R.I.P

Today was an eventful day while I went door to door speaking broken Khmer about dengue for a community health project I also went to my first Khmer funeral/wake. Sadly one of the other peace corps volunteers host dad passed away this morning needless to say being in her shoes is tough because Cambodians are quickly to make you family and that being so opens a whole new door of responsibilities that I my self don’t know if I would be ready for. Then on the other hand you also have to deal with I have only know this family a month is it right for me to stay go what I don’t know. Well from my perspective had a lot of new rituals to learn about how one acts and a Cambodian funeral, which seems to be considered a festival there more about celebrating the life of the person then the death. I guess what I went to was more the American version for a wake except there are a huge amount of monks around and you have to bow to them and do the lighting of incenses also there is the giving of the money which is the part that threw me off. Okay so I was told that you give money because it is what pays for the funeral so I am okay with that however when does one give the money I had no idea do I give it when I walk in or out turns out no it goes on a plate to the monks then because you gave them money they bless you. To me this seemed semi off because I would think the monks would want to bless the family not me never the less we Americans amused the monks in fumbling though this whole ritual aspects of Cambodia, always willing to make a monk happy. Everything was really colorful and they give you food and water the family wears all white and wears their shirts inside out I wore a black sampot and a white shirt which I guess is what woman wear to such an event always a learning experience in Cambodia. One could only hope that an event like this would not be come a spectacle what I mean by that I could not help but feel some people came around to just watch the facts Americans were at this house and that made me feel pretty shitty that someone died and people still had to put the fact that I am American above all else I thought death would trump most things in life. The whole town has been with out power for 2 days now I guess they are fixing the system to make it better I don’t know but I was able to explain to my host mom that were I am going I will not have lights and table this made her hysterically laugh for the whole night so every time the lights came back on she was like Eileen does not have in kpong channang. Then she preceded to ask me if I would cry in kpong channang and then she whips out her pinkie finger deff threw me off to make me pinkie promises that I would stay in Cambodia for 2 years and not go home to America. Naturally I also threw in the kiss with it to make it extra 3^rd grade lmao!