Catastrophes and Tiger Balm

This week I had a catastrophe. Now, on the whole these days I am doing quite well. On a day in and day out basis I feel quite content in my general surroundings and have very little cause for complaint. My one big issue with this country remains noise. Cambodia is loud. I told this to one of my co-teachers recently and was rather startled to see his confusion. He actually told me that he thought Cambodia to be a quiet and tranquil place. Surely this is because he has never been anywhere else, and having been raised here he does not register the cacophony that is this country. I do not think I have gone a single day in this country without some period of time filled with music, speeches, or chanting monks being played over loud speakers with very bad sound quality. Thus, when my i-pod died I was beyond distraught. I actually cried. It was inconceivable to me that I could continue living in this country without it! I am glad to report, however, that my father took pity on me and aided me in buying a new one. Sanity restored. Crisis averted.

The last several weeks have been fairly uneventful otherwise. I have had very little school due to exams and grading of exams and holidays and so forth. My host "sister" was visiting from Phnom Penh over Chinese New Year and that was a lot of fun. She is close to my age and knows a fair amount of english so I had a great time with her. It was also helpful in learning things about the family. For example, I finally figured out where Foo came from and why he lives with his Yays. I learned that our neighbors may or may not be peeping toms. That was a fun conversation. "Cher, my grandmother says maybe you be careful in your room because the neighbors are not so polite." WHAT!? I also learned that Khmer people think airconditioning gives them acne. I find this hilarious since Americans in Cambodia think a lack of AC gives them acne, but alas, both may be true.

Now for some of the "bests" over the last couple weeks:

Best moment at site: I was teaching english at the health center and the nurses were trying to get me to eat some treats. I told them I would only eat one because I want my clothes to fit when I go back to America to visit in April. I then told them I need to exercise more. They then dragged me into a back room where they pre-natal check-ups and turned on the tv. As it turns out that had recently recieved a "Salsa-cise" dance work out video which they are now doing twice a day monday through friday. It was one of the most hilarious things I have seen in this country. I fully intend to begin salsa-cising regularly when I get back to site (I am in PP right now for in service training).

Best PC Staff moment: I will have to give a little background on this one. Khmer people LOVE tiger balm. For those of you who may not know –Tiger balm is a menthol-esque chap-stick like substance that people use for all kinds of purposes. We barangs use it primarily to lessen the itch of mosquito bites and occasionally for blocked sinuses and headaches (a little tiger balm on the temples or under the nose…) Khmer people however, use it for any ailment you might imagine. We all joke with each other about this. When someone has a medical problem or an injury or something the immediate response from one of us is usually “oh did you put tiger balm on it?” You might think this is an exaggeration but a quote from this week’s in service training proves that it is not. We were discussing safety and security concerns and road safety was one of the topics brought up. We got onto the topic of what to do if you are in an accident or view an accident. One of our staff members started suggesting steps of things to do if you witness an accident where someone is injured. It went something like this: “First maybe you move the person out of the middle of the road. Then maybe you see if you can get anything to help them, like if they need some tiger balm.” I don’t think we all meant to laugh. But we all did. It was just so perfect.

Best text messages of the week: “sister, what do Sunbunny and Snowbaby mean?” Or "Sister, what is a meat pie?"

Some big events...

A couple of weeks ago I was hanging out in my room drawing a picture (since that’s what I do these days) and my little sisters came up and told me I should go outside because their grandmother wants to know me. I was confused since I was fairly sure I was living with their grandmother. It was however, another grandmother, one that lives about 30K north of us. It was a good opportunity for me to spend some time with the family, and one of the visitors spoke good English and was able to translate some questions my Yays (grandmothers) had. The most impressive part was that I went through a 45 minute conversation in Khmer without a single person asking me if I had a husband or boyfriend. That has got to be some kind of record for a first meeting.

I was sitting in the teacher “lounge” at school a couple weeks ago minding my own business when one of my co-teachers informed me that my school director wanted me to attend a wedding with him roughly 45 minutes later. I figured hey, free lunch, why not?! So I ended up going, in my teaching clothes, to this wedding with my school director and about 9 other Khmer men from my school. Details of this event are perhaps unnecessary; I think the overview will suffice. In the course of lunch I have no idea how many beers were poured into my glass while my head was turned. What I do know is that eating a whole duck with chopsticks is difficult without alcohol in your system but virtually impossible with it and when people start yelling “FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP” at you in Khmer, it is time to go home! My heart-felt apologies to all disappointed staff of TK High School, I do not chug. (for the record though, it was a lot of fun and a good opportunity to build relationships with the male-dominant staff of the school at which I teach)

Recently a couple of members of our Peace Corps Medical staff visited me at my site just to check things out and get some paperwork done. This turned out to be a pretty eventful visit. For starters it gave me an opportunity to communicate some things with my host family. I really love the family that I live with, but I also spend a lot of time by myself. This can be misconstrued in this culture as a lack of regard for the family. I wanted to make sure they knew that I really care about their family and am very happy with the living situation. It was nice to be able to communicate this and receive reciprocated assertions of the families regard for me. It was just a comfort to know that they enjoyed having me there and did not doubt my appreciation and affection for their family. In addition, during this trip I found out some interesting facts about the family. Most interestingly I found out that they are from Phnom Penh originally but came to Battambang during the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh during the Khmer Rouge. They stayed up north because there was so much rice! During this visit I was also able to ask a lot of questions at the health center about what issues they encountered most and that evening I was able to watch a delivery with two of the nurses from my health center. It was totally cool, but I might choose never to pro-create after watching it!

This past weekend I decided to embark on an epic journey. I decided to take a trip to Phnom Penh with my host family. Now I will start off by explaining that many of us laugh at the way many Khmer people travel. It is not all efficient. Usually in route to a given destination the bus will stop at least twice as often as necessary at some rest stop like area or another. It was really amusing for me to travel with my host family because they are the reason the bus stops so often. They packed huge amounts of food with them for the 6+ hour bus trip, and yet every time the bus stopped they got off and bought more food.

While in Phnom Penh we stayed with some extended family and all went out to dinner together the first night. I sort of thought we were going somewhere special because the whole family bathed and put on good clothes before leaving. As it turned out, the special dinner out was at a fast food fried chicken place in the “super market” (ie: SORYA mall) It was actually really fun eating American food with my Khmer family. We also took a brief trip to the arcade where I was reminded yet again that children are roughly the same everywhere. The next day was the big event.

We left around 12:00p for the water park and returned to the house just before 6:00p. It was exhausting but so much fun. I got to spend the whole afternoon going down water slides, giving mini swimming lessons, and just playing with my little khmer sisters (breakdown: I live with the mother of one of my health center nurses. I went to Phnom Penh with the nurse, her husband, their two daughters and two nieces. Also with us at the water park was the older sister of two of the girls, and her best friend, as well as two other kids whose relation to the family I am not sure of!) It was great to have that time with the family, especially the 4 girls that live with me (well, technically next to me). It was also really fun to spend time with two girls closer to my age (both were 19) who are studying fields I am interested in (pharmacology and nursing I think) in Phnom Penh. In addition, it was really fun watching the reactions of people when they saw me and then realized who I was with. I had two favorite moments during this afternoon. The first was my little sisters yelling “CHER! BARANG TIET!” which translates to “Teacher! More foreigners” excitedly whenever we saw another white person. The second and best was this: on one of many trips down the big water slide some guy went down the slide too soon after one of the older girls and kicked her pretty hard. She was not happy about this, so when she saw him getting ready to go down the slide again she waited at the bottom then racked him over the head with an inner tube. I have rarely seen any feisty move from a young Khmer woman and this one took the cake. It made me really happy. The security guard (not lifeguard…security guard…at the pool in full uniform watching the water slide) also found it quite comical.

This past week was exam week. It was very relaxed and gave me ample opportunity to think about projects for next semester and begin planning how the next several months might go.

AND text of the week: "I can't help it, I'm a sucker for drunk women who saunter up to me at four on tuesday and remind me that they can make me 'happy happy.'"