Halfway

This week marks the completion of my first year in Cambodia, and for lack of an original remark regarding the passage of time, I’ll stick with the common adage “Wow, time has flown!” The new group of volunteers arrived yesterday, and I can fully identify with the innumerable emotions they must be feeling upon arriving in this land that is so different from the comfortable world they came from. I can’t really remember specifics about what I did those first few days after arriving in Cambodia, but I can recall powerful sentiments of anxiety, excitement, exhaustion, and bewilderment. For the most part, I have overcome the once prevalent feelings of anxiety, exhaustion and bewilderment, and have maintained a more carefree composure with spatters of excitement. I can reflect on my past year and truly say that I have come a long way. A pat on the back is in order.

So, now that I’m no longer a newbie in Cambodia, there are a few things that my first year in Cambodia has taught me:

Patience

Before coming here, I was probably your average American when it came to patience. I’d get pissed off when sitting in traffic and curse under my breath at the idiots who didn’t use their turn signals or slammed on their brakes. But I’d also smile and not get frustrated when my order got messed up at a restaurant or my friend was an hour late to meet me. My tolerance for inanity fluctuated given the situation.

All that changed when I learned how things work (or don’t work) in Cambodia. If you don’t have patience- or quickly develop it-, there is no way you can make it here, not happily at least. I learned quite quickly how efficient things are in America, and what an ingrate I was for not having patience in my pre-Peace Corps life.

The leisurely pace of life definitely required an adjustment, but now I have more patience than I know what to do with. When I sit in my taxi for 2 hrs waiting to cram in as many passengers as possible to go to Phnom Penh, I squeeze in some reading time. When my students take 20 minutes to answer a question that I thought would take 5 minutes, I jokingly chide them to study more. When the entire neighborhood crew of kids chases me and shouts HELLOOOO, I smile and shout hello back. When I get asked the same 10 questions every day, I use it as an opportunity to throw in some new vocabulary I learned. Life is so much more pleasant when your threshold for petulance is abnormally high.


My beautiful host mom, Navy, in wedding attire

Imitation can be a good thing

Cambodian society is full of mimicking. Their fashion tries to copy the bizarre style that is all the rage in Korea and Japan, but they add a few too many sequins, so it just looks tacky. Almost every popular song in Kmai is a cover of a song from somewhere else, usually the U.S. (I mentioned in an earlier post about the omnipresent Kmai version of Pitbull’s “Calle Ocho,” which is just one of the many). The most unfortunate example of mimicking would be students cheating on anything and everything. However, this week I discovered that imitation isn’t always a bad thing. While at a neighborhood wedding with my host mom, I was forced onto the “dance floor,” which is essentially a table with flowers on it that everyone dances around. In general, Kmai people are very reticent when it comes to “letting loose” at weddings, so the dance floor stays empty until everyone gets drunk and inhibitions fade away. But this is not true of little kids- they couldn’t care less about what people think of them (which I guess is one of the universal virtues of children). Since I’m stared at all the time, I don’t really mind making an ass out of myself on the dance floor. Once my favorite Korean song came on, I started dancing with a group of about 15 kids and doing the most ridiculous dance moves I could think of. Immediately, I had a cult-following mimicking my every move. It was single-handedly the best dance experience I’ve ever had. These kids were so happy to get some new dance moves (even if they were ridiculous), and so fun to dance with! It’s crazy that the more outlandish I am here, the more I am esteemed. I’ll keep this in mind for future situations.

My host mom and friends at a wedding

Best dance party ever

Eating with a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left

Before I came here, I thought I’d be using chopsticks all the time. Sure, I use chopsticks once in a while, but not nearly as much as I use my beloved spoon. The spoon goes in your right hand, and the fork stays in your left hand while you eat, so that you can push food onto your spoon. Knives are only used for cutting things and are not meal accompaniments. It makes total sense since I’d probably be sitting around for hours trying to pick at each little morsel of rice with my unrefined chopstick skills if it weren’t for the handy spoon.

We are fools in the Western world when it comes to what we’ll pay

I can buy a shirt at the market for $1. I can buy a delicious cup of coffee for a quarter. I can stay at a clean, relatively nice guesthouse in Phnom Penh for $15/night. I can get to Bangkok from Phnom Penh for $18 by bus (granted I’m sure it’s not the most pleasant of conditions available). Paying $50 for a shirt when it costs a tiny fraction of that to make? Never again.

You can never be bored with books around

At first I was nervous about all the free time that the previous group told us we would have during the many holidays and “summer” (it’s always summer here) vacation from school. We are lucky to have a pretty sizeable, decent library of books at our office in Phnom Penh, and my eyes are bigger than the time I have to read. I have so many books that line my bookshelf, and there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of reading a good book and knowing you have a great deal more at your disposal. I will never again have this much time to read, and I am enjoying every minute of it.

Kmai people are incredibly helpful

I’m sure this can be said about many people around the world, but Kmai people will go out of their way to help you with anything from the smallest to most complicated issue. You might think this to be a vast generalization, but I have found this to be true in almost every situation I have encountered, whether with strangers or friends. Here are just a few examples:

• If the phone shop I go to to add more money to my phone doesn’t have the card that I want to buy (our phones are prepaid and can be topped off in increments of $2, $5, $10, or $20), they will hop on their moto, go to another shop to get the card, and bring it back to me.
• My host mom will load my plate with the best cuts of meat, vegetables and other food items anytime we go to a wedding before anyone can get to it first. This also applies at home. She takes care of me without me ever asking. I could go on and on about the multitude of helpful things she does- she’s the best.
• During Kmai New Year, one of the Peace Corps volunteers in my province got stranded in my town and couldn’t find a taxi to take her back to site, as it was a huge holiday and there weren’t a lot of taxis running. My host mom’s brother called every driver he knew to make sure she got home safely, and helped her negotiate a price so that she wasn’t getting ripped off. This was 5 minutes after he met her.
• Every time I go away for a few days, I come back to find my room much cleaner than I left it. I’m pretty sure this mystery elf is my host sister, Theavy, who is always spoiling me with random acts of kindness, from drawing beautiful posters or writing up joke stories for me to read on my journeys to Phnom Penh.

While these are just a few of the things that occurred to me while writing up this blog, I am unable to truly capture the essence of my experience here thus far. It is something that only other Peace Corps volunteers and I will ever understand. I can honestly say that I am looking forward to what’s to come in the next year- the new school year, the ceaselessly awkward conversations with my host mom about why I probably won’t marry a Kmai man, seeing more of Cambodia, and enjoying my time with other Peace Corps volunteers. The first year has been such a great experience, so I am ready for what’s next!