Next stop, the other side of the world

As I've mentioned several times previously on this blog and haven't stopped talking about for months now (leaving my friends and acquaintances no doubt really really ready for me to actually leave), on July 6th, at 1:45AM, I will be on an airplane at JFK, heading for Phnom Penh, Cambodia. With a stop in Taipei for 3 hours and to convince myself to get back on an airplane after 16 full hours to get there.

Sass aside. I have a one way ticket. I have no idea when I am coming back, or where. I've started telling people I'll be there until I leave, which no matter what will be true. It should be somewhere in the six to nine  month range, I think, and sometime next March I will probably be found in Denver. Maybe.

As for what I'm doing...well, that's a bit up in the air too, but at least until the end of the summer I'll be teaching choreography workshops with Cambodian Living Arts, an organization with a mission to rebuild the country by bringing back the arts. I'll probably continue working with them during the fall, including an all-expenses paid trip to Siem Reap to teach at the School of Fine Arts there.

In the meantime, I'll be teaching English to pay the bills (I hope), collaborating with whatever arts organizations I can possibly collaborate with, and (hopefully) producing work.

It sounds fantastic, and I'm so thrilled, but I always get asked, why in the world - literally - Cambodia?

Well. My friend Nettra, my suitemate freshman year, is from there, and infused me with her passion for the country. Somehow, we decided I should go, but there was never time, until there was, and I threw the idea out into the world to see what happened.

Simply enough, I thought it was time to give back. I'm fascinated by how the arts are returning, having been entirely stamped out during the Khmer Rouge, and I have the opportunity to really be a part of the movement to rebuild.

And besides -- I love how I can get real experience teaching and working, and in the process immerse myself in a part of the world that is entirely foreign to anything I have previously experienced. I love how I can go and be whoever the hell I want, as accomplished as I care to be.

I'll probably have a camera, and at the very least, I'll be keeping up the blog, writing down the adventure as it unfolds under my feet. I have absolutely no idea where it's going to lead me, but I think I want to be there to find out.

See you on the other side! (literally)