Rainstorms and Reminiscing in Phnom Penh

Hey everyone~ I feel like it's been awhile since I last posted so this one is going to be a long one. Hope everyone is well!! :)

So I left you right before our day off last Thursday for the Queen's birthday. We figured having a day off was a good time to go to Choeng Ek, or the killing fields. It was probably the saddest thing I’ll do in Cambodia- it was overwhelming. I think the worst part was how the place felt. Just getting there and walking around, there was this automatic presence of loss and sadness, and you could tell that something bad had happened there. I don’t think they needed a memorial to mark it because just walking through there, I could feel that something very grave had happened.

The first thing that we saw was the worst part of the memorial- there was a building at the entrance that was filled with human skulls, and they had little sign markers that showed the different age groups of the people who had been killed. The slaughter in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime was worse than the Holocaust. And, not to stray away from the subject but I feel like it's worth mentioning, do we talk about the killing fields in schools in the U.S.? Of course not. Looking back I have to say my education was definitely biased toward American history- it would have been nice to learn more about the rest of the world.

The rest of Choeng Ek consisted of a pavilion that had pictures and a detailed history of what happened during the Khmer Rouge’s reign, and ditches overgrown with brambles, weeds, and struggling flowers. We quickly learned that these ditches were mass graves, each for hundreds of people. Just walking down some of the narrow paths between these ditches, we could see bones poking through the worn dust.

We spent maybe a half hour there.

I never want to go back.

On Friday, we taught again- but we “taught” because Mike and I had to go to the airport and pick up Danielle and Lydia. Danielle was the first volunteer from SAS here and she apparently comes back every year and takes the kids to the beach or to the waterpark each time. She came last summer with her mom and brought her friend Lydia with her this summer. So teaching became pretty much pointless because all of the kids fled their classes when we returned to greet her and didn’t come back- each new arrival constitutes a day off in their book.
We took it easy on Friday- Danielle and Lydia slept all day from jet lag. Alisa and Jessi both came down with a really strange rash. We took them to the clinic for meds since it kept getting worse. The doctors didn’t have much to say about it except that they thought it was food related, which we had already worked out for ourselves. They were the only ones to eat fried prawns at a restaurant we had gone to a few days earlier, so we figured it was probably from that even though neither of them have a seafood allergy.

Saturday during the day we went out and got ice cream and bought movies as a way for Jessi and Alisa to get out for a bit- we didn’t stay long though because their rash got a lot worse in the heat. We came back, watched a movie, and then Mike and I went with Danielle and Lydia and a bunch of other Palm Tree people to the night market.

The night market was sweet. Pretty much what you would expect in a tourist market, but still, I liked it. Especially since I really need clothes- I brought enough clothes to get by assuming that I would just buy more here, but in the past few weeks I've had to do laundry way too many times from running out of things to wear. We’re going to go back tonight after classes because I didn’t really get a chance to buy anything that first time. Instead of shopping, we ended up eating behind one of the stands on a mat that served as a table. I’m getting pretty adventurous with the food here. We had fried bread that was really good, I don’t know what they fry it in but I want a recipe of some kind. We also had this juice that they swore would make us sick, but Mike claims to have an iron stomach now that he's had typhoid and I’ve been doing pretty well myself.

Sunday we took the kids to the waterpark. It was awesome- they were so happy. It sucked that girls had to wear shorts and t shirts and guys could run around naked though. I mean seriously. I have a one piece bathing suit. A conservative one piece. But we abided by the strict rules. And the kids had so much fun that it made it all worth it. They had a pool, kiddie pool, slides, a wave pool, and a lazy river. The kids pretty much just dispersed everywhere and had a great time, and Mike and I became jungle gyms for those who couldn’t swim. We were in the main pool most of the time, and kids just kept jumping in and then clinging to us because they didn’t actually know how to swim-it was a bit crazy. And the lifeguards were sleeping, or at least two of them were. Not the same standards as the States, clearly. Yet no one gets hurt. It’s interesting .The wave pool was insane- everyone was in there with inner tubes and kids were jumping in off the sides on top of other kids. It was claustrophobia city with waves thrown in just to make things a little more terrifying. Plus they didn't have a lifeguard at the wave pool, which was, in my opinion, the most dangerous of the attractions at the waterpark.

The rest of the week has been fairly typical. Jessi and Alisa fully recovered from the rash they had. And I can officially say that everyone has been sick here except me- so clearly much has changed since Pittsburgh/York. Not really. Though it’s bound to happen-no one spends a significant amount of time in Cambodia without getting sick. Mike got typhoid, Jessi and Alisa got the rash, and Danielle had dengue fever two years ago when she volunteered at Palm Tree. So I'm kind of just biding my time.

Tuesday night we had a party for Danielle and Lydia before they left, since apparently its customary to have parties before people leave. They went out and got the kids soda floats, and we rented speakers and blasted music. It was an eclectic mix of tunes; they played a lot of Khmer songs but they also played a lot of American songs. And by American songs, I’m talking Akon and Jay Z. Five year olds were walking around singing, “I want to make love right now now now.” It’s really good that nobody but us actually understood most of the words to those songs. But the entire orphanage danced. It was awesome- the kids aren’t shy here, they have no problem dancing in front of each other for hours. And they watched us to see how we danced, and I do have to admit that it was pretty different. They have group dances for almost every type of song, like we have group dances for songs like The Electric Slide, except that it’s usually the same dance. It was pretty easy to pick up and we did that for awhile, but we broke out our own moves too, especially to the American music that we recognized, and then the kids copied us.

At some point early on in the week, one of us (really can’t remember which one) got the crazy idea that a good way to work out would be to borrow some of the kids’ bikes and go riding through the streets of Phnom Penh. And to be more specific about the streets, I mean our street, which you can’t even really call a street- it’s more a path of death with a little dirt road thrown in for kicks. Our street is about half the size of a street in a small neighborhood in the U.S., and there are constantly cars, vans, trucks, and motorcycles all vying for position in both directions. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen but (knock on wood) we have yet to see any accidents.

We taught all day Thursday and it was ridiculously hot. It’s been hot all week but not like it was on Thursday. The kids all walked around in their pants and long sleeved shirts that they often wear in ninety degree plus weather and we taught while melting like the human popsicles that we are in this type of heat. We were looking forward to the bike ride. It's important to find things to look forward to here. Don’t get me wrong, I love volunteering, but it does get a bit monotonous after awhile. It’s a place that takes patience, to put it straight up, and I’m not used to being in the same place day after day. We were itching to get out and get around a little bit. Plus I desperately need the exercise- the only real exercise I've been getting is running around after/ away from kids.

So after dinner (a particularly good dinner of chicken and rice), we borrowed the bikes. Two of the guys rode ahead of us. They don’t like to let us go anywhere by ourselves, and I’m not sure if it’s because they think we won’t be safe or because they know we’ll buy them things if they come with us (probably a bit of both),but a few of the older kids always come with us wherever we’re going. It tends to help when we have to bargain in Khmer, although the kids don’t really bargain- they just translate for us and leave the rest up to us.

Starting out went fairly well. We had some near misses with motorcycles and a pretty determined truck, but we did well all in all. We were feeling pretty cocky. We got to the main road and decided we really weren’t up to riding down highways yet, so we turned around and found a little bar. It was about six, and it was almost the weekend, and we felt a little nostalgic for home anyway with the whole bike ride (also I haven’t ridden a bike since like 10th grade so I’m kind of proud that I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere). We ordered beer and got food for the guys who came with us, and it was relaxing….

For about five minutes.

Then the skies decided to open up and flood the streets of Phnom Penh. We stayed in the little café/bar for as long as we could, but it was starting to get dark, and between floods and darkness we would take the floods. We had hoped the rain would stop- since we arrived, we’d only been getting little rainstorms that lasted ten or fifteen minutes tops. Of course the first time we decided to get daring and venture from home without a covered method of transportation, we hit a real storm. And it doesn’t rain anywhere else in the world like it rains in Cambodia. I’m not even sure if it’s because it rains harder here (though it does rain super hard) or if it’s because all of the roofs are tin. The sound of the rain is deafening; it’s as if the sky itself is plunging in to the streets and buildings of Phnom Penh. We cancel class when it rains because it’s too loud for us to teach. But in the café/ bar, we didn’t have much choice but to get home before dark. There are gangs in Cambodia that come out after dark (much like many American cities) and when we’re out late we usually take the tuk tuk- on bikes we wouldn’t be as much of a match for them. So we paid and eased our way in to the midst of a pretty furious storm. Not to mention the ever present Phnom Penh traffic.

Riding home was like trying to ride a bike straight through a lake during a rainstorm. Literally, that’s what it was. A lake of trash that smelled terrible. And it was nothing to all of the other people on the roads-it might as well have not been raining or lightening or thundering or flooding. They just carried on like it was no big deal. I think we might actually be getting into monsoon season now- I’m a little apprehensive to say the least. But we made it, feeling (at least I was) slightly euphoric at the sight of Palm Tree’s gates. There was definitely something thrilling about biking through the back streets of a foreign country through a pounding storm.

We’ve been getting more and more adventurous as we ease into living here- we’ve started going to the markets by ourselves and exploring the shops in our neighborhood more. We’ve also settled in to a routine, which helps with establishing a sense of familiarity and comfort. We get up at 5-6 a.m. every morning, teach 9-11, eat lunch at 11, teach 2-4, eat dinner at 5, and then while away the last few hours till we go to bed at 8. Even on the weekends the structure isn’t much different, though we tend to go in to the city center of Phnom Penh and explore in the hours we aren't teaching.

One of the things that helps is that we’re all readers. We’ve been exchanging books since we got here, which is great because in the past two weeks, I’ve gone through all three of the books I brought and half of one that a previous volunteer left here. Reading is probably the best pastime available to us- we don’t get out often enough to buy that many movies, and even when we want to watch one it’s hit or miss on whether the quality is decent and if the movie will even play at all. I’m just excited to read something that I want to read and actually be able to enjoy it for the first time since like high school.

One of the teachers here has also agreed to start teaching a Khmer class on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays so we can learn. I’m really excited- so far my Khmer abilities can barely take me past a simple greeting, and I’d really like to get better.

Anyway I have to teach soon and I'm not sure what I'm teaching yet (this is the norm because they change the system pretty much daily), but I'll try to post again shortly! Miss all of you!!

Love from Cambodia,

Monica