Meet My: Favorite People and Things

One big thing they teach you in training is called IRBig. Inter relationship building. This is a big part of what you do in Peace Corps. It's so important to build good relationships with people in your town. When you get to know a Cambodian they will look out for you and help you in any way they can.

Here are some people whom be built good relationships with and whom we enjoyed seeing every day.

First is our vegetable lady. The first time we went to the market we went to a different lady and she totally over charged us. The next time we went to a new lady and she gave us awesome prices, and thus she became our veggie lady. Her and her husband were always there and they always asked about Hal if I went alone and visa versa.

 Next is our drink lady. We would always stop at her little stall which was on our road, close to the crossroads with the main road, so we passed it a lot. Her entire family knew us and they were all incredibly sweet. She lives next door to our host aunt, so in the evenings when I would ride past on my way to teach I'd have a big crowd of waves.

 The next woman we didn't know super well, but we loved what she made. It's one of our favorite things, and I am so bummed I forgot to bring some back. She makes Skaw Tuh-nout. Or translated as brown sugar. But it's probably actually palm sugar. You could go in the afternoon and she's take down the bucket collecting sugar from the tap in the tree and you could watch her turn it into what she's holding below. This stuff was so yummy and creamy and perfect in oatmeal.

Next up is the K2, the previous volunteer's host family. They are the sweetest Cambodians I have ever met. They were our Khmer tutors, and the host dad is also fluent in french. I just love this family to death. Our host dad told us that once they asked if we could come live with them instead. They have two sons, a daughter in law who is gorgeous, and one grand daughter. The baby was never really interested in us, and was often a little scared. The picture below is our last dinner with them days before we left and we gave them some of our Cambodian wedding pictures. The baby saw them and all of the sudden her attitude towards us change. She was playful and loving towards us after that. Anyway, I adore this family.

I already told you about one of my favorite girls in town, but here's some more. These little girls lived where my favorite puppy lived. I once tried to go take pictures of him, but he wasn't there, so they went on a quest to find him. These munchkins already knew my name, and the little girl on the left is named Lisa. Everytime she was home when I rode by she would yell "Hello Sam" and I would yell "Hello Lisa" back. She would always seem so shocked that I remembered her name. 

In conjunction with this picture, is a missing picture. The woman who lives next to the family above is our Sugus lady. Sugus is a candy similar to starbursts. I am really sad that I somehow never got a picture with her. She looked out for us. Whenever we'd be walking down to the road to catch a taxi or a bus to Siem Reap or somewhere she'd always ask where we were going. She'd always notice when we came back. She is actually the one who found the dog in the above picture sleeping under her little stall. She was so sweet and we joked around with her a lot.

I figure I should round this out with at least one man. This is Muny. He is my host uncle, and he teaches economics at the high school. He speaks fabulous English and has one of the best world views of any Cambodian I've met, mostly because he lived in France for a bit. I posted about his engagement here. He is probably the best young Cambodian man I've ever met. He bought a touri (a large van) so his family could all come to his engagement in Siem Reap. Well, he was so nice and gave me the best deal and drove my girls to and from Siem Reap for Camp Glow.

I'm sure there are many more people and things which deserve to be on this list, but this is what I have so far. Cambodians are just the greatest people and I am so lucky I've had the opportunity to get to know some of them.

Meet My: Town

I'm trying to finish up my posts about Cambodia, but it seems like every time I get on the computer I think of something else I want to share with you about our experiences there. Here's some glimpses of what our town looked like.

These are two pictures from a tall house by our market. The first one is looking west, at the road our market is on. The second one is looking north towards the road our house was on.

I really liked our town. It was a good distance from bigger towns that we could go to when we needed it, but it was big enough that there were things to do while we were at site. A national road runs through my site and it's in between two big tourist spots so every once in a while we'd see people biking through our town, and one time we even saw an older foreigner walking through our town. I remember my co-teacher asked me as we watched him walk past the school, "why is that foreigner just walking?" I don't know co-teacher, I don't know.

Before we left our town I really wanted to get some video of where we lived. Below are two videos of my town. The first is the street that we lived on, so I walk north facing east and then walk back to the house facing west.  You'll see our house, Hal and my host mom and then our taxi filled with all of our stuff as I walk by. The last video is one I took from the taxi window as we drove out of town. You'll see the school at the end of the video.

Meet My: Co-Teachers

Co-teachers can make or break your time in Cambodia. They have a serious impact on the amount you end up teaching. My school director had chosen my co-teachers for me when I arrived. I worked with 3 co-teachers, all whom have names that start with S, so they shall be S1, S2, and S3.

First is S1. I never really got a good picture of S1. He had been teaching for I think 15 years, and was pretty set in his ways. He was a great teacher when he actually taught. He had another job working for a cell phone company, and since that one paid more, it came first, before teaching. I only taught one 10th grade class with him, but those students were smarter than all of my other classes....probably combined.

S2 is a newer teacher. It was only his second year teaching. He teaches middle school level and is going to school to get his degree to teach high school. He was so great to talk to. We had a lot of great conversations, but he would often want to talk over teaching. Once he told me, "I don't want to teach today, I am sad." I wish that I had pushed him to teach more, but it's hard to know where that line is, especially as a woman interacting with a man. Our 7th grade students were notorious for leaving after their first class if their teacher didn't show up, so we'd go to teach for the second set of classes and no students would be there. I taught 1 7th grade class and 1 8th grade class with him.
He got married suddenly and I was in china so I ended up missing his wedding. It seems like it was kind of a shot gun wedding. I'm not really sure. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone.

S3, good ol S3. I was so lucky to have a female co-teacher to work with. She is the only female to teach English at the high school level in my school. I worked with her a lot on my projects and she was my main co-teacher. She started a private English school in our town where students could come and for a rather reasonable price take extra English lessons. She's currently expanding her school to add more classes in things like computer skills. She has so much drive compared to a lot of Cambodian woman and is probably considered a spinster in Cambodia. But she's lovely and she's successful, and she's one of the people I miss the most.

Lastly I'll include my school director, Mr. P as I'll call him here. He was always so friendly and nice to Hal and I. Especially Hal. He really liked hanging out with Hal. He was a supportive school director and never said no to any project I wanted to do. He loved maps and would study English on his own every single night. He always looked out for us and was upset when I didn't turn to him for help when I had dengue. He is a nice guy, but lets his teachers get away with everything.

Between co-teachers not showing up to school and students either not showing up or leaving early teaching English at public schools in Cambodia can be very very difficult. If they do show up, the current text book is pretty horrible and out of date. Thanks to Peace Corps and some partnerships, hopefully that will change soon thanks to a new textbook in development.
But when you do get those moments where you click with the students and they get what you're talking about, they're magical. Those are the moments that get you through the weeks where you end up teaching only one class.

Cheers to Four Years

Four years ago today this happened.

I was going through some old journals the other day taking out things I no longer want in there. It was so fun to read about the time leading up to meeting Hal. I was someone who didn't really want to get married really young and marriage was not on my radar. I read through a post about how confused I felt about everything and how the clarity that prayer brought was I needed to prepare myself to get married. The night before I met Hal I told my sister I felt like I would get married soon. It's funny what following God's path can lead you to. I'm so glad I was open to what God wanted me to do, it led me to something so amazing.


As I said before, joining the Peace Corps and going through all of the trials and triumphs is the Peace Corps made me realize that I was so lucky I made the best decision ever and married Hal. He is the hardest working, most loving, most supportive, best hot chocolate maker I could have ever asked for.

In these four years we have had some pretty crazy adventures together. I'm so glad that I found someone who is willing to seek after adventure with me and to be by my side and support me through our lives.

My Cambodian Wedding

Now I know I've shared a little bit about what weddings in Cambodia are like. Before we left Cambodia Hal and I wanted to experience a Cambodian wedding from a different perspective. In training we knew a family who took weddings pictures and ran a business renting out wedding clothes. They placed a great volunteer with that family, and we were so lucky that when we went back to visit before we left, we were able to arrange a photo shoot in their living room.

I don't think you guys are ready for these pictures. Are you ready to laugh and be amazed by these pictures? Lets just say I had a bit of a sore body after being put into these clothes and then every part of my body down to my fingers were posed. The result is amazing, and I will forever love these photos. We got some with backgrounds added to them, in ultra Khmer fashion, but I can't find them in our boxes, so I'll keep that treasure for a future post.

Things I don't want to forget: Language and Music

Now that we've been back in America for almost a month my Things I don't want to forget posts are winding  down. I miss Cambodia a lot and posting these memories has allowed me to remember some great experiences of our time in Cambodia. Today I'm writing about learning the language and music.

Language:

my language group in training

-How every Khmer person grunts in conversation as a form of agreement
-When you tell Cambodians that you're on your way to your Khmer lesson and they tell you you don't need lessons, you can already speak Khmer.
-How you'll say something to someone in khmer and they'll just stare at you with a blank look and ask someone else what you just said, that person will then repeat also in khmer what you just said, and they'll understand them.
-That one time we were in another market and were telling the lady selling noodles the name of our town. She didn't understand and said "what", we started repeating it, but there was a chorus of probably 5 women in the surrounding stalls who called our the name of our town.
-When you say hello in Khmer, and they proceed to tell you how amazing you are at Khmer, and then bust out in a whole bunch of Khmer you don't understand while you nod and repeat the last few words they said while grunting...works 90% of the time.
-How close the word yellow is to the word penis
-How close the word corn is to the word vagina.
-Hearing stories of volunteers mixing the two up :)

The wonderful family who taught us khmer in our village

Music:

-How your house will rattle from the music going on at a wedding anywhere within 5 houses of you.

-When you get seated at a table right next to the speakers and your entire body vibrates from how loud the music is.

-How you can hear wedding music halfway across the village.

-The cacophony of two weddings both blasting music at the same time.

-Khmer music....oh khmer music, and a slightly tone deaf Moto Accident singing it all day long

-How Moto Accident watches TV while wearing head phones plugged into her phone that's playing music.
-The people that warm up for pop stars are cross dressing men...trying to sing like women. It involves a lot of voice cracking.
-The epic 8 music video series of very dramatic stories.
-How music videos almost always involve a death.
-How music videos almost always involve a car accident
-How the audio from those car accidents are still played in the audio of the regular song.
-Dancing around the pole in my living room to some sweet dance music.

-How you can just make up dance moves to songs and still look like you know what you're doing.

Here's an example of a Khmer pop song my host sister would listen to.

Activities of Camp GLOW

In-between sessions with the help of our counterparts we ran quite a few different activities. Most of them were meant to let the girls get to know each other and to help them bond a little during the camp. These led to some of the most fun moments of the entire camp.

The first day we had the girls all make a bag. Inside the bag they wrote a note to themselves about something they liked about themselves. Then throughout the camp we asked the girls to write notes to the other girls, mainly girls in other villages that they had gotten to know. This activity was a huge success. I loved seeing the girls put notes in each others boxes.

 Our activity that night was decorating t-shirts. Hal made a fabulous stencil and we spray painted it onto all of the shirts. They turned out great!

Day two we did an activity called Cross the Line. This is where the girls stand on a line and we read a statement like "This is my first time to Siem Reap," or "I think I am beautiful."

 I ended up joining the girls in this game and sometimes I was the only one who crossed the line. This led to a good discussion with the girls after the game.

That night we had a girly night were we colored, made bracelets and painted our nails. Or more accurately, they painted their nails, and our nails. We had so much fun this night, we ended up teaching the girls the macarena, and they seemed to have a great time learning it.

Day 3 our activities was so much fun. We started out with a yoga session led by me. I was impressed with their skills, especially at tree pose. We played a name game where we put a sheet in the middle and split the girls in half. Then one girl from each group comes up to the sheet. We drop the sheet and the first girl to say the other girls name wins. This was such a blast.

This was our last night of the camp so we decided to go big. We brought the girls into Siem Reap town. First we took them to a tourist market and then to Lucky Mall where they were all very excited to go. They ate American food at Lucky Burger and had some time to visit the mall before we ended with some ice cream.

Our last day we had a lot of fun taking a million pictures in our sweet Camp GLOW shirts. Seriously, a million pictures.

I hope the girls had as much fun as I did at Camp GLOW. Seriously, everything went so smoothly and the girls did amazing. It ended up being a blast and I'm so glad that I was able to spend those 4 days with them.