Hello, I love you, let's get married...or not

The time has come to chit chat about an area of life where Cambodia and America have very little to do with each other: love, dating, and marriage.

I'd like to start with a disclaimer: It'd be easy to read this as saying one thing is better than the other and therefore it's stupid to continue and really now. I don't mean for it to be that. I'm just trying to lay out some things I've noticed, and if I disagree with something, it's because I come from where I do, and believe what I do. It doesn't mean it's wrong.

So let's start with this: Cambodia still has a tradition of arranged marriages. From what I've seen, it's not uncommon for a relative to meet what they consider as a potential mate and introduce the two. A marriage a month or two months later is not uncommon either. Even in the case that the two are boyfriend and girlfriend, it's the parents who talk and decide if they'll be engaged. Monks are consulted and depending on a number of factors, a lucky day for engagement and marriage is decided.

Marriage is a very important thing, and most people are married fairly young -- especially women. Twenty-five and single is not a good thing. Marriage -- and children -- is the ultimate goal.

Perhaps for this reason, or some other factors I'll get to, things get serious very quickly. Love happens abruptly. I know a number of expats who get frustrated with dating Cambodians because on the first or second date, the latter has proclaimed their undying love (hence the title of this post).

I've actually noticed this when it comes to friendships as well. In general, I have the feeling that most people here have a fundamental aversion to being alone. It might be the family focus, the fundamental unit of existence. But being alone is a bad thing (and let me tell you, I know a lot of people in the west like this too). It means loneliness. It means listening to your own thoughts, which go into a lot of bad neighborhoods.

There must always be at least two. Simple things, like going on an errand or something. There are always two. While, for example, it is perfectly normal to see an expat alone in a cafe with their laptop, you almost never see Cambodians alone. They work in groups.

Anyway, back to the friendships. Awhile back, I met a Khmer woman outside of the ballet school. We had a short conversation, small talk, and she asked for my number, which I gave. I didn't think much of it, but then she started to call. She wanted to talk, wanted to know what I was up to, if I could come hang out. I don't have much time, but undeterred, she would call multiple times a day, and when I'd say maybe I could meet up next week (a normal time frame for me), she said she missed me.

I found it completely bizarre, and a little uncomfortable. When, on my birthday, she convinced me to go eat something, and I told her I had maybe twenty minutes then I had to get back from work, she thought that was too short, but yet, when we were there, in person, she was so shy. She wanted to drive around Koh Pich, but I said I had to get back to work, and when she called, I said I couldn't talk.

I didn't think she was a stalker, or dangerous. I know that, for Cambodians, it's perfectly normal to call your friends at least once a day to see what they're up to, what's going on. Still, I had to back off from any kind of contact, because it became very clear to me that we were just unable to relate on the most basic level of what we expected from such a friendship. For me, the thought of missing someone after speaking with them for some five minutes was utterly foreign. I have very little time, and I wasn't going to hop on a moto and spend hours not talking with someone I barely knew.

That's the thing -- talking. I've learned that it's pretty normal for couples to not know that much about each other -- for wives not really to know what their husbands do or how much they make. That just baffles me, coming from the communication culture.

I wonder sometimes if the tendency I've noticed in people my age to "fall in love" very, very quickly stems from the desire to insert love into the arranged marriage situations. Now, their world is fill of love songs in which the singer is either proclaiming their undying love for their girlfriend or boyfriend, who has usually either cheated or left them. I wonder if it's their way of making sense with the traditional marriage and the modern love, or if it just comes from that fear of being alone. Whatever it comes from, I've seen it enough to know it's a common thing. There's not much between "stranger" and "best friend" or "future spouse" or "love of my life."

There's a young couple that always goes to one of the cafes I do a lot of work in. I think they come in every day. It's always just the two of them, and they cuddle next to each other and watch videos or something on a laptop or a phone. After a couple hours, they'll get on their separate motos and go home, presumably. I wonder how long they've known each other, and when they'll get married -- because I assume, that's the next step.

It's easy to see why, then, cross-cultural relationships are so hard. I would never say never, but let's be honest: this is the girl who doesn't want to think about tomorrow, let alone next week or next month or next year, the we-are-together-right-now-for-as-long-as-that-lasts. I don't want to have to know if we'll be married or not, and no, you do not get to say you love me if you've met me once. That's not possible, you don't know me, I don't know you.

I've seen it work on a few occasions, so I know it's possible, with a hell of a lot of negotiation. But again, it's not that one side is better or not, it's just completely different views, with completely different cultural expectations. I think love can -- and does -- transcend all of that, but you've got to find two parties willing to walk the tightrope and meet in the middle of the chasm.

And as a last note -- in the cafeteria at CTN, the older woman who always works there came over to chat briefly today.

Question number three was, do you have a boyfriend?

Further thoughts on the expat condition

Since my last post I've been thinking and observing, and wanted to take the time to expand my thoughts a little bit. The previous post was a very visceral emotional reaction, one that quite surprised me with its force, and since then I've been trying to attach words and concepts to decode what was actually going on. From that, I've been trying to figure out why -- why, that is, most expats think/behave as they do, and why my vision is so completely different.

I want to add a disclaimer here -- the following is quite scathing and I have to note that not every expat follows this. I know some who are different, and some who, if they don't agree, at least more or less get where I am coming from. Maybe this is not what people are actually thinking, but it's what I see.

So last time we had the grand issue being most expats only view Cambodians as lazy, stupid, annoying, and generally making life difficult. Something I've noticed is that the vast, vast majority of their interactions with Khmer people involve the Khmer in an inferior position, most often offering a service the expat requires or requests.

In that regard, the expat is constantly in a world where they are asking for something, and if it is not given promptly, accurately, and straight-forward, then it is annoying and frustrating and blamed on the person responsible for doing the serving, the Khmer. Even in volunteering, teaching, or what have you, they are in the higher position, responsible for teaching the inferior how to do something they don't know how to do yet. If they do not understand, accept, and promptly assimilate the training, then it is annoying and frustrating and blamed on the person responsible for learning, the Khmer.

As an example. Someone I know has a few Khmer staff. The guy is nice, but he micro-manages to a fault. He wants things now, responses upon receiving things, and things returned in very certain manners. Everything must be double-checked, edited several times, etc. Of course, that's just the way he works, and I'm not faulting him. In his own country, they do things like that.

I've talked to the staff. If you tell me to do something, I'll do it, one of them said. I won't necessarily do it right away just because you asked, or tell you I've done it, but I will do it. You don't have to keep telling me.

But the expat doesn't understand. Isn't it obvious that their way of doing things is more efficient, more professional, and generally better for everyone? Actually, no, it's not obvious. It's one more detail added to a pile of stupid details that really don't seem to add anything if you don't know, if you haven't had the years of training, years of discipline in a culture that prides itself on efficiency and detail. No, it's not obvious at all, and even once it's been explained, it takes months, or years, for the effects to truly be seen and understood.

But the expat doesn't spend years. They come for a few months and then leave, having seen no real progress and made their judgments.

There's another barrier I've noticed : the language. The vast, vast majority of expats do not speak it, barely a word besides "turn right/left" and "hello." If they get to hello. So they sweep into places where they expect to be served, not bother to learn a word of the language, and then have the gall to complain about being misunderstood, as though they are entitled to always have someone with perfect English and understanding of their culture to respond immediately and understand everything.

Usually, just saying "How are you?" or just a word or two more is enough for Khmers to say to me, with surprise and delight, "Oh, you speak Khmer a lot!" That dismays me. How are you is the easiest thing in the world to learn. "Sock sah bai." When I take the time to greet the staff at the places I go and ask that before I get around to saying anything about what I actually want, everything changes. We relate differently. We are equals now. They are not as flustered or uncertain, jumping to do something, anything, quickly because that's what the expat wants to see, even if they don't really understand. Therefore, in the end I am rarely misunderstood.

But once the expat makes their judgment, it is made, and everything they see reinforces it. Inside is a bubble, where everything should work just like it does back home and on the edge are these really annoying, hovering creatures that mess things up. And to them it will always be like that, no matter how hard one tries to enlighten the poor Khmers.

We've talked about this before. Yes, the country is messed up. Yes, it's corrupt, and poor, and badly run, and the government is...well. Yes, that is all true, yes there is a lack of education and professionalism and training.

But come on. I want to say to the expat in our examples above, open your mind a little. Try to think, for a second, that this is Cambodia. You are in their country. You are not entitled to be here, and have no divine right to make things all better because come on, clearly the west just knows how to do it better. Your way is not necessarily the only way, or the best way. It might be a good idea to open your mind and heart to this country as it is, to the people as they are, as people. Learn a bit of the language. Have patience. Try to see Cambodians beyond the maid, the waitress, the hostess, the guy behind the counter, and as people, like you, doing their best.

It's completely changed my experience of the country, and for the better.

And if you can't, then maybe it's best if you go back to the place where people speak your language and think just like you, and stop the arrogant "but they need our help" trip. I'm being quite serious when I say I think that would be better for everyone.

Hey, those are my friends you're talking about

I get this question a lot from expats : What do you think of Cambodia?

Usually it’s said with a little smirk, a smile or a sort of knowing look in the eye, because they know what you’re going to say. It’s what everyone says, among expats. It’s the only story you hear, just with different variations, but for the most part it never changes.

They like the weather and they like how easy it is to make money and live. But the people?

All I ever hear is how Cambodian people make life difficult. How they have no ambition, only play around on their cell phones and never work, never learn, resist passive-aggressively, and generally speaking the country would be better off if Cambodian people were not as they are.

There are exceptions, but they are exceptions, few and far between. I can count them on a few fingers, the people who have positive stories and outlooks, who are not convinced that the people of this country are either lazy, stupid, or just generally annoying and frustrating.

Most people, when pressed further, will admit that they don’t really think Cambodians are stupid, just uneducated, and they know there is a difference. But either way, there’s nothing to be done. There’s nothing there.

Let’s be clear: Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime took a culturally and industrially advanced country and razed it to the ground. They killed the culture, the education, and yet still even now the tribunal has not yet officially established that what happened was “genocide.”

Let’s also be clear: the formal western professionalism and training and discipline does not exist, if it ever did, it is gone, vanished, lost. The education system is pitifully funded and the teachers have not been formally trained. I’ve asked a couple people what they are studying, because everyone is in university and studying something (that’s 60 percent of the country population under twenty-five). Banking and finance for one, and I wonder – to work where?

Where can he work with that? In a bank in Cambodia with the other thousands studying the same thing? What if he wanted to get out? You go anywhere else with a degree from Cambodia right now and they laugh you off. Another guy is studying tourism, with a few million others. That might get him a little further, but not much.

Someone described it to me as realizing this country is deeply intellectually and emotionally hurt, and that is true. Most Cambodian people I’ve met are emotionally much more immature than their western counterparts. But where have they learned? Their parents are scarred, and there’s a void of emotional coaching. Emotions aren’t discussed, treated, talked about—it’s Asia, for one, and why would you? There’s too much hurt there.

It is also true that there is a general lack of energy and ambition, and certainly a general lack of the cut-and-dried western professionalism I and my expat counterparts grew up with, were drilled with since childhood. Smartphones just got here, and everyone is always on them. There is no real professionalism training. The teachers are late. There aren’t role models for that.  

What I mean to say is, the genocide is over now. But the country, and it’s people, even those who never experienced it, are scarred by it. That is the truth, and there is truth to the expat stories.

But there are times when it is all I ever here, and I just get tired.

Because I’ve met young people who think differently. I’ve met Cambodians who are passionate. I’ve seen sparks, I’ve watched people push themselves, and be proud. I’ve talked with people who don’t like what they see.

Yes, of course, they do stuff that bothers me, like answer their cell phones at inopportune times or come late to important things.

But I see potential. Someone told me right now there is nothing, maybe the kids who are in high school right now. Yes, but I would also add those in university. The kids my age.

They aren’t going to change the country in two weeks, or two months, or two years. Does any country change so fast? Time takes time. They don’t know how yet, they don’t have the tools, and maybe they won’t ever. But at least a few of them will make sure their children do, however that happens.

The older generation cannot physically overpower them forever, because they are dying. There are so many young people, and there is potential. They don’t know it yet. They haven’t grown up, hit walls, fallen down. They haven’t had the hard teachers, the tough training. The survivors of the genocide are farmers. They have no education to pass on, and the young people now have to figure it out themselves – all while being bombarded with modernity that no one has ever taught them to use or abuse. They are faced with an enormous, fast-paced world, with very few tools to deal with it.

And yet.

Beyond all the potential or no potential, the future and the past, there are these few simple facts:  I work with Cambodians on a daily basis. They make me laugh, make me smile. They’ve comforted me when I’m upset, I’ve comforted them. They make me angry sometimes, yes, and frustrated. But we’ve talked, laughed, shared jokes. Sometimes we just shake our heads and say, yeah, it just doesn’t translate.

Essentially, I’ve found them to just be people, trying like the other five billion people in the world to be happy, and these are the stories I never hear from the expats. It’s always about how life is being made difficult, or how the country is messed up, but not about people being people, people you can talk to, people who worry about their health (like anyone else), who don’t know if they can really do what they want (like anyone else), who get upset with each other (like anyone else) and wish things were different (like anyone else).

Those are the stories I live with every day. Not good,  not bad, just life, like anywhere else, with anyone else. Yes, in a completely and totally alien culture, but people like me. And when all I hear, day after day, time after time, is how frustrating, annoyed, uneducated, difficult, and generally upsetting Cambodian people are, it really gets to me.

When it comes down to it, the fact of the matter is that those are my friends they’re talking shit about. My friends they are putting down and dissing. Yes. Sometimes I do want to throw things at them. And so? Do we understand each other perfectly? Absolutely not. And so?

At the end of the day, those are my friends, and hearing them constantly put down hurts, as it does tonight, and the reason I took the time to write down these words and send them out to the world. The expats can have their reality, but I'm not part of it. 

I'd like to keep it that way. 

Shit Happens

Especially here.

The thing is, the food is good. It takes a bit of getting used to, and I don't just mean the whole fish thing. The spices are different, the vegetables are different, and how it's cooked is different. Some of it is a little too strange for my taste, but on the whole, I do enjoy it.

But the thing is here, shit happens. It happens to barangs and khmers equally -- we're not just talking the delicate constitutions of westerners. It's just part of life. Yep, today is gonna be like that. Okay, well, it'll pass eventually.

Essentially food hygiene hasn't made it here yet, except in the nicest restaurants. There's no real sense of needing to refridgerate things during the day, so meat eaten in the evening may or may not have been cooked since this morning and lying around since. Cold cuts came from god knows where and aren't cold. At the local place, there's a huge cooler of water with several cups on top. People take a cup, have a drink, and leave the cup (I like eating there, but have never touched those cups).

I remember working for a restaurant a few years back and the breakfast buffet had to be kept at a certain temperature at all times, hot or cold depending on the food.

You tell that to someone here, and you'd probably get a look like you have two heads.

On the contrary, you bring the safety experts from America here, have them eat at the local corner place I always go -- one look at the fried eggs, cooked since who knows when, sitting in the cart with the cooked meat, with no refridgeration, and they'd probably keel over on the spot.

I don't mean to say this as an example of how backwards this place is -- but rather, how behind it is. I haven't been out of the country, but I'm told you see it the second you step out. The Khmer Rouge didn't just destroy the people, it destroyed all the modernity and industry that Cambodian had gained under King Sihanouk's rule in the 50s and 60s. The country is at least forty years behind many of its southeast asian counterparts in terms of infrastructure and standard of life.

It's not a bad thing or proof of any lack. It's just a fact. Just like it's a fact that if you live here, every so often shit happens.

And that's just part of life in the developing world.

The rains, bubble tea, and oh yeah, I am living in Cambodia

It's not quite yet the rainy season, and I guess at the end of the dry season here, the world has been cooking for so long that heat has wormed its way everywhere, the walls, the air, bones, skin. Air-conditioning pushes it back for very short time, the epic battle of our time. I imagine the cold air doesn't even make it to the walls, just hovering there with the heat, waiting on the other side.

I took a friend's moto out for a spin today, as I'd like to more or less know what I'm doing by the time I buy one of my own in a couple weeks. It was in the heat of the day, and the sun basically laughed at my SPF 15 sunscreen and, while I'm not burned to a crisp, my skin is noticeably darker. I was out for 25 minutes, maximum.

When the rains do come, as they are currently doing, it cools everything down for a brief and incredibly welcome time. I've learned to tell that the hottest, heaviest days are usually the ones where the storm is coming. Whenever I do leave the bubble tea place that is my newest addiction, the rain will be gently leaking from the sky and the air will be cool against my skin.

The bubble tea place was introduced to me by a friend this week, and we became quickly inseparable. My apartment cooks in the day time, and since my room has no windows, staying in there with its flourescent lights is not that appealing, despite the air-con. I'm starting back with my old job this week and my free time will be cut down, but for the moment I've had a lot to spare and no interest in staying at home, so I've been here the past three afternoons, drinking bubble tea and working. I'm busy cooking my latest project.

I picked up a book the other day about moving to Cambodia, a kind of all-inclusive guide for expats. I flipped through it out of curiosity. I remember reading stuff like that, about ten months ago, CultureShock manuals and articles my somewhat panicked mother (she has since calmed down, by the way) sent me.

It was all useful information, but it seemed strange to see it on a page like that, that it was necessary to take this life and string it into words, paint pictures with language. I thought, reading the safety section, that the words made this place feel much scarier than it does, but then again, I don't walk anywhere late at night or carry purses that are easily pulled off anymore.

Mostly, it was just strange to look at all these words, trying to explain something that I'm living, day by day, things I've known intellectually since before arriving but am only truly understanding now. It was a reminder that I'm here, yes here, in this place that before was barely even a word in my mental dictionary. Yes, it is a place that needs to be bashed into words for westerners coming to live, and even those are completely inadequate for the daily negotiations. Some people do it more than others -- some trying to bash the world into the words they already know, some just trying to learn the language of life as each word presents itself, some diving deeper, to find what is underneath the words.

Really, what I mean to say is, I looked at the words and saw a surface, and underneath an ocean. Every day here is spent in that ocean, drinking in what you started to know before now, and are only knowing now.

Living or Traveling: Culture divides and people like me

Ever since my year abroad there, I have wanted to live in Paris. I can't explain what it is, just that I have never felt so at home in any other city. I feel like I belong there. It's not just the city -- I've met a lot of people who have great things to say about the city and nothing good about the people, but I love the people. I speak the language more than just the words.

But I didn't go to Paris after graduation, I went to Cambodia, and I've found all sorts of amazing opportunities here that are exciting and interesting and I'm quite sure that it's a fantastic place to begin my career. The problem is that sometime over the past several months, I got it into my head that I could never actually live in Paris and do what I want. In Europe, maybe, but not in Paris. That is, of course, ridiculous.

As you know, I just went back to Paris, and was quite surprised to find that I still loved it just as much as before, perhaps even more, and felt just as home as before. In fact the amount to which I did feel at home was really disturbing -- after the first day, when I felt like a tourist and THAT was upsetting -- so much that I  kept forgetting in I was in Paris, this grand city and word that was this far-off, inaccessible place in my mind. I guess in self-defense, I decided that since I could never live there, I should forget how much I enjoy being there. The Ego is a crazy thing, isn't it?

What I mean to say is that for the last several months, my life has been nothing but cultural divides and language barriers. The experience I'm getting, the amount I'm learning and growing, is already noticeable to me and to others, and I have no doubts whatsoever that years down the line, it will count as one of the most marking experiences of my life.

However. It's strange, I hate saying this, because I do love learning about new cultures and immersing myself in them, seeing what it's like on the other side and in some ways it feels like dissing this place. But I'm not, and I don't have to be.

The fact is that I want to spend my life somewhere where I am not a stranger, where I get the culture and the language and have a mutual understanding with the people around me.

Here, walking out my door brands me immediately. I cannot go anywhere anonymously. The Cambodian people are warm and friendly, but I will never be one of them, never truly belong. I am Barang. And then everything else, but first I am white.

I don't want to say that Cambodia is not a good country, the culture is bad, or anything of the sort. It's just different, fundamentally and in every possible way, from what I know. Because of it, there is and always will be some disconnect between us, a gap that is just too wide to leap. We will always be negotiating, meeting in the middle.

I don't want to live forever like that. I count on staying, as I've said, for anywhere between two or three more years, and intend on using that time as fully as possible. But after that, it will be time to find some place where I can be home. Whether that's somewhere in the world with my parents, or even better, in Paris (and that's always on the list, always the place where I am going).

In many ways I feel more French than American and often feel like a stranger in America. Paris needs to be where I end up -- and therefore I'll find a way to do what I want there -- because it is home. It is where I am at home, where my energy syncs up with the energy around me, and living is as easy as breathing.

Going back reminded me how beautiful that is.

Re-entry: calm and chaos

Mosquitos. Horns. Loud and busy and why the heck is it raining. Shop fronts and no sidewalks. Loud. Where did that moto come from and driving slowly with a helmet this time. Power cuts and internet spottiness.

I am so tired. Sleeping on the airplane -- my lucky string of discovering the rows with only one other person continues -- did no good. A 3-hour nap I barely dragged myself up from, in bed at eight and awake after nine and still couldn't get up. Another 1.5 hour nap today, and if things don't change, another in the works.

Twelve hours on the airplane and back to the humidity and in a tuk tuk. Side saddle on a motorbike and a plastic bag of trinkets distributed to the dancers. Everything as it was, as though untouched, as though it all froze for a month and only by touching it it came back to life, animated like a wind-up toy.

Everything as it was but it's not, precisely as I remembered but the reality is shocking. I am the only one who has changed, one month away and rediscovering worlds I once knew that became home, became beloved once more, and then left them to their own devices to re-enter this one and I admit as we dipped and descended towards Malaysia, the awful propaganda video playing in front of me, I thought, what the hell am I doing here.

When we descended into Phnom Penh, I was asleep. There was no one in the row with me, no window at the end for whatever reason, just fuselage, and so I closed my eyes instead and only knew we'd arrived by the bump of the wheels hitting the ground. Then I opened my eyes and blinked once into the madness, clambering into a tuk tuk and staring around me.

I knew it. Knew it all, expected what I saw, not the wide-eyed astonishment of the first time, but this time reentering a place that had become familiar, comfortable, easy, and now was strange and chaotic (it was the chaos I missed those first few days in the manicured, carefully crafted first-world streets.)

I know what I'm doing here. I love the opportunities, I'm excited about what I can do here, I have ideas and projects. I have friends. I love the opportunities and so I learned to like the life. I have purpose and a path.

My head knows this, and somewhere I think my heart does too.

But for right now, changing lives three times in one month has left me confused and dazed, stumbling back into a life I used to know so well with blank and unseeing eyes. I'm sure within a few weeks, it will be all I remember and this cloud of culture shock will have lifted. It always does, eventually. But the old saying is true: once you begin traveling, you cannot go home again.

Or maybe, you can, except "home" is different, home is where you are at the moment, and reentering old moments is jarring and uncertain. But the thing about that too, is like the great poet T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration, 
and the end of all our exploring 
will be to arrive where we started, 
and know it for the first time. 

I have returned to where I started, and indeed knew it for the first time, and each time I return I will know it again, and again, rediscovering more of each world I never thought to look for. For that, I am blessed, and acknowledge it freely.

But right now, all I want to do is bury my head in the pillows against the chaos and sleep until I wake and find the eyes I had before, and that this place that I used to know is once again comfortable.

Lost in Paris (Again)

It has been a year. One full year, one year of life and a few hundred lifetimes. I dove into, discovered, adapted to, and built a life inside another world that had nothing to do with the life I had previously, and what was my plan before has melted down and built back up into something entirely surprising. Where I am is not where I thought I'd be. What was immense passion has become sheer obsession, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

And now--yes I know I haven't updated in forever and there was a whole life in Colorado that you missed because I didn't want to stop to put it in language, didn't want to waste time on words when living was enough--I've returned to a life I had.

Two years is not a long time. And it is.

The last time I was in Paris, I was still a student, still fresh off the experience, still reliving it every day. Now, I've entered into the Big Bad World of Adulthood, and have spent eight months in an entirely different universe, and Paris became a word.

Not a place, but a word, a word that means a time, a moment in my life when everything changed, when I changed and everything I thought was my essence was burned away, and what remained was so much more than before.

But just a week ago, I pushed on the word and found it a door, and behind the door was a world, a city, a place that exists and lives and breathes. Not a dream, but flesh, rock, and bone, and not just a place but a place I know in my bones. It took a couple days, but it's not Paris the city of light, the grand European city that everyone talks about and loves, but a place I know. 

The streets, the metro, the buildings, it's familiar. It's not out there but right here, not a city in the world but a city in my heart. A different language, but one that came rushing back after a day (albeit still imperfectly) to the point where I've started dreaming in French again, and the first language that comes out of my mouth.

I have to say -- it's confusing as hell. It's equally as disconcerting as returning to the United States was after my year abroad. There is a girl in Paris who I knew, the girl I became, but I don't really know her anymore. My life is different now, I'm different now. How do we live together?

It's perturbing, to say the least, to reenter a dream you had. I don't know how to explain it, even to find the words to say why it's so perturbing. Is it good to be back? I don't know. Bad? Can't say that, either. It's not what it was and yet it's exactly how I left it...and that's as much as I can say.

Of Paris, I have no idea what to think. But as for the people here, it has been a very great joy to rediscover them and I have enormously enjoyed it. It makes leaving, once again, very difficult.

Paris is beautiful, but it makes my heart hurt.

Enormous cuts of meat and houses in rows

You can see it the second you step in the country.

It's the people, first of all. What they look like, how their bodies are shaped, how big they are, the look in their eyes, how they're dressed. Then you notice what they talk about, how they talk, the words they use. And what they eat, how they eat, how they pass the time.

But it's not just that. It's how things look from above, the identical roofs and clear cul-de-sacs, little perfect developed rows of houses a stark contrast to the mass of colored roofs and no clear roads. Then it's the streets, the way people use space, wide sprawling highways where the cars drive so fast, and perfect spiraling entrance and exit ramps, and the fact that cars stop and wait quietly if the light is red. The total lack of motorbikes, the huge parking lots, the wide open department stores.

And the prices.

And then there's the supermarkets. The fruits are different, of course, the way they're presented is different. There are a thousand different varities of everything, from oil to jello, but what really got me was the meat.

The most enormous cuts of meat. Pounds and pounds of it, in a single package, thick, boneless, meaty meat, in these enormous packages. I don't know why it was so striking, but it was. And the fish fillets, these huge pieces of fish that don't even look like fish.

A lot of people sort of sneer and say Americans are so privileged and spoiled. The truth is, they are privileged. That's just a fact. Spoiled implies that it's wrong, and I think there's a lot of people who think Americans take their privilege for granted while they should be doing something to help people who aren't as much, and maybe that's true, though that implies that every American is privileged and doing nothing but soaking it up. The reality, I've often found, is much more complicated.

I don't want to make any statements or judgments on this idea. What I do want to say is that it's just clear to me how much the environment shapes you. Seeing the way life is set up here, in every possible aspect, explains to me why people look, act, think, talk as they do -- generally speaking. It just seems to make sense, and now trying to put it in words, it seems clumsy and too specific, but it's just a feeling I get. Like the world and its people fit with each other, and if the world were altered, so too would the people.

And as for this particular world I find myself in, it is most definitely a first-world country and impossibly rich. I don't mean anything by that, only that it is, and it's confusing me.

Don't look at me

I don't want to give the full update. Maybe you know, maybe you don't. I started a new job and got a bit more than I bargained for, and have spent the last couple weeks fighting tooth and nail for the things I need to do my job properly. I have begged, discussed, texted/called myself out of credit, gotten the upper management involved, and now, everything I was on about, I got.

Let's take a moment to acknowledge that's great, but today is not about triumph. In fact -- well, it's complicated.

Being sick (and coined) again has not helped my case. Today, simply put, I was constantly frustrated. I can take it with a grain of salt because I know why it's happening, but from the ridiculous detour through the middle of nowhere (though it might have been because the roads are closing for the late King-Father's funeral next weekend) my ride decide to take this morning and making me almost fifteen minutes late, to the young guys making fun of the dancers and movement during our usual rehearsals in the bathroom, I've been wanting to fight the entire world.

Sometimes I feel accepted and welcome, and sometimes I feel like the very out-of-place Barang who really maybe should just go home. And sometimes I understand that I only feel that way to myself, and then sometimes I want to scream, "STOP STARING AT ME, I'M JUST A BLOODY HUMAN BEING LIKE YOU."

That's what you get for living and working in an alien culture, and don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd change it. I know this post is taking on a rant feel, and that's okay -- you never get much updates, but right now you are riding with me through a very real moment of sheer frustration that is part and parcel of what I'm doing.

I'm learning a lot (oh lord am I learning a lot). As I told one of my dancers today, everything is different here. He suggested culture, I said that too but it's everything, everything is different and sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't.

The thing about all of this, all of the fighting I did, I can't say "I'm so tired of it," because I'd do it all over again and I know I'll have to to do what I want in life, and again and again. But I am. And naturally if you asked, so why not just go back to the expat  bubble where it's safer, I wouldn't.

I don't think this post makes much sense, and I'm debating on whether or not to post it (though since you are reading it, clearly I did.) It's the product of a very long Saturday where I was not at my best and at the end of a very long week that saw a lot of diplomacy and the end of a lot of outstanding struggles, when I'm a little too tired and my thoughts are not my friends.

I've decided to wait a couple days until I decide if I believe what I think. We can talk then.

In the meantime, I'm going to try and avoid the bad neighborhoods in my mind.

ADDENDUM: 
Although my instinct was to go out and escape from my head, I thankfully decided against it, took a hot shower, and went to bed.

Unsurprisingly, life looks different after sleeping for 12 hours.

Me vs the Motos (I always lose)

The bikes are at the bottom, competing with the cyclo taxis for last place, but since a loaded cyclo is not stopping as quickly as a bike, the bike get the bottom spot.

Next are the motorbikes, who all have inferiority complexes and like to think they are on top, even though they're smaller. They also think they're faster than everyone else, which isn't true, everyone goes at right about the same pace. But the motos think they're fast and they think they're important, and they always cause the most trouble.

Next are the tuk tuks, though they are arguably below the motos, as even though they are bigger they are slower. I can't figure out how they got the reputation for driving too quickly.

Up next are the smaller cars, which are usually somewhat unobtrusive but bigger than the rest.

Then the large SUVs, the number of which is booming as the nouveau-riche find various ways to show off, and so the bigger and the more prominently "lexus" is splashed across the side, the better. The drivers, usuall checking or talking on one of their three iPhones, know they are bigger than everyone and just go when and where they want -- except they, unlike the motos, stop for red lights.

Above this is a collection of large lorries and trucks, and in and out of the above mess are your various moto trailers. Not counted are the vendor carts, usually on bicycle or moto, puttering along.

In the U.S., if there is no light and a four way stop, everyone will stop and one by one go in order. Here, everyone goes forward until someone is in their way, and then waits to sliver through whatever available space they can find. Red lights do not mean stop, they mean if there is traffic, stop, and if not, go.

There are the hotshots on their absurdly large motorbikes that you sort of crouch strangely atop and blast through traffic, something that motos piled with young school students also do. One of the worst is, I think, the female drivers, who are really quite passive-aggressive. They sit with their knees held daintily together, and worm their way through the traffic, pulling past so close you just have to brake and let them pass.

Someone is always getting cut off. Someone is always going down the wrong side of the street, and there is always a near collision between someone at least once on every ride. People seem to accept these as everyday, as they don't honk, just screech the brakes and wait to see who will move first. At most a dirty look or two is exchanged.

The horns are used instead just to warn people they are coming.

Although I know how to deal with it, it's always stressful and I still get frustrated with the moto drivers. I think if they just learned that red light means stop, and the city invested in some stop signs, already life would be improved.

And in the mean time -- I'll just keep getting cut off.

Professionalism, Performances, and serious Déjà Vu

I suppose it's anywhere you go, the madness and the last-minute nature of things. Anywhere you go something goes wrong on opening day, Cambodia or New York or Paris. However, add in all that and mix with cultural and language differences, and you get quite a mess.

The one problem with the arts scene in Cambodia is the lack of venues, for performance and for rehearsal. The only "western" style professional theater is Chenla, which is kind of on the outskirts of town. I don't know the rates for that, but probably fairly expensive. But aside from that, it leaves few options.

I was asked by a friend to perform for the year-end school of the new ballet school in town (my friend runs it), and immediately agreed (especially seeing as I wasn't being recruited for a ballet, but a contemporary piece.) The piece ended up being a 15 minute duet (including a five minute solo) with a lovely Scottish woman, and it's been incredibly nice to have some time to just do what someone else tells me to do instead of the madness of creating, producing, and etc.

The evening was rounded out by a one-act ballet provincial style, with bales of hay and all the other various props that go in ballet-ballets (so much ballet...), including a posse of ten or so kids to hop in a circle at various intervals, and a community outreach contemporary piece, performed by eight Khmer students. My friend is determined to put together a professional school and not just the place you send your kids to fluff about for awhile, and he's doing a pretty good job of it. He has a real passion for teaching and it comes through.

He rented a theater called "the Department of Performing Arts." I am not sure if classes take place there or really what it is for, but it is hidden back amongst the houses around it and you have to be looking to find the alley way that leads to it, a large, somewhat oddly shaped building with stairs unnecessarily wrapping around it. It looks big, but isn't particularly, seating 150. The stage is a decent size, but there are no dressing rooms or backstage areas. The bathrooms are downstairs and you have to go outside to find them. Mirrors for makeup don't seem to exist anywhere. The stage is wood and nails creep up here and there.

In addition, nobody bothered to tell us that while we could be in the space all day, if you run the lights that long they burn out, and halfway through the afternoon all the dimmers blew, leaving us with access to the four mains onstage and the bank of spots in the front of the house. The only way to turn them on and off was by unplugging and plugging the cables. On or off, no in between, and the production staff decided to blame  us for using the lights so long.

That pushed the rehearsals back, the hair and makeup people were running late, the people coming to do the hair for the community piece were late, the film crew turned up two hours late, and with my friend overwhelmed and running around, it was left up to me and my duet partner to warm up the kids.

I don't know how to warm up a bunch of seven year olds, but nevertheless, we played some silly games. They ran around. I taught them a bit of Thriller. They got bored. We stretched, they were even more bored. But we'd wasted ten or fifteen minutes and they pronounced themselves ready to dance.

A word about the kids -- all expat kids, their parents here for work. French, British, American, earnest and adorable, asking endless questions and adoring the older dancers, their hair in two french braids and little dresses (the one boy in green trousers and a white shirt). They were all me, fifteen years ago. I could see it so clearly, their parents helping with the show like parents do anywhere. Only in Cambodia. It's just where they live, nothing special. Back in America, they say, it was like this, but I don't know here.

It was such a mind-twist for me, to see myself as I was fifteen years ago, the little ballerina girl with the blond hair and hamming it up, but here, in Cambodia, in this somewhat rickity, imperfect theater.

The show sold out. They had to turn people away. Everyone had a good time, the lights didn't look awful, and no one was any the wiser. I didn't overbalance on the tilt. The kids were great. The community piece looked beautiful in a shadowy light, with their white costumes and crazy hair.

I guess, wherever you are, the show must go on.

Christmas finds its ways to this side of the universe

I suppose with a strong expat community and a commercial potential, you'd expect such a thing to happen. It's a chance to sell merchandise, and that above anything seems to highly motivate the local businesses to go all out in what they understand Christmas to be.

The local movie theater in the city mall has a tree and "Merry Christmas" strung up from the ceiling, which was bizarre enough, and then Lucky Supermarket got in the act, plastering its windows with tree stickers, displaying stacks of Santa chocolates, outfitting their entire staff with Santa hats, and playing "We wish you a merry Christmas"  on repeat.

As far as I can tell, the locals treat it was some bemusement, but I would guess as a grand opportunity to sell stuff, which is unfortunately what Christmas is about everywhere. It is kind of sad, though, a little upsetting, to see that part of it in its extreme -- for most people, I think, Christmas is the commercial but also the family time, tradition.

Here it's just the commercial without the tradition or the idea of spending time with the family. You can sense the locals don't give one whit about the holiday itself or what it may or may not mean. Maybe they see on TV  what it's supposed to be like, and I think they really are trying to recreate it for all the crazy barangs, but with this kind of confused distance.

Essentially, it's the side of Christmas I am not at all a fan of, and I'm already sick of it.

In the mean time, today is December 1st. It is hot today. There has been no real change in the weather, though I think it is slightly less hot than it was. I miss the cold and watching the seasons change.

Hot winters and Christmas in the Cambodian supermarkets -- the best word I can think of for it is surreal.

Walking sideways on the edge of the world

(by the time I return, I think, I'll have begun to flip right side up,
enough to find my own people equally upside down, 
and will have to find the way to walk sideways, 
on the edge of the earth). 

I wrote that awhile ago, near the beginning of my stay here.

On Thanksgiving night, I had a wonderful meal with good people, with all the staples and the good stuff, good conversation. I very much enjoyed myself.

But the food was too much. I'm not used to eating that kind of food anymore, and I felt kind of bloated. I wanted rice the next day, or fruit.

The next morning, I was on skype with my family, looking at the apartment and wanting to join them, but --

Sometimes I do feel kind of like a stranger in both worlds. I can already tell how strange it will be to be back in the US, even for a visit, and how the poem is making itself true. I'm flipping, and I don't think here will ever be fully right side up, just sideways enough to make things back home look pretty sideways too.

I guess it just comes with the territory of living in a culture that is so different. Staying where you come from is a lot less complicated than navigating the unsettling culture shock, tiptoeing around home that is not home. Looking at where you want to be and knowing that because of where you have been, what you remember it as will not be the same when you step back in, both you and the place itself changed.

This week was a violent mix of brilliance and stress, beauty and exhaustion, feeling under-appreciated and feeling heartily blessed, and the two have mixed badly, like oil and vinegar being forced to co-habit. Although I still have much to do and many things to accomplish and deal with and sort out and wait for the world to turn in the next week, I'm trying to take some time off this weekend.

Waiting until everything stops spinning around me -- or at least, to just let it spin and not spin with it for a time, until I can jump back in.

The White Building

The White Building is not white, but it is notorious. At some point it was built to house artists, a kind of low-income, subsidized housing project. Since then, it has adopted the tag "slum" and if you google it, the majority of the articles talk about the prostitution and drug dealing that found its way inside.

It's often used as a symbol of Cambodian poverty, with its graying, dingy exterior, prison-like halls, washing hung out on the deteriorating walls and tin roofs.

However, it is also home to many artists and families. I have heard all sorts of differing things, the good the bad and the ugly. I see it all the time, stretching down Sothearos blvd and just behind Cambodian Living Arts' main office. It certainly looks awful, people milling about and the usual shops on the ground floor.

I'd never been inside, as I never thought it was my place, and I'd heard enough mixed reviews not to have any particular expectations when, as part of the Cambodian Youth Arts Festival, I found myself among a group of people heading there to check out a gallery that had been set up inside.

I did feel strange about being there, even with other barangs, just because you are such an anomaly and I'm pretty sensitive to energy like that. Despite how helpful the guys chilling in the stairwell -- just sitting, in the dark -- were in directing us to the second gallery, or the residents watching you go by, it did feel like intruding.

The galleries themselves were fascinating -- one was in clearly a schoolroom, where they had classes in everything from ABCs to Yoga, and had set up about ten small TVs, each playing a tape following one resident and letting them discuss their relationship to the building. They were subtitled in English, and that was interesting.

Then the second was much more of a traditional gallery, young artists from the building -- photography, painting, collage, music and video, and a young man working on the spot -- drizzling paint into a Styrofoam box filled with water and passing a sheet of paper in the water to pick up streaks of paint. All the materials used were apparently readily available in the building.

The apartments I saw were cozy and well furnished, and the hallways were filled with young children, who shouted "hello" as loudly as they could and touched my hands as I passed. They loved the exhibits, crowding around the TVs and giggling, or hovering, fascinated, as the artist working with the paint, water, and paper.

I can't say I made any judgments or learned it to actually be one thing or the other. As with many things, I think the truth is always more complicated than the words spoken about it. It was clearly a community, clearly desperately poor but still going on, the kids still kids. It was precisely what it was, and nothing else.

I'm glad I got to see it.

Just not my scene: The backpackers

I got talked into going. I suppose in the end it was a good enough evening, but --

I've mentioned this before, and I don't want to point at it as bad or wrong. It's just that in Phnom Penh, and more concentrated in Siem Reap, there is this scene of almost entirely expat, young people, who are here to party, hang out with each other, but just in different countries. Most of them are just passing through, here for  and not everyone who was at the Halloween party at Eighty8 last night is like this, but there were certainly plenty.

Apparently the guesthouse is known as a 'backpacker's hangout'. In Phnom Penh these are more spread out, though we have our own version of Pub Street on 278, where I also found myself last night.

I don't want to get into a holier-than-thou kind of thing. I freely acknowledge that I am becoming more boring by the minute, as anything that doesn't have to do with my projects, work, and career is getting less and less interesting and I literally have to be dragged out at night. It's not because I'm trying to make a point, it's just not where my head is at right now.

And for whatever reason, I just don't understand this backpacker scene. I don't get why you would go to a foreign country and spend your time partying among people like yourself. Maybe it's just an evening thing and you spend the days exploring, but what if you're spending the day just seeing the sights, looking at the places the guide says to, and then going back to party? Or maybe I'm missing the point.

Either way, I don't get it. I guess if it works for the people inside it, that's fantastic. And it's not like I'm saying I want to avoid all expat scenes. Part of the challenge of being here is learning to balance the cultures -- eschewing western culture altogether is not the solution, and I find often that a good western coffee shop does wonders in the midst of a crazily different world.

But there's a different energy, between the backpackers and the coffee shop. The former just has an energy I'm not comfortable with.

New plan: embrace what has been called my "getting-old"ness and zone in on what matters the most to me!

Exhibit Barang, the River, 6 methods of moving, and Pchum Ben

I'm not quite sure how to begin this write up -- I could do a multi-part, day-by-day thing, but I'm not sure I want to be that ambitious or if it would be that interesting.

Let's start with the bare bones. Here's how the thing shook out, by modes of transportation:
-Tuktuk to Central Market
-Shared taxi - we bought the backseat, 3 people where 5 usually are, and as a consequence there were 5 in the front seat, including one in the driver's lap - to Kampong Chnnang
-Moto to the riverside market
-Ferry to Kampong Leang
-Walking around
-Ferry back to Kampong Chnnang
-Boat ride around the floating villages
-Moto to hotel
-Next morning, bus to Ponley
-Moto to Kampong Steang
-Motorized canoe ride around the area
-Moto back to Ponley
-Bus home to Phnom Penh.

As you might be able to tell, we spent a lot of time moving. You can't tell from this how much of that time moving we spent in packed public transportation, squeezed in between the motos and market goods and people, with loud motors and odd looks.

Let me put it this way: tourists don't go where we went. I was traveling with a good friend and her uncle, the Uncle fortunately being able to speak good Khmer and have a knack for discovering how to get places. We didn't make a single reservation in advance the entire time, and to get home were literally standing on the side of the road flagging down buses.

Tourists go to floating villages, sure, these strange bobbing clusters of humanity on the river, swollen heavily from the rains, where shops are on barges and everyone owns a boat. But they only go to certain floating villages, in certain places, and not, apparently, the ones we were at. I think we were the only Barangs I saw the entire two days, except for a group of people at the hotel restaurant.

The looks we got were curious, amused, excited, deeply concerned/confused, and uncertain, the primary one being amused confusion. Open stares were more the norm than sidelong looks, and in some cases the staring turned to gaping. You could hear the thoughts, what the hell are these Barangs doing here, of all places? 

In both Kampong Leang and Kampong Chnnang, within some time of arriving, a friendly police officer arrived to say hello, see if we needed anything -- if we were lost, more like. It was really funny, I thought, that they sent the police to deal with us, I guess no one else really wanted to. On the boat ride at Kampong Steang, we stopped by an island Pagoda, filled with people celebrating Pchum Ben, and there it was a monk sent to deal with us -- and attempt to get money from us, but he did it in a very nice way and wasn't upset when we politely refused. We figured he got sent to deal with the Barangs because he had the best English.

Wherever we went, we were a spectacle. The street kids hanging out at the temples came in crowds to follow us and try to get in the pictures we took. The people in the pagoda greeted us very warmly, almost proud to have their very own Barangs. We were like celebrities, but like aliens too. Celebrities because alien, I guess. People -- and not just kids, people of all ages -- waved to us as we passed, shouted hello. We waved back because, why not?

The constant motion and the constant staring was exhausting, but this was contrasted with the peace of the river and the water. The rainy season has made water of the whole land, the trees in up to their branches and green plants floating where mud flats are during the dry season. Something about the water is so calming, even with everything.

During the sunset cruise, we motored by people just living -- fishing, sitting in hammocks, eating, praying, kids playing in the water. A few kids with boats were drag racing in front of the appreciate audience on the riverside at Kampoong Chnnang. We also saw two boats playing pirates with each other, throwing plants and anything else they could get their hands on at each other, and then later on a 'club boat' -- no lights, no music, but a bunch of kids dancing away to the beats in their heads.

Watching the little girls expertly row the boats, the kids playing in the water, the water culture, I thought, they don't know what it's like to live on dry ground. The water is everything to them.

It was a fascinating couple of days, and I can't deny I was glad to be back home. I thought I was a foreigner in Phnom Penh -- and I am, and always will be -- but it was nothing compared to the strange, fascinating, and interesting alien I was there. The scrutiny gets to you after awhile, and I'm still getting over the constant motion. But -- I am glad I went.

Here are some photos from the trip:

This is the kind of look we got. 

The ferry from Kampong Leang to Kampong Chnnang

Sunset on the river, and some awesome little girl rowing.

The boat ride to the hidden pagoda, along a hidden channel.

With some onlookers. 

The monk went to deal with us, my travel partners, and the crowd. 

Taking a rest, what's on TV, and TGIF

Let me be the first to say : It hasn't been an easy week.

I can't say it's been a bad week because, well, those don't exist and there was a lot of progress and good things. But it hasn't been easy, as the overload of things to think about and create and push caught up with me and I caught a nasty cold/cough on Wednesday. That makes everything more difficult, plus the normal hiccups in producing projects.

Yesterday my partner cancelled our meeting for the fusion project as she too was getting sick, and I had the entire afternoon to myself. Despite being exhausted -- from the cold, and from an early morning wake up to attend a press conference for Cambodian Living Arts' new cultural season at the National Museum (Plae Pakaa, check it out) in a swiftly-becoming devilishly hot morning -- I found myself utterly incapable of resting.

Instead, I worked all day. Literally. There was plenty to do, e-mails to send (I still haven't caught up, I found some embarrassingly unanswered e-mails when cleaning out my inbox today), things to edit, Khmer to practice, etc. I only took a break to stare out the window for 20 minutes, and when I ran out of things to do around 9pm, I went to bed.

Some eleven hours later, I wasn't much more rested than the night previously and was feeling even more blah, stomach a bit upset, the whole nine yards. Despite this, I went to work and endured some endless meetings, and then at last decided to pull part-time privilege and go home.

At that point starting to get hungry, I stopped by the grocery store - a bit concerned about the likelihood of anything being open during the holidays this week -- and went home. Except this time, I didn't go to work. I made some tea (I'm out of tea now. The world is ending), had some chocolate, played some stupid games, and when I couldn't stay awake, I took a nap.

I was supposed to visit an apartment tonight, but instead I called the woman and rescheduled. For the hell of it, I turned on the TV, and stumbled on a channel playing Ratatouille, by good chance near the beginning. So I sat back to watch, had a bit of dinner, and when it was done, found a channel replaying the Titans and Steelers game from the other night.

In short, what I mean to say is that at last, I managed to spend a few hours without thinking, planning, or working, a brilliant gift at the end of a long week.

Sometimes that's just what you need. Tell my secretary to cancel all my appointments, I'm taking the night off. I don't want to deal with everything I'm trying to do and make and create and however exciting it all is, sometimes you need to drink a coke, watch a silly movie, or some football.

I was talking about this with a friend the other day -- because everything is just so new here, living is so exhausting because even if you do the same things every day, you're still learning, all the time, every second of every day. I think the best thing about watching a movie like Ratatouille is that it tells you what to think so you don't have to work too hard, just exist in another world as observer for awhile.

It will be a four-day weekend. As best as I can -- and I do try, I really do -- I will take the time to rest and get better. But for tonight -- as exciting, interesting, and wonderful as this adventure has been so far -- I am just so content to sit back and watch some football, because there, at least, I understand exactly what's going on.

A quick thought

It snowed in Colorado today. Last night, for them. The highs are in the 50s, tomorrow under 40.

This is not particularly abnormal for Denver -- my mom says first freeze is average around October 8th.

But it is completely unfathomable for me.

It will be in the 70s again in a week, I'm sure, I said in a skype chat.

Of course, mom replied, don't you remember Colorado?

I thought for a second -- and realized, no, I don't. I have no idea. I've been back here and there for visits, during the summer, during the winter. The last time I lived there was over four years ago, and of course I've been in close contact, but right now especially --

No, I don't remember. That world is not even another planet, it's another universe, and maybe not even parallel. Here, it is the rainy season. October means rain, and that is all. Autumn is not a word that means anything here. I remember in theory, when I think about it, the Colorado winters, that I needed to wear a jacket --

But I don't remember what the cold feels like.

It is the same earth, I think, but the place where it is snowing, called Colorado, is as far away from me as the nearest star. It was a strange realization -- not really attached with an emotion, just like turning around and looking at something and saying, Huh. Now, isn't that interesting.

Two weeks stay, the rainy season, and hiding in the hotel room

As with any first night in a new place, I woke often in the night, despite enjoying the wonders of sleeping in an air-conditioned room, mostly because I got to use covers for the first time in forever. The sound of the rain pounding on the tin roofs just outside woke me up, but didn't bother me too much, though to discover it still going this morning was a bit annoying...

My alarm went off at eight and wrestled me out of a dream about causing havoc at my old high school (which I did even while I was there, come to think of it...). I went to the café just across the street, Common Grounds, for breakfast, and was stymied by the fact that they were still baking all my favorite breakfast treats, but managed just fine on toast, eggs, and an espresso. I'm trying not to spend enormous amounts of money, so mostly trying to stick to my 10 dollar a day per diem from Cambodian Living Arts.

In any case, I met one of the supervisors from the club I'm teaching at nine, who came in a car, thankfully, and showed me how to get to the rehearsal space. It's a bit out of the way, but it's funny to note that as soon as you leave the tourist traps, the bilingual signs more or less disappear, leaving just Khmer. It's pretty sad, actually...anyway, the space is a huge room on the second floor of a hotel, with a big tin roof, tiled floors, and windows open to the outside. They open onto Siem Reap and the countryside, and it's actually quite beautiful, though the noise of the rain on the roof is a bit loud.

Speaking of the rain, apparently the rainy season is in full swing now, and September and October promise to give 25 days of rain per month, according to the club supervisor, and if the past few days are any indication, it rains all day too. Which means that I'm going to have to just suck it up and spend the next couple months being wet, or buy a couple of those ponchos.

I was going to spend this morning exploring a bit, and probably still could as it's more or less stopped raining, but I was so tired when I got back at nine thirty that I decided to just sleep, and have decided to take today easy. Maybe I'll explore when I go out for dinner, but I realized that I'm here two weeks, and it's a small city. I have all the time in the world to explore, and if I need to take a few days to adjust -- everything is still so new and confusing -- that is totally okay, and if I just chill in my hotel room, that's okay too. Or at a cafe, or whatever it may be.

It's a luxury I think a lot of travelers don't allow themselves, and goes along with my previous post about seeing the sights. I still remember my mom telling me to sleep a lot when I got to Phnom Penh because that's how your brain adjusts itself, and while Siem Reap and Phnom Penh are in the same country, Siem Reap is a whole new city and I would not say I'm comfortable in Cambodia yet.

I'm comfortable in Phnom Penh in that I know how to get around, I can more or less always figure out where I am, and I have places I go to and like, and people I know. It's not really home yet, and still remains very strange. Here, I don't know how to get around, I don't know how to get places, I know no one and I have no idea what are the good places. That's okay; I'll find some good places during the two weeks and I'll probably make sure to go back there a lot.

In the meantime, I'm going to take today very easy, still a little sick and culture-shocked all over again. I'm anxious, as I always am, for the first day of teaching a new group. I'm going to get lunch at the café adjacent to my hotel, because it's probably cheaper and I can sit and eat my noodle soup in peace, and mess around with my syllabus for the first class.