of s'mores and second goals

Last night, Topher and I were finally able to accomplish something we've been working towards for several months now.  Something we've been planning since we first asked my mother to send us chocolate, and marshmallows and graham cracker, which she obliged in a package around Christmastime.

Last night, we finally made s'mores with our host family.

It started as a craving when asked what we'd like in a package, and grew to a greater purpose when we realized this could be a truly fantastic, very "American" experience we could share with our beautiful Khmer family.

Although our original plan was to roast the marshmallows over our family's ceramic fire pit outside, we discovered (after weeks of tweaking to ensure it worked just right) that our gas stove worked just as well!

So we invited our nieces, nephew and sister into our home after dinner to partake in some fun of making a 'bong-aim America,' or American dessert.

It was a roaring success, I must say.


The best reflection of the enjoyment is seen in the imperfect lower right picture of the cluster below.

 After we had devoured our sugary snack, the kids played on our small whiteboard.  I took the opportunity to quickly help them visually see the name of the treat we'd just made.

In the Peace Corps world, we talk about our work within the framework of three goals.  

My primary work fulfills goal number one, but it's the daily joy I find in goals two and three that keep me excited to wake up each morning here in Cambodia.  A lot of my work relative to goal one often leaves me feeling impotent and out of control (thanks Cher!), mainly due to existing bureaucratic, systematic hurdles that exist in the education system here.  But all of my work relative to goals two and three feel meaningful, revelatory, and usually fun.

Which is exactly how I'd describe last night.  I explained to our sister that Americans typically make s'mores while camping and sleeping under the stars, which is why we like to roast marshmallows over the open fire, as we do when we camp.  They may have thought us a bit nuts, but the sweet, sugary end was a delight in and of itself!

What great American dessert would you feel compelled to share with another country?

and that was the weekend!

As I mentioned in my previous post, this weekend held a few big events.  One of these was a float along the Mekong River (something we've done a few times before) with the Acting Director of Peace Corps, the Regional Director of our EMA region and the White House Liaison to the Peace Corps.  Pretty fantastic to meet three stellar, intelligent women and witness a gorgeous sunset.

The Friday before, I attended the wedding of one of Chris' students from the English class he teaches at the Ministry of Planning with our friend and Khmer tutor, Thany.  She looked gorgeous in her traditional wedding shirt and sampot- that yellow made me wish I hadn't stuck with boring white when I made my shirt 18 months ago!

Khmer weddings typically happen at home (infographic comparing weddings coming soon!), and this was no exception.  Except the groom's home is HUGE and clearly quite new.  Not exactly your typical wooden house, it is stone and stucco. The beautiful three level home's yard served as a seating area for guests.

 There is always music at a Khmer wedding, and a live 'orchestra' if it can be afforded!  The orchestra typically includes at least one male singer and at least three female.  This one featured six women and one man, who sang to live music the entire evening.

 You can also see how tables are set with drinks and plates ready to go for guests to be seated.  All ten guests have to be seated before plates (which are typically wrapped in plastic) can be opened, ice can be served and food can be eaten.

 I don't think I'll ever get tired of taking silly self shots in tuk tuks while traipsing around Phnom Penh.  Though, it's safe to say that Topher is pretty much over them, though he continues to humor me.

 Lastly, this weekend was also the 100 day mark since the former King Sihanouk passed away, and 20,000 monks gathered at the Royal Palace to pray for the King's spirit.  They were amassing all along the main roads in Phnom Penh as we made our way to the boat on Saturday evening.  The sea of orange was quite a sight.

All in all, a great weekend! Cheers to Monday!

we just don't do that: a cultural comparison

Happy Friday!  This weekend, the Acting Director of Peace Corps is in town, and I may even get the chance to meet her!  I'm off to join Chris in Phnom Penh bright and early tomorrow morning, after spending the evening attending a wedding of one of his colleagues here in his stead.

I've had this post in drafts for six months at least now, and I finally took the time to put it in an interesting format and share with it you.

These are my reflections on lines of politeness here in Cambodia, versus those in America.  This is definitely NOT an exhaustive list and certainly not an 'absolute truth' kind of list.  It's more of what I've noticed or been told as compared to how we do things, politeness wise, in America.

I've tried to break it down into an easily understood chart.  You can assume that if there is not a star in one country's column, it is not a common practice and the opposite, you can safely assume, happens all the time. I'll leave it at that!

Anything surprise you?

our love, it's older than our beginnings.

We met on a Friday evening, on the twenty third of January, in the year that we would re-elect President W. Bush.  One of those cold evenings where you can see your breath, but there's no snow to make all the cold worth it and you mostly just hurry to wherever it is that your headed.

I hesitate to call it love at first sight (LAFS, if you will) but there was something.  Some unexplainable force working against our better judgement.  That force had been tailing him for a few months already by the time it hit me full in the face that chilly, January evening in upper northwest DC.  It led us to the same obscure corners of campus at the same obscure hours of the day, and it led us to inexplicably seeking out the other's company, even when we had far too many pages to read before class the next day.

If you ask either of us, we're quick to admit that if we'd known that mother fate would discern us capable of finding our forevers at eighteen, we would have laughed, scornfully so, in fact.  Who plants roots with someone before you can even legally drink?  Before you've voted in a presidential election? Before you realize it is certainly far past time to shave off those sideburns and embrace the changing hair landscape that is to come?

The beginning was complicated.  It's always complicated, though, no?  There's never an easy transition when it comes to that strength of just right for you kind of love.  It was messy, and exhilarating, and painful, and it was everything I imagined when I was ten, and more, much, much more.  My Barbie's dramas had nothing on us those first six months.

And when it settled and slowed and solidified that fall, it felt as natural as the green becoming gold on the trees that lined Massachusetts Avenue.  Loving him became as natural as blinking and breathing, and his heart, I carried it with my heart, as if I always had.

My black peacoat, that first official J. Crew purchase, kept me warm that winter, but never as warm as I was right there in my insides, in between those breath-caught lungs and that love drowned heart.  Which might be in the running for the cheesiest thing I've ever written down outside of the journal I kept when I was fourteen, but there it is.

And there it remains, because it's as true today as it was nine years ago.

Love you, Spud, and I always shall.

-Plumpy

need a win

the kindest way to phrase it is that yesterday was very much a "disillusionment" phase kind of cultural-adaptation day.  we'd moved our way out of adjusting and shock, worked our way through assimilation and curiosity, and straight through to that frustrating place where you basically understand the what but the why, that damned why, still escapes you.

yesterday, why was the only question we were left with.

we needed a win.

so we turned to pancakes for lunch, fried chicken for dinner, and s'mores made over our gas 'stove' for dessert.

and after our attempts to drown the day in fat and sugar, we proceeded to fall asleep watching liz lemon's very first season and let her try to make us smile.

and finally, thankfully, it was wednesday.

two truths and a lie

who else is tired of self-indulgent photobooth photos?

Today, I biked to the teacher training center prepared to engage in a rousing game of Two Truths and a Lie with my trainees.  Upon arrival, I used my limited- and - mayhaps - stagnated Khmer reading skills to determine that today, the 14th, was in fact a day for no regular class for students.  This was confirmed various times as I encountered fellow teachers, and so, I retired my game idea until the morrow.

However, last night as I couldn't fall asleep, I found myself thinking up rather elaborate truths and lies to share, and so I present them for your perusal, remark and, most of all, guessing.

...............................

A:
Last week, Chris saw over my shoulder that I was 'exploring' Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  He was intrigued and without very much prodding at all, in fact, he then spent the evening being chosen by a wand and sorted into his house (by the by, do you think Dumbledore would consider age 27 an appropriate time to allow for sorting? you know, because he was concerned that sometimes, we sort too soon?).  From the minute he entered the Pottermore website, I called it: he would be sorted into Gryffindor.  

When he reached the Sorting Ceremony and began to answer the series of questions drafted by her literary majesty, Lady Rowling, I was confronted with bleakest sort of self-awareness as my chosen true love scoffed away the idea of being scared of isolation or the dark, or choosing to walk toward the forest when the ocean is the most perfectly viable option.  And when he was sorted into Gryffindor, I said to myself, Well, self, you've been equally sorted into both Slytherin and Ravenclaw, and we can't have a Gryffindor married to a Slytherin, so that account must be eradicated.  The decision was of course helped along as the newly anointed Roaring Lion in our relationship confirmed that I was definitely of the Ravenclaw sort: wacky but intelligent, witty but erratic.  

And then we dueled.


B:
Just yesterday, I spent two hours reading about my and Chris' moon and planet charts at the time of our birth.  It was like reading a book about my soul, even the squishy bad parts that I wish no one knew.  I even got Chris on board and he was enthralled.  And then we proceeded to have a thirty minute discussion about how everything about our interactions and disagreements can be easily explained because of the location of Pluto and Mars on the day we were born.  We also then referenced the birth charts for the rest of the evening, and I'm ninety-two percent sure it has revolutionized our relationship in ways no one could have imagined.


C:
Today, after I arrived to school and was notified of the cancellation of class, I used the not-so-rare opportunity to swing by Chris' school to see what he was up to.  I found his bike outside of the twelfth grade building, and when he noticed me, he beckoned me in.  I've swung by his class a few times, most usually when a similar occurrence of class-cancelling has happened.  This day, he was just beginning a lesson centered around the heroine of the 12th grade textbook, Sophea, attending her cousin's wedding in Cambodia, and then reception in London (because, you know, Sophea married a Brit.) (The textbooks were drafted and written with significant help from the British Council. Just saying.)


The students were eager to overlook the boring story of Sophea and instead asked for a discussion about marriage in America.  Never ones to disappoint, I cajoled Chris into re-enacting our entire wedding day, from wake up to, ahem, sleep.  From a joyful first look to a tearful walk down the aisle, culminating in a dance party and a send off of bubbles, the students were enthralled and we were asked for a repeat performance each afternoon for the next month, at 2 and 7 pm. They even said they'd pay a .25 cent admission to see it all again.  

We had to turn them down, as we aren't allowed to charge money for our services, and really, that's a performance one just can't repeat on command.

...............................

Your turn!

it is the saddest part of the day, leaving you

Receiving emails about 40% off this and that from your favorite cheap and delicious stores like Forever 21 is just about the saddest thing about living not in America and earning not a non-volunteer wage.

And deleting those sad little emails is the saddest part of my day.

This is me, regretful and sad, for the record:

This is also what I look like when I sing Moon River.  Though in my head I look much more like Audrey, this is more likely the reality.

Two drifters, off to see the world

there's such a lot of world to see...

where yellow glitter and hockey pucks meet (see also: marriage)

Tonight I asked Chris (over the phone, lest we forget that he is still a hundred kilometers away, toiling away to help build a school or some such) (also, when will i revert back to seeing distance in miles again?), I asked him what color I should paint my nails.

You see, I find that painted nails help me keep myself from a terrible, nasty no-good finger related habit of mine.  In related news, I learned today that said habit is actually a form of OCD.  Which makes oh so much sense if you know me at all, it does!

Which is to say that I should actually be somewhat ashamed of that OCD-ish personality of mine, but it's all mine you see, and one can't be ashamed of something that is so distinctly yours.  So, I'm really rather quite an overthinker and overanalyzer and with that comes some leaning toward other forms of overdoing things.

And so.

I asked Chris what color I should paint my nails.  And he said "yellow!" which just so happened to be the exact color I had in my grip and was contemplating applying to my sad, overanalyzed fingers.

Which is all to say that after thirty minutes of painting my nails a nice mellow yellow and sprinkling yellow glitter on top (a gift! from Cambodia!), I realized that I had up and dispersed the joy of glitter...well, rather everywhere.

Which wouldn't be much of a problem if I had painted my nails somewhere easily washed down, like, say the bathroom.

But see now, our bathroom here has no sink.  I have no cabinet top with which to rest my fingers as I color them.  So I did the next best thing.

In bed while I watched My Fair Lady.

(Just you wait, Henry Higgins! Just you wait!)

Can we just comment for a second on the lovely Audrey Hepburn in this role as Eliza Doolittle?  Did you know that she was not told that she was to be dubbed for her singing, and she took voice lessons and everything to prepare for the role and then they upped and let her sing her heart out, only to cover her voice in nearly every single song with another woman's (a lovely woman's) voice.  Poor Audrey.  So humanizing, that story.  Makes Audrey very much a woman just like me, a woman who can be disappointed and frustrated and screwed over.  So humanizing.

See, what I'm doing here is burying a little tidbit that concerns the whole gist of this post, I am, right down here in the very middle.  Hoping that el Topher will just skim the text of this little update and move on to the next part where I'll talk about hockey.

So, pressing yellow glitter on top of your mellow yellow nails while a fan blows directly at you pretty much results in glitter everywhere.  Glitter. Everywhere.

I am prepared to wake up tomorrow with glitter smashed all over my face.

And I did try to clean it up, I did!  Except that somewhat squishy nails don't make for a very easy cleaning attempt.  So there were some swipes but I think I'll just leave it for the morning, you know?

Which brings me to hockey.  Lest Chris reads this and realizes that there is glitter all about our bed, it's up to me to remind him:

I just love hockey!

You see, just a few days ago, the NHL players and the league (and the owners?) reached an agreement.  Because there had been a disagreement? About money?

So, they made an agreement.  And now the season that had been postponed and nearly forgotten (it was supposed to start up back in October) will begin!  And it's promising to be wonderful, even though my most favorite player will not return.  But Chris, remember, no matter how much I love Semin, you are my most favoritest person and if you played hockey, I'd get your name on my jersey.

Which would be silly, because it'd be my name too and people would say "aren't you all conceited?" Which of course, I would be because I'm married to an athlete like you! And Ovechkin is our best friend, so yeah, we're arrogant with good reason!

You know, I once wrote a "poem" about hockey.  It was the third season in a row that we (we= Washington Capitals) had suffered a devastating loss in the playoffs.  And if you know a hockey fan, having a number one seeded team that has won the President's Trophy for 2?3? years in a row but can't seem to make it to the Stanley Cup is pretty much the worst fate for said hockey fan.  It's almost as bad as being the team with the lowest points in the season (which, matter of fact, was the Capitals fate for the previous three seasons.) 

The year prior to that poem was perhaps the saddest one of all. We were the number one seed.  It was our  year. Plus, it was our wedding year!  Good luck all around.

And then we lost to the number 8 seed.  After winning the first three games in row, we then lost the next four.

It was the most devastating of days.  It was the Thursday before our wedding.  My daddy-o had just gone to pick up a Panera lunch order for everyone crammed inside our little townhome- bridesmaids and a mom mad rushing to make 125 sugar cookie favors, which was a five step process from ingredients through baking to fondant covering and fondant edible-glitter covering.  And poor Chris was watching the game from the couch and the moment that final buzzer buzzed and we had really, truly lost our chance at the Cup...it was just the saddest moment.  It was the worst wedding present ever, and I tried to console Chris but I couldn't get the edible glitter of my hands, and I just knew glitter on his head would just make it worse.

And we're back to the glitter!  It's amazing.

So, in sum.

Yellow nails = Poor Audrey Hepburn = Glitter everywhere = A mutual love of hockey = Edible glitter after a devastating year = I just know we're gonna do it this year!

(Did I mention that I just LOVE it when they thrown down the gloves and they use a combination of punching and tumbling to draw blood to inspire their teammates? It's just like a poem, watching a fight on the ice. Dreamy, it is.)

C-A-P-S! Caps! Caps! Caps!

(seriously, i'm just covered in glitter.  i might need to use actual shampoo to get this shiz out.)

a series of goals

Thumbs up for goals!

For a very important week.

For the next five days, at least, Christopher will be in a nearby province, exchanging his skills to gain new ones.  As he says it, performing some hard labor.  As I say, filling up his work-soul with all that it craves and more.

I've established for myself some big goals for this big week where I'll be pretty much on my own.

Firstly,
I shall attempt not to starve.  To avoid this, I've asked myself what I used to do before we lived together and Chris made nearly every item of food I consumed.

The answer? Pasta. And crackers. And cheese. And things from bags, mostly.  I'm going to throw some fresh fruit in there, because one doesn't need to do much peel a banana.  So, I'm stocking up on convenient foods here in Phnom Penh so that I can meet my daily caloric need.

Secondly,
I shall read.  I have an impossibly high stack of books on my Peace Corps issued trunk that has been haunting me for months.  I will get through some of them.  With my earplugs in so that I don't think that every single noise after the sun sets is a killer come to get me.

(This is a legitimate concern, if you're inside my mind late at night anytime past six p.m.)

Thirdly,
I will create spreadsheets to my heart's content.  I have three on the docket, including:

One to organize all of the job searching-and-applying that I'm about to dive into in these coming months (the triumphant return is approaching and I can almost taste it!)

One for the purpose of ranking and sorting all of the James Bond movies ever made, a task that Chris and I have set for ourselves before we make said triumphant return.  We are going to watch every single one and assess it on the rubric I'll make this week.  Items to be assessed currently include: Quality of Villain; General Awesomeness of Bond Girl: Swagger; Believability as International Man of Mystery/Martini Drinker; Intensity of Fight Scenes and (for me), Level of Human Elements that Make Kate Want to Watch.

and

One for actual working time, for budget planning for our hopefully-upcoming second Camp GLOW.

---

I have quite a history for setting lofty personal goals for time when I'm alone, so I've little doubt that all items are going to be accomplished.

I mean, if we're being honest, Chris will probably arrive home to me passed out lying in a pile of ramen noodle wrappers watching Monster's Inc, which I'm currently downloading to my iTunes.

So, you know,

we'll see.

like a goldfish

I have now officially seen the Taylor Lautner "thriller" Abduction thrice on Asian HBO.

There are a number of things I have come to realize about myself and my life because of these viewings:

1. I can recognize Dermot Mulroney's voice within three words, and every single time I always wonder where that scar came from.  I imagine a variety of scenarios, ranging from a baseball sliding-into-home accident when he was in little league, to a knife fight in a bowling alley a la Grease 2.  I could easily look it up, methinks, because "Dermot Mulroney scar" was the second thing that pre-populated Google as I typed his name to ensure I was spelling it correctly.  But it's a just a little better, not knowing, you know?  I like the mystery of it all.

B. I haven't decided my thoughts on Taylor Lautner yet.

3. Okay, so I think I still like Zac Efron as a teenage idol more.  He can sing and all. But he doesn't have those muscles?  And Taylor always seems to be squinting into the sun? Which makes him a bit more mysterious, less boy-next-door, like Zac? And I don't think Taylor would ever try to pull off skinny jeans, which speaks to my soul and impresses the teenaged girl living inside my movie-selecting-hypothalamus-gland.

D.  The girl in the movie and her bangs sent me into a deep spiral of eyebrow hatred for approximately one week, culminating in me declaring to Topher that I'm pretty sure I've waxed and plucked my eyebrows into such submission that I'll never get to have those Brooke Shield-like eyebrows that I so deplored in seventh grade but now secretly kind of want back, I mean, a few days a week at least.  And I'm a bit sad about all that there, which led me to ask Topher:

Do you think my eyebrows are too skinny, and do you like my eyebrows even a little bit at all?

To which he said:
Your eyebrows? I don't even notice them.  Unless that left one gets that little tuft that it sometimes does and makes them all uneven looking.

You can envision the wail that my hypothalamus gland let loose after that, oh yes I bet you can.

(I'm still moving on from this eyebrow episode.  Good thoughts for my speedy recovery are welcomed and shall be returned equally so upon the commencement of your next very own physical appearance non-freakout, as dictated by the whomever-therefore-reads-my-blog-clearly-cares-for-my-ramblings-and-I-shall-care-in-return-unto-them guidelines and rules.)

All of this to say, that you're probably asking how one has the time to wonder so deeply about one's eyebrows?

Too which I say, when you've been mysteriously ill for three weeks and have a hotel room to yourself for a weekend in which you are attempting to convince your body to provide all the necessary...items for your medical officer to attempt to diagnose you, you have have a lot of time.

And so.

You also do things like:

A. Make ridiculous lists like the preceding one, and this one, too.

2. Spread out every article you brought on your adventure onto every available surface so that when your husband shows up so that you don't have to spend the entire weekend alone, he says, for the thousandth time since you met nine years ago, "you're just like a goldfish, expanding to the space that you're given!"  To which you reply "when in Rome!" which is the universally acknowledged non sequitur a wife is to use in reply to all statements ever made by silly Tophers and husbands alike.

C. Spend hours thinking about how you seem to have lost your quest for perfection, a fatal flaw that has dogged you since birth.  This occurs in the moment wherein you realize you don't actually need to achieve the best language score ever! Especially in a language you enjoy speaking, but one that will likely very rarely ever again be useful to you.  This, in turn, becomes a realization that renders one of your Thirty before 30 goals essentially nonsensical, causing you to question what you're doing on this little corner of the internet anyway? Until you realize, who cares! You write this for you and that cute little kid with blue eyes that you dreamed about the other day that left a strange feeling in your arms when you woke up! Huzzah!

4. Realize that your desire to give up seeking perfection falls more in line with your Ravenclaw self (knowledge for knowledge's sake! seek out the interesting and don't be afraid to be your oddsboddikins self!) than your Slytherin one (achieve greatness at any cost!), causing you to sorrowfully relinquish your ties to said Slytherin Pottermore account.  You give a mournful prayer in honor of both your former JD-PhD-CEO-seeking-self and your attempts at even pretending you were somewhat of an adult.

Finally, it should be noted that a weekend alone in a hotel room means that you get to turn your air conditioner up really high, wear a hoodie with awesome thumb holes so no cold air can enter!, climb into bed sans-pants-but-with-hoodie and watch Abduction all over again and then type up a seemingly important blog post that is actually a delicious essay about nothing in particular, except to say:

so this is where I am and how I'm doing so far this new year.

How are you?

Welcome 2013

This is going to sound trite, but I can scarcely believe that we've launched full into 2013 already. 

2012 was an immense year for me personally, as I had more time than ever to spend with my thoughts and myself and who I am at this point in my life.  It was a year of incredible frustrations professionally and immense growth and happiness personally.

Though you're rarely supposed to say it out loud, I began last year questioning my choice to 'put my life on hold' in America and join the Peace Corps.  I think many of the people who serve in this capacity have many doubts. These doubts, I've found, follow one of three routes: they dissipate over time, are proven false, or become even more solidified and result in an early return to home.

Over the course of the year, I moved slowly from the mindset of my life being 'on hold' to recognizing and relishing in the fact that me, here, in Cambodia: this is life.  This is me living, and that's why it's so concurrently, exquisitely, painful and relieving.

Pain was the unrequited search to find my place and meaning in my assigned role here, and relief was the moment when I expanded my breadth and scope of what my role is and found all the joy and peace I'd been missing when limiting myself.  Pain was the nagging self-doubt and questioning of the last four years of professional work and its value in this new world, this new culture, this new life.  Relief was the moment standing in front of thirty new teachers and realizing that, there, that's it for me.  That is the nexus of comfort and challenge and what I want for the rest of my professional days.

When I was a teacher, I was constantly questioning, and if you ask Chris, I was very often emotional.  When I was supporting new teachers, I saw all that pain and growth I had experienced for two years reflected back to me in the eyes of the eighty new teachers I supported.  A friend and co-worker, in the same role as I, framed that pain and emotion in this way:

Change is painful.

What I was doing, what they were doing -educating those amazing, trying young people - was inherently painful, day in and day out, because those young people were changing me, educating me, helping me discover my own truth.

Change is painful.

2012 was an exquisitely painful year. 

It's also rather trite for me to say that I can't fully get behind resolutions, as I've never really made them or kept them.  I believe it began in fifth grade, as my classmates one by one shared their resolutions for the new year and I anxiously awaited the moment when I would have to share what I hoped to change about myself that upcoming year.  I said that I had set the goal to become less bossy.  It was met with such exclamations of joy and support that I stubbornly wanted to abandon all desires to meet said goal in that exact moment just because others were so on board.

Which clearly could be the beginning of a great exercise in self psychoanalysis, but I digress.

If 2012 was about change and all of the joy and discomfort that accompanies it,

2013, I hope, will be about adjusting my response.  More thoughtful, more considered, more positive.

Welcome 2013.