A Vlog for the Weekend

Cheers to your weekend! I knocked this vlog together this Saturday night (wild things happening here at the home of Kate and Topher, as you can tell) and hope you'll enjoy it, if you please.

It's mostly a rambling of nothings, like how I'm feeling two weeks after my arrival back in the U.S., what I'll be doing tomorrow (Sunday) and when you can expect to see pup Boomer's face 'round these parts!

So, how are you?

ten days home and all you get are these awesome iphone pics

What have you been up to this September so far? Drinking lots of pumpkin spice lattes? Enjoying cooler weather? Mourning summer? Smiling at the school buses and kids as they traipse home each afternoon, their backpacks bigger than 2/3 of their bodies?

Or is that just me?

These past ten days home have been...fantastic. Truly. The perfect balance of a social calendar and chill time.  A good avoidance of the boxes I need to unpack with all of my clothes (I'm going to do it tomorrow, I swear!) (I say this to myself every.single.night without fail.) Some time bumming around Washington, D.C., not enough time in Baltimore (yet!), a re-immersion into the U.S. retail world.  A good number of (unsuccessful) attempts to capture a new LinkedIn picture so that people who will work with me/want to hire me will actually recognize me.

Which brings me to this: coming home to fall is exactly what I would have picked if you would have asked me.  If I could just come home to America in the autumn, always, I will die happy.  Something about the chilly crispness in the air brightens my soul and sharpens my senses.  

It definitely has to do with back to school season, and all the joy that brings.  Back to school shopping was, quite possibly, my favorite part of my childhood.  Scouring the stores for the perfect new outfits.  Choosing a new schoolbag, to be used just for that year.  New notebooks, new pens, new pencils, a whole new set of markers and a whole new chance to organize and arrange and label and begin.

Many say that spring is the season of renewal.  Yet I say, for me, it's autumn which will always be the time of birth, of beginning, of beauty.

Perhaps it's the markedness of this fall that makes it especially poignant, as I feel like I too am shifting colors like the leaves and letting go of built-up frustrations, concerns, baggage like the trees let go of the dead and dying foliage each day, with each gust of wind.

On a lighter note, I am also chilled to the core.  I refuse to admit that I am cold, but I am.  I am cold. I said it.  I love fall, but these 70 degree days...man!

P.S. My new computer makes one picture out of several (see above) and it amazes me. These pictures were all magically uploaded via my phone which I can access on my computer for this blog and it amazes me. I am amazed.

Today, I...

Today, I drove the car around all by myself and did not hurt anyone or anything, though I am weirdly extra cautious on the road now.

Today, I ate a meal I've been dreaming about for two years: soup and salad.  And it was delicious.

Today, I received ninety-five cents in change and truly did not know what to do with it.  It stayed in my hand for a good five minutes.  And then my fingers smelled like coins?! And then I stashed it somewhere in my clutch.

Today, I rode the Metro for the first time in a good number of years and I was that dorky person smiling and looking around me because it was so very wonderful.  And then I was that person taking selfless on the Metro and today, I was ok with that.

Today, I discovered that Pumpkin Spice Lattes are kind of super sweet?! And my new coffee-drinking self struggled to get it all down. And it was five dollars and I am trying not to think about how very expensive that feels to me, five days out of Cambodia.

Today, I walked around Washington in a neck of woods where I interned...oh...eight years ago.  And I remembered it well and it was affirming and fun and fantastic, all wrapped up in one. I reveled in every step today.

Today, I visited Peace Corps Headquarters and took what is probably a shockingly terrible picture for an I.D. badge.

Today I felt even more like I was home. And today was great.

home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Quite officially, I am home again.

Returning 'home' after two years away, without even one small visit in the interim, is a tiny bit like waking from a very long sleep.  Frankly, I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle.  Things are mostly the same but a bit different too.  People have changed a bit and I've missed it all.  I'm not sure if I'm making the mistake of proclaiming to be a loyal subject when I say things like 'I don't know how to use my iPhone' or 'I'm sorry, I have no interest in watching that reality show you are saying is fantastic.'

Yet, home I am and everything is intimately familiar while also being strangely distant.  My house is still home, but Boomer isn't returned yet so if I don't think too hard, I expect to hear her little feet padding after me.  And then they don't and I'm confused, then sad, then weirded out how my brain 'expects' a noise in a familiar place.  The television holds little interest to me, no matter how hard I try to get into the shows I've missed.  And yet the hours drift by and I have no idea where they went.  

At the heart of it though, I feel so completely comfortable and happy.  I didn't experience much of a jet lag- I tried really hard to sleep in sync with America so that would happen smoothly. I still get tired pretty early- around 9:30 or 10 pm, but really, that's the time I was going to bed in Cambodia so I don't attribute that to jet lag.  I wake up at a normal time and drink yummy coffee.  My fingers find things that I thought I'd forgotten if I just let them lead and I don't over think it.  Case in point, I stood in my kitchen looking for the light switch for ten minutes last Sunday.  And then I turned the water on in the shower automatically later that morning, even though it's not the normal 'lefty loosey' situation; my hands just remembered because I did not think about it.

I have boxes upon boxes of things to unpack: clothes I asked Topher to leave for me to go through and other household items that he got tired of unpacking.  I went upstairs to start that process yesterday, saw all that it entailed, and walked right back downstairs.  Well, first I showered and did my hair.  At 3 pm. You know.

Which, I can't really tell you how things have been going without mentioning the small change in hair I decided to go with as I headed home.  Wrapping up chapters and all of that, while opening new ones. I'm a big believer in changing up your style as your lifestyle changes.  So, I decided to mark the occasion of ending my time living in ankle-length skirts and ponytails with a style that doesn't match any of my current makeup and, frankly, won't allow for a ponytail. So, here we are!

on integration

As I wrap up my life here in Cambodia, I'm stumbling through my draft posts.  I found this one today, wherein I was going to continue my process of sharing my thoughts from the semi-annual report form I had to fill out as a Peace Corps Volunteer (the first part was here.)  So, I now present my thoughts on the all-important 'integration' component of life as a PCV, and my feelings (a few months ago) on how I integrated and what I learned along the way.  

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How integrated are you and what have you learned in the process of integrating into your community?

I am basing my integration level on my interactions at my school site, within my host family and my immediate commune. I make this distinction because I believe that integration at the provincial town level looks very different than that at the small district town/village level.

At my school, men who didn't seem to know how to approach me a year ago, seek me out to say hello, share a joke. I have ongoing funny jokes/stories with several teachers that are not my specific counterparts. They invite me to play chess or boll with them, even though I have no clue how and I'd be the only woman. When they do, I politely laugh, say I don't know how, and then stay to watch for twenty minutes, to express my appreciation that they even invited me.

I am an integrated part of my host family. My host mom calls me daughter, she looks after me, knows my teaching schedule. Our host nieces and nephew treat us like a part of the family- they annoy us, play with us, and give us adult space. We eat with our family, we celebrate birthdays together, we hear them yell and cry, and they hear us do the same. (Well, the kids yell and cry, and we groan about the heat. Same same, but different.)

In our immediate commune, we are known. We are no longer the random foreigners at our small market nearby- they know us, know our story as a married couple. When they found out we were going home in four months, there was genuine sadness, and excitement for our expressing our desire to return in five years. When we bike home after work, we are waved to not just by excited kids screaming hello, but by adults who know us too.
What I've learned, and I've said it before, is that language is the easiest and biggest thing a PCV can do to integrate. A simple conversation at the market, on the street corner, at school, goes a long way. It has helped me build a congenial relationship with the men at my school that I can't interact with outside of school (I wish to preserve my respect for the boundaries between men/women in Khmer society, and I do not wish to get drunk with these men in any case.)

My language learning has not progressed immensely, though this is mainly my fault. Because I can read fairly well, I relied on myself to learn from a dictionary, and I find this infinitely more challenging to find motivation to do. Also, because I possess the daily language needed for nearly everything I do, and the technical language to do my work as a trainer, I am not overly motivated to seek out even more learning. I do still have a language book with terms I still want to learn/double check, and this is a priority in my final months here.

Also, it's vital to step outside your bubble- your house, room, etc- every single day. Somehow. Even today, a Friday where I don't teach, when I have been cooped up inside working on a VRF [Volunteer Report Form] that won't save and I've had to re-write 3 times, I plan on going to the nearby park to walk for an hour with the women who exercise there each evening. That daily interaction will further my integration and help my mindset after a frustrating day.  In this sense, I've found that I feel most integrated on the days when I try, when I attempt to break outside my comfort zone. 

At the end of the day though, integration is living.  Making friends, finding regular sports to eat, play, work.  I've learned that integration is about opening your heart to the people around you, without judgment and with a smile and a 'yes' on your lips.

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in the final four days: lessons learned, part c [part the final]

Once again, as with reflections about Cambodia after one year living here, my fellow RPCV, technical trainer, and friend Katie has perhaps more accurately summed up why I am consistently returning to this small space of my world wide web with varied attempts to dig deeper and produce something worthy of truly capturing Cambodia. 

Frankly, there is no way to accurately capture these two years.  To attempt to do so, nicely, tied with a bow, is an exercise in futility and reduction and triviality.  What appears to be an 'experience' to an outsider actually is life.  My life, for the truncated time of two years.  The lives of my community- my Khmer family, my fellow teacher trainers, my friends in Takeo town who greeted me warmly, day in and day out.  To begin to summarize all that this life has been for the last two years would be, as Katie says in her post linked above (please go read it!), trite and self-indulgent at best.  Because I can't speak for my community, because I can't open my head and pour the past two years of my life into a running slideshow for you (but oh how I wish I could, even though even that would do nothing to capture the beauty in everyday moments), I can only scratch the surface of what I really want you to know.

What I really want you to know is that my community, my family, are endlessly patient, unfailingly open to laughter and new experiences and people, and quick to help anyone who shows them the small courtesy of getting to know them.  What I really want you to know is that there is also so much more than the surface level smiles that the incessant tourists comment on when traveling through Cambodia.  That the smiles are indicative of Cambodians' openness and friendliness.  But also that distrust runs deep through my community and the communities of Cambodia and it is a long road, with varied potholes and boulders that prevent many from gaining a true understanding of this country, these people, my second home.

What I really want you to know that is just as we live life in America and throw out the cheap cliches - 'it's not about the end, it's about the journey' and all of those other ones that speak to finding happiness in the small moments of life, with those you love - this too is just how we live life in Cambodia.  It's no 'simpler' despite the lack of infrastructure or underdeveloped educational systems.  Life, as always, moves along, complex, full of double meanings and grey areas and people with good intentions and humans who err.  Emotions run high, until they don't.  People go to work to make a living and there are the lucky ones who truly love what they do.  Families are created and children are raised, and expectations are set upon the shoulders of children and they meet them, or they don't.  People live and die.  People mourn.  People celebrate new beginnings and happy endings.  People live.

After reconciling that I could probably never actually give you the 'summary' I long to, I am left with the reductive and self-absorbed navel gazing that are my 'reflection' posts.

I am inspired by my other dear friend and fellow RPCV Christine's post.  She landed in America, alongside Topher, two months ago.  Her line about trying to find balance between who she was before she lived in Cambodia and who she had to become while here, and who she is now upon return struck a chord with me.  How often in life do we have the true, marked 'end' of a portion of our life, to be indulgent enough to sit back and consider how we've learned and grown?  I got halfway there last month, but there's more.

I will indulge, if only in an effort to write down now the changes I like, that I don't want to let slip by too quickly upon re-integration into America.

Who I am, what I know how to do, what I want to become is not a stagnant thing.  I am constantly learning, changing and growing, as is everyone around me.  This is a good thing.

Be inquisitive by watching, learning, listening.  Remember the value and art of observing to understand and the art of silence.  I don't always need to have a response, an answer, or a comment.  It's often better to listen and let my listening be my contribution

Relax and breathe and trust.

Professionally, strive to be better- still action and solutions oriented, but with the balance of true reflection and opening to a wide variety of ideas and solutions. Personally, strive to be a better friend, wife, family member.  Slower to anger, quicker to smile or laugh.  Remember what I know about myself now: what I need when I'm sad, or angry, and how to work to make myself smile again; how to be more supportive of my husband and loved ones.  Continue to practice (and practice and practice) the art of steering the conversation away from myself.  I still suffer from selfish tendencies daily, but I am more aware of it and I am actively seeking to change it.  

I don't have to know everything, or be the best at something.  I can simply strive to do well, be a constant learner and do something that I passionately love. I think happiness and success will follow.

s is for september....s is for selfie?!

It has been officially decided that upon my return to the U.S. (which is quite imminent, dear friends), I will slide seamlessly into instagram culture, as I have quite mastered the selfie.  My fellow technical trainer agrees, and she would know, as she has witnessed quite a few of my selfie pics these past eight weeks, and has happily not let it affect her opinion of me, as it would far too easy to do, given that selfie-picture-taking-skills are not exactly something of which to be proud.

In other news, happy September! Did you remember to say 'rabbit, rabbit' right when you woke up this morning? No, me neither.  September is my third favorite month (right after May, which is right after October.)  September is the best beginning of the wonderful season called AUTUMN! FALL!  Even, LEAF-TREE-DROP in direct Khmer to English translation!

So, the training for the new group of Peace Corps Cambodia trainees has nearly come to an end.  My direct involvement, as the new group of education trainees' trainer, ended last Friday and I am wrapped up in all sorts of bittersweet emotions.  The new group here in the 'bode are really fantastic- I've said it before but it's honestly just so damn true.  It was quite a privilege to train them, witness and play a part in their growth as an educator and development worker, and prepare them for life as a PCV.  I am pretty excited to hear about the good work they do in their communities because I know they are equipped with the invaluable tools of patience, humility, humor and graciousness.  You so got this, K7s!

Yesterday, I left Takeo, my home for the last two years, for the final time.  In the end, I had what felt like two goodbyes with my community- one with Chris and one by my lonesome.  Neither was easier than the other, and both filled my heart with such happiness that it literally made my chest ache.  The second time was full of more beauty perhaps, because now that I can ride a moto, I was taken on two outings to observe the natural landscape of my community.  It was such a high to take in the lake in our town, with lily pads sprouting through to the surface and the rays of sun reflecting off the water, without having to peddle my bike or sweat or do anything except look, and look and look some more.

I'm currently in Phnom Penh through Friday, when I will welcome the K7s I've trained to the PCV Cambodia club alongside other staff members before jumping on my 28 hour journey to that sweet land called home.  I'm reveling in lots of fantastic coffee, cheap massages and little bits of final projects for work before I go home.

Home.  That place I am lucky enough to both be leaving from and arriving in this coming weekend.