12.20.2008

Merry Christmas!


Lita, Rosa, Phanit and me!

A Photo!


Things I like


12-14

Very recently I was speaking with my good friend Deidre about, as usual, the fact that we have more time on our hands than work could ever possibly fill. We can try to fill our time by building our muscles with exercise and physical activity, cramming our head full of words from books, working on our language skills (Khmer, not English – my spoken English skills continue to evaporate through lack of use), or picking up some new hobby or skill, but there is only so many hours that can be filled with that sort of business. We find that we, therefore, find the things that give us the greatest amounts of joy in order to supply us with the sanity that we need to fulfill our obligations to the great county of Cambodia. For Deidre, it is coffee with a newspaper (a great thanks to Dan’s family for sending the Economist for our perusal) and anything/everything about the mornings, including the rise of the sun, the food usually served, the routines, the fresh fried bananas…everything.
And for me? Life here is so… what can I say? Slow isn’t the right word, though time moves at a different pace here. It isn’t simple, either, though that adjective comes to mind as well. For a person new to this culture and this language, nothing is simple, though life is nowhere near as difficult as it was – the market is not as intimidating, the general spectators of my life give me less trouble than before (as a foreigner, this is everyone), and I have no dread of the fact that there will be rice at my next meal (mainly because my body has discovered a certain dependency for that particular grain). As life gets easier, I find more things that give me the joy that I need to survive so far from home and so far from the life that I lived for 20 some years.
There is almost nothing that I find better than an afternoon bike ride with some mood music blaring out the numerous statements of wonder and attention that I get on an amazingly daily basis. The countryside is lined like Iowa with rice supplying the color instead of corn, and dotted with palm trees instead of big elms or oaks, and as I ride through a village hazy with dust as the sun sets, I feel a surreal wave wash over me at the life that I live. I find joy as I sit respectfully in the temple, gazing at the statues of Buddha and the paintings of his life. In my village the temple is unfinished – the doorways have no doors, the windows no panes, and a cool breeze blows the scent of incense across my face. When I get home, I know that wherever I live there will be a hammock, and I will sit and read as I do here. I have spent many hours lost in fiction as I slowly swing in the hammock with a glass of jasmine tea. I’m not sure how I will ever survive another winter.
There are more things that I like (isn’t that what Martha Stewart says?). The Khmer people have a certain kiss that they give to babies and children – they press their face up close to the child and take a deep breath through their nose – and my yiey recently gifted me with the same kiss, which gave me a sort of strange giddiness that I can’t explain. Such closeness is a rare commodity for me here – hugs with boys are expressly prohibited and I’m not quite to a hugging level with my female family members, so the contact was well appreciated. In fact, the closest I am allowed to get to boys (not that I am complaining, mind you, at least not much) is in transit, when I am squeezed in a taxi next to a silent middle aged man, a talkative middle aged lady who is enthralled with the hair on my arms, or a teen-looking boy who steals glances at me but is much too frightened to speak to me. There are many places to find humor here.

The Great Mouse Adventure.

12-14-08

There were mice in my room. I cannot be sure how many lived there at any given time, nor can I be particularly sure where they lived within my abode at any particular moment, but I knew they were there. On a few occasions I heard the pitter patter of little feet scrambling through the boards that line my room near the roof. On considerably more occasions, I swept up a few gifts that they had left me in various nooks and corners of my room. But on the most memorable occasion, I returned from a compulsory visit to the big town of Battambang and began to put some clothes away when one brave little mouse jumped from my clothes back onto the wall and scurried away. It was this occasion (plus the holes in one of my favorite shirts) that compelled me to act.
So my family brought me a little can of yellow goo, which we in turn spread onto a plate-like circle of plastic with a juicy selection of fish heads in the middle (my grandmother’s choice, not mine – I would rather tempt them with some more clothing, perhaps a piece of the same fruit that I saw a seed of in my room). And we put our 2 ‘pizzas,’ as my family so quaintly put it, into my freshly cleaned room. Coincidentally, I found the living quarters of the little rodents: in one of my tennis shoes that has lain untouched for the joy of flip-flops. I am fairly certain that they enjoyed my shoelaces as their pillows, because they tore them to pieces and piled them with the scraps of some of my other clothing.
It should be mentioned that the day that I cleaned my room so well was also the day that I hung up my lucky find from Battambang: brightly colored flashing Christmas lights. I mention this because as I sat and gazed at them in the sheer joy of the holidays, my grandmother came in and warned me that the mice wouldn’t come out if they were on all night. She is always looking out for me, in true yiey (grandmother) fashion. She is also a surprising source of hilarity: During one lunch during the very eventful mouse adventure week, as I was lamenting about the mice biting on my clothes and shoes, etc, etc, my yiey began talking about the biting of ears. At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about… no, yiey, the mice didn’t eat my ears! … Oohhh, the mice could have eaten my ears? … Holly-ield? Eye-son? … What about fighting? … You mean Mike Tyson? Evander Holyfield? I could not control my laughter. I am continually amazed about the bits of information that the people here has access to – and the times that they choose to reveal such knowledge.
But on with the previous topic. I woke up the morning after I placed the fish ‘pizzas’ strategically on my floor, with a very restless night fraught with mice whimpering and a strange fear of what was happening under my bed, to find not one, not two, but four mice struggling for freedom in their respective sticky circles. And what followed might have been one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. I don’t consider myself a squeamish person, but watching my host mother peel the mice off of the disc with a stick and pound their heads against a rock until they stopped moving, and then throw the pile of carcasses into the nearby pond as fish food… well, it was a little much for 6 in the morning. Over the next two days, two more mice were caught in the gummy trap and suffered the same fate – I found it a bit ironic that we used fish for bait and then fed the dead back to the fish, but I suppose the circle of life is a bit different in this hemisphere. Why wouldn’t it be when so many other things are…

12.05.2008

Typical Day......

A Typical Day right now:

6 am – Tear myself out of bed to brave the icy (only a slight overstatement) northern winds for my cold morning shower to get ready for school by wearing my traditional Khmer skirt and a long sleeve button-up shirt.
6:45 am – Hop on my bike and ride the 2K to school on the very bumpy and usually dusty, if not obscenely muddy, road.
7 am – Meet up with my buddy and co-teacher Chhay to watch the morning assembly as we eat ramen soup or rice with meat with the other teachers at school.
7:15 am – Teach a class, usually grade 10 or 11.
8:00 am – Have a break, consisting of joking around with fellow teachers or chatting with some students.
8:15 am – More class.
9 am – Another break.
The class and the breaks continue…though sometimes I watch/play volleyball with students and other teachers.
11 am – Go back on the bike and fight the northern winds to get home.
11:30 am – Eat rice with some sort of stir fry and fruit for lunch.
12 pm – Relax, read a book, nap, do laundry, clean, or play around on my computer.
2 pm – Return to school after another shower for sports or lower grade level classes.
4 pm – Go on a bike ride around the district (the farthest being about 5K away) and exercise with volleyball playing or some yoga.
6 pm – Wash up and eat a dinner of eggs or fried ramen or stir fry little pieces of fried meat with spicy sauce, chat with the family.
7:30 pm – Relax by watching TV, writing, talking with the family, helping with English, or doing some combination of the above.
10 pm (or earlier) – Fall into a peaceful slumber sometimes disturbed by obnoxious dogs, party music, or the rooster that I would prefer cooked on a plate in front of me.

Banteay Chhmar


11-22-08

In celebration of the Bon Om Tuk (Water Festival), in which bunches of people watch boat races in Phnom Penh (and the ever-popular water parade with Vegas-style lights on a bunch of boats at nighttime), my friends from the province came to visit my site and we all went up to Banteay Chhmar temple to watch a smaller scale of boat races and tour the local ruins.
The boat races were a little bit like watching a game of baseball for me, with the exception of having a cool stadium to peruse, lots of awfully unhealthy food and drink to consume, and really entertaining fans to make me laugh. In fact, there is little to no cheering and I was eating grapefruit for my snack while we sat on a river bank and saw just a few seconds of action in any given 20 minutes. It was a little disappointing…but I think that most of you know that I can have fun just about anywhere, so of course I enjoyed myself.
And then there was the temple…wow. There is a huge complex with towers and walls and lakes and tunnels and the adventures are endless for climbing and discovering beautiful scenery. “Climbing: is certainly the optimal word there, though, because the whole complex is in ruins, with these immense stone bricks stacked up in some haphazard way…I continuously wondered how they had gotten into such a state considering how sturdy and secure they were under my feet. We can climb to the top of the tower spires and go into the “Narrow Fortress” (aka Banteay Chhmar) underneath the tall walls. We explore the walls littered with old Sanskrit engravings and try not to trip in the blinding darkness broken only with tiny creaks that we can somehow squeeze out of back into the tree shadowed sunshine. It would be easy to get lost in the temple, with the many towers beginning to look like one another and all of the rubble confusing your sense of direction. The corridors under the high walls begin to look all the same and the little ponds and grassy knolls within the complex somehow have all of the same people around.
But it is so gorgeous and so fun… On one of the walls there is Apsara with more arms than I could count, and a giant Buddha statue nearby, and so many Poloroids-to-be that I could barely keep my batteries from running out.

And then the rest of the holiday… After a leisurely meal with my friends, we went with my family to the nearest wat in the town. Normally the quietest place in town, that night the party was there, and it looked like a carnival and a rave and church at Christmas all in the same little complex. Rowdy kids had firecrackers just like the Fourth of July, the monks were leading a lengthy prayer to the ancestors, and the rest of the young folk were dancing in the big circle of fencing while everyone was milling about and eating more sweets than I am sure that they need. My sisters bought little boats made from flowers and foam and ribbon and lit the candles to send them off in the nearby pond. I think that that could have been a really pretty sight if there were a whole sea of little flowers and candles, but the wind was wrong I think. It was fun anyway, and then we went home.

The Wedding


11.21.08
As in all events, this one can never begin at the beginning of the day. Granted, I will not start with the engagement, because I still am unsure about the relationship of the bride and groom to my family or really to one another, nor will I begin with any sort of wedding event, because the most exciting start came with my brand new shirt.
The fact that my current host mom is a tailor has come in handy numerous times already. She fixed my sarong that was torn from too much vigorous activity with the boys, she tailored my pants that the weight loss had made unwearably huge, and she let me dig through her scraps and play with her sewing machine, which I sure many of you could guess, gave me endless enjoyment. The fact that she made me a beautiful shirt in the span of a day while also making some of the wedding clothes is nothing short of miraculous, though. And the shop is altogether entertaining as well. It goes something like this… I’m going to make you a shirt, so I have to measure you all over – raise your arms, lower your arms, hold this a minute, wow you’re big!, ok all done. Here’s your shirt! Try it on now (as we stand in the very public shop outside our home). Here’s the curtain to stand behind – no bras allowed. By the way, while you are being sheltered from the local men with the little curtain, the local women who are in any way connected to the shop are more than welcome to help judge the beauty of the workmanship. This of course happened, and I still don’t know the girl who watched me get down to almost nothing as I changed into my new shirt. I also didn’t expect to be felt up by both my host mother and my host grandmother as they discussed the cut of the shirt and how it felt. In the tailor’s shop…all rules are off (not that there are as many girl to girl rules as there are girl to boy rules…).
This second ‘shirt experience’ was pretty entertaining for me, mainly because my Khmer skills have dwindled with my easy access to English and my complete lack of ability to use the English with my mom and my grandma. Neither of them speak a word, but I’ve learned most of my pronunciation and grammar from them, so fair trade. It is also entertaining (and I’ll get to this more later) because of the length of time that we wear said fancy clothes.

Now the fun part…the pre wedding preparations. I am pretty certain that we are related to the bride, some aunt cousin twice removed or something…Khmer calls everyone uncle or aunt or big brother, so it is sometimes hard to say. But, we went over to the groom’s place to put a huge (huge) amount of fruit and vegetables and slabs of meat and noodles onto plates with saran wrap and pretty bows in preparation for the first part of the ceremony. The next morning, in our prettiest clothes and as my aunt caked a bunch of make-up on my face, we went back over to the same place, took a plate, and the procession of pretty girls in sparkling outfits of any color imaginable brought all of the groceries over to the bride’s nearby house with a light sprinkle of rain falling from above. We took a seat and listened to the wedding singer and local emcee sing a while, the groom and bride gave a selection of fruit to the parents, and then the equivalent of the flower girl and ring bearer performed a little skit with unwrapping some fruit and feeding it to one another. “It’s sweet,” and “It’s sour,” sort of like a Something Borrowed, Something Blue sort of tradition.
But then we got to change (after about an hour), back into cute normal clothes for the Hair cutting ceremony, where couples take turns fake cutting the bride and groom’s hair for good luck. I tried to ask if getting a hair cut is lucky on all occasions, but unfortunately, it is not. All of this takes place in the bride’s home, because the culture is matrilocal and generally the husbands move into their wives’ homes after the wedding.
And then a break, though we did return that evening for the “Bride Price Negotiation Ceremony,” which considerably more singing and music than discussion, once again in street clothes, though the bridal party had an outfit for each one of these separate ceremonies and even more than I saw. This ceremony was only notable for me because I got to play with some of the local instruments, and I met the jack of all trades of musicians, the man from the village who could play each of the instruments without hardly paying any attention.
The next morning there was more make-up, and more music, and more pretty clothes, and more people than I have ever seen in one place in this village. I had flowers in my prettily braided hair and my fancy new shirt on, and it appears that I was the belle of the ball (at 10 in the morning that is…). There was no ceremony to see, just the bride and groom and wedding party in yet another outfit, this one was red I think, and a lot of food and boose (at 10 in the morning that is…).
So I was seated at a table with a fellow teacher and a bunch of people who I didn’t know, including one woman that barely fit into her fancy shirt and who had this very distinct mole above her constant frown. The table with full with drinks of all kinds, the strange fruity things that the people here like as well as beer and whisky with soda. And then the meal began…appetizers with sugary peanuts and spring rolls with peanut sauce, some jerky-like pork, an entire fish that stared up at me while I explained over the blaringly loud music how little I ate fish back in the States, some stir-fry, and the grand finale: a portable electric stove with a volcano style pot complete with raw veggies and pork and a chunk of lard to cook it with…right in front of your eyes. It was absolutely delicious, and available for only $5, generously paid by my host family. Amid all of this, the waiters, or young guys most likely related to the family, the drink servers, young guys most likely related to the family, and the ice carriers, young ladies like my sister who are somehow related to the family, and the can carriers, young kids with string who go around and pick up all of the empties from the ground, are moving about in the grace of the Khmer people.
And while all of the women are trying to chat at the table and generally behaving and running the scene, the men are… (I just taught this word and about 5 adjectives to my co-teacher) getting sloshed. Lightweight is too generous a word to describe how quickly the alcohol affects them – I’ve decided that with the heat of the day, the organic food, and the fact that the majority weigh half as much as me, it’s to be expected, though I do find it unusual when 15 full grown men are dancing together on the dance floor, completely un-sober, at half past noon on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It’s even less likely to see them, plus a few others, push each other over for a chance to dance near me (which is only a slight, very slight, exaggeration of what actually happened). There was the one who sat just a little too close to me and begged for a dance throughout most of the afternoon, the one who offered me a drink every time I finished a dance circle, the one who, whenever he saw me, gave me a ‘heya pal’ tap on my cheek (highly inappropriate for this culture…), the one who barged in on my dancing with a girlfriend and practically fell over trying (Need I say that none of these men were in the ‘attractive’ age group?). But I had fun anyway, despite the adventure…I danced with my girlfriend, my sisters, my adorable cousin George, other members of the host family, and talked with a future English teacher at the school. It was all over, no more than a few hours of dining and dancing and drinking, even less for those who didn’t stay for the dancing part!
And after I had listened to the same song about 7 times at the 3 hour wedding celebration, I went home and heard it played from afar at least another 6 times. The song: I’m in love with a foreign girl.