It was a busy day, including a little jaunt to a school somewhere in the middle of nowhere to the north of Phnom Penh, a good 5km and long bike ride that left me with very oddly sunburnt hands (think, holding a bike handlebar line). My legs are still complaining...well, that and an interview for what I thought was an assistant teacher and instead was a preschool teacher. It went well but ultimately it won't work out as they don't want me to go to Siem Reap in September, as planned with Cambodian Living Arts, and I had to make the choice: am I here to teach preschool, or choreography? I think you know which one I chose, but always hard to give up stability for what you actually want to do...
The afternoon was spent teaching -- yesterday only had 3 students but we got some good work done and of course today I had 11, so trying to get everyone on the same level and avoid the inevitable "been there three days" cliques from forming. I may or may not have succeeded, but that's besides the point...
(This post is all over the place because I am -- it was another busy day and lots of stuff happening.)
But anyway, for the evening I wore my new dress -- ankle length, which I am not at all used to -- and put on makeup and earrings for the first time since coming here. It quite makes a difference, I actually looked like a girl!
For dinner we went to a little place called Atmosphère, a French bistrot very nearby my apartment. It was very quiet -- I guess people don't go out to places like that on Tuesday nights -- but the wait staff was very friendly and the food good. The decor was all very white -- cream, I guess -- and fancily folded napkins. The meat was grilled outside, a big wonderful outdoor grill. Medium rare ongleut de boeuf for me...
The waitstaff learned it was my birthday when I was trying out my new skills in Khmer, as my friend taught me to say 'It's my birthday'. We ordered an apple tart for dessert, and then my friends asked that it be brought with a candle, so back they went and came back with a candle, prompting everyone to break out in a cacophony of various versions of 'happy birthday'. English, French, and Khmer, somewhere in the song and no one really together, but happily clapping along and cheering when I blew out the candle. Really quite a lovely present.
Afterwards we wandered down a street where there are tons of cute little bars, but then one of my friends noticed there seemed to be a concert up on the second floor of one of the buildings, and so we decided to try and figure out how to get up there. We went up a couple flights of very, very steep stairs and came out in the bar.
As with many restaurants/bar, it opened directly to the air, in this case the street. There were mainly expats there, lounging on the congregation of big couches and bean bag chairs. The liquor behind the bar was set on a replica of the Independence Monument, built into the wall and backlit with blue. There was a little stage in the corner, where an Australian hippie was jamming away on the guitar and singing a crazy mix of songs, from Australian hiphop to the Gorillaz to Modest Mouse to Outkast.
It was a really nice atmosphere; everyone was having fun and enjoying the music, singing along or chatting to their friends. The walls and ceiling were covered entirely with little messages and drawings from the past clientele, I guess the bar was called Top Banana, as I only discovered today, but we stayed for a drink and generally had a lovely time.
After we left, Nettra and I spent some time at my apartment, having a beer and chatting about life and love. All in all it was a really lovely birthday -- low key, simple, and great fun.
Currently in mode: find work that I WANT to do. It's so tempting to just apply for everything everywhere but I found myself dragging my feet on some things and then thought, why? Why not get paid to do enjoyable work? What a thought...
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