Basketball & Laundry

I promised I’d update and here I am!

I forgot to mention last time how tall I am compared to your average Cambodian woman. This is emphasized to me every time I go to step down from the second floor and hit my head on the ceiling. Luckily, I’ve gotten used to ducking, but sometimes I am painfully reminded that I have forgotten. Haha.

Did I mention all of the farm animals that walk around my yard? We have tons of chickens and one pig in a pen. I am awoken every morning at 4am by the sound of the rooster, which wakes the babies, who then proceed to cry. I’ve learned to sleep through it. This morning, however, I woke up before the rooster to the sound of crunchcrunchcrunch, part of my mosquito net falling, and then the currying of tiny feet. I am about 99% sure that my visitor was a mouse, as I don’t think scorpions or newts bite wood and plastic.

All of my homestay parents’ children are back in town for the election, and they have a daughter who speaks pretty good English, so last night, I got out all of the pictures I brought of my friends and family and talked about them. I tried to speak in Khmer as much as possible, but it was nice to have an English speaker to help me. I was able to accurately explain everything except sororities. Aww well. Then my mai (homestay mom) brought out some pictures of one of her daughter’s weddings, and it was gorgeous. She gave me one of her and my pboke (homestay dad).

Oh, I also had a giant cockroach in my room last night before I went to bed. I watched it with my bug zapper for about 30 minutes, hoping it would only stay by the light, but once it started to go onto my clothes, I knew I had to get it. Next time it landed on a wall, I hit it. It fell behind my trunk, and I was too scared to check to see if it actually died, so just keep your fingers crossed for me!

Today, a few of us Trainees played basketball with some Khmer teenagers. It was a lot of fun although I forgot how tiring basketball can be. The running back and forth up the court plus the sun plus the humidity had me exhausted after an hour, but I kept playing anyway because I spend the rest of the week sitting in a classroom. After football, three of us went to the p’saa (market) to get some coconut water to restore our electrolytes. I like going to the market for it because the coconut ladies give us the water for free, since they don’t use it for anything anyway.

After I got back from that, I had lunch and then did laundry. Laundry took me an hour and a half, and I had less stuff than last week, when it only took my homestay sister 15 minutes to get through all of my laundry. I will hopefully get much faster.

I’m also really happy I got to Skype with a few of you yesterday. If anybody ever wants to Skype, I’m on every Saturday morning (for me) from 6:30am – 7:45am, which is starting at 7:30pm Friday for Eastern US time. I’m also available all day Sunday, which is Saturday night and Sunday morning for those of you in the US reading. I’d love to Skype with any and all of you!

One last thing I wanted to mention was that if you are going to send me stuff, please don’t use USPS. Anything else is more reliable to Cambodia.

Talk to you all soon!

Spiders and Mosquitoes and Flies, Oh My!

Today, we had our second “Hub Site” day, but it wasn’t at the usual place. It was at the Provincial Office of Education. It was quite nice to see all of the ETTTs again, and catch up on how our language and technical trainings are coming.

We met our CD (Country Director) today. Her name is Penny and she was away when we originally got here. She seems pretty cool and offered some good advice on how to approach service while we were all eating lunch together on the steps. We also met some of the WID-GAD (Gender and Development) Committee, which is a committee I would definitely like to join when the applications come out. Here’s their website if you want to check out what they do: http://pckhmerwidgad.blogspot.com/

Oh, we also learned about all the different things that can give us diarrhea! So now I can be scared of mosquitos and food. Just kidding!

Don’t expect to get updates every day! I just realized throughout the course of the day that I had more to say :-)

A few things I forgot to mention last time:

1. Bucket showers. I think I have finally mastered taking a bucket shower. When I was in TZ, the water was warmed before we used it, but here it comes out of a well that is installed in the bathroom, so it’s cold. During our PST Orientation, when we were literally being re-potty-trained, the woman doing the training told us that we would learn to do it in four “buckets.” My first bucket shower took over 10 buckets, but now I’m consistently at or below 6 buckets, and with the length of my hair, I consider it a victory. Also, when I say buckets, I don’t mean like giant buckets… I’m talking about something the size of an average pot to boil water. Mom, if you’re reading this, it’s about the size of our second smallest water-boiling-pot with a handle. Yeah.

2. Khmer. I love it but it is so hard to learn a language, at least for me, by phonetics only. The Khmer written script is a whole ‘nother animal that I eventually want to learn, but for now, we just speak. I try to practice with my host family every day. And I’m proud of myself as I can feel myself getting better in my daily interactions, and have less hand motions to do.

3. BUGS. There are bugs everywhere. I’m not squeamish by any means, but the sheer number of spiders, mosquitos, and flies makes me skin crawl sometimes. In fact, a spider has taken residence in my loofah. I think I’m just going to let him keep it. I do, however, get great satisfaction out of using my bug-zapper. As a formerly “kill nothing, just release it to the outside” person, I feel slightly guilty but it’s nice to know that the bugs I am zapping will not be in my clothes, on my sheets, or on me.

4. Technical sessions. As a health volunteer, I learn, on a daily basis, about the health care system in Cambodia. This week is maternal and child health. My trainer let me speak to the other CHEs for a few minutes about being doula and how to support women through birth in a non-medical context. It felt really cool to share my knowledge. We all learned that many of the female CHEs also help with the birthing and the pre-natal check-ups, which made me extremely excited to get sworn in and start my service already!

5. Internet. I now have a “Metfone Stick” which means I can basically access the internet whenever I would like. However, I’m seriously trying to get over this addiction, although I am obviously already failing. Miserably.

6. Elections… It has been really hectic with all of the campaign “parades,” but I’m glad that’s finally coming to a close on Sunday, Election Day. I will be stuck close to home, so I will probably write more then.

7. If you want to send me mail (which I would LOVE), please send nothing big, nothing valuable, and nothing that will melt. Letters and pictures (from a camera or drawn), and maybe small books or movies (I have a DVD drive). I’ve also really been craving granola bars and Nutrigrain bars for breakfast, and have been trying to satisfy that craving with teething crackers (yes, for babies).  Please please please let me know if you send me something as the mail is not always reliable. I’m not sure how much it costs to send stuff here, but if you talk to my mom, she’s already sent one package. If you want a letter back, let me know! I’d like to get back into the habit of hand-written letters. Anyway, here’s the address [[should I put it in the side bar??]]:

Attn: Mary Walsh

Peace Corps Cambodia

P.O. Box 2453

Phnom Penh 3, Cambodia

I’m going to leave it at 7, since I’m a K7, but I would like to close with the fact that I have never loved an object more than I love my chamber pot in the middle of the night when I hear dogs howling outside, and oral rehydration salts taste gross but work so well.

I’ll write more soon!

2 Weeks Feels Like 2 Months

Hey everyone!

Sorry I didn’t write earlier. There were things I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to put Cambodia in words until I was committed to what I would have to say. I’m still not quite committed, but here goes my attempt anyway… (as always, I’m going to be 100% honest here)

When I landed in Cambodia almost 2 weeks ago, I was excited to begin this adventure. All of the K7s (that is, the 7^th group of volunteers to come to Cambodia, or, as they call it, Kampuchea) gathered for a quick picture and then we were off on a two hour drive to Takeo for our first day of training. Yup, after what felt like days of traveling, we didn’t get a break, just straight to training!

The orientation to PST (Pre-service Training) was through the weekend (we landed on a Friday), and that Sunday, we split into CHE (Community Health Education) altogether and ETTT (English Teaching and Teacher Training) groups A & B, since there are more of them, and met our host families at the local Pagoda (Buddhist equivalent of Christian Church, Jewish Temple, Muslim Mosque… you get the idea). I was hoping for the host family that had brought the small child, and guess what, I got it! My host nephew is 3 and adorable. I think he’s also slightly afraid of me, but he’s warming up.

After that, we were dropped off with our bags to our host families, and that is where each of us has been sleeping since then. My host family doesn’t speak any English, so we do a lot of hand gesturing. However, I discovered this weekend that my host dad speaks French, so now we communicate pretty well in Frengmer. Haha.

Other than that, not much has stood out, except for the fact that I was terribly homesick this past weekend. If you know me, you know I usually don’t get homesick; traveling is in my very soul. However, I think the reality of not seeing my family for 2 years has really set in, so Skyping with my parents on Saturday morning was almost a bad idea since I was in a foul mood for the rest of the weekend… I watched 5 movies because I just wanted to be alone, and 4 of them were dramas, so I could cry. I’m glad I got it out of my system so early though, because now I feel fine.

Today  was awesome! After training, I played soccer with some of my fellow Trainees and a bunch of Khmer children. I played goalie and it felt so good to be “on the field” again, in a sense. It really got my adrenaline going, and I even made a pretty good save.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m going back to being a vegetarian, at least for now. Eating meat was going well until I almost threw up eating a piece of pork that just did not feel right, so I spoke to my LCF (Language & Cultural Facilitator, ie a Cambodian to help us learn the language and the culture), and she called my family. Now it’s back to tofu and veggies and I couldn’t be happier!

For those who are wondering, my average schedule is training Monday through Saturday from 8:00-12:00 and 1:30-5:00, with Sundays free. Every training day (except Thursday) is with the other CHEs, although about half of the day is language and we were divided into 4 smaller groups for that, so I spend a lot of time with Sam, Kayla, Heather, and Wes. Thursday is our Hub Site Day, meaning that we gather with the rest of the K7s and learn stuff that all of us need to know. Last week, we learned about mosquito-borne illnesses and, let me tell you, it is scary to think about some of the stuff mosquitoes can give me! But, it’s good to know this stuff. I like Hub Site days because we get to hang out with the ETTTs, and they are all really awesome.

Feel free to write to me, and comment to let me know you are reading.

Miss you all!

EWR -> LAX -> Tokyo -> Bangkok

I'm currently sitting in a First Class lounge in the Bangkok airport with the 48 other people I will be serving in the Peace Corps with. I can tell you this, after these last few flights, I never want to see another airplane again. Alas, we have to fly out in less than 7 hours to go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia though. After that, though, it's staying put in country for at least 6 months.

So far, everything has been pretty cool, if not a little rushed with so many things squished into such a short amount of time. Our "Staging" (which is the Peace Corps term for the orientation before getting on the flight to our destination) was 5 hours long but it felt like a full day. By the middle of it, many of us had hit our so-called "wall" since we had traveled that morning to LA.

Everyone seems really awesome. The Peace Corps definitely attracts a certain kind of person, so everyone has been really nice and pretty cool so far.

Just updating you all! I won't have regular access to internet after training starts tomorrow, so expect some spotty updating.