I'm sweating, how are you?

Hellooooo! First of all, I want to say THANK YOU for all of your donations! I left my charger in Phnom Penh a week ago, and have been without my computer and the internet for a week, so imagine my surprise at checking my PC Projects page and finding that over $1200 has already been donated to my project! I cannot adequately express to you my gratitude for this… Your support means so much, and literally makes this project possible. Thank you.

Since the last time I updated, I went to Phnom Penh for St. Patrick’s Day, to celebrate with fellow volunteers (and, of course, partake in drinking some festively green beer in honor of the occasion). I got back on Monday, and found that there was no school for the entire week because the 12th graders had their national exams. Why the entire school had to close down so that just the 12th graders could take their exams beats me… But I wasted no time in pursuing other ventures- I rode my bike to my friend Diana’s site, about 38k from me, to help her with her World Map Project, so I could get a better idea of how mine will go. Hers is actually the first other volunteer’s home I’ve visited, and it was so nice to see how another volunteer’s “home dynamic” is other than mine. Diana’s is very different- her family is a lot more chatty than mine for one, and also quite a bit younger. Her sister knows a little English, which, for more reasons than one, Diana and I both found wildly entertaining…

So visiting Diana’s site occupied a day and a half of my free time… But that still left the entire end of the week, and this whole week, which I have today learned is also free from teaching. Wow! I may go crazy. As it turns out, since it is so close to Khmer New Year (actually not that close- it starts on April 13 and lasts, technically, for only three days), the students have simply stopped coming to school. I somehow was not aware of this (I'm usually not notified of these sorts of things until they're already happening so I guess it's typical), and showed up to school this morning in my sampot only to be greeted by the few teachers who were hanging around for no other reason than to get out of the house for a couple of hours. Sigh.

In other news, it’s HOT. Like really hot. Like, so hot that even Khmer are uncomfortable. Back when I first got to site and was a whiny baby about the weather—back when it was a balmy 85 degrees and that was too much for me—I remember complaining to my mom in the late afternoon, “k’dow naa!” (it’s SOOOOO hot!) Now it seems so silly to me that I could have wasted those words’ meaning on such pleasantries. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m up to three bucket baths a day now, and those are what I use to mark time. Bucket bath one is simply taken out of habit- it's how I start my day. It's even still kind of nippy at this time. Number two is by far the most needed. It’s 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I’ve been writhing around in my bed, trying, and likely failing, to read, trying, and likely failing, not to notice the sweat dripping down my back and down my arms from my armpits (gross, I know.) Bucket bath number three marks the end of a long, hard battle. It is at the same time a kind of victory over the day, and the calm before the storm that will come tomorrow. Do me a favor next time you’re in an overly air-conditioned mall or grocery store, ok? Just go ahead and bottle some of that up to send over to me. :)

dinner I made for my family- couscous with potatoes, onions, green peppers, black eyed peas, and tomatoes. Yes, we ate it with ketchup.

Diana's students drawing the grid for the World Map Project

cow

somehow Angkor tastes better when it’s green.