School Field Trip!

Last Wednesday, 66 kids, my vice school director, two other teachers, and I took a field trip to Phnom Penh, so the students could learn first hand about their history. If they could pay the muy mun brahm (15 thousand riel, about $3.75), they could go. Not an expensive price to pay for all the places we visited, but the cost still prevented many from being able to go. Over the course of the day we visited the Royal Palace, the National Museum, The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and a well-known pagoda and touristy area called Wat Phnom.

The day of the field trip, we met at my school director’s house at 6AM. I should have known that if we were “planning” to meet at 6AM, this meant that most of the kids wouldn’t show up until closer to 7, and we wouldn’t actually leave until 7:30. We filled three rented busses, squished two to a seat, and set off. I sat wedged between the driver, Ongkean (vice director), and his daughter, which offered a perfect view of every time on-coming traffic decided to veer into our lane at the last minute to pass the car in front of them…

Getting ready to go

Surprisingly still in one piece by the time we got there, we got off the now-stifling bus and started our journey at the Royal Palace, where, having already paid, we bypassed the lines of tourists and walked right in. We were given a guided tour, and while I only understood bits and pieces of it, the immaculate landscaping and golden-tiered buildings were enough to hold my attention.

Established in 1866 by King Norodom, the Royal Palace has undergone many renovations over the years, especially after the destruction it experienced during the Khmer Rouge.

Moonlight Pavilion, which serves as the stage for performances of traditional Khmer dance

It’s kind of hard to believe a place this pristine and lavish can be allowed to prosper in the midst of Phnom Penh’s general grime, but it’s sign of the wealth that used to be prevalent in Cambodia, and so not taken for granted by Khmer who appreciate any mark of affluence.

Stupa near the great halls

Outside the National Museum

Sprig of camellia blossoms handed to passersby in the museum. Think this is a lovely touch and American museums would do well to take a page out of Cambodia's book to breathe more life into museums!

a couple of my grade 10ers, outside the museum

After learning something about Cambodia’s preserved history at the Royal Palace, and the National Museum (home to Angkor-era attire of kings and queens and other artifacts from the time period), and stopping at Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh’s namesake, we made our way to Tuol Sleng, the museum that recognizes a part of history most Khmer prefer not to remember: the Khmer Rouge. During the Khmer Rouge, Tuol Sleng served as a prison for those accused of crimes against Pol Pot and his regime. Before it was converted for this horrible purpose, it used to be a school. During the Khmer Rouge, however, it was the brutal site of unlawful persecution, the handlebars of a jungle gym aiding in water boarding, classrooms transformed into rooms for interrogation and torture.

Holding cells for prisoners

Of Tuol Sleng’s 20,000 inmates, only 7 survived.

Tuol Sleng is not a place you visit more than once, and having been there already, I decided not to endure it again and met back up with the group afterwards.

It had been a long day, and we were all physically and mentally exhausted. Being near a body of water is always rejuvenating- we drove to the riverside and sat near the junction of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, sipping on Fantas and letting the breeze rekindle our spirits. At this point I thought our trip was coming to a close, but we still had one more stop—Dreamland— a kind of amped up county fair trying to pass as an amusement park. 

The kids COULD NOT have been more excited about this… So we went, paid our 2000 riel (50 cents) to get in, and at the strict orders of the grown-ups to be back at the bus in FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, we frantically rushed around, trying to get our money’s worth. Now, in my eyes, this would mean going on as many rides as possible, stuffing ourselves with cotton candy and getting sick on the tilt-a-whirl. To my students, however, this merely meant walking around aimlessly, calmly absorbing the surrounding over-stimulation with a disinterested eye… I think this had more to do with lack of funds than anything else (you have to pay an additional 2000 riel for each ride), but it still totally surprised me and shook up any preconceived notion of how “normal” teenagers react to this kind of scene.

I’m blaming this (and poor textbooks and Jurassic Park reruns on Khmer TV) for why my dad asked me if there are dinosaurs in America.

A group of 10^th grade girls and I decided to see what the butterfly garden had to offer, which turned out to be not much: not only were there NO butterflies, but most of the plants were fake… And not one carnivorous plant in the room.

Anyway, as fun as it was to watch other people playing bumper cars and riding the Ferris wheel, we had to call it a day at some point. We loaded up the busses and started our journey home…

Chinese New Year

Today marks the start of Chinese New Year, a holiday celebrated by the large segment of the Khmer community that’s of Chinese descent. My co-teacher/Khmer tutor is half Chinese, so he’s celebrating, along with my ming (aunt) Ohn, whose mom is Chinese. In honor of the occasion my market is a much more festive scene than usual with lots of fruit not typically available—Jazz apples (Hyvee, are you responsible for this??), bright orange oranges (usually they’re green), juicy grapes, and a variety of others. There are also oodles of noam (cakes), ranging from the typical bland but likeable enough muffins and sticky rice cakes to more glamorous offerings like crown shaped cakes with a cherry in the middle.

Ohn has been busy for the past week preparing for the three-day festival, getting up at three in the morning to start cooking noam, not finishing until six or seven at night. One day she cooked ten batches of muffins (each batch takes about an hour and a half and probably produces about fifty muffins). I came over and there were ten or so people helping her, working systematically at different stations: one person churning the batter, someone filling muffin tins, someone packaging the cooked muffins, another team of people working on the noompia (biscuit filled with milled peanuts), and yet another group working on the an soam jay— one person laying out the banana leaves, another spreading sticky rice to roll with boiled bananas and coconut. I was amazed at the efficiency of the operation and tried to slink out as quietly as I could.

Extended family, in from Phnom Penh for the day. That’s Mama, Ohn’s mom, in the background.

Although the Chinese New Year isn’t an officially recognized Khmer holiday, Khmer never miss an opportunity to party, so everyone takes time off anyway to relax and be with family. My host brother, who I’ve only met once previously, has come home from Phnom Penh for a few days to hang out at the house, taking my mom for rides to the market (a whopping 2k away) in his shiny black Toyota so she can show him off to her friends.

Offerings to the ancestors: plates of fruit, platters of entire roasted chickens, dried squid, spring rolls, noam, and some Coke and Fanta in case they're thirsty

Praying for good health, happiness, and wealth in the new year.

the whole smorgasbord

Ohn’s adorable niece

Ohn’s adorable nephew, whose definitely gotten pudgier since I last posted a pic of him

I’m not sure if this badass All-Star pose was intentional or just fantastic luck

A Wedding in Pictures

Invitation: “Leah Mory Mortonson”

Mai khnyom! (my Khmer mom)- Walking to the “hi joom noon” (wedding procession), 6:30 AM.

In front of the groom’s house, which has now been transformed into party central…

“You’re so tall and I’m so short!”

Waiting for the groom and his best men to arrive

Carrying my contribution: sticky rice wrapped around pork and then bundled in a banana leaf

Boc khnyom! (my Khmer dad!)

About to start the procession! It’s starting to get hot…

Music is playing, men are sporting sampots,  we’ve got our trays of gifts and are ready to make the pilgrimage.

Aaaaaaand breakfast! Rice porridge with shrimp, bean sprouts, and a spicy red pepper sauce, followed by fruit and sticky rice cakes filled with banana, peanuts, and coconut.

A break in the afternoon to relax (and give a test to my lucky students), and then it was back for more festivities around 3:30.

…Which means more FOOD! Shrimp with pickled vegetables and crushed peanuts, roasted duck, beef stew with mint and more… Yum! J

Day Trip to Prey Veng!

Today my family and I took a day trip to Prey Veng. It was a nice change of scenery and I was able to buy a few things too- some more soymilk, a couple ripe mangoes (even though mango season hasn’t started yet- I’m not sure where they came from), and some apples.

The morning got off to an interesting start, before we left. I woke up, and once again, spotted the behemoth of a spider that’s been inhabiting my room for a while now. I ran downstairs to tell my dad—“Bon tope khnyom mein bing beyung tom!!”—who armed himself with a kroma and came up to help. My mom came with him too, and when, to my dismay, I discovered the spider was not in the same spot it was when I’d gone downstairs, they started creeping around, swatting at the wall and my desk. My dad spotted it behind the desk and they both went for it—my dad inching his kroma in the space between the desk and the wall and my mom using a duster to poke at it. But this spider is apparently cleverer than us and scrambled through a crack in the wall to Waitchicka’s (a girl who lives at my house and works at the health center with my dad) room.

This is not the first time he’s escaped. I first spotted him hanging out on my wall, near my world map one day and ran screaming to my dad to kill him. He got away, but not before scuttling into a reusable bag and befouling my peanut butter and oatmeal with one to eight of his disgusting hairy legs. Another time I once again spotted him, in one of the drawers of my desk, body fully splayed to about the size of your outstretched hand over one of my EFC books. This time I thought maybe I’d try to trap him myself so I could later brag about it to my family, but alas, he eluded me once more.

I really, really dislike spiders. If they’re small, I can tolerate them, but once they get to be sand dollar sized and bigger, I turn into a small child. My family thinks this is pretty funny, and my mom never fails to ridicule me when I whine about them, since to her the ones I find predatory and terrifying are mere child’s play. And really, they probably are here in Cambodia, considering I once saw one of my student’s little brothers dragging around a dead crab on a string for enjoyment. Not knowing where the spider is has put me on edge, though. Every ruffle of the bed sheet in the wind or move of a gecko on the wall is enough to send me jumping up to grab the nearest makeshift weapon I can find.

Look at its eyes!! Pure evil!

Anyway, back to our daytrip to Prey Veng. We got there around 8:30 or so and stopped at the TELA (air-conditioned gas station that sells Western food stuffs) so I could get soymilk, and my dad could get ketchup, which they ended up not having. He recently discovered he loves ketchup, when I made eggs, potatoes with cumin and paprika, and toasted baguettes for dinner one night and shared my stash which, thus far, I've just used when I cook at my friend Ohn's house. My dad pounded on the back of the bottle until what amounted to a serving size of meat pooled onto his plate and basically ate ketchup with a dash of eggs and a couple of dice sized potatoes for dinner, declaring ketchup a “most delicious” condiment (I couldn't agree more and will encourage this to no end. I'm hoping we'll soon be eating our white rice with ketchup).

Going to the TELA with my family was pretty funny and I had fun watching my mom ogle all of the products, intrigued by the Pringles and checking out all the soft drinks.

After TELA, we separated—me going to the bank and then the post office and my mom and Waitchicka going to the market. I wandered over to the market after running my other errands (post office was closed), and let the chaos of it wash over me. After only frequenting my small market for a while, anything comes as a shock (and Phnom Penh is another world entirely), so the busyness of it was stimulating. Ripe mangoes (have I mentioned it’s not even mango season yet?!), fried bananas, freshly plucked and de-entrailed chickens being prodded by customers, eels squirming in a nearby tub, people haggling over prices, impatient children tugging at their moms’ sarongs and the smell of fish and car exhaust hanging heavily in the air.

One last stop for tuk bang baw ("tomato water," aka ketchup) where I’d spotted it in a stall in the market earlier and we were off, our short day trip coming to a close over noodles and coffee in a small restaurant. The drive back was uneventful, but we were all contented with our purchases and our morning outing that provided a needed break from the ordinary.

**UPDATE: Monster spider is no more! Death by Raid! Waitchicka found him in her room and proudly  displayed him to me, shriveled up on the tip of a knife. Yay!

New Year's in Sihanoukville

New Year's 2012

New Years in Sihanouk was an experience I will not soon forget. Located on the Gulf of Thailand, this beach haven is known to tourists for its white, pristine beaches, awesome night life, and of course, that traditional Khmer hospitality for which Cambodia is famous.

On Friday, after a 6 ½ hour bus ride from my village to Kampong Sam, I met up with PCVs Heather (who lives in Sihanouk), Amelia, and Amie. We caught up over dinner and beer, sharing stories from site after being apart for so long. It was refreshing to talk with them- to gain some perspective by hearing what other people have been up to- and share accomplishments and frustrations. I think I most make sense of my own experiences when I talk them over with other people. After we’d essentially closed out the restaurant, we headed down to the beach for a while to breathe in that sweet, salty air and dig our toes in the sand…

The next morning, I went for a brief run along the ocean. There was a festival going on for New Year’s, which included a race, so for the first time in all of the five months I’ve been here, I saw Khmer people willingly running… That was definitely a first. For once, I didn’t feel totally out of place and gawked at as I ran by in my running garb.

Amelia, Amie, Heather, and I went to breakfast at a place called “Sister’s” a restaurant I’ve mentioned in a previous post because there’s another one located in Kampot, the Oceanside city I went to during training. Run by a woman who grew up in an orphanage in Sihanouk and learned to cook from an American who volunteered there, she vowed to open up a restaurant someday and employ kids from the local orphanage, teaching them skills that will open up opportunities for them to have better futures than they otherwise might. She now has restaurants in Sihanouk, Kampot, and Phnom Penh, and has helped dozens of girls improve their livelihoods.

Around 11 we headed down to the beach. Can I just say how excited I was at this point?? There have been I don’t know how many times where I’ve thought to myself “I wonder if I were to just hang out for a while in the bath basin, what my family might think…” Here was my chance. I didn’t waste time. Dumped my stuff on a nearby lounge chair and ran in, reveling in the salty, cool water. It was heaven. For most of the morning, we didn’t do too much. Mainly just laid around, limbs hanging off of those comfy padded chairs, jumping in the water when needed.

What’s truly amazing to me about this trip is I actually got to feel anonymous for a while: something I took for granted and even resented in the states. Living in a small, rural village for a while has taught me to appreciate a good dose of anonymity, though. Responding to every “HELLO!” screamed desperately across the street as I ride my bike through town or putting up with neighbors coming over for the sole purpose of watching me eat can be a little taxing sometimes. So it goes without saying that I enjoyed getting lost in the crowd. But I did blow my cover at one point when my dad called me and I started speaking Khmer, much to the surprise of every Khmer person in the near vicinity.

Needless to say after two days of beaching and taking in the cultural offerings of Sihanouk- both daytime and nighttime- we were all pretty spent and anyway, had to face the inevitability of heading back to reality, but now with a restored energy.