all the emotions

Life since last Monday has been an intense whirlwind.

From cleaning our entire house and finishing packing all on Monday, saying goodbye to our final (for now, from me), to then diving headfirst into all the beginnings of my new position and just beginning to resurface to prepare to say goodbye to Topher, I'm FEELING ALL THE FEELINGS.

Feeling them all so much that I'm really not even in a place to begin to process which ones I'm feeling at which moments, and I'm not really at all emotionally prepared to bid farewell to my husband and a large portion of the Volunteer friends I've made this upcoming Wednesday.

Tonight, as I vigorously typed away on a tab in my excel planning document, my host mom called. 

Just to say hello, ya know?  Catch up.  Ask me if Chris would be returning to Takeo before he headed home.  Ask if I was too busy or taking time to rest.

Tuesday, our final day at site as Volunteers, was more than I imagined.  Hilarious, loving, and bitterly, sweetly sad.  I wish there was a better way to explain how it manifested than to say 'everyone was crying as we climbed into our taxi' but that's the simple reality of the situation.


Less than a week after pulling away, and I'm already looking forward to returning during some downtime on Sunday evenings to visit my Khmer family.

A family meal is a family meal is a family meal.

Family portrait time.  Happier than we look, I swear.

The last meal of delicious fried pork ribs, large ant and larvae, small fried fish, and yummy soup made with chicken we had leftover from a grocery purchase in Phnom Penh.

I will forever be trying to make those kids laugh.

today and a few weeks ago

Today I said goodbye (until Monday, for a hot minute) to the trainees that I have taught for the last two years.  The school had a lovely graduation lunch for them, wherein I got to sit with eight men I didn't know, and Topher.  ;)  But it was fun to see them all so excited and celebrating.

Tonight, we gave our family a series of farewell gifts.  We had so many little things that we put them in a basket and had a great thirty minutes watching the kids exclaim over pages of stickers, a chocolate bar just for them, and lots of other little things.  And then our host mother started to cry and it was just too much.  It feels inauthentic to just say we're going to miss them.  They truly welcomed us to this country and gave us a literal and figurative home.

Tomorrow, Chris and I are headed to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat for the third and last time.  (Though it may seem like we were just there according to these photos, that's all an illusion. An illusion, I tell you!)

A few weeks back, Chris and I took part in something that's quickly becoming a tradition amongst PCVs here: we took Khmer wedding photos.

This one above is quite the most traditional; it's very rare to see smiles in these kinds of photos. As much as we tried to fight it, you can't keep the smiling American down for too long.

The process from going from everyday to THIS was quite intense.  It took three hours for the two outfit and hair changes, application of makeup and general posing. Three hours!  Luckily, the studio was air conditioned, so it was quite pleasant.

Well, except for those eyebrows. They were drawn so intensely that Chris kept telling me to stop scowling at me.

I wasn't.

Though 'funny' photos aren't typical for Cambodians, the studio we went to had seen enough PCVs that after we took a few normal ones, the photographer asked us if we wanted to pose for some funny ones.  Who are we to say no?

This last one is our host nieces' and nephew's favorite.  We printed a copy just for them.  Never seen a smile so big.

****

Huge thank you to my real and online friends who took a moment to respond to yesterday's post!  When I re-read the post, it got very close to a pity party, but it still means a lot that so many of you shared how you've been with me throughout this experience, and more importantly, enjoyed it.  So thank you. A lot.

one wonder: the welcoming crew

These two little rascals, nearly every day without fail, welcoming us home from wherever we hail, morning, noon and night.

How they love to 'help us' with our bikes.  How, two years later, they are big enough to ride their own bikes, and sometimes even hitch a ride on the wire seats on ours as we slowly ride in each evening.

How their heads loved to pop up right at this window before lunch or dinner, usually while we worked on something computer related for Peace Corps, or a project, and would get our attention by just saying 'Aunt! Uncle!'

Their laughter and the hollers of 'Ma!' all the live long day.

Them.

**I've decided to capture, as it strikes my fancy, the small things about the Kingdom of Wonder (Cambodia) that I want to remember, that I love, that drive me crazy.  Mostly small vignettes, hopefully with a picture or two.  And all of them, my personal wonders from two wonderful years in the Kingdom of Cambodia.  This is the first.**

ah yes, where were we...

 Coming up for air...

deep breath...

breathing.

Oh June, how you've done me in already!

So, apparently, I have reached the point where it is time to say goodbye to the place I've called home for the last two years (until I return to the same province to train new Volunteers in four weeks), and my body and mind seem to be resisting.

Ye olde brain has decided to send lots of signals to my nerves and emotional centers that the appropriate response is frustration for no reason? And el body threw a violent protest a few days back, making itself clear every twenty minutes that it did not agree with whatever was going on, and it would make itself heard by burning itself from the inside out, allowing itself to be sat on by ten elephants simultaneously and emptying itself of everything that existed within.

Or, that's how it's going around here lately.

How are you?

Who are you out there?  I try not to do too much blog-navel-gazing (talking about the blog on the blog to people who read the blog), but as I inch closer to this returning home thing, I wonder: is there anyone who has followed along on this Cambodian journey the entire time? Anyone left from the days when I told rando stories about our rando life that I found somewhat funny?  I don't pay attention to traffic, and the visible decline of comment notification emails hasn't been too noticeable without a smart phone for two years.  And yet, I wonder. 

Is it true?  "They" tell us no one will care about this experience, this life we led, as much as we have.  Some will ask us, in passing, without realizing or wanting the time needed for a full answer. 

Are the imperceptible, tiny changes I've begun to notice about myself felt here? Can you read them between the lines, in the words?

This is all very blog-life-existential.  Let's move away before this becomes a very strange thing.

June thus far has been quite the amalgamation.  Camp GLOW (2nd Annual!), myriads of actual end of service appointments- medical, language and otherwise, fun things like this:

and an assortment of goodbyes and illness and learning how to eat again.

That about sums it up?

I'll have to get into more detail because that second picture just begs for more, doesn't it? And oh, but there is more.

But on a final note for today, one of the trainees I've taught for two years made it very clear she wanted to find me on facebook as we took pictures this morning.

"You know, because I want you to tell me the good news someday," she said as she patted my stomach and giggled.

No pressure at all.

And that's Wednesday, folks.