B-day!

The current volunteers warned us that the first few days at site would be strange ones…and they weren’t kidding! It has been an odd start (not a bad start, just an odd start) compounded only by the fact that my birthday was today. But where to begin…after swear in, I said some goodbyes and caught a bus up to Battambong, where a bunch of us got together and enjoyed one last night of food and ice cream (Battambong has this wonderful old ice cream shoppe, where you can point to a picture and you get exactly what you see…even though the cherries are actually gummy and the whipped cream is something that I didn’t expect). We also did a little bit of shopping considering Battambong is the 2nd or 3rd biggest town in the country, and it has a lot of things that my town doesn’t. Thinking back on it, I should have grabbed some peanut butter, but I just got a tin of Jasmine tea instead.

The four volunteers from my province grabbed a taxi and squeezed into the backseat all together in the very cozy style of Kampuchea. Usually in the backseat with the four adults there is a child or two standing or sitting in laps, but I didn’t experience that until I went on to my town. Taxis, which are usually the same style and color as my old grey Camry from the states, are packed with somewhere between eight and ten people (with one person sharing the same seat as the driver, which is actually on the wrong side of the car given the side they drive on) and gender roles are shattered as the sexes jam together in the tiny car. The mini bus taxis can usually put 16-20 people and it continues to amaze me. In the last min bus taxi I was in, someone crawled through the back window in order to sit next to me because the rest of the car was so full. It is very a very frugal method, given the price of gas is about a buck and a half for a single liter.

I went to school the next day. Classes haven’t started yet, even though they probably should have, but the teachers go and the students go, all in uniform, and do…stuff. I’m still having a little trouble figuring out just what is going on, but I’ve gathered that there are announcements and some registering and cleaning and book-getting on the students’ part. And for the teachers…just…getting to know each other and visit I think. They show up sometimes at 7, or 8, or whenever and just chat and then go home. The students too also do much more visiting than anything else, though private classes are in full effect and my little sister goes to at least three per day. In this nice visiting time, I have met several different people, including the entire female staff (about 7 people out of more than three times that for the male staff), a young geography teacher (by the way, no one at my school can actually say geography) who is taller than me, a very rare occurrence, and a very wonderful English co-teacher who has been absolutely wonderful these past couple of days.

On Tuesday, when I was sitting in the office watching the students move about and being watched just the same, someone walked into the office and I heard “Khmer-American.” Strangely, a young 25 year old guy walked in (wearing a COLLEGE T-shirt from Animal House and khaki shorts and tennis shoes…That outfit screams American…), sat down, and spoke accent-free American English to me. Amazing. He’s visiting his family, he says, because his parents fled in the 80s and moved to Florida, and now they are coming back. He had been in country just a few days, and I could tell. I’ve been around Americans who have grown as I have the past two months, who have adjusted at basically the same rate and who were pretty calm to begin with. I could tell that this guy (Sophon was his name) was American because I was sitting calmly and waiting for nothing and he was a whirlwind of activity even as he sat in his chair. I’ve forgotten how fast things are over there – life here moves considerably more slowly. The best evidence of this is that I should be teaching and instead spend most of my time visiting and sleeping and talking and eating. And eating. I’m fairly certain that a Khmer person’s joy comes from the knowledge that the family and the guest is well fed for every hour of any given day. (a note about the chalkboard photo...during a teacher meeting, they listed all of the teachers under their discipline, but for my column, he erased the E that should have stood for English and wrote my name and nickname in All Caps instead. I thought it was funny enough for photographic evidence).

Side bar: another odd bit of news is that I found out my bed has termites or ants or something and they bit me while I was napping. They are little red ants with big black booties and I do not like them at all. I took pleasure in dowsing them in my bug spray.

Side bar 2: There is some information floating around about unrest on the Thai border because of the Preah Vihear temple and disputes about who it belongs to, but Peace Corps is keeping us informed and has all the knowledge we need. I am super close to the Thai border, but I am not in the same province as the Temple and am totally safe! In addition to that, my safety within the district is basically assured because I have had 3 meetings with the district office, commune office, and police office, and every single one of the officials has assured me that if I ever have a problem to contact them immediately and they will fix it. The police also requested that if I ever go long distances to tell them so that they can accompany/protect me…and then the head policeman came to my house right around dinner time…