Luis prep

Okay well a few hours in counting till he lands in Cambodia supper excited!!!!!! Now I would by no means say my boo is high maintance but he has a lot of nerves that mean prep for those people around me. My host family I think is ready but they keep trying to talk me out of him spending the night because they think their house is not good enough I have a host sister who is close by who I guess has nicer stuff but I keep telling them no problem not to worry I live their don’t I like I am American if I can do it why cant he. Well its all because my host sister husband will not spend the night the one time he visited but that’s just not how me and Luis are so I keep telling them not to worry. Now that im pretty sure he has no internet connection I can post this but after my family worries they inform me they all want to go to the air port to meet him lmao yea he has no idea and is not even going to know what to do which will entertain me! I know im a horrible girl friend my family is really invested in me and they know how happy I am with him coming so when they came to me to inform me they wanted to do this I was shocked. For one they never leave the house bc “they must sell” “I want to cook” these are the answers I get ALL THE TIME WHEN I EVER ASK THEM TO DO SOMETHING FUN! And lets be honest in America picking people up at an air port isn’t not really on the list of things people like to do that combined with my host family always working never occurred to me to invite them to go to the airport. Last min planning well originally I sort of was like ahh their this saying this because like I said they never leave but yesterday when I realized they really ment it I went to my friend who lived in cali for awhile that is divorced I think I mentioned him in one of my first blogs anyways he has a car and I knew he would help me out for not to much money or so I hope. Now that I got the car I had to split into pp today for a meeting with coca cola about toms leavening my host sister with the money and told her she better pack that car up with 20 dollars worth of people lol and to stay away from the 99 (99 is a cheap brand of whiskey it’s the family joke) so this all might be sort of a surprise for me as well because I have no idea who from my village will be piled in this van. Next funny thing so they want to know how much stuff he has with him how many kilos is his bag I then have to inform them well he just bought a backpack but he has a bag all for me about 70 kilos they think this is soo crazy and I have to agree it is but its cheaper then shipping it ups but poor Luis has to truck around this bag all for me =) now for everyone’s 411 I really tried to explain to him how Cambodia will be and how it will be in my village but like most of you im sure you think some things I type or say to you are just me over-exaggerated sometimes I wish I was but pretty much his visit is front page news if their was a village news paper lmao. He has no idea in part bc I don’t want to overwhelm him to quickly but 10 different people have ask for us to go and eat with them I don’t know a single person who has not asked me everyday for the last 2 months when he is coming and when can they meet him and then ask if we will get married while he is in Cambodia (no we will not) this is just the way Khmer people’s thought process goes. He thinks he can just say hello and we will be on the move but he doest get that they will just invite them selves to my house to eat with him lmao and they will speak Khmer a million mile an hours expecting him to know what they are talking about it’s about to be a real shit show and with me in the front row seat watching with pop corn. Once he gets to experience this I feel it really will all click so until next time peace out from the other side of the world!  

PIZZA PARTY

Yes as Peace Corps volunteer we gladly accept ideas of pizza parties just as excited as any 10-year-old kid would be! The idea was brought up to have a kp chhang pizza party Hannah started to ask at hotels around to see if we could barrow their kitchen we had a yes so the planning started which required a trip to lucky ps cheese is really expensive in Cambodia for one block of mozzarella is 20 dollars yea for real. In the end it just ended up being only K4 volunteers and some friends of Hannah’s. Naturally things being how they are in Cambodia there was some confusion the day of so I get into town to go to a meeting with women’s affairs’ and we discover the hotel doest have an oven humm now what to do. Thinking caps on well if none of the hotels have ovens next place to try… bakery bingo they had them but supper big and would not let us use it for what we wanted I even tried to offer him 10 dollars. Plan B we bought big French bread to make the pizza on top of a flame be4 we knew it we had all the Khmer staff helping make this food and feeding them it was interesting to say the least. I was joking around with Hannah telling her she was like the dude from hells kitchen the Khmer staff thought it was funny just how everything was going on when it was done we severed them first which I think took them a bit by surprise. In Cambodian culture its like they make them selves second class next to Brongs and since they’re everyday job requires them to serve people so seeing Americans go out of their way to serve them I think made them really happy huge respect thing. After I spent the night at Hannah’s friends sweetys house who is called the Indian Cambodia is really bad like that its just like why know a person name they do this to me at site to o the American she is over there. it was cool though to talk with her about her life experiences from India. The next morning I had to get up early to get back to my site bc liz was coming to spend the rest of the weekend doing some research work. Though Gadc request from some Canadian ngo they are trying to gather information on Khmer women and voting and economic status. Well lucky for this ngo they will get a wide variety of answers because people who do work tend to only ask big cities but bc I live in the middle of nowhere it was an added bonus.  Interesting things I learned along the way some people think its supper easy to vote others say they are now allowed to vote and pretty much every single person barrows money from the bank and the solo person to take out the loans is the oldest girl in the family if she is of age if not it is the wife. Only about 40 percent of people could read Khmer if they did not understand are Khmer we had a write up for them to read that most children had to read anyways meet a lot of people and learned a little more about day to day Cambodian life. I also think its worth mentioning that asking people about salary etc was not rude at all you know how in America you cant ask those types of Cambodia they all think its so obvious that they are so poor there is not point to hide it for ego sake.  Other good news an organization by the name of KHANA they work with orphans with hiv and at risk population has agreed to work with us in storage for the shoes!!!!  Also I have been trying to get small funding 150 dollars for a first aid workshop and I have been told that world vision wants to help me other wise I was going to pay out of pocket which would have sort of sucked but that’s the things about Cambodia you cant educate for free you have to pay a Khmer person to show up its sort of annoying but I feel this is worth it bc they have motto accidents all the time and first thing they do is pick someone up not realizing it could paralyze them eek! Since coming to Cambodia I have become more and more invested in women equality and gender issues in Cambodia well there is a few organizations that I really think do good work I finally met with one of them and they agreed to do education for my health center staff and to take me on to volunteer on criminal investigation stuff for their work!!! Supper excited about that as well. Until next time peace out from the other side of the world!