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.

spaces, recently

I've always been more of words-person: pictures are great and all, but it's doodles of words that I'd use during school.  But I think visuals are helpful here as I try to think about what the last five weeks have been and looked like.

I must say: the new group of trainees are not only fantastic, but they are getting it good with their training digs.  Air conditioning and comfortable seats? Best location for weekly 'hubsite' days EVER.

Sweet!

Swapping training ideas and daily occurrences has been a pleasure with this woman:

And leading training sessions in this swag of a place has been, honestly, amazing.

Those chairs are usually arranged in a much more conducive-to-discussion manner, and these fancy seats pictured below are not usually present when I'm up there, pacing and talking.

In an effort to provide some color in the very bright and somewhat sterile place, I've gotten in touch with my teacherly-poster-making roots and created some super fancy (ha) reminders of why we're (me and my beautiful trainees) there everyday:

the goals and core expectations of Peace Corps Volunteers:

My own goals for their technical training:

Mix those in with some basic reminder posters of the topics we've covered, and these guys:

And you've got yourself a pretty fancy training space.

And each evening, I head home, weary of talking but invigorated by my trainees, to this place:

'home'

Yes, that is NCIS on, and how did I never realize how ridiculously engrossing those weird cop-law-justice shows are?

Also, a pretty sweet purple bathroom, yo:

And these two spaces have been the entirety of life here for this woman.

a new kind of wine...

While in Siem Reap visiting Angkor Wat for the third and final (for a while, at least) time, Topher and I went on an adventure with four other Volunteers: rice wine tasting!

Now, usually rice wine is not something you 'taste.'  If you're me, it's something you avoid.  It burns, it's not delicious and it's typically only offered by already-drunk men at weddings.  It also might kill you, as it can be homemade and then sometimes stored in bottles once used to store terrible, deathly chemicals.

I digress.

This rice wine is being produced safely and deliciously by a couple in northern Cambodia.  And the best part is that they are infusing it with all sorts of fantastic things.

At our tasting, we sampled every single flavor- from mango and green chili to banana and cinnamon.  Other highlights were a coconut pineapple and green tea orange.  Yes.

I never would have guessed but my favorite was coffee and anise.  Anise, like black licorice? Which I typically hate? But it's amazing.  Topher's fave was the banana and cinnamon (you could not have designed two flavors he likes more.  And in one bottle, alcoholic and all? Done.)

The bottles are also hand-painted with some sweet Cambodia scenes by some local young artists. 

And of course, these hand-brewed, hand-painted and hand-bottled flasks of wine were just twelve dollars each.  Which I don't think is a lot, but I can't really tell anymore? So, you'll have to let me know in the comments if that is actually a great deal or I'm nuts.

I'm excited to bake with the banana cinnamon and add some of that coffee anise rice wine to some Bailey's!

Have you ever had rice wine?

july

It's July.

JOOOOOO LYYEEEEEEEEEE.

That's how I've been saying it my head all week long.  Slowly and methodically and disbelievingly.

A lot has happened in July thus far. So much that I haven't really taken a moment to fully process it, and thusly, write about it here.

So let's recap:

We visited Angkor Wat one final time.  I got so many braided string bracelets, I feel like I've got good luck and health going for me forever.  Which I'm so celebrating and counting on!


We left our provincial site in Takeo.  We said goodbye to our family.

We ended our time as Volunteers and officially became Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.


This ending involved a lot - too many- goodbyes with fabulous people, including these women:

This guy had to go home, without me.


I may or may not have hurt my toe somewhat badly.

I have, and continue to, work endless hours preparing session plans for the incoming group of Volunteers.   There are no fun pictures, because it's me, at a computer, typing and occasionally staring as I think something through.  Maybe it's a lot of staring? I can't really tell.  (I talked about what I'm doing in Cambodia while Topher is home here.)

And I've been working alongside this awesome woman, who is managing the health education program side of training for the new group.  (Cambodia has two main programs- English Teaching/Teacher Training and Community Health Education.)

It still doesn't seem like 2013 could actually be half over, but I guess I have to believe the tick of time.

How has your July been thus far, world?

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.

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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.**

lessons learned [part a]

This post has been sitting in my drafts for three months (give or take, given that the first paragraph initially read 'less than four months left in my service'), and I can't figure out if that's because it felt inauthentic to write about this topic when I still had a good deal of time left in my town, or if it was because I simply got exhausted, mentally and emotionally, when trying to gather all of these thoughts together.  Either way, here it is now.  A collection of things I think, of things I think I learned, and things I still don't know about Cambodia.  The other half soon, about things I think I know about myself, now.

Given that I have about one month left in my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have begun the intense process that is internal reflection. The other day I actually jotted down a list of things that I felt I've learned about Cambodia and about myself since being here. It is so cliche but I feel like, at this point, I know more about myself than I do about anything else; that the more I've learned about my community, about Cambodia, the less I actually know.

The more information I process, the more confused I become. But here's part of what I know. For certain.

Or, at least, for now.

ONE.
Every single Peace Corps Volunteer's experience is uniquely and utterly theirs. This applies, I'd imagine, to my experience in Southeast Asia, as compared to someone's in Western Africa or Central America. But it even applies to my experience in southeastern Cambodia as compared to someone's in northwestern Cambodia- or heck, even my husband's nearly exact-same-logistical experience in the very same community. These differences make my experience no less valid or important or worthy. Even when I think about the previous Volunteer who taught at 'my' Regional Teacher Training Center (RTTC), lived in 'my' house and I get a bit down about projects he completed or people he worked with, that I meet and tell me all about how much they love him- I remind myself that it's actually better that I have branched out to different people, organizations, projects. If every PCV who went to a replacement site worked with the same people, tackled the same issues, progress would be stagnant. Who's to say that the next PCV at 'his/her RTTC' in 'his/her site' won't meet one of my trainees or students who came to my Camp GLOW and regale them with the things they learned from me, the broadened worldview they gained because of our interaction?

TWO.
Building real, deep relationships are tough. Because of language and cultural barriers, but also, somewhat, because of the inherent time limit of our work. Everyone knows we're here for two years. Then we go home. A co-teacher, when I first met him, remarked how I'd just be gone in two years. And he's right- it can be challenging to get someone who has seen two previous Volunteers come and go at their school to trust you and attempt to build a lasting relationship when you're just going to leave in a short period.  You can't expect to walk in anywhere with instant credibility and authentic relationships.  Often, the deepest and most fruitful relationships have only seemed to blossom in the last month or two here.

THREE.
Sometimes, as a foreigner working inside what I believe to be a struggling education system, I feel ineffective. Sometimes I feel like a prop- that me being inside the classroom could be viewed as belief that the existing system/curriculum/expectation levels are all correct. Sometimes I worry that my efforts are not viewed as I view them- new ideas and techniques that will better the current methods, that will lead to increased learning and thinking- but as fun but unrealistic techniques that the silly foreigner brought for a few years and then left so that the current methods could be continued as they have for good number of years.

FOUR.
All that being said, I've met enough intelligent, inquisitive, open-minded, strong-willed young people that I have no doubt- no doubt- that real change is imminent in Cambodia. That in a number of years I am going to return here and have no idea where the Cambodia I know has gone- and those changes will all be for the better as power shifts and is passed to the next generation of leaders.

FIVE.
Most importantly perhaps, I've learned that the struggles that Khmer people face are universal struggles. That the sixteen year old girl who drops out of school because it's necessary for her to start trekking to the nearby garment factory to bring in income for her family is not unlike the sixteen year old in America who drops out of school because her mom, who works the night shift at the grocery store, can't provide the transportation or money for transport to get the girl to her high school across town every morning. And that if we're still figuring out how to educate that student in America, there's no reason why I should expect that another country should have it all figured out by now. Progress takes time.

SIX.
And I'm increasingly devastated to be leaving Cambodia.  Especially when I spent a very short time working with a counterpart whom I feel truly could be a friend and colleague, with whom I could see us truly making an extensive difference as co-teachers. Just the impact we had in the short month we taught together has lifted my spirits and beliefs so high that I get deeply sad when I consider leaving.  It's devastating because what they told us when we first got here- that we'll do our best service at the end- is one thousand percent true.  My language is at it's highest (and I am on the current ebb of desiring to learn even more new words! just squeeze one more in!), my relationships have reached a place of mutual comfort and cooperation, and I only hate the heat slightly more than when I first came here.

SEVEN.
Cambodia changed me indelibly.  This country, these people, gave me more than I could ever dream of giving to it and them.

reflection, transition: everyday counts, especially these next 37

This week has been a slight up and down of me cursing with stress from the upcoming Camp GLOW (our province's second annual! Thank you to any and all reading this that donated!), and deep breathing through the happiness that is pouring through me as I reap the benefits of two years of relationship building with the unfailingly kind people around me.

Currently, I've pulled myself out of that stressed out place to write this post.  I needed to pause and remind myself of all the good that has happened even in the last few days, and that everything will come together. It always does.

This week has been the absolute ultimate for me.  There is no other descriptive word for it.

At our Close of Service conference, our Country Director (CD) reminded us not only about how far we've come, what we've done, what we've come to mean to our communities (all good things), but also how far we still have to go.  Something our CD has been saying a lot lately is to remember that every single day here is an opportunity to make a difference.  To which I add, every single day is an opportunity to engage in something small (or large) that leaves me with a smile on a my face, and smiles and laughter from others in my wake as I bike away.

Sometimes the hardest thing about being in the Peace Corps is getting wrapped up too far inside your own head, too far inside the introverted side of yourself.  Questioning so much of the whys, the hows, the what-fors.  Sometimes, when you know your primary assignment won't happen that day (in my case, when school is cancelled, or closed for a holiday), the hardest thing in the world is opening that door and entering it all.  Entering Cambodia, entering the heat, entering an entirely new culture.

But I am constantly reminded that when I do open the door (let's say literally and figuratively here, and cover all the bases), my efforts are rebounded upon me double fold in the kindess, generosity, humor and new people, words and experiences.  Unfailingly, I am left feeling ten times better than I did when sitting in by the fan in my little home.  Unfailingly, I am also sweaty and shaking my head from some potentially brash (and honest) comments made to me or about me, but I am absolutely, without a doubt, happier.

This week, I made it my priority to create for myself a very full, and thus fulfilling, schedule for my final five weeks at site (that is entirely insane to seen written out.)  I am with my students in the morning, with time for a stopover at one of my two breakfast stalls before class, and one after, and running errands for Camp GLOW or spending time with students at my library in the afternoon.

Adding to this, Topher and I have decided to take pictures and distribute them in frames with kind words to many of the people who mean so much to us here- our family, the men and women whose places of business we frequent, the students who have been with us every single week from the very beginning.  And it's exhausting, yes, but dear lord, it's also my favorite thing about the end of all this. Finding some small way to thank the community, our community.

And every evening, I am riding that roller coaster of stress and joy because this job is not done, and I feel the ever creeping weight of our final days here approaching, and I'm not ready, and I am, and in the end, every single day is another opportunity.

To learn from, and with, these hard-working, compassionate friends of ours.