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"...

Monday: And so it begins

The first half of this post was written on Monday morning, when my Facebook feed was filled with happy statuses about a great Sunday, or somewhat less happy about the upcoming return to reality when Monday rolled around.

I have been to the future, my friends, and Monday is not so terrible.

It started with a meeting; or rather, with a phone call as I was about to leave for the meeting. My mad e-mailing seems to be going somewhere, as I was asked for an interview for an assitant teaching position at a nearby international school. Then it was off to the University of Fine Arts, and I didn't really know what I was planning to ask about. The pretext for my meeting, I found out later, was something about wanting to do research on the Royal Ballet, but we soon got past that. As a matter of fact, I just wanted to know them, and be known, and both turned out splendidly.

The meeting took place in the administrative and admissions office, which was simply a large room in one of the long buildings that make up the university. Next door was the music department, its doors wide open and some very lovely music spilling out, and on its other side "Choreographic Arts", though apparently they just teach the theory.

In the middle of the room was a wood table with a teapot, and surrounding it about five or six old desks, retro 70s style, clunky and somewhat gray. One had a slab of rock under one foot to keep it stable. Two of the desks had enormous desktop computers, the kind that look like old TVs. The floor, tiled red and white, was very dusty. Here and there a few pieces of scenery or decorations lay on the floor. It was cool, though, shaded and a couple ceiling fans gently keeping the air circulated.

I guess that's what counts for high tech here. Nonetheless, the man I was meeting was very friendly, passed off a few phone numbers and suggested I meet the teachers at their Secondary School. Exams, he said, are tomorrow, and then vacation, so you should go tomorrow.

Guess where I'm going tomorrow then? Somewhere way up in the north of the city, though really it's maybe 5 km, to a campus that they didn't really know the street address of but knew roughly how to find it and pointed it out on my handy Phnom Penh map. Interview, then secondary school. Sounds like a good day to me...

In any case, I also started my workshops -- due to the Secondary Fine Arts school having their exams, as I had just learned this morning, 11 of my students were not present, leaving me to try and ingratiate myself to the 4 who were present. They were all very nice, don't get me wrong, it's just that the long and the short of it is:

They have never done anything at all like this. I don't speak Khmer, though I do have a translator. They don't even know what 'choreography' is, as with a lot of people; I say it means making dances and they want to slap movement together. But there's more to it, and it's my job to get them to trust me enough to try it this new, strange, and decidedly different way. I'm trying to let them stay in their comfort zone by using movement they are comfortable with, but we are approaching it in a vastly different way than they know and -- well, that's why I'm here, to give them a new way of looking at things.

It was a long three hours, but that's okay; if this is going to work, it's going to take a lot of patience and a lot of attention from me. I bet you anything that the more we go along, the better it will be -- mostly because I'll have a better idea of how to approach it, introduce it, etc. I already do, and looking forward to restarting with the full 15 tomorrow.

Tonight my friend is taking me to a popular expat biweekly event called "Nerd Night," in which people present on something they're a nerd about, from tea drinking to barefoot running, by talking about 20 slides for 20 seconds each.

In the mean time I'm having a quiet dinner at home -- some veggies, some rice cooked with olive oil and salt, and bread. For dessert I decided to have half of what I suspected was a mango, and having never cut a mango before was unsure how to proceed, having somehow gotten into my head I should cut it like an avocado.

It was certainly a mango, but you most certainly do not cut it like an avocado, but juice everwhere aside, it is perfectly ripe and very, very yummy.

Not a bad life at all...

Sunday in Phnom Penh

The heat is a bit oppressive today, and as such it is not quite four o'clock and I am dead tired. I just spent some ten minutes lying on my back and staring at the ceiling. I imagine there will be more of that before the end of the day, in fact a nap is looking increasingly likely.

This morning I went for a short tour on the bike -- hello thighs, we haven't spoken in awhile -- around Phnom Penh. I started by heading over to the riverside and biking north along the quai. It's very lovely, with the palm trees, and the sky is clear today, hence the heat. There was a bit of traffic, but nothing you can't deal with if you pay attention.

The city is small; it doesn't take long to bike. I didn't go all the way to the north, just up around street 88, then turned back and zigzagged my way back through the narrow streets to get home. My sense of direction is still as terrible as ever, but maybe it's getting better because I didn't get lost once, there were only a few times when I wasn't sure what street I was on, but that's understandable as there are very few street signs, and only on the main roads.

I really like the city; it's small and I suppose by American standards the streets are pretty narrow. All the signs are in Khmer and English, lest you forget where you are. As I've mentioned, of course, the tuk tuks are everywhere, and in the midday the drivers can often be found in the back taking a nap. Besides the restaurants, there are the nomadic food carts, their owners walking them along and tooting their horns to announce their arrival. Kind of like vendors at a sports game, only without the shouts.

I was only out for a half hour, but it was plenty enough to wear me out. I headed back out again for lunch with some friends around one thirty, to a place nearby called Khmer Surin. It's a guest house as well as a restaurant, and absolutely beautiful. The place seems to explode with plants and greenery. Dark wood and low tables, with red and gold cushions. Though you're inside, and cool in the shade, you feel like you're outside, with the green and the sky opening up above.

I had pad thai, which I know isn't Cambodian, but it was a Khmer and Thai restaurant and it was very good and cheap. I just learned yesterday the word for chili sauce and put it to good use, succeeding in ordering some. I was quite proud of myself...

We stayed a long time. The food was very good and it was so calming. Just next to us was a little pool and a fountain, and what with the green, you could just stay forever.

However, we didn't, and the bike ride home was enough to dispel whatever cool I had managed to gain at the restaurant. I'm now trying to decide what to do with myself for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow is the start of everything and I admit to being somewhat apprehensive, but mostly just exciting to kick things off. As many people can attest, I don't do nothing very well.

I'm supposed to meet the dean of the university of fine arts in the morning as well, and I don't know for the life of me exactly what I plan on asking about, but I figure it's someone very good to know and I'm sure I can extemporize. Talking to people has never been a problem...

It looks to be a busy week, and all the better. Vacation -- if you can call it that -- is over, and now back to life. As I noted after graduation, I have nothing else but that for as far as I can see.

Saturday Afternoon

Let me paint you a picture:

The patio is neat and deserted. Everyone is inside, as they well should be, but I wanted to sit here and watch. The tables are glass topped, and the patio is fenced in by black iron, every few tables a plant to add a touch of green. To my right, the parking lot; not much to see there, besides the army of motos and tuk tuks across the street, waiting in the shade for the customers leaving the shopping center.

In front of me the drive curls around to the parking garage. A staircase proclaiming "214Lounge" heads up to, presumably, a lounge, the 214 coming from the number of the street.

The ice cream in front of me is melting quickly in the hot air. Under the table are a couple bags with loot from the supermarket inside the shopping center; seasonings, a lot of noodle soup, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, a dustpan. The makings of a home, for less than fifteen dollars.

Lest you think it was too much like home, to the side of the parking lot are the little miniature temples, set up for the ancestors. They are like little gold houses on pedestals, intricately formed and beautiful, filled with small gifts and offerings. These offerings are everywhere -- unobtrusive, and you don't necessarily see them unless you're looking, but everywhere.

Behind them, the street is lined with palm trees and another kind of tree with a brilliant red flower. Everything is deeply green and deeply colorful. There's a white apartment building beyond, a few palm trees on a rooftop garden.

Things are completely uncertain, but at that moment, I was at peace. I realized that even if I succeed in giving only one private lesson a week -- people have been urging me to go the route of private tutoring -- it will essentially pay my grocery bills. The thought was quite encouraging, as I have been impatiently wondering just when I am going to start getting income.

Soon, I thought, savoring the now very gooey ice cream. The server, surprised I could speak even a few words of Khmer, asked me in Khmer if I spoke it. I stared at her blankly, but when she translated, I smiled.

Ch'hey tac tac, I said.

Only a little.

An evening out in Phnom Penh

It started with a bike ride.

The streets at night are not particularly well lit except for the main arteries, such as Norodom Boulevard. There, the streets are lined with lights, a red carpet of lights. Every block or two is a little post, containing an umbrella and one or two bored officers in their khaki uniforms and walkie talkies. My bike happens to have a little gadget that, when you flip a switch, something rubs up against the front tire and activates a little light on the front of the bike. Very useful at night.

I took the main street, of course, and when I left around seven thirty, it was packed. You have to pay attention, with motos and tuk tuks cutting you off at every turn and winding your way through oncoming traffic at every intersection. I'm getting good at it, but haven't lost the habit of swearing badly whenever the nearest tuk tuk decides now is a good time to cross.

The ride took me to street  136 and the Europe Guest House, where, while waiting for friends, I chatted with the friendly proprietor, who offered to keep my bike in the back while we kibitzed about. I gladly accepted, and with the other three, headed out in search of food.

We found what's called the Night Market, apparently on the list of "Where You Should Go" in the Cambodian guidebooks, as can be judged by the amount of tourists uneasily slipping off their sandals to settle themselves indian style on the covered ground, carefully balancing plates of food from the surrounding food stands. It looks like carpet, the design at least, but isn't, a sort of woven vinyl that makes strange patterns on your skin if you stay in one position too long.

The market is roughly organized in a rectangle; the lights from the stands more than enough to light the open center, where each stand seems to command a certain area. Baskets of hot sauce and other condiments are strewn throughout, but if you try- as I did - to move them to another area, soon enough some assistant will come by and give you the basket you were really supposed to be using. Whoops.

My stomach had been upset for most of the day, no doubt complaining about all of the very new things it's been asked to handle in the past week, so I just got a simple chicken fried noodle, which, when mixed with the hot sauce, was absolutely delicious. Some greens, some noodles, a bit of sauce, and some chicken. Simple enough. I also got a fizzy drink that I still have no idea what it actually was -- my guess is the Khmer version of cherry soda, though it would surprise me if it was actually cherry. Either way, it was very tasty. A stage was set up on the other side of the rectangle, a strange built up podium with some Khmer band happily jamming away.

The food finished, we headed off in search of a bar the girls had heard about, heading to the riverside. After a false start in the wrong direction, we found the place. It had two floors, sleek and modern like most of the buildings on the riverside. The party, whatever it was, was happening on the second floor, so up we went.

It could have been any other club; the lights down to a low red, a bar and some places to sit, and in the next room a DJ pounding away your basic club hits, like "Call Me Maybe" and a remix of "Rolling in the Deep". The drinks were expensive by Cambodian standards, 5 bucks for a cocktail, and I wasn't particularly in the mood, so I passed.

Any other club, except filled with Khmer people (which I was actually somewhat pleased about -- I would have been somewhat dismayed if it was filled with westerners). Any other club, except the tiny balcony wrapping around the outside overlooked the Mekong River, with palm trees along the wide riverside promenade and tuk tuk drivers grappling for customers leaving the nearby bars. The tourists, which you can spot a mile away, staring around at their strange surroundings and carrying their backpacks on their stomachs.

It was nice, I guess. We went inside after awhile to check out the dance floor, which again could have been any dance floor, any place, the flashing lights and circling colors. The pumping beat. I was tired, and not particularly interested in partying the night away (yes, you can fall over in shock now), but let's be frank:

Dance floors intoxicate me.

They just do. The beat gets into my blood and it's over. And yet: here, with three other ex-pats, the Cambodian guys turning their heads, the flashing beat and throughout all of this the undeniably surreality that I am, in fact, in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, absolutely nowhere near anything I know...

The sheer incongruity was almost enough to send me reeling. Fortunately or not, I didn't have much time to contemplate it, because the girls decided to try and talk their way into the 14 July - held, naturally, on the 13 July -- party at the French Embassy. Never mind you had to have a French passport to get an invitation.

Nevertheless, we got a tuk tuk, the driver asking his friend directions because he didn't know where the embassy actually was, though didn't want to lose business. It was easy enough to find, after all; an impressive wall with one door, a crowd of tuk tuk drivers standing around and waiting for people to leave, long rows of motos on either side.

The party was winding down, and the girls began their pitch. I stood quietly to the side. One of the officers came over to shake his head at our behavior, and I naturally denied all knowledge of the plan. I said -- honestly -- that a friend had invited us and I understood perfectly well we were late. The girls pleaded and begged and got some lady in charge who was passing to have pity, and then we were in.

A long, paved walkway led to another sleek, modern building, very white and blocky, like a giant piece of minimalist, abstract art, just in architectural form. The main building was in front of us, but we veered to the right instead, following the music. The building was light and airy, and opened up onto a sprawling lawn, where a stage and a dance floor had been set up. But for every person dancing, there were three standing around, talking and schmoozing, a few white-clad officers with impressive arrays of pin on their uniforms and red shoulder sashes, and equal parts Cambodian and French people.

The officer was right; we were late, and not three songs later the band closed up shop, leaving a bunch of drunk twenty somethings - they had been serving free alcohol -- looking for the next best thing. It was, after all, only 11 o'clock.

We had acquired a couple more people by that time, and I was getting very tired. Everyone seemed to be heading to one of the few nightclubs, Nova, but I asked one of our new Khmer friends if he could just take me back to the guesthouse, where I could get my bike and go home. He agreed.

During the time, however, in which we tried to decide where to go and how to fit seven people onto three motos, we were continually accosted by a bunch of drunk twenty something French ex-pats, with obliging tuk tuk drivers in tow, to ask where we were going, or where the next party was happening.

We got ourselves sorted, and headed first to the club to drop everyone off. It was again sleek, looking for all the world like a renovated warehouse, surrounding by security guards and motos, again. We left the girls, and my friend took me to the guest house. My bike was exactly where I had left it, and I headed back home on the now mostly deserted streets, coming back into a quiet house.

The evening was fun. I will grant it that. However, it made me think a lot, and to be very honest --- it bugged me. The many drunk French people just desperate for the next party, the 'find-the-next-party' attitude in them and in my own group. Listen, I have nothing against that, I've been there, I get it. However --


I am not here to go out all the time. Safe or not, I don't necessarily feel comfortable wandering the streets at night, and I'm just as happy to bed early and wake early. Every once in awhile go dancing, sure. But to be here just to find the parties?


No. I realized forcibly that it's just not what I'm here for. The sense of displacement was enough to tell me that. 


In the meantime, the job search continues. I remember from living in Asheville how long everything seems to take, and how really quite awful the waiting is. But I have to be patient; as utterly bizarre as it is, I have only been here a week. 

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!

Gillian v. Herself: Dealing with Culture Shock

I noticed something interesting today, in how I’m dealing with the new culture.

I decided, as I usually do, to jump into this new adventure with both feet, full immersion. To the market right away, on my own on the bike, learning Khmer, eating the local food. It’s a sure way to get used to what’s going on and I’m proud of it.

However, today I was craving the West and the familiar, and decided to spend some time in a western style coffee shop, on the internet and on the phone with my parents. I had been planning not to do that until Sunday, letting that day be my day to spend in a familiar environment.

There are two opposing factions in my head. There is the one that is almost ashamed of having given in, the one that is so upset with the stereotypical tourist and ex-pat that remains constantly in the Western areas that she tries desperately to do the exact opposite. She’s the one who thinks the best way to deal with the shock is to just continue on, and soon enough it will become normal.

Then there is the other faction, who thinks that it is perfectly okay to seek refuge in the Western style when faced with an overwhelmingly new life, and not only perfectly okay but perfectly understandable. She thinks that so long as it does not become a crutch, or a habit, or otherwise impede the experience of the country, there is absolutely nothing wrong with retreating to one’s roots.

The two are just about equal, and while one does seem more reasonable – the latter – I just can’t discount the former, the embodiment of my come-hell-or-high-water, obsessive self that throws herself into life with a verve some may call utter insanity.

I’m trying to compromise the two halves by having internet installed in my apartment. That way, I don’t have to always go to those western cafés for internet but remain in touch with the world I left behind. I think it’s a very healthy compromise and may appease that violent adventurer.

I guess I just need to convince my obsessive self that you can have the cake and eat it too, that it is possible to be fully engaged in the life and the culture here and yet still irrevocably rooted in the place we come from. I will always be western, and as much as I try otherwise, I will always be American. I can’t erase that self. I just need to learn how to keep it, nurture it, and yet remain open to the influences of the culture around me.

It’s not an easy job, and goes against my instinct. But I think I have to learn, because I have a suspicion that the only way to fully immerse myself in the newness of this place is to be perfectly grounded in where I came.

Certainly, it’s something to work on…