telling anyone, we ran across the road. We didn’t know if the guys would follow, but eventually they did. 7 people shared two pints of ice cream standing in the middle of a gas station in Phnom Penh. It was nothing short of stellar.