I suppose it's technically year 24, as today I am 23 and entering my 24th year of life. I suppose it should also be year 2, as I have just finished year 1 in Cambodia and year 1 of Real Life not in school.
Whatever year, it's new for me, and my overwhelming emotion for the day is gratitude.
I make some luck for myself, but I'm also on the receiving end of a ridiculous amount. I can't take credit for a lot of it, and I don't dare ever take it for granted. I'm overwhelmed by the love and support of my friends and family, by the fact that I get paid to do what I love and somehow my dreams are coming true, day by day and second by second. Every day is a blessing and a gift.
As for one year in Cambodia -- I'm excited to see what the next year can bring. This is the longest I've been anywhere away from home, and have had a tendency before to build half a life and then leave it and go onto the next thing. Now, I'm taking the time to build something here.
Tonight everything is sunshine and roses, but of course this whole year wasn't all fun and games. As you saw from my blog posts, especially in February, this year has challenged me in more ways than I thought was possible, and pushed me further than I thought was possible. It's been a struggle, and some days I got up to fight and some days I just buried my head.
But I don't want to talk about that today. That is that and now is now, and now I am blessed beyond belief.
Let's see what fantastic stuff comes up in year 23....
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Birthday in Cambodia
It was a busy day, including a little jaunt to a school somewhere in the middle of nowhere to the north of Phnom Penh, a good 5km and long bike ride that left me with very oddly sunburnt hands (think, holding a bike handlebar line). My legs are still complaining...well, that and an interview for what I thought was an assistant teacher and instead was a preschool teacher. It went well but ultimately it won't work out as they don't want me to go to Siem Reap in September, as planned with Cambodian Living Arts, and I had to make the choice: am I here to teach preschool, or choreography? I think you know which one I chose, but always hard to give up stability for what you actually want to do...
The afternoon was spent teaching -- yesterday only had 3 students but we got some good work done and of course today I had 11, so trying to get everyone on the same level and avoid the inevitable "been there three days" cliques from forming. I may or may not have succeeded, but that's besides the point...
(This post is all over the place because I am -- it was another busy day and lots of stuff happening.)
But anyway, for the evening I wore my new dress -- ankle length, which I am not at all used to -- and put on makeup and earrings for the first time since coming here. It quite makes a difference, I actually looked like a girl!
For dinner we went to a little place called Atmosphère, a French bistrot very nearby my apartment. It was very quiet -- I guess people don't go out to places like that on Tuesday nights -- but the wait staff was very friendly and the food good. The decor was all very white -- cream, I guess -- and fancily folded napkins. The meat was grilled outside, a big wonderful outdoor grill. Medium rare ongleut de boeuf for me...
The waitstaff learned it was my birthday when I was trying out my new skills in Khmer, as my friend taught me to say 'It's my birthday'. We ordered an apple tart for dessert, and then my friends asked that it be brought with a candle, so back they went and came back with a candle, prompting everyone to break out in a cacophony of various versions of 'happy birthday'. English, French, and Khmer, somewhere in the song and no one really together, but happily clapping along and cheering when I blew out the candle. Really quite a lovely present.
Afterwards we wandered down a street where there are tons of cute little bars, but then one of my friends noticed there seemed to be a concert up on the second floor of one of the buildings, and so we decided to try and figure out how to get up there. We went up a couple flights of very, very steep stairs and came out in the bar.
As with many restaurants/bar, it opened directly to the air, in this case the street. There were mainly expats there, lounging on the congregation of big couches and bean bag chairs. The liquor behind the bar was set on a replica of the Independence Monument, built into the wall and backlit with blue. There was a little stage in the corner, where an Australian hippie was jamming away on the guitar and singing a crazy mix of songs, from Australian hiphop to the Gorillaz to Modest Mouse to Outkast.
It was a really nice atmosphere; everyone was having fun and enjoying the music, singing along or chatting to their friends. The walls and ceiling were covered entirely with little messages and drawings from the past clientele, I guess the bar was called Top Banana, as I only discovered today, but we stayed for a drink and generally had a lovely time.
After we left, Nettra and I spent some time at my apartment, having a beer and chatting about life and love. All in all it was a really lovely birthday -- low key, simple, and great fun.
Currently in mode: find work that I WANT to do. It's so tempting to just apply for everything everywhere but I found myself dragging my feet on some things and then thought, why? Why not get paid to do enjoyable work? What a thought...
The afternoon was spent teaching -- yesterday only had 3 students but we got some good work done and of course today I had 11, so trying to get everyone on the same level and avoid the inevitable "been there three days" cliques from forming. I may or may not have succeeded, but that's besides the point...
(This post is all over the place because I am -- it was another busy day and lots of stuff happening.)
But anyway, for the evening I wore my new dress -- ankle length, which I am not at all used to -- and put on makeup and earrings for the first time since coming here. It quite makes a difference, I actually looked like a girl!
For dinner we went to a little place called Atmosphère, a French bistrot very nearby my apartment. It was very quiet -- I guess people don't go out to places like that on Tuesday nights -- but the wait staff was very friendly and the food good. The decor was all very white -- cream, I guess -- and fancily folded napkins. The meat was grilled outside, a big wonderful outdoor grill. Medium rare ongleut de boeuf for me...
The waitstaff learned it was my birthday when I was trying out my new skills in Khmer, as my friend taught me to say 'It's my birthday'. We ordered an apple tart for dessert, and then my friends asked that it be brought with a candle, so back they went and came back with a candle, prompting everyone to break out in a cacophony of various versions of 'happy birthday'. English, French, and Khmer, somewhere in the song and no one really together, but happily clapping along and cheering when I blew out the candle. Really quite a lovely present.
Afterwards we wandered down a street where there are tons of cute little bars, but then one of my friends noticed there seemed to be a concert up on the second floor of one of the buildings, and so we decided to try and figure out how to get up there. We went up a couple flights of very, very steep stairs and came out in the bar.
As with many restaurants/bar, it opened directly to the air, in this case the street. There were mainly expats there, lounging on the congregation of big couches and bean bag chairs. The liquor behind the bar was set on a replica of the Independence Monument, built into the wall and backlit with blue. There was a little stage in the corner, where an Australian hippie was jamming away on the guitar and singing a crazy mix of songs, from Australian hiphop to the Gorillaz to Modest Mouse to Outkast.
It was a really nice atmosphere; everyone was having fun and enjoying the music, singing along or chatting to their friends. The walls and ceiling were covered entirely with little messages and drawings from the past clientele, I guess the bar was called Top Banana, as I only discovered today, but we stayed for a drink and generally had a lovely time.
After we left, Nettra and I spent some time at my apartment, having a beer and chatting about life and love. All in all it was a really lovely birthday -- low key, simple, and great fun.
Currently in mode: find work that I WANT to do. It's so tempting to just apply for everything everywhere but I found myself dragging my feet on some things and then thought, why? Why not get paid to do enjoyable work? What a thought...
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Year 21, in review
Since the time I turned twenty one, I have lived at least a thousand lives. And yet, today I have somehow contrived to only be turning twenty two. I am not sure how that happened, or what, in fact, happened. But it did, and therefore only a year must have passed, as incredible as that is.
Last year this time, I was still in Paris, still in the throes of self-discovery that was the entire year abroad, celebrating my twenty first among people that had become so dear, often in a very short time, that it was impossible to think of leaving. But the end of my stay was fast approaching, and it all coalesced into a bright shining moment of understanding on the morning of July 26th, and less than a week later, I was on an airplane. Leaving after eleven months a city that had become more comfortable and more beloved than any other place on earth. Chatting up the kind Italian woman next to me and trying not to go stir crazy.
I spent a month at home: a month of eating salad and working out like a fiend to drop the extra ten pounds I'd picked up in Paris, a month of letting go and moving on, a month when I often sat on the couch with my mom and cried, trying to make sense of the impossibly transformative experience that I had; as with any transformation, the destruction was just as powerful as the creation.
A month of dealing with culture shock -- as I have often said, and will say again because it's so true -- it was a monster I had prepared to fight but did not even recognize its face; I knew the roads would be too big, the tables, the cars, everything too big, not enough motos and not enough sidewalk cafes, but I didn't realize that my family would have lived a full year that I knew nothing of, had changed and I didn't know it, had a full year of experiences just as I had but not shared. I didn't know about the nagging, uncertain sense of unbelonging, of displacement, of recognizing everything but being unable to picture yourself inside.
In fact, the culture shock wouldn't go away for six months, and soon enough I was on another plane, back to the city that never sleeps, where the cars, noise, and lights promptly overwhelmed me. But it wasn't just the city, but after a year of life suddenly I was in school again, turning in homework, doing research, and preparing a senior thesis. I met the King of Pop, the subject of said thesis, and was inspired, again and again. I wrote a hundred pages and played the academic and the dancer. I got to know not one but two androgynous, genius, and decidedly unstable male dancers, not only MJ but Nijinsky, and loved delving into their stunning ability to move.
Besides the academics, I spent months trying to reconcile the girl I used to be with the girl I had become, until one fine morning in December looked at myself in a mirror and recognized the girl within. Not three weeks later, I was on a plane again.
Another month at home, time to give and to celebrate being together, a time to rest and recuperate. I discovered my pixie heritage (remind me to tell you that story one day; if I finish it without you dragging me to the loony bin it will be surprising), said goodbye to my childhood hometown, and was so fully present that when I arrived back in New York, after another plane ride, I didn't recognize the apartment I stepped into.
I knew where everything was, because I had put it there, but had again the sense of displacement, as though someone else belonged where I was intruding, and it took me a good couple days to shake. By then, I was deep in the throes of my latest project of taking a group to Paris, a project begun the previous semester but left to simmer on the back burners. I put it on high heat, but at the beginning it crawled, like sailors on a beach after a shipwreck. Dancers were leaving, funds were nonexistent.
Nevertheless, because not going was not an option, I headbutted any brick wall in my path and after two intense months of preparation, the trip was funded and I was on a jumbo jet heading over the Atlantic, taking ten days off school to kibitz about Paris; a surreal experience in an increasingly more surreal life. For ten perfect, beautiful days, I was home.
By the time I returned, it was time to graduate, take final exams, and say goodbye to people I had been in school with for four years. My family was in New York, there were two stars next to my name in the program, and it was celebration and madness --
And then I had moved, and was throwing myself into the next adventure. I had already agreed to participate in the choreography showcase, but found myself quite unexpectedly co-producing it, working with dancers ten times more experienced than I, and yet somehow or another the thing got produced and performed. It was an experience that made me feel equal parts totally incompetent and totally competent, and more often than not very very young, and very very inexperienced. And yet -- as with all experiences like it, it taught me a hell of a lot.
But there would be no time to rest, either preparing for or after the showcase, because there was a move to the other side of the world to organize, and with my mom in town for a brief, lovely week, I gathered up my energy for the next big leap.
The last week in New York was filled with goodbyes and the incredibly revealing things that happen in the case when you quite simply don't know the next time you'll be back, if at all. They were all little gifts, little embers to hold somewhere in my soul, little wonderful looks into people's eyes, each separately surprising and fascinating. I spent a great deal of the time running around like a chicken with my head cut off, pausing and posing for a few seconds before fluttering off.
My July 4th was filled with fireworks, you could say, and the next night at 1:45AM I was on another jumbo jet, the lone white female in the back of the plane with a company of the Indonesian Navy, and touched down in a place where nothing at all seemed to be anything like what I had previously experienced, quite literally the opposite side of the world.
Which is where I am currently writing this post, completely baffled by how that all fit into one year, especially since I didn't even mention the half of it. However much I may not understand, though, it was in fact one year, and I am in fact just now turning twenty two. It makes me almost afraid to wonder what will happen before July 17th, 2013, but if experience tells anything -- it certainly won't be boring!!
It should tell you something that I think one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said to me was calling me "strange, or at the very least unusual"...
Last year this time, I was still in Paris, still in the throes of self-discovery that was the entire year abroad, celebrating my twenty first among people that had become so dear, often in a very short time, that it was impossible to think of leaving. But the end of my stay was fast approaching, and it all coalesced into a bright shining moment of understanding on the morning of July 26th, and less than a week later, I was on an airplane. Leaving after eleven months a city that had become more comfortable and more beloved than any other place on earth. Chatting up the kind Italian woman next to me and trying not to go stir crazy.
I spent a month at home: a month of eating salad and working out like a fiend to drop the extra ten pounds I'd picked up in Paris, a month of letting go and moving on, a month when I often sat on the couch with my mom and cried, trying to make sense of the impossibly transformative experience that I had; as with any transformation, the destruction was just as powerful as the creation.
A month of dealing with culture shock -- as I have often said, and will say again because it's so true -- it was a monster I had prepared to fight but did not even recognize its face; I knew the roads would be too big, the tables, the cars, everything too big, not enough motos and not enough sidewalk cafes, but I didn't realize that my family would have lived a full year that I knew nothing of, had changed and I didn't know it, had a full year of experiences just as I had but not shared. I didn't know about the nagging, uncertain sense of unbelonging, of displacement, of recognizing everything but being unable to picture yourself inside.
In fact, the culture shock wouldn't go away for six months, and soon enough I was on another plane, back to the city that never sleeps, where the cars, noise, and lights promptly overwhelmed me. But it wasn't just the city, but after a year of life suddenly I was in school again, turning in homework, doing research, and preparing a senior thesis. I met the King of Pop, the subject of said thesis, and was inspired, again and again. I wrote a hundred pages and played the academic and the dancer. I got to know not one but two androgynous, genius, and decidedly unstable male dancers, not only MJ but Nijinsky, and loved delving into their stunning ability to move.
Besides the academics, I spent months trying to reconcile the girl I used to be with the girl I had become, until one fine morning in December looked at myself in a mirror and recognized the girl within. Not three weeks later, I was on a plane again.
Another month at home, time to give and to celebrate being together, a time to rest and recuperate. I discovered my pixie heritage (remind me to tell you that story one day; if I finish it without you dragging me to the loony bin it will be surprising), said goodbye to my childhood hometown, and was so fully present that when I arrived back in New York, after another plane ride, I didn't recognize the apartment I stepped into.
I knew where everything was, because I had put it there, but had again the sense of displacement, as though someone else belonged where I was intruding, and it took me a good couple days to shake. By then, I was deep in the throes of my latest project of taking a group to Paris, a project begun the previous semester but left to simmer on the back burners. I put it on high heat, but at the beginning it crawled, like sailors on a beach after a shipwreck. Dancers were leaving, funds were nonexistent.
Nevertheless, because not going was not an option, I headbutted any brick wall in my path and after two intense months of preparation, the trip was funded and I was on a jumbo jet heading over the Atlantic, taking ten days off school to kibitz about Paris; a surreal experience in an increasingly more surreal life. For ten perfect, beautiful days, I was home.
By the time I returned, it was time to graduate, take final exams, and say goodbye to people I had been in school with for four years. My family was in New York, there were two stars next to my name in the program, and it was celebration and madness --
And then I had moved, and was throwing myself into the next adventure. I had already agreed to participate in the choreography showcase, but found myself quite unexpectedly co-producing it, working with dancers ten times more experienced than I, and yet somehow or another the thing got produced and performed. It was an experience that made me feel equal parts totally incompetent and totally competent, and more often than not very very young, and very very inexperienced. And yet -- as with all experiences like it, it taught me a hell of a lot.
But there would be no time to rest, either preparing for or after the showcase, because there was a move to the other side of the world to organize, and with my mom in town for a brief, lovely week, I gathered up my energy for the next big leap.
The last week in New York was filled with goodbyes and the incredibly revealing things that happen in the case when you quite simply don't know the next time you'll be back, if at all. They were all little gifts, little embers to hold somewhere in my soul, little wonderful looks into people's eyes, each separately surprising and fascinating. I spent a great deal of the time running around like a chicken with my head cut off, pausing and posing for a few seconds before fluttering off.
My July 4th was filled with fireworks, you could say, and the next night at 1:45AM I was on another jumbo jet, the lone white female in the back of the plane with a company of the Indonesian Navy, and touched down in a place where nothing at all seemed to be anything like what I had previously experienced, quite literally the opposite side of the world.
Which is where I am currently writing this post, completely baffled by how that all fit into one year, especially since I didn't even mention the half of it. However much I may not understand, though, it was in fact one year, and I am in fact just now turning twenty two. It makes me almost afraid to wonder what will happen before July 17th, 2013, but if experience tells anything -- it certainly won't be boring!!
It should tell you something that I think one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said to me was calling me "strange, or at the very least unusual"...
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