Almost time....

I guess I haven’t written in a while. It’s not so much that I don’t have anything to write about, more like the last few weeks have been a bit introspective, and maybe a little boring. While in the US I accepted a job offer to teach ESL at an elementary school in Kunming, China. It’s a school for expatriate children (expatriates are foreigners who reside in another country, as opposed to tourists who are just passing through). So I won’t actually be teaching any Chinese students. All the classes are in English, so I will be helping the non-native English speakers (Koreans, Indians, Italians, etc) to keep up. I am really excited, but as always when you leave a place that’s become home, feelings are mixed. I do love my village a lot. My friends are fun, kind, and generous. I can’t even imagine how much I will miss them. I definitely wouldn’t still be here if wasn’t for a few amazing people in village. However, Cambodia as whole is beginning to wear on me. In my village people know me. While they still do and say things that would be considered rude by American standards (ex. Stop eating so much rice or you’ll be too fat to find a husband!), I know that for the most part they consider me a member of the community and they look out for me. If someone is rude to me, someone will tell him/her off. No one tries to rip me off because I’m a foreigner. But that is unfortunately not the case when I leave my village. People are rude because they think I can’t understand them, and they are so certain I’m rich that they get angry when I refuse to pay double what the price would be if I were Cambodian. A cart-taxi driver tried to charge me double the price when I reach my destination, I refused and he tore up the money I offered him and threw it in my face. I taped it together and bought breakfast with it the next day, he basically gave me a free ride. He sure showed me. But things like that I think I can do without. They are really the hardest part about being here. The lack of electricity, running water, or internet isn’t really a big deal. It’s amazing how quickly you get used to it. But being treated like some sort of sideshow freak can become a bit annoying. But the flipside is that when you meet people who can appreciate you as an individual, and not as a source of entertainment, it means a lot. I’m sitting here in the disaster area that is my room, trying to decide what to do with all my junk. It’s strange going through two years worth of accumulated stuff. I’m doing good now, and haven’t cried in almost three days. I have less than three weeks here at site, soon I will go with some of my students to a pre-workshop training, stay in Phnom Penh to finish up paperwork and then fly to China.
The best way to describe my relationship with Cambodia is it’s like being part of a family. It can be irritating beyond belief, but at the end of the day they’re there for you. Before leaving America two years ago, I remember thinking “How can I go for two years? How much will I miss?” I did miss a lot of things. I missed my great-grandmother’s funeral, weddings, births, birthdays, and anniversaries. That was incredibly difficult. But the truth is I would have missed so much more if I had stayed. The Olympics, Heroes, the rise of Lady Gaga, aren’t things I particularly regret missing. But caring about people who’ve never really mattered to anyone, and having them care about me is something that I can’t imagine living without. Many of my friends in Cambodia are getting married, having babies, changing jobs, etc. So we’re all starting new things in life and it does make me sad that I won’t get to see them. I’ve done a lot of growing up here. I’ve learned a lot about myself. Not all of it good, but I guess 24 is a bit young to be perfect. I’d hate to make everyone jealous.
So basically I’m just trying to enjoy a brief break from teaching English, and spending as much time as I can with my friends, as well as reading. I think I’ve become a bit too Cambodian. I can sit on my porch with a book in my hands and never look at it; I can just sit there staring into space for hours. Seriously. I get annoyed when people expect me to show up to places on time. When I have to work more than three hours in a row I act like a deserve some kind of medal. Clearly this has no connection to what normal people would consider to be reality, so I’m sure it’s good that I’m going back to the real world now before this kind of behavior becomes permanent. But there’s just something so wonderful about just walking down the road and people stopping you to hang out with them. They’re like “Here eat this.” Cambodians are very uncomfortable being around people who aren’t eating. They feel like they’re somehow being inhospitable. If you show up when they’ve just run out of food they will buy you some more.
I went to visit my host family from training a couple of days ago. It’s always fun to go back, my language skills are much better, they tell me, but I’m still not thin. They are masters of the obvious. I was welcomed by drunk women meeting me on the road and kissing me. Well, in Cambodia kissing is more akin to sniffing, but whatever. One of them came by my house a little later with a two liter soda bottle that used to be full of palm liquor. Alas, by this time it was almost empty. Tragic. So this woman comes up to me and shows me that just a few drops are left in the bottle. This is clearly very upsetting. The woman is on the verge of tears, running around yelling “It’s empty! It’s empty!” and begging everyone around for money to remedy the situation. She comes up to me, and as politely as I can I tell her I don’t have any money. And she’s like “No, you don’t understand, my bottle is empty.” I offer to pour her some tea and she walks away in disgust. Then it’s time for the funeral. I have no idea whose funeral it was, but that’s not important. It wasn’t the real funeral; it was the seven day later funeral. Basically monks chant, neighbors come bearing gifts of money and incense, and then the family of the deceased serves rice porridge to guests. Traditionally white shirts are worn to funerals, but as long as you bring the money it doesn’t really matter. The best part of a funeral is that the monks’ chanting is blasted on a loudspeaker until midnight, and then starts up again at 4am. Fun. The real purpose of a funeral seems to be specifically for old people to get drunk. They are kind of the stars at funerals, helping out the monks and what not, sometimes they take over the chanting to give the monks a break. The best chants actually happen around 9pm, because the old folks are giving the monks a break, but it is sooo past their bedtime, and they’re really drunk, so they have no idea what they’re saying. I can’t really understand the chanting, because it’s done really fast, and they use a lot of religious words that I don’t know. But I think that sometimes the monks get bored and start chanting whatever pops into their heads because no one’s really listening. I swear they went on for longest time about fried noodles.
And that’s my life as of now. I will continue to blog from China, fear not. I love and miss you all!