'Nam

I departed from my site for about 2 ½ weeks on the 6^th of April for a trip to Vietnam while the rest of Cambodia went crazy celebrating Khmer New Year (although they technically observe the Gregorian calendar as their official system of keeping dates, they still celebrate events for the Buddhist calendar) which is 3 days but in most rural regions is celebrated for almost a month.  This of course means that I get a fairly large chunk of vacation time, and a few friends and myself decided to take a trip to Vietnam for about 10 days.

Almost immediately after arriving in Ho Chi Minh City we were scammed by some cab drivers who ended up taking us to a money exchange that gave us 4/5 of what we should have received and then proceeded to charge us each $10 for a ride around the block.  So Ho Chi Minh started off pretty well.  After we got our heads about ourselves we figured approximately how much we had lost and for some it was worse than others.  I had an idea about the exchange rate so I only changed $10 and ended up coming out okay, but a few members of my group exchanged quite a bit more.  That night we met up with a few other volunteers also vacationing in Vietnam and tried to forget the whole ordeal had happened.

The next day Stewart and I set out to find the War Remnants Museum and get a feel for the city.  Ho Chi Minh is much larger than Phnom Penh so our map that we thought had a reasonable scale turned out to be much larger than we calculated and things were quite a bit farther than the map indicated.  However we made it to the Museum and got to go see the war from a little bit different standpoint than we were used to seeing it in our history books. 

When I say it was a little bit different I mean there were 4 floors, and 3 ½ of them were dedicated to the atrocities of American soldiers and armed forces during the war.  The first floor was all about propaganda against American Imperialism and even compares the war to the expansionist approach of Nazi Germany.  So Stewart and I looked at each other and immediately decided we would claim to be from Canada.

Second floor was some of the major battles of the war with the French and American armies and the carpet bombing of the Air Force during the later parts of the war.

Third floor was about the massacring of entire villages and had some literature about Bob Kerry and his team.  The second part of the third floor was both my favorite and probably the saddest section of the entire museum, and it dealt with Agent Orange.  There were many pictures of children with deformities of both Vietnamese and American parents who had been exposed to the chemicals during the war.  Many of the pictures had captions and personal stories about the victims and some were very explicit in their descriptions of the effects it had on the population.

The fourth floor had some of the weapons the infantry used and had a final section with a little bit about the policies and history of Vietnam during the period.

I tried to write this to make it as objective as possible but the museum was very anti American and it was hard to write in a favorable or objective tone toward America for the way some of the displays were presented.  I am aware that the Vietnamese were not the most Geneva Convention minded during the war and many of the American soldiers were badly mistreated also.

The last night we were in Ho Chi Minh we stayed the night at a friend’s apartment and got a little more insight into the general attitude of the Vietnamese towards Americans because although the host was American also and has lived in Vietnam for about a year and a half, I had the opportunity to talk to a few of his Vietnamese friends.

I learned that at the end of April there was a big celebration and expressed my disappointment that I would already be back in Cambodia and wouldn’t get to join in the festivities.  Then a little later to add to my humiliation I learned this celebration was an annual event to commemorate the day America left Siagon.

After a few hours of sleep and one too many cups of coffee we all hopped on a 7 ½ bus ride to a mountain town called Dalat where we were told the air was crisp and cool, a nice change considering I have been living on the surface of the sun for around 8 months.

Dalat was everything it was promised to be and we had a chance to break out the fleeces and sweaters that we brought, and this small town had the charm of a village in the foothills of the Alps at an altitude of around 4,800ft.  We spent 3 days in Dalat enjoying the air and some of the attractions it had to offer including one ‘Crazy House’ literally something out of Alice in Wonderland.  I knew that Dalat would be an easy favorite for me because I enjoy mountains a great deal and the fact that I wasn’t constantly sweating because of the heat and humidity was a definite plus.  Nha Trang was our next stop, a tourist beach town about 500km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Nha Trang was a very touristy town and had a lot to offer in terms of beach activities and some sightseeing, but I’ll be damned if it was 110 degrees in the heat of the day.  We had a great time though, and managed to score an island hopping tour for about $6 a person so we came out alright.  Overall Nha Trang was just an oasis with about 4 miles of beautiful beach.

Then it was back to reality and that’s about where we stand right now, heat, sweat, teaching, Peace Corps.

Kampot River Cleanup

Next I would like to tell everyone about a very successful week I had in March.

I had my official site visit by my country director and program director on March 12.  They got to come and see my site and talk to my counterparts and school directors and things went pretty well.  Then they discovered that Jen and Jake, a married couple in Kampot (provincial town), had helped plan a river clean up with some of the expats and the governor.  Well my program manager (PM) caught wind of this and offered to give me a ride.  On the way down we spoke a little about the scope of the project and at the time I didn’t know how involved of a process it had been but thank god for Jen because she coordinated so much of the whole operation.

The next day, March 13, I woke up around 545 got to the river front to help set up all the tents and table and get everything ready for the 200 volunteers we were expecting.

Organizing 200 people is a pretty daunting task, however after the Governor discovered the operation we had a little over 400 people show up and offer their volunteer services.  This of course put a bit of a stretch on our supplies seeming as we had enough plastic gloves for 300 and the kids kept playing grab ass and breaking them, then of course they wanted new ones.

Despite the turnout doubling our expectations we managed to field a pretty successful day, Jen and a few other volunteers were in charge of the groups that would stay on the land and clean up the riverside, and myself and Katy Strong took to the high seas of the mighty Kampot River.  The Cambodian Journal, an English newspaper in Phnom Penh even sent a representative and photographer down for the event.

Anyway, the cleanup was a wild success and everyone got to enjoy some free lunch afterward and, not to toot our horns too much, the river did look a lot cleaner after we had finished picking up the garbage.  There was something peculiar that did happen during the cleanup however.  When we climbed out of our boat onto a grassy shoreline some of the children I was in charge of began to clean up the biodegradable material, and I had to basically give them a lesson right there on what went inside the garbage bags and what we could leave behind.

After this experience I decided to do some research within one of my classes to discover exactly what they thought was garbage and what they thought was otherwise.  It made more sense to me after one of my students described that the dead leafs and coconut shells were brown and ugly, and the plastic bags were colorful and beautiful.

Well that’s all for me for now, on April 6^th I will be heading to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon for all you AMERICANS) to spend a few days in city and surrounding mountains finally making my way to the beach around the 15^th for some R&R. I also have about a month and a half off from school because of Khmer New Year and the Kampot Sports Tournament.  Thank you for reading and I appreciate the patience in between the recent posts.

Wedding Season

Wedding Season in Cambodia is a very special and hectic time for a volunteer.  Along with the usual workload you must budget your time between keeping up relations by attending weddings that can last up to 20 hours.  Okay so as a foreigner unless you have some relative in the wedding you can usually get by showing up for the reception, but it still can be quite exhausting.

I’ll walk you through the second week of February and that will give you an idea of the wedding season here.  So first of all I had two weddings that I had formally been invited to, with an invitation with my name on it and everything and neither of them were in the town I worked in.  Boom right there we already have 3 days off of school.  Next you are never really sure when you will get a spontaneous invitation by a Khmer person you haven’t seen in a few weeks to attend a wedding, this week I happened to receive two of these more informal invitations.  So I am already looking at 6 days (4 for actual weddings and 2 for travel) and thankfully my school director was understanding “yes because you are a foreigner you will get invited to many things and will miss some school” he says.

Anyway, now you are probably wondering ‘What exactly happens at a Khmer wedding?’  Well for the all day one I had to find transportation to a fairly remote village where I arrived at around 2PM.  Many volunteers have the opportunity to ‘walk the fruit’ in the morning at 7AM, however I have enough problems waking up for my 7AM class let alone arranging transportation to a remote village.  So I get to the village around 2 and everyone is intermittently eating and gossiping about me and I get to see many of the teachers from my school.  Well I soon discover that the reception or the next part in the wedding won’t start until around 7 so I have a good 5 hours of eating and drinking with Khmer people ahead of me.

I learned a valuable lesson at this wedding because although I had been to a few before this was the first one I actually had some understanding of the ceremonies and time lapses when there was simply nothing to do, because I had a friendly lady from Houston describing what was happening.  I also want to express that Khmer weddings are a really big deal, not just for the parties involved, but for anyone within a solid 5 kilometer radius.  They blare the music, dance for hours, drink like fish, eat, and then do it all again.  So by around 10PM I feel pretty tired (I know 10PM, cut me some slack I didn’t have my afternoon nap) but being a foreigner here is like having the Golden Ticket from Willie Wonka and everyone wants a piece of you.  You get pulled every direction, everyone wants to talk to you, and many times you just want to sit and cry (cough) I mean sit and relax.

It is a nightmare for me because it’s like all the avoiding of all the shady characters in my school won’t fly anymore, I’m there and they know I speak Khmer, and I can’t pretend I don’t.  So soon my co-teacher comes to bail me out and I am put to bed, it feels funny writing that because it’s like I’m an overgrown child, but whatever, if I didn’t get out of there I was going to throw a tantrum that would make a toddler losing their favorite toy seem mild.

So cram the above experience 4 times over into one week and you have a volunteer who needs a vacation.  Lucky for me I have found a polite way to turn down invitations now, and now I almost whole heartedly refuse to attend a party unless another volunteer will be present.

Koh Rong and Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat, will visit again but this is when I did the marathon and didn't get to go during the daytime.

Koh Rong, the island where everyone got sick.

Koh Rong, me on my bungalow

Hitting my stride

So I'll come out and say it, December sucked.

Capped by a bacteria in my intestines that had me in the bathroom for a few days, I was also missing Christmas, New Years, and my birthday with all my friends and family.  All this buildup didn't make it any easier that EVERYONE stares at me no matter what I am doing.  Could be reading a book for example and suddenly I've got an audience.

January has been a better month and I feel like I'm beginning to hit my stride.  I already have 2 clubs up and running and am looking to expand into a third next week.  The kids seem to be enjoying the classes more as I am in a better mood and able to communicate directions and act out things in front of the classes.  I still get laughed at for my accent on frequent occasions but people seem to enjoy me and routine is becoming more natural.

I am also looking to start a garden my school director has been asking about for the better part of two months.  What do I know about gardening in a tropical monsoon like environment? Nada.  Should be interesting though as I'm sure she has a mental image of flowers and shrubbery, and mine will be vegetables and overgrown weeds.

Christmas and New Years were a lot of fun and I got to spend Christmas on a tropical beach with beautiful women, and spend New Years in Phnom Penh on a boat.  The island was very nice but I'm certain that the improper disposal on garbage and other less pleasant human leavings were a major contributing factor to my illness.

(Maybe leave that last part out when you tell the Grandmas)

Last week I was in Phnom Penh for some friends' Birthdays and we all had a blast.  I think about 5 volunteers had birthdays within a week of each other so we all came into Phnom Penh and went out how you're supposed to on your birthday.

Next up I've got a few weddings I've been asked to attend and then an all 80's party at the roller disco in the provincial capital city of Pousat.

I would also like to wish my Dad a happy birthday, 57's a good number (at least H.J. Hienz thought so).  Love ya and miss ya pops.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years 2012 here we come!

A long December

So far December has been a pretty dull month in terms of traveling about and visiting places in Cambodia.  At the beginning of the month I did get to go to Angkor Wat (some of you may have heard of them) for the annual half marathon, but other than that most of my days have been spent lulling around my site and getting to know my community better.

I have met some interesting folks though.  One of the teachers at my school has a beautiful farm in the countryside where she grows (what else?) rice.  I planned to visit her farm for a short afternoon and ended up spending the whole day there. 

I have discovered that in Cambodia it is often very rewarding to go off the beaten path and see how the rural people live because Chhouk is by no means a large town, but it varies vastly from the rural countryside of Cambodia.

On a different note I started my club and am now teaching a writing class at the school.  It’s going well and the students seem to enjoy it but I am having problems getting them to stretch their imaginations.  One exercise I have found works well is to write a list of adjectives on the board and have students write a question using an adjective from the list.  Then I redistribute the questions and have different students answer the questions.  It usually turns into a pretty lively activity.

I have also started planning for my garden at school.  This has been a big project that my school director wants me to get underway so naturally, I have been putting it off.  However I now have a list of supplies that I need and will begin fundraising next week.  Wish me luck.

Thanksgiving was a success and our lovely K4s in Kampot cooked us a killer Thanksgiving feast, but it was bittersweet because one of the volunteers I have gotten close to was sent to Bangkok for an angiogram (heart) and missed the holiday.

Up next is a vacation to Monkey Island off the coast of Sihanoukville for Christmas and for my Birthday I do not believe I will be doing anything special which is fine by me.

One disclaimer I would like to make about my blog is that now I have been in Cambodia for almost 5 months I am beginning to see a lot of things here that no longer surprise me.  I realize that to the outside viewer many of the things I walk by on a daily basis and used everyday would require a detailed explanation of why? and how? but as I progress towards integration (I use the word ‘progress’ because no matter what I do I will never look like a Cambodian) I begin to see things as normal or tradition when I know they are not (at least to some of the target audience of this blog). 

So please if there are any questions about what I post do not hesitate to prod deeper as I’m sure I have overlooked many chances to explain various concepts or events

More Pics

My house

My kitchen

Jelly (she got ran over)

This is an interesting picture because the apparatus you see before you is a dud B52 bomb that was dropped on Cambodia during the Vietnam war to try and stem the supply route of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Today it is used as a bell to signal the beginning and end of class.

My school and students preparing to clean the school.

different angle of my students

Avg. Cambodian classroom.

Principals office, library and a few more classrooms.  Taken facing the opposite direction of the picture with the students seen earlier.