Prey and the Hunted

Rocking around the (palm tree)

While everyone in American is scrambling around to get last min gifts and party favors I am taking the Cambodian rout this xmas and planning my xmas get away to the beach! Since I cant have the white snow why not the white sandy beach of Cambodia with some like-minded individuals from the Peace Corps. I know you all want to hate me right now but I will make you feel a little less jealous when I tell you all about my insect and hunting encounters of the 4^th kind so while you all are enjoying your egg nog I was hunting rats that’s right rats and scorpions. Where to begin well okay first off the electricity at site as been really bad lately keeps going off at all the wrong times making life some what hard have had to use my electric tennis racket with a flash light quite a bit anyways this was yet another night when I had no electricity I was sitting out side with my sister when I saw a rat come around the house and I was like don’t do it in my head but it did… so now what do I do? I see this sucker go into my house I have to get it out mind u a month ago I had to get to mice out I did this with the electric racket and they never came back scared them enough I guess lets hope the same thing happens to this rat. Okay so while im rat hunting what do I see in the corner but a baby scorpion I might have ignored it but just a week ago another baby appeared by my shoes now what if I stepped into said shoe and it was in their I know you don’t want to think about it either do I. well anyways now that this is the second baby in a week I have seen chilling in my house all I can think is before I killed their mom u remember the story of the giant black scorpion under my bag well im convinced she laid eggs somewhere or how else did they all start to show up at the same time and size they are form the same hatched eggs I just hope its her bc at least I know she is dead but if there is another mom around that’s something ill deal with when I see it which I hope is never. Okay so I take care of one issue at a time scorpion dead with my sisters help quick and easy now the rat im looking around cant find it and suddenly I see it beady eyes and try to shock it with my racket but it got the point quick enough and left my house so issue number two down. Still no lights so I go back out side to sit in the cold I know its not snow cold but it is actually cold these past few days and I swear my showers in the ams r pretty deathly however what is funny is I just happen to get cold really easily so Cambodians think this is the funniest thing ever. They have the idea that it snows all year round in America its hard to get them to understand that America is so very big and different states have different tempters due to the fact in their mind it snows all year round they think I should always be warm so the fact that I am so very cold wearing sweat shirts while they still can wear short sleeves kills them I just keep telling them that I don’t leave my house in the winter. The other day at work there was this cute puppy I was playing with and this started the staff asking me if I had a dog in America I had to tell them know to explain all the reasons I don’t have a dog would be to hard but to say they are expensive is easy however not a concept they understand in Cambodia since you can just pick dogs off the street for free why in gods name would one have to pay for a dog then I told them the dog need to get shots and things and this is when I saw some of the funniest face I have seen in a while like they really thought I was joking like they really think American’s are crazy. O yes before I forget if your still looking for that last min gift look no further turns out if cnn did no capture the Phnom Penh bridge disaster you can now buy it for all your family to share on dvd or in my case sit on a taxi for two hours and have the awesome privilege to see said dvd when you think you have seen it all there is always something around the bend until next time peace out from the other side of the world.

True life I have reached Creeper status

Okay so after a long trip back to site having to have the same repetitive conversations I was sort of ready just to pass out however my family wanted to really talk to me. I was taken a back at first bc even my host mom who never really is excited to see me was happy when I got out of the taxi. There is a reason behind this sudden change in behavior I think well Cambodians know all the on goings with you and Jentee is my best friend at site but im sure they hear things though her so I don’t really say much as far as my family life is concerned to her bc her dad and my dad are friends however be4 leaving I talked a lot about my family in prey chore this leads to my family feeling well she should not miss them or its bad that she says that she misses them losing face sort of deal. Well when I got home my sisters started to talk to me about weddings and dancing and then asked me to see her wedding pics which have to say not so pretty my sisters are soo pretty however these pictures are not bc they have there face painted all white and all this fake stuff on man I wish they knew that is not pretty natural is better but different culture different views. So while looking though the pictures I understand more of the family dynamics so she is still married but does not like her husband any more so that’s why he does not live with her and my other sister with the 4 kids also similar situation but I think its more of the husbands wanting to be separate however u know my khmer is not amazing so I could have mixed that up some. I also found out that I guess I had a brother who was killed in a moto accident after trip down memory lane they wanted me to go for a walk to go see the dancing at the wedding aka when my creeper status started luckily I was not the only one standing behind a fence watching dancing however I was the only American doing so what this means is that I was in no way able to just hide away from the fact that I was their. Despite being be hind the fence in the dark this did not stop people from trying to get me to join the wedding party aka wedding crash when that didn’t happen they saw me try to sit Khmer style and how awkward I looked so they had to bring me at a chair I really need to get better sitting like a Khmer person. Even though I just got back to site xmas and new years are coming up so I have been trying to figure out what to do originally I thought about doing the beach for new years but I think now I might go for xmas instead although my Khmer friends invited me to phenom penh so ill have to figure that out and hopefully have enough money for travel. There is a first time for everything today when I was sitting at the market stall two English speaking people stopped by no one ever stops by to sit and do anything bc there are places in less then a mile that are way better anyways had interesting Convo with them and also I think it might be the universe sign. What I mean by this is that one of the girl was telling me how she has been living all over Asia for the last 10 years doest see how she could go back to Australia I keep about thinking about saying in Cambodia and I always joke to people that ill stay for 10 years so maybe me bumping into these two girls means something I dunno. I have to say its so very crazy to think its that time of year shopping crazy and how much it just feels like an extended summer in my mind though when I went traveling though the city in Cambodia they have xmas music and lights all over the place and all the people who work at many of the stores all wear Santa hats I found out today the word for Christmas in Khmer is noel its just funny bc in Cambodia they are not a wear of the war on xmas so they really keep it Christmas and play real Christian music its amusing to see globalization at work. Peace out from the other side of the world!

IT’S LIKE GOING TO MCCDONALDS ON A DIET

You know when you are like o I am on a diet but a friend then invites u to some fast food restraunt and in ur state of denial you like o I can go and not eat their but u know that you most deff are. Why I bring this analogy up is bc I was soooooo soo excited to see my host parents and I thought I could just go and not be sad that I don’t live their anymore but that was denial just like the fat kid denying them selves fast food. So I went to Phnom Penh first and then left bc I cant go straight from my site their and met up with my friend liz and her older host brother you can tell I have been in Cambodia to long I have to mention that he is her older host brother or in Cambodia bong haha. Due to the fact he was with us I didn’t have to do so much work to get the taxi etc however it took 5 hours for the taxi to fill up so I didn’t get into prey chore until 7 Friday night and there was still the extra excitement if my host parents really understood I was coming bc me and them have a really good charades system but that system is pretty useless over the phone lucky they actually understood and were waiting up for me my host mom was so excited it was cute she ran up and hugged me I mention this bc Cambodians r not really huggers at least I was no excepting it just planning a normal bow. First things they told me were I have more black spots now I am no longer fat and I speak more Khmer just a normal way to start off seeing someone again right haha its like all the things u want to tell someone when u have not seen them in a while they just blurt out in the first 5 mins. My host mom is not like most Khmer woman and what I mean by this she is totally cool with me teaching her in appropriate things or having crazy convos with me, which I would never have at site however sometimes I do wonder how I mange to explain these things to her but lets just saying when she wants to ask further about some of the topics we talk about she will do some charades and its to funny use your imagination to explain the way Americans are and how someone might act it out. It was nice to have real conversations all weekend long to all the people that live around us also sit around and just have random convos with me and even though I know it must be hard to sit and have me understand Khmer they still do and that’s one thing that makes me sort of really upset about not having that at my site now with my family. I guess its really hard for me to explain what a human being has to offer or the little things u can just pick up on when your around them so while I may never be able to have you understand in words if you spend a few mins with both my families you would see the difference. I also noticed that when I got to site that my blogs became a lot less its not so much me getting used to Cambodia but having less random conversations to report on but I deiced I am going to put forth more effort to find some crazy khmer people to chat it up with at site it may not be my family but there are a lot of people around site that are always talking to me so a lot of opportunity to reach out. Anyways back to my trip I got to see all the market people I was friends with they were happy to see me one of my freinds eggo is prego 3 months so she was pretty excited to tell me about that they were all telling me I should try to transfer back to prey chore if only in peace corps let you choose haha I was like yea its not really up to me but Cambodians love when u are just happy like they always assume that being American I would be home sick and not like Cambodia but when I tell them how much I love Cambodia this makes them so happy. On a down word note the café lady I wrote about somewhere in the blog archives stop selling coffee when I told my host mom I was like I will cry jkjk but I think my host mom thought I was really that sad I have to learn how to say just kidding. Its crazy to go back to a place to see everything is pretty much the same I went back to the school a lot of the kids still remember me I played some soccer I guess according to the volunteer who lives in prey chore the kids ask about me and I get random text messages from them although I have no idea who they are. My house in prey chore is a place that a lot of kids came to bc we had the photo booth so I met a lot of people this way I really miss that aspect of where I lived but I guess its always a give and take bc I also lived in the middle of metal work shop 101 now I live in a more peaceful environment but you know me I am a crazy New Yorker I will take the loud and the crazy over the peaceful and calm quite any day of the week. My host dad really likes to play dos sigh aka American hacky sack but when I lived with them I did not know what it was however now that I play it everyday I had the dos sigh with me and got him to play it was pretty chill my host dad in prey chore is the opposite of that of my dad at site he is just way more loud and crazy willing to talk to me I don’t make him nervous where my host dad at site is scared of me doest really like to say more then 2 words to me I used to sort of be like humm maybe I can have him get used to me but now I think its his personality bc he doest really talk to my sibling either. That morning before I left my mom spent the whole time showing me pictures of all these weddings and things and she even had some pictures from when her and my host dad were really young it was pretty cool to see at one point I asked if she had wedding pictures and she just turned and said total straight face pol pot like not even I don’t have but just that and I was like dam but she had pictures from that time period she has picture of her self pregnant and what not she was really beautiful when she was younger I am sure who ever comes to see me will get a trip to prey chore and can see it for your self. Sunday I had to head back my plan was just to do what I always do stand on some high way waving down a taxi but my host mom thought this was to funny and was like no u can sit in the drive way we can get you a taxi well in the end after an hour or so of waiting I had to go to my original plan and get a rd side taxi. I felt it was a more roomy taxi ride compared to how I deal most times. I had to take two separate taxis once I got into phnom penh I didn’t go find a taxi ride just walked around a bit got some food and then I went into lucky supper market. I really wanted to pick some stuff to take back to site however I could not afford anything in that place Cambodians always tell me how expensive supper markets are but I had no idea I wanted to buy some peanut butter to tide me over till I get some of my xmas gifts and a tiny tiny jar cost 8 dollars and cereal was 6 granted I understand this stuff has to be shipped but one would think there has to be some Asian brands of this stuff so I can pay a normal price bc Cambodian can’t afford the stuff they were selling it really must just be for the tourist bc I just don’t understand how they could keep said place open if it was ment for Cambodians. Well after my adventure to prey chore it was a nice way to look back and see what I have done since coming to Cambodia and keep my self focus of what I want to get done but also to remind me that even with limited skills in many things I was able to really connect with people their and I want to make sure to do the same at site.

What it Feels to for a Girl

“Girls can wear jeans And cut their hair short Wear shirts and boots'Cause it's OK to be a boy But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading 'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading But secretly you'd love to know what it's like Wouldn't you What it feels like for a girl” Madonna. So something that never seems to stop plaguing my mind is the very concept of gender and what the world would be like if we did not build up this system of male and female. Granted being possibly over educated in women studies only drives these thoughts further but never the less im in a new culture with a whole new set of gender norms and I really do have to ask why do we in modern day and age still try to keep them so defined. Last night instead of learning Khmer I ended up having over an hour debate with my Khmer teacher talking about this very thing it all started bc I guess there is some dance coming up that all the teenagers are excited about but he was telling me he has no girl friend in the village so he would never be at the dance so he could basically care less about this dance. And then he asked me why I was wearing socks was I cold and asked why khmer woman wear socks and im like try not to be “the black color” and this made me bring up if culturally ideal to be white then why do Khmer men not try to be white? He was like we think white is beautiful and I was like I get that but in America people like when both male and female are tan however if that’s the ideal both try to attracted the opposite sex. Then he bought up that the man has his choice at women so it doest matter I said yea but she can reject you and he said yes but if they really want to purse they can just go to the parents. He proceeded decided to tell me how hard it is for him the man in Cambodia culture well then the doors to hell opened and the battle of the genders started jk. He was protesting to me that he thinks it unfair that Cambodian men must get all the money and then pay the brides parents I think it was 2000 dollars if he want to marry her then he went on about being the bread winner etc. well I have heard this whole dowry price before but I was confused bc Cambodians make on average 1000 dollars a year so asked how does a Cambodian man come up with the money? He told me that they will sell a cow or a part of the land off humm he did’t seem to see the issue with this so I had to help him make the wheels turn. I was like well if you feel its so unfair that you must pay how would you like knowing your human worth to your family is the same as an animal that of a cow not that im not saying for a Cambodian man that 2000 dollar is not a lot of money but when it comes to a humans value would you want to be worth 2000 dollar or priceless? He thought for a min and was like I never thought about that but I guess your right I would not want to be worth the family cow. Next he told me also sometimes the men are lazy and if they pay the money they will make the wife go to work and pay back the 2000 dollars and I was like yea you keep talking about the man being responsible for bring money home for the family but how come everywhere I turn all I see men do is work for a few hours and drink when all the women work all day long and are still responsible for cooking cleaning and taking care of all the husbands needs? He tried to tell me it is only like this in svay and I was like no I don’t think so but he is from phenom penh so he was trying to say its not like that their and I said yea but that doest really count that’s like a different world from the small villages of Cambodia and I went on to tell him many of volunteers that live in small villages see the same thing I do. This left him thinking and he said well the concept behind this is that the man should want to get a job to take care of his family and that is supposed to be a good thing. I said ill take that granted do you realize that how unrealistic that chivalrous idea of the man and woman don’t exist not just in Cambodia but all over the world each person is out from them selves to think that either person wants to be put in this position where they want to take on solely one roll limits both sides. I should also mention he just was dumped by his girl friend who he wanted to marry bc he did not spend enough time with her or something and bc he is a student he could not pay for her etc so he has the chance to start all over with who he picks so after the conversation he decided he wants more of an equal relationship so I may have learned no Khmer yesterday night which is what I pay him for but I might have changed his whole view on woman and men and for that I will say priceless.

This is not an Asia brand…

You know it takes a lot of over thinking things as a volunteer for a few reason you are always trying to be culturally sensitive and make sure it can relate to my target audience so to speak however sometimes there are things that just completlly miss my mind. DEC is HIV/AIDS awareness month so I was supposed to do something for it today had a few things together anyways never happened bc as I mentioned I think in another post they are trying to get money for this new maternity ward and randomly throw together meetings naturally not informing me. The nurse who does the presentations with me showed up bc he new the od was gonna be there to over see, the od is not awear he goes to school instead of coming to work so its this whole hush hush thing the staff plays at the hospital but since he was there I decided to show him some of what I had ready. Well part of my presentation was to show how to use condoms properly and I bought some extra to give away and when I say bought I mean I took from my peace corps medical kit the 6 condoms they gave us figured I don’t need them convenient (though im sure peace corps would not be happy with this) not to mention I don’t want the whole villiage to think I am out buying bulk condoms at the pharmacy and be considered a “broken girl”. However when I showed them to the nurse he was like I think these are American condoms and I was like no its okay they’re not American brad anyways but he was like no there not Asian condoms…. Im looking at him like don’t worry about what brad they are bc I am slow and was not getting it he had to finally spell it out for me these are to big lmao and then he laughs and I cant control my self bc I re think over the whole conversation and it all starts to add up. Well the harvesting of the rice has started I went for one of my forbidden walks into the middle of nowhere to see the process Cambodians really think I am going to get kidnapped u should see them miming it out to me so I always just go and anyways I ended up meeting these kids who were so excited that I had a camera they were bring me all over the places to take pictures getting me into a Water Mellon field it was a lot of fun it was also cute to see these kids planting they were like don’t step on the watermelon trees and were showing me how they were breaking up the sand they spoke pretty good English to. Soon enough I was a good 3 or so kilos out and it started to down pour so me and all the kids had to walk back they were also bring in the cows so it was a slow walk but I guess once ur wet ur wet they were telling me some interesting things as we walked. However wat surprised me was okay so I am the american walking in the rain so this is so sad so people would offer me to come under there house etc to come in from the rain but no one offered these poor kids they would just ask me and bc I was walking with them I was not about to go in and like said once ur rained on mine as well just keep walking. This weekend is a long weekend bc Friday is humans rights day which gives Cambodians yet another day so a few of us are taking advantage and going back to training site to see our host families however to explain this to my host family I have no idea if they understood what I way saying so might have to re talk to them to make sure they really know I am coming I will update u with that story next till next time peace out from the other side of the world!

I Had Thanksgiving with Brad pit jk

Okay now that I have your attention so thanksgiving was interesting in Cambodia try to imagine making thanksgiving dinner with out massive oven and stove tops etc as you all know I don’t cook to begin with so I cant imagine the amount of work some people put in to make the turkeys (ill shout out a thanks to them). For thanksgiving we were all shipped off to Battambong 4 hours away from phnom penh to do some more cultural and la training and in between meet up with all the other volunteers and enjoy a thanks giving feast. For the meeting up with volunteers had a lot of fun ate some western food however going back to the way things were in training sort of sucked and hear is why… while there is some good information a lot of it is repetitive and not needed, there is so much generalization to listen to while it was hard in training to swallow its even harder now that I live at site and I kinda wonder what type of Cambodians the staff is around, then some people think questioning the hell out of peace corps staff is going to get them answers when it should be more obvious now that they don’t have answers that one might really want to know, then there is times when we need to stick on what were talking about but we have to move on to learn about the reparative stuff, then you sort of get used to ur own way of live in a small village well I don’t want to generalize so I will say I have and when you have freedom and you spend all days with Cambodians its some what frustrating to deal with that many Americans at once no lie. I know a lot of you are sitting and reading this being like ahhh whats wrong with her but its hard to explain bc each person could live exactly as I live and not feel this way however it is just the way I go about living life that makes it so that I understand my new life a bit better then what I left behind and being alone and relying more on actions then just talk has made life better for me. Never the less I am grateful for getting to take a trek around Cambodia which of course with traveling and me always a story bc I was going far away I could have taken a bus however it cost 6 dollars from my site and I was like nope I can take a taxi cheaper even if I have to stand on the side of the road for an hour (quick side note iam supper happy that I learned how to hitch hike in college it has been one of the best tools I could use in Cambodia!) however Cambodians try to talk me out of this just bc the taxi is a tight squeez 3 or 4 in front and 4 in the back of a roomie taoyota =) well after 45 mins I thought mabey I should have not been stubborn and taken the bus however as is anything in Cambodia patients in a virtue and then the stars aliened for me better then a taxi peace corps Armageddon cars (I refer to it in this manner bc out of all the countries ngos etc in Cambodia no one quite can compete with peace corps van its got a snorkel and some other interesting additive that make it scream out when it passes by) anyways it took a few to pass before I got one to stop for me so I lucked out I think ill say its one of the benefits to living on the national rd so close to pp they always pass by me site. Okay I realize I have not posted in a while so trying to run down how much I have been trying to do with thus far little success well tom shoes I have to email them I have been trying to talk to usaid with no phone calls returned and then I talked to someone who is in charge of us as volunteers and she said she knows people at the embassy and that most likely they could help so a step in a direction. Pass back has not sent me any emails and my other project that I sent the most emails to is to get a pocket size projector for my mac for health edu at my health center I really thought bill gates foundation could have hooked me up but they told me no that I would have to apply for a grant as for other organizations I got even worse feed back so ill have to see with that. On a postive note I met this guy at the school he is an eng teacher and he wants to start up a first aid class so I think we might work together which is exciting my first random counter part not inside the hospital he seemed reliable to I guess he has worked for many ngos so feel this could be a good connect also 411 if your wondering u don’t actually have to be certified to teach cpr etc in Cambodia so my knowledge is considered good enough luckily for them I actually did get certified by red cross better then nothing at all =) on a crazy note I talked with the midwives today with my nurse that speaks eng and im going to start some training as a midwife will not be long until I can deliver a baby jkjk but who knows in Cambodia they try to get me to do a lot of stuff so I figured I cant resist the whole two years that I should pick some things and actually get trained. I sort of wish I could go somewhere to get trained better for breast cancer bc around the community since it was my first project that’s what im know for aka why people flash me all the time now lol but I have no idea really how to tell all the different types of lumps in America that’s when im like dude u need to go see a dr but in Cambodia that’s when they come to see me that’s a pretty scary thought. I will let that thought metal in your head till next time peace out from the other side of the world!