Thanks!

Hi everyone, will post soon! Now just wanted to let you all know that the girls camp was a huge success. The girls told me they were sad it ended. They absolutely loved the shirts so thanks so much to all who donated. At school, the day after the camp, one of the shyest participants volunteered to present her group's work to the entire class. I have never seen her do anything remotely like that before. I think it really made a difference so thanks again. Promise more details forthcoming.

Musings on headgear, alcohol related injuries, and gay chickens

There are many things that I do in Cambodia that I never would have done in the States. One of those is to wear ridiculous things on my head. I have some wonderfully awful hats, and now, I have a Rastafarian headband. I have mentioned my sparkly hat and gold/silver billabong hat in a previous blog, but I haves since acquired several more. One is black and red with gold dots on the red part. Another is rainbow striped with a pink, silver-dotted brim. A few days ago my friend gave me a headband that Bob Marley would be proud of. I wore it to school. Much to the amusement of my students. I also occasionally tie scarves around my head to keep my hair from blowing in the wind. And I sometimes wear long, billowy, floral skirts. Sometimes when I think about what I’m wearing I scare myself. I first arrived in Cambodia with a wardrobe as low key as possible. Fail. Khmer people don’t like black and gray. I have since procured many colorful sarongs, surfer shorts, pajamas, and t-shirts. As long as it is a bright color, they love it. Matching and fitting aren’t really a big deal here. They just like things that are bright and shiny. I don’t think there is a word for “flattering” in Khmer.

Water Festival just ended, but not to worry, we won’t have to face the shock of getting back to working a full week yet. Now we have a three day weekend for Cambodian independence day. Water Festival is actually three festivals. There is a rice roasting festival, a boat racing festival, and moon festival. Cambodians show gratitude to the Mekong river for sustaining their crops. This is the reason for boat racing. The moon festival consists of making small paper shrines and putting candles on them and setting them afloat on the river. They believe that the moon, rather than the sun, is responsible for the growth of crops. They wait til midnight to thresh the rice. Altogether these festivals make up Water Festival, which is a really big deal. Hundreds of thousands of people descend on Phnom Penh to watch the boat races and get ridiculously drunk. Having already seen boat races in Battambang, I was content to stay home.

Water festival means the beginning of ambok season. To make ambok, they take grains of recently harvested rice, roast them, and then put them in a mortar/pestle to pound them into flakes. The reason I get so excited is that if you fry the flakes, they puff up and basically become rice krispies. Yum! I had that for breakfast. One of the downsides of water festival is the alcohol. Two young girls were seriously injured in a moto accident over the holiday. They were carrying a load of wood on the moto, and most of it fell on them when they crashed. The driver of the other moto was not from around here, visiting for the holiday and driving far too fast, probably drunk. He was injured pretty badly as well, but he went home so we don’t really know much more about his condition. Le’ak and Mey aren’t my students, but their aunt, whom I have affectionately dubbed my ‘dealer’ sells me Vietnamese coffee, so we’re basically family. The girls are back home and they are going to be okay, but they’re really banged up. I visited them today. They were both in good moods, but they have some pretty awful scrapes. They may be scarred for life. But they were joking around and talking about how they don’t ever want me to leave Cambodia. It was so sweet. I also learned that the Chinese doctor who has been here for six years doesn’t speak Khmer as well as I do. He thinks Khmer people look like the Vietnamese. Apparently Khmer people don’t like being called Vietnamese any more than I like being called French. They also told me that Americans are far more beautiful than the French. The French are too white and have too many freckles. I’m sure had I been French they would have said the same thing about Americans. But whatever, it was fun. They are so bored because their injuries prevent them from doing much. I brought them some oranges and magazines. I would have given them my checkers set, but I left it with my host brothers, because they had lost a lot of pieces anyway. It didn’t seem to phase them, they just invented a different game requiring fewer pieces.

Now I have host sisters, and went with one of them and a few of her friends to pick oranges. They hate the way I peel oranges, cutting toward my hand taking the skin off in one long strip. They always try and take the knife and teach me to do the khmer way. They are certain I will cut my hands. I have tried to learn the khmer way. It's hard. I am content to just pay attention when I peel fruit and thus avoid cutting my hands. They are certain this will lead to my losing a finger. I have assured them and entire nation peels fruit this way and the loss of limbs remains relatively low. I find that it is rather difficult to pay attention to fruit peeling while having this conversation, so I hope that one day I do not prove them right. During this fruit peeling conversation, there are chickens milling around trying to eat the orange peels. One of them has almost no feathers. This is not at all unusual, Cambodia has some of the ugliest chickens I have ever seen. My host sister informs me that when a chicken has no feathers, this means that it is gay. So apparently homosexuality is big among Cambodian chickens. She says that the rooster try to pluck their feathers so they will look more like females. So in case you weren't previously aware of the cause of baldness in chickens, here it is. I'll end on that note. Nanny vickie, thanks for the pix, Colebren is so grown up! And for those who have sent me packages, I have a rather difficult mail situation, so things may not get to me in hurry, but I will let you know when they do. Love and miss you all!