Some days...

You just have to quit.

Prahok is a common Cambodian seasoning, often used in soups. It's earned the nickname "Khmer cheese", though I have not been able to figure out why. A quick look at wikipedia tells me it's a paste made from fermented fish and something else, and well, either way --

It was in the soup I had for lunch, and I am not a happy camper. 

I'm including this in the blog because it's part of it. Tomorrow marks the end of my second month here, and the previous two have been one long adjustment process, whether it be in attitude, culture, body, mind, spirit, etc. 

People are not standing on their heads here, but the world is literally upside-down. My students have started friending me on Facebook and it's making me wonder what their lives are like, have been like, will be like. I don't know, and probably never will, know what their day to day existence is like, and nor them, mine. That doesn't mean we aren't or can't be friends, or that we aren't more similar than probably either of us would think. 

It just does make me think, at times like this, when I am feeling really far from home and projecting my anger at the over-fermented prahok onto the country as a whole, which isn't fair at all but hey, let's talk more tomorrow. My day to day life is not ridiculously altered, but yet fundamentally, it is. 

Sometimes it's a lot like home. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes I sit back and think and realize that no, everything is different here. 

My sympathetic co-worker said it like this, "Some foreigners can't take the Khmer cheese."

That is what I am here, a foreigner. As always when I make statements like that, I don't mean it in a bad way. It's just the way it is. It is foreign to me and I am foreign to it. 

Even getting used the fact of being a foreigner is foreign. The circles never end, and sometimes it gets really tiring. If everything was the same, but people stood on their heads, I think it might be less strange. 

I am literally on the other side of the world, and most of the time I don't really notice. Gravity works the same here, after all. But some days, I do, and others, I'm forced to. 

All part of the adventure, as much as I wish sometimes it weren't. But if it wasn't...well, of course it wouldn't be the same, now would it?

UPDATE: By the evening the prahok had found its way out, and I was able to munch on bread and rice for dinner. I am now sitting in my fantastic little solar, playing stupid computer games, and am back to being okay with life. It doesn't change the point of this post, but I thought you might want to know.  

Market OD (No seriously)

Orussey Market has probably gotten a mention on here before in my overall description of markets. It has probably been in the form of  complaints about the fact that it leaks out the sides and I can never find the tiny side street somewhere around it that has the bikes because apparently the sheer amount of stuff that needs to be sold just can't fit inside, so whole side streets are dedicated to the excess.

I had previously never set foot inside, just seen it, like a giant parking garage that has been taken over. The street that winds around the outside is technically one-way but nobody pays much attention to that anyway. Some parking here, mostly just billions of umbrellas hiding more wares. I knew it was overwhelming.

And then I went inside.

I don't know how many floors there are. Three at least, though I wouldn't be surprised to find more. Each level is packed to the gills with stalls and aisles roughly a foot wide between each. Things are grouped by type, and on the third floor, where my friend and I found ourselves, it's all jewelry, beauty products, and clothes.

So many clothes. Jeans for ridiculously tiny asses but mostly a million different kinds of shirts. Some for men but mostly for women. From traditional blouses to the modern n'importe quoi, T-shirts ranging from weird and Asian to cute and Asian to totally inappropriate to fashionable to ridiculous Engrish. Shirts of every cut and style, then if that wasn't enough, there are stalls upon stalls of fabric -- embroidered, gaudy, colorful, traditional, god only knows what.

When you hit the jewelry, it's a mass of shiny objects, from tiaras to rings, and about a thousand of them in each stall. They look like costume jewelry and probably are, but the vendors try to sell them for 15 bucks for a bracelet, and say "No discount", with varying degrees of friendliness.

Food vendors come through all the time, selling anything from fried tarantula to soda.

I am trying to paint a picture like this: massive amounts of human life, materials, and much more of it than you'd ever think would be possible in one place.

My friend said, let me know if you start to feel claustrophobic. I said no worries, I'll be okay. It's just busy, right? But I noticed about ten minutes in that my body was acting in a very strange way. I felt jumpy, shaky, and anxious. My limbs were started to get oddly weak and my heart was pounding.

I thought, is this really happening? Is this really the market? Is there really such great energy here that it is doing this to me?

I sat down. I took a few breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, and did the best energy block I know of, imagining being surrounded by water, like the fountains at the Bellagio.

Suddenly, things got better, and I was forced to admit that yes, that was just a serious energy overload. I followed my friend around peaceably for the next twenty minutes, looking through all the crazy shirts, but when we got out at last and headed to a café for much needed air conditioning and a frappe, I was dead tired.

It started to rain and all I was able to do was stare blankly out the window and watch the tuk tuks stopping to roll down their windows, or giggle at the guy who was literally carrying around a table umbrella like a giant walking tent. But I was just not there, like some part of me had been sucked away. I was left with a fierce desire for quiet, to curl up on my couch and not deal with anything.

When the madness died down, I got on the bike and went home, and despite it being close to five, I crashed.

A half hour of strange dreams later, I returned to the world and was back in one piece. I even went out and joined the same friend for a last happy hour as she is sadly leaving town, and peaceably spent the night drinking sangria and later on gorging myself on a feast of Indonesian food -- there were six of us, and we did it tapas style, everyone sharing everything, and it was brilliant. I am still recovering from the food coma, in fact...

But it was seriously like an overdose. I even had to sleep it off. Apparently you have to build tolerance for Orussey, according to my friend, and I don't doubt it.  But at the same time, I think it's probably one of the best places to find the "real" Phnom Penh, and not just the glossy expat version.

Still, for those of us uninitiated -- to be partaken with discretion.

Biking the monsoons, for real this time

The madness began literally two minutes before I was intending to leave, just finished a private English lesson. At some point I had been planning to use the only half hour free I had during the day to go the market and get fruit, but that was clearly not going to happen.

In fact, me going anywhere was kind of a sketchy proposition.

Usually the madness calms down after a bit, but this time it only got stronger, as if this time it was feeding off its own fury. The raindrops were literally striking the buildings, the air turning gray from its force. Though I had been sitting on the balcony, the rain invaded that too, riding in on the wind.

We fled inside. I was intending to just wait it out and be a few minutes late. In the meantime there was food, some kind of chicken curry cooked in banana leaves and red rice, a fruit salad with mango, banana, lychee, and various other goodness. So we munched, and stared at the rain. I attempted to text a couple of my students to tell them I was going to be late -- unnecessary, as it turns out, they were all later than me.

At some point I decided that the rain was not going to stop anytime soon, and pulled on a borrowed flimsy yellow plastic poncho and headed out to brave the rain.

The sky was literally falling.

The streets were flooding, everywhere, intersections turning quickly to lakes. My bike made a perfect wake in front of me, spattering my shoes with warm water. The drops were accosting my face, only held off when I used one hand to pull the hood further in front of my eyes -- but doing so involved steering with one hand, so I used this power with great discretion.

I ran home, shuffled about trying to figure out how to get my backpack off without taking off the poncho, and grabbing a full change of clothes, before tearing out again and heading directly back into the madness.

By the time I got to Cambodian Living Arts, the streets were seriously flooded, and I hit a lake of at least six inches deep at the intersection. I didn't think it was possible for flip flops to be as wet as mine were when at last I arrived, dripping wet and what wasn't from rainfall was from sweat from the plastic poncho.

Of course, the vast majority of my students were late, choosing to make the trip after the madness at last died down. But I figured, I'm the teacher, so I'm kind of obligated to at least try to make it on time.

With all of that said -- between the water hitting my feet in huge sprays, accosting my eyes, the sound of it attacking the rooftops ---

Well of course it was fabulous.

The banalities, the six week slump, and trying to remember where I was yesterday

So I was just thinking, I should save writing about the banalities for Tuesday Night Chatter, but then I realized several things. (All at the same time, so naturally I will have forgotten most by the time I write this.) The first was that, I will never remember everything I'm thinking of now on Tuesday, and TNC is mostly just for stream-of-consciousness anyway, a kind of snapshot of a moment. And besides, currently, the little observations, little ideas, short stories and small pictures, are what is making up my life these days.

I have some posts in the works with a bit more point, mostly about the workshops that I've grossly neglected to mention for several weeks. But in the meantime, I want to tell you about the small things.

Like how I got stuck biking in a real monsoon the other day, the several minutes of madness (only this time it lasted about an hour), and it was only the bright pink, flimsy poncho that one of my students gave me out of the goodness of his heart that saved me. Mostly, I just couldn't see, blinking madly as the raindrops assaulted my eyes and hunching my shoulders; not because they were getting wet, but because I guess I thought I could use them to shield my eyes.

The six week slump, I think I addressed somewhat last TNC, fueled by a lack of power and internet, the onset of a nasty head cold, and various other factors, has been rearing its ugly head this past week. I've been referring to it, but I don't think I've articulated its main source in clear terms on this blog yet, though I have to my family. The fact of the matter is this: I came to Cambodia with some fuss and fanfare, with a grand vision - subconscious or otherwise - to modernize and develop the dance form and be some kind of hero, or heroic presence. I didn't think of it in such terms, but I did.

I found out pretty quickly that that was not in fact what I wanted to be doing, that it was the most grossly western and arrogant thing I could do. Therefore, it left me scrambling a bit, and dealing with a very simple fact: I don't know why I'm here.

I don't mean this in a bad way. I don't even think it's a bad thing, and I don't think it's permanent. I don't particularly wish to be elsewhere, and don't regret having come here. But the fact remains. I came here because someone asked me to, and now I have to create what it means.

I'm sure that the previous times that I went to live in a new place -- Asheville, New York, Paris -- I went through this stage too, this maddening stage where you are where you are and glad to be there, but trying to adjust as quickly as you can and understanding that you can't hurry it along, but live it through. It's encouraging that I don't remember those times, because that means they were unimportant in the long run, and the breakthrough more than paid the hours spent running at the wall.

(You know, even when I want to not have a point I somehow ended up creating one. In blog posts as well as life, apparently.)

Anyway, it's also not like I'm not busy. There is a lot going on, and yet somehow I find that when you ask me what I've been doing I have no idea what to say, such that, like now, when I sit down to write blog posts I stare at the screen blankly, wracking my brains for something to write about.

I dropped the teaching job with the trust that I would be able to live without it, and that if it wasn't the right fit there was no point in doing it, and since then I picked up an odd job teaching an NGO the Thriller dance (despite not really knowing it myself) a couple hours a week and was contacted about another dance teaching thing. I modeled for an art gallery's weekly 'Drink & Draw' and picked up five bucks. Somehow, things are fitting together in ways that I couldn't have possibly expected, but that are only possible because I trusted enough to say no to something I couldn't fully commit to.

Besides getting caught in the rain -- and it has been VERY rainy recently, precisely after I said something about it not raining much -- the main adventures of the past week have been mostly in guessing how long until the power comes back, finding ways to keep cool and cheap cafés to go to, and obsessively reading the Fountainhead, which I finished on Wednesday (and loved).

Also, I apologize if I repeat myself. It's a bad habit, but when you can't remember what you've been doing without serious mental strain and just go for the main themes, you often mutter the same themes over and over again...

Tuesday Night Chatter

Thanks to the brave who commented last time, again I welcome comments and questions, should you so decide to pass them on. They will be addressed in next week's edition of TNC.

Russ, I am not sure how the post office works, if it does, indeed, work. The post office is enormous and there are about a million windows, each one for something else, and the western forums are filled with horror stories of officers taking money for stamps and canning the letter, or overcharging, or generally being nefarious. However, I have also heard that friends have successfully sent and received packages and letters, and therefore I'm sure that the truth, as it always is, is somewhere in between.

The building is huge, and yellow, and has a wide parking lot in front, probably the only parking lot I've seen here (I forgot to mention in my post about traffic that the sidewalks are always mistaken for parking, and thus there is always someone backing into the middle of oncoming traffic). My box is in the very back, at the end of a hallway, in a wooden cabinet with the others. I have been told that sending stuff to the post office is more or less reliable but at least you are not trusting the letter to some tuk tuk driver who has no blessed clue where your address actually is.

As for subtle cultural differences, Tristen, I could probably write a novel but naturally most are escaping me right now. They come in quiet realizations and understandings, like the fact that you aren't supposed to touch people on the top of the head because that's where the soul apparently is. I also get the impression that people act very differently towards westerners and therefore some of those real differences are lost in the exchange. I will, however, try to note it as I go.

In the meantime, if having a cold means there is too much going on, then...there is too much going on. I am not too sick to do anything but enough to snuffle around my house and sneeze violently whenever I turn the fan on. I think it's also because my over-active hamster brain has been on double duty the past couple weeks and keeps me up long after I turn out the lights.

It's been a terrible weekend for the utilities; I was without internet from Friday night through Sunday afternoon, and without power from early this morning until around five thirty. Nothing fatal, but thoroughly inconvenient and required me spending more money than planned at the cafés for internet and today for lunch.

One good thing about the time, during which I groped about desperately for something to do with myself, was picking up The Fountainhead, which I had with me from the states and never felt like I had the energy to deal with. With nothing better to do, I've very much enjoyed reading and confess myself totally engrossed -- it's interesting, however much you know how you are being beaten over the head with the philosophy, it's still so fascinating. I personally think Ms. Rand spent a lot of time reading Nietszche...

I've been worrying about money this week. I did, in the end, quit the tutoring job with the four-year-old -- and don't regret it, but it does make paying September's rent a bit of an adventure, though I think it will be fine in the end.

I'm not afraid to admit it hasn't been a great week; I've been stressed, worried, and frustrated with the lack of internet, which serves to make me miss home all the more for having lost my permanent link with it. I'm not dancing, which always makes me grumpy, and the fusion project has inexplicably stalled, leaving me scrambling to figure out how to proceed and what really I'm doing/want to accomplish with my time here.

My saving grace has been my workshops. The first was good, the second better, and the third so far proving to be the best. I have four repeat students and two I already know; they are all great and interested and generally fantastic. Although I have no idea what they are saying to each other, I think they're hilarious. The kicker was today in class, when one of my students (one of two who have been there since the first workshop) startled me by asking during a break, "Yan, do you want to be a supermodel?"

"Absolutely not," I answered, but he said, "But why not? You're tall." And sort of as a hesitant afterthought, "And beautiful." Of course I preened.

They then proceeded to all flabbergast me in a very simple exercise about initiation (where in the body the movement comes from) with the incredible innovation, depth, and thought they managed to pack into a simple thirty second phrase. I swear, I have nothing to do with this stuff. I just open the door, and they come storming through.

So here I am. Very far away, and totally uncertain, but I am here. And as one of my favorite Zen sayings remarks, wherever you go, there you are.

Traffic "laws"

The first thing you need to know is the city lay out. It is more or less in grids, though there are certain streets you can't get through to from other streets where the water cuts through (I think), and thus some streets don't go through. Generally speaking, odd numbered streets run north-south, with the numbers going up as you travel east. Even run east/west, and get smaller as you go north.

Of course, there isn't much rhyme or reason, or so it seems. 294 is followed by 302, though 296 and 300 exist, just further to the west, across Monivong (one of the main arteries). Only the main arteries have stoplights, the rest is a free for all in the intersection. 

(Don't get me started on the housing numbers, which make even less sense than the street numbers. They proceed more or less in chronological order, but one odd number on one side of the street is absolutely no guarantee it will continue, and simply because the numbers are going down doesn't mean they will continue to do so. If, as is often the case, two houses have the same numbers, a letter is thrown on the end for kicks -- the most common being A and EO, though why is really quite beyond me.)

In the meantime, there are certain rules that everyone follows, though they cannot really be called traffic laws in the way we westerners would think of them. Once you figure them out, however, you can get along just fine, if by fine you don't mind a few heartattacks on each trip.

The most disconcerting thing for me is the way to turn left at intersections. You turn to the far left side of the road you want and drive on the wrong side of the road until the opportunity to cut across oncoming traffic presents itself and you can get back to the right side.

At stoplights, the motos and bikes wind their way up to the front, disregarding the lane markers entirely and often spilling into the oncoming traffic lanes. Red lights for many motos means 'take more caution when crossing the road', and they wait until everything is most calmed and then motor on across. If you don't start pedaling when the countdown -- large red numbers on the stoplights announcing just how long you have to wait -- hits "4", you'll be left in the dust, but then it's important to be aware as someone will always be pushing the limit of when the red light actually appears.

For those intersections without stoplights -- that is to say, most of them -- it's just a touch and go process to wind around everyone and hope the car in front of you isn't blocking a moto traversing on the other side (which it inevitably is.) This is similar to turning left without a light, in which case you just wind your way through oncoming traffic wherever there are gaps.

My trick is usually to find a moto or a car turning at the same place as me and then hiding behind them, using them as a shield and zipping through the hole they create. It works, most of the time.

Cambodian drivers are remarkably patient with this crazy system, and despite the hundreds of near collisions in one short drive, road rage is very rare. Honking, however, is common place. Generally speaking, though, the honk is used for both moto and car to simply announce its presence, usually as it is cutting across several lanes of oncoming traffic to turn left or something of the sort. Since people get cut off all the time, honking usually serves as a warning that, although you may have just swerved in front of me, I am still here.

Honking can also be used to clear the way, as the more important cars use it just to make the smaller ones get out of the way. There is definitely a hierarchy, starting at the top with the big cars, then the small cars, then the tuk tuks, motos, and lastly bikes -- yet another reason to use the cars as a shield.

The last thing you need to avoid are the huge carts carrying supplies - they move slowly because it's just one moto pulling it (no chevy trucks here, no sirree), laden with supplies and with at least one or two young men sitting on top, with dusty clothes and scarves over their mouth - and the food carts. These are sometimes like huge, glorified wheelbarrows or like the push carts you might find in Central Park. Their owners either walk them around or attach them somehow to a moto, and drive along the side of the street, announcing their presence with a little horn playing a ditty that may be the most annoying thing I have ever heard. But it works like an ice cream cart.

And I may have mentioned it before, but the motos, aside from being absolutely ubiquitous, carry the damndest things. It is not uncommon at all for whole families, including very small children, to be perched on top, or for huge boxes of god-knows-what tied precariously to the back. If you can put it on the thing and it doesn't collapse, well, then there you go.

It's not unorganized, as I thought at the beginning, and perhaps seems much more dangerous than it really is. But if you are paying attention, and understand where you are supposed to turn, it works out just fine.

However, and especially since the bag snatching incident, I wear a helmet. 

Biking in the monsoons

"Life in the wide world goes on, much as it has this past age, filled with all its comings and goings."

A very famous wizard said this in a movie once, and he might have said it in a book too, but those exact words are currently escaping me.

The fact of the matter is, I just don't know what to tell you. Life goes on, and I feel like I'm repeating myself a great deal these days. What do I do? I ride around on my bike, these days with helmet firmly buckled on head and backpack sweating on my back.

In fact, I do that so much that I think I know what I can tell you.

Until yesterday, I had been extraordinarily lucky in my timing on the bike. I was often on it after the rain, or right before, or arrived in my house a scarce thirty seconds before the deluge. I'm still, actually, pretty lucky, as I wasn't caught in the worst of it.

Perhaps I have never actually put words to the rain, which were pretty commonplace the first few weeks and have been conspicuously missing since then. I found this odd, and thought it maybe the reason it's been so hot. The rains do cool it down.

They come quickly and suddenly. Once you start to hear the drops starting to hit the tin roofs, you have a bare second or two to find cover before it hits the streets, big fat drops that look like curtains falling from the sky. It pounds, blows, and consumes the world in madness for ten, fifteen minutes, before dying away and softly sputtering, sometimes for hours after.

The streets flood, small lakes appearing on the sides of the street and worming their way into traffic, the motos and cars doing what they can to avoid driving through and covering everyone else in muddy splashes. Some people, the brave, go without raincoats, but most people wear the disposable plastic poncho thing, clinging to sweating skin. The rest run for cover. There's not much point in having an umbrella, really; the rains are too heavy, and too strong.

It was only raining slightly at the time, having completed the main section of its fury, but it was still an adventure, swerving around the puddles and still splashing my legs, trying to hold up my aladdin pants to avoid getting wet from the dripping bike. Carefully riding the brakes, and wiping drops away from my helmet, and trying to avoid the stares from the other drivers.

Crazy barang, I always imagined them thinking. 'Barang' is a general term for white people, though it also specifically means 'French'. It's derived from "français," which the Cambodians can't say, and became 'barang' over the years.

I'm sure one of these days I'll get caught in the full on monsoon, but for the moment -- I'll just knock on wood, and suspiciously eye the clouds out the window whenever it's close to the time for me to be on a bike.  Because, clearly, that is a foolproof plan.

And then it clicks (Part 2)

I’m not sure what happened Monday.

Maybe it was the arrival of a student who had taken contemporary dance before and knew what was going on. Maybe it was the weekend, and the kids having time to digest the ideas. Maybe it was even my stellar teaching skills, though I’m not so sure about that. Maybe it was the fact that two of the main troublemakers – great kids, and very good, but ALWAYS chatting or generally not working – weren’t there.

Either way, we had a bit of a breakthrough. The kids who were there were working, exploring, thinking, and suddenly really good work was happening.

There’s a big gap in the class: two very advanced kids who are either older or studied the form before, then the arts students who have experience with movement, and then the kids for whom all of this is new. The top two take the lead and work with the newbies, but I could sense on Tuesday they were getting a bit frustrated.

They don’t realize just how difficult these concepts are, and how for someone who has never done such a thing could be really lost. I’m just learning now, actually.

Despite the gap – everyone suddenly started improving.

For me one of the most incredible things is that they are still coming, especially the newbies. They look at me with some incredulity, they hesitate, but they still show up, albeit irregularly, and try. They carefully put their arms out, then drop them with a little laugh like ‘man, this looks stupid,’ and I always try to catch them right there, imitate the pose myself, and nod enthusiastically. I can’t tell them in their own language, but I mean don’t give up on yourself.

And they keep trying. It’s absolutely stunning—often much more so than the kids who already know how to move, and complete an assignment only to be done with it, and sit around talking until they get to show it.

There’s one boy who clearly doesn’t have any dance training. I haven’t guessed his age, but I’d say fourteen or fifteen. He never wears dance clothes, and can often be found sitting and watching, hiding behind a thick mop of hair. He smiles easily, but says very little, and hangs back. He’s usually the last or close to the last to show. He didn’t come on Thursday or Friday last week, but showed up on Monday, to my great surprise.

And yet. During an exercise in which we worked in pairs, there was an odd number and since everyone paired up immediately, he was left to work with me. I could tell he was reluctant, but we started working together. I don’t know how much he understood, but at the very end, he, like many new dancers, dropped the last pose. As if to say okay there I did it, sorry it was bad, I’ll go away now.

No no, I said, you have to finish the dance on a strong note. Hold the last position, then slowly come back to neutral. Don’t let it go, finish it. He looked a little strangely at me, but nodded.

During the showing, he did it, exactly like I had showed him, and the effect was startling. I was ridiculously excited about it.

It’s moments like that that make me glad I teach. 

Now change everything you do (part 1)

I thought I would devote a blog post or two to the workshops I'm currently teaching, as they demonstrate remarkably well some of the differences between western contemporary dance and Cambodian classical dance. They may be both called 'dance' but are as different from each other as night and day, but not only in how they look, but how they are taught, the genesis of the movement, the history, etc, etc.

First of all, it must be said that Cambodian culture is based around tradition and honoring the past traditions, especially in the arts. Masters teach, and students learn. It is based on imitation, as the students are judged on how perfectly they represent the steps. There is no room in Cambodian classical dance for innovation; the steps are the way they are since they were created, and personal interpretation is not something that exists. The subjects are equally set; each dance tells a certain story. New stories are not a thing one does. .

So keeping all of that in mind, imagine a group of young teenage Khmer students, being now told to create their own movement.

You'd be out of your element too, wouldn't you?

And yet, that is exactly what I am proposing to my students, in my current three week workshop directed towards making an original solo. I do not tell anyone what movement to do. We started with making shapes -- that do not move, and have been working slowly towards stringing them together with movement.

The very concept of making a 'shape' -- essentially a pose, but carefully chosen -- is foreign to them, and it took at least a couple days until they figured out what I meant. Very tentatively, or with great fervor, depending on the student, they set about putting their bodies in positions, often drawing on Cambodian classical forms.

With that little success in hand, we then embarked on drawing inspiration from pictures. Drawing from my grand collection of postcards and pictures, I asked them to make shapes based on what they saw -- yet another thing that you simply do not do here. They took it somewhat literally, often imitating the pictures or the shapes -- and who could blame them? They don't look at a picture of a building and think to make a square with their arm, they look at it and wonder what to do with it. I asked them to just take inspiration from the energy of the picture, and got a whole lot of blank looks. Oops.

In addition to the problems of understanding the concepts - and what, really, a concept even is -- one of the things I had wanted to stress was discussion, so that everyone helps each other with their work, watches, and makes comments. I found out very, very quickly that this was going nowhere, as they just do not know how to talk about dance. 


And again, who could blame them? You don't talk about Cambodian classical dance. You imitate, and you perform it precisely as it should be. It's not just that they're looking at completely alien movements, but then to try and say something about it, what 'works'-- what works, in fact, is a complete nonsequiteur for them. It is a concept that quite simply does not exist, and would require a whole lot of time and explaining from me if I was going to try and introduce it.

With all of this -- some of which I was anticipating, some I wasn't -- I admit to being heartily glad for the weekend at the end of the first week. In addition to the added energy and effort to make myself understood, through a translator and asking them to do things they have never, ever, done before, there is the more frustrating matter that I never have any idea who is going to show up on any given day. 


The idea that a workshop means every day is important just doesn't register, though I suspect that has more to do with their age than their culture. Being on time is another tricky concept, though that's sort of a nationwide issue as far as I can tell. In any case, every day there is always someone who hasn't been there the day before, or for several days, or just comes at the start of the second week as the case was today, so I'm always scrambling to figure out what to do with them, or what to do with my regulars while I catch the newcomers up. 


Thankfully, I have one student who really gets what is going on and what I'm doing, and works with everyone else, which is fantastic.


Going into the weekend, the kids had blazed through all of the assignments I had laid out for two weeks, meaning I was going to have to redesign the syllabus for the second week. 'Exploring further' is not something they understand; so far as they are concerned, if they do the assignment, they're done. To them it makes perfect sense; in classical dance, you certainly don't go back and play with the movement, see what's better, what works, what other ways you can do something. How do I explain that a dance is never 'done', that it can be workshopped and workshopped ad infinitum? 


Heading to the second week, then, I admit to wondering if anyone would come back, having lost -- I thought -- at least half the class, a good deal of people missing an important session on Friday. Or if the newness was just too much and I was too alien, asking them to do too alien things.

Well, consider me surprised, and pleased. (to be continued)

There's a lizard in my sink

Granted, it was pretty small, only about three inches total from nose to tip of tail. One of the little, almost translucent lizards that flit up and down the walls, especially at night. They're everywhere, though I'm not sure how this one found his way into my apartment. I suppose he fell, and then couldn't climb the slippery stainless steel walls of my sink.

I found him when I got home from a meeting, needing to make dinner. However much I think the things are cute, having a living one in your kitchen is a different story. I waffled a bit, and then called my friend Nettra. She didn't pick up -- I figured she was having dinner, so texted her.

Upon hearing about the problem, she immediately called to ask how big it was, then suggested I lure it onto a piece of paper and put it outside. She must have heard me hesitating, because she decided to send over their maid to help me out.

Their maid is a tiny little Cambodian woman who doesn't, as far as I can tell, speak a word of English, but she's very friendly, and came over to investigate, chatting away happily in Khmer. She found one of my discarded cardboard boxes, left over from the water filter, and then proceeded to chase the thing around my sink, trying to convince it to go in the box. He refused, so at last -- much to my discomfort -- she took a paper towel and snatched it by the waist, then threw it into the box.

I was somewhat concerned for the thing's well-being after all that, but she showed me it sitting in the bottom of the box, still alive and no doubt scared to death. With another cheery remark that I didn't understand, she headed out with box and lizard in hand, leaving me to my various stumbling attempts at cooking (let's be frank: I am no cook. I can feed myself, and that is where we draw the line.)

Things have been very, very busy here, but I don't really want to bore you with the details of it. A lot of running around, a lot of selling myself, and a few leads on getting paid for tutoring. Encouraging, and exciting, but quite hectic.

You know. The usual....

Sampling the local delicacies

Which proved to be the most challenging adventure yet...

Last night for dinner, we had one of the local delicacies: cooked, fertilized duck eggs.

Yes, eggs with ducklings inside. I have been told that the ones we had were further along than people usually eat them and therefore you don't usually have a mostly formed duckling to deal with inside. This is good to know, as --- well, I think you understand.

With the rounded part of the egg up, you crack the top and break the skin. Then, you put in a little sauce made from lime juice and salt and pepper, and drink the fluid inside. Then you just dig in with a spoon. If you're like me and realize that what you're trying to dig out is in fact the head of a little duckling, you freak out, flip the head back in, and pass it off to your friend to deal with.

I did have a couple bites, but finding it hard to eat because it was a lot of bone, I decided to stop, a decision applauded by my adopted Cambodian family, who said that usually the ducklings are not so fully formed and thus much easier to eat and forget about what it is you're actually eating.

I don't really have anything against the practice -- people eat all sorts of crazy things -- but the duck head was a bit much for me. I think I would give it another go if the thing inside didn't resemble a baby bird quite so much.

The verdict from my adopted Cambodian Dad?

"You passed."

Good to know!

The food, and the drivers

In other words, you need a helmet.

At least for the latter, but perhaps for the former too. I mentioned that nobody cares what side of the road you drive on, and I mean it. The scariest part is at intersections, as most don't have lights and you just have to grit your teeth, slow down, and wiggle your way through the throngs of oncoming traffic. The other is that there aren't really street signs and when you take the time to look at the shop signs to see the street, you aren't paying attention to the road. It's a balancing act for sure...

With that said, I adore the chaos. I found my way to the Orussey market, another mess of stands and smells and things to buy, food and fabric and motorbikes and water filters and if you can dream it, you can find it. It's so much it sprawls out from the main building and onto the surrounding streets, as though the sheer amount of stuff being sold fell from the sky and blurted out the sides.

I bought a helmet. It was the first success of the day, the second being buying a "numpai", a steamed pork bun, for a snack and conducting the transaction entirely in Khmer. Yes, aren't I cool.

In the meantime, I'm learning quickly how to eat Cambodian food. It's just so different that at first I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but the last few meals have tasted really good, so maybe I'm learning.

The biggest thing is this: I will need to, and am already making progress, swiftly get over my aversion to fish heads. The fish are served whole here. There is no such thing as a filet or a boneless chicken breast. Everything has bones. Chicken claws are not excluded from the chicken when cooked.

Rice is of course served with everything and the food itself is not spicy, like Thai food, but filled with spices. Cambodians love to mix everything together to get the mix that suits them. The most popular dish is, as far as I can tell, Amok, which is some concoction of coconut milk, fish, and a bunch of spices. Everyone makes it differently, so I've heard, but it's very yummy.

Fish is served with fish sauce and some kind of pickled veggies. Fish cakes with eggs are eaten with raw vegetables. There is a lot of soup, and a lot of veggies. I had a very good pineapple and beef concoction the other day.

Then there's the fruit. Green mangoes, which I'm not so sure about yet, but then there are ramboutan, mangosteen, lychees, and some little thing that's like a lychee but not that I can't remember the name of - langsat, says google. Dragonfruit, and green oranges; apparently the most outlandish thing I've said so far is, "How can it be an orange if it's not orange?"

I still don't have an answer, but green or not, it's an orange.

Though I'm still settling in, I already love living here. I met some fellow ex-pats last night, with the same idea as me to explore the local culture fully. Now equipped with a bike, I fully intend on exploring...

PS. The camera will have to wait until I have paying work. Until then, I'll do my best to make my words count.