Photo Challenge: Cambodian Sunsets Un-Altered

I really enjoyed this next set of photographs, even when attempting (and succeeding!) at long exposures and silhouettes.  All photos of sunsets in my new home are completely un-edited by me.

day twelve and fifteen

sunsets and silhouettes

photo credit here goes to my darling husband, who suggested that i go capture the sunset by the water near our house, but volunteered to go when i was too lazy.  at the last minute, i asked him to capture his bike as well, but with the flash off so as to capture the silhouette.  i love this image because in the three short months we've been here, some of my favorite moments have happened while riding our bikes home from class or studying and being completely stunned into silence at the beauty of the sunset surrounding us.

day thirteen

me and thirteen things

 attempt one. me with thirteen grains of rice.  rice is our life here, and even though we now cook for ourselves, we've chosen to still cook khmer food (much to the chagrin of our fellow volunteers, me thinks.)  rice not visible, so i moved on to the next attempt.

 they were incredibly and surprisingly heavy.

life in cambodia. me with thirteen coconuts. chris loves to drink these, but they are too sweet (pa'aim) for me. look closely and you can see my arms straining!

day fourteen

eyes

my favorite eyes in the world. so freaking blue. can our children PLEASE get these eyes?

day sixteen

long exposure

each provincial town i've been to (all three of them) have many traffic circles around a monument.  this is our monument, all lit up at night.  the light streaks are of motos, a constant in my life.

one last shot of our sunset.

A Treatise on our "Job"

Now that we’re official volunteers, it’s high time to discuss just what our actual job descriptions are for the next twenty-four months.

First, we’re volunteers. Simple, eh?

We take that to mean our biggest priority is to learn as much as possible about our community and do our damndest to leave it better off, fulfilling their needs and wants.

Technically speaking though, Chris and I both came in as ETTT (English Teaching and Teacher Training) trainees, which is a part of the larger TEFL program in Peace Corps. 

We now both embody one half of this acronym, respectively. Chris is an English teacher at the local high school, and I am assigned to a Regional Teacher Training center. There are six total RTTCs in Cambodia.  PC Cambodia is piloting a Teacher Training program this year, but I’m not a part of the direct pilot.  (In the new system, there are two volunteers at one training center, and while one stays and does typical duties- teaching classes, working with trainees- the other travels to nearby provinces and sets up workshops and trainings for current English teachers and likely their Peace Corps counterparts (volunteers.)  Many of the other volunteers that are at RTTCs have some experience either teaching in Cambodia or working with children, and we have a great group.) My job is to train the soon-to-be English teachers at my Training Center in methodology and general English skills. 

Beyond that, it’s up to us.  We could volunteer with nearby NGOs (and there are a hearty few in our provincial town), try to work with other branches of the government wanting assistance, or simply spend all of our time with our students and fellow teachers, meeting their needs.

Hell, we could pretty much do anything besides open our own tuk-tuk business (because, you know, we can’t drive motorcycles here) as long as it’s benefitting the community and our majority of time is spent at our schools.

Hokay, so. You’ve now been briefed on our highly detailed and strictly defined job descriptions. Just how is it panning out, thus far?

Oh, panning out and how!

We just spent our first full week at site, and it was at times incredibly stimulating and exciting, and at others…freeing.

On Monday, we both showed up, at seven a.m., ready to meet our potential counterparts (the host country nationals we can collaborate, teach and generally work with at our schools) and see what life is like in classrooms in our respective schools.  While Chris dove right into observing the myriad of English teachers at his school- exactly as Peace Corps recommends- I discovered that the day was a pajoom day- or a day full of meetings. 

So, I attended one three-hour meeting in the morning and one two-hour meeting in the afternoon.  I was incredibly excited because I also met three of the five English trainers at my RTTC, and all are genuinely nice guys.  All of the teachers were given their schedule this day, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that I was able to successfully track down the majority of classes and times.

On Tuesday, I met a fourth English teacher, and he invited me to teach his two-hour afternoon class.  I politely said I’d love to come and watch and meet the trainees, but later on he texted me that he wouldn’t be needing my help teaching that day…

However, I was also able to speak with a counterpart I am incredibly excited to work with, and invite him to attend a week-long conference about a new TEFL curriculum/ system here that is happening in just a few weeks.  I also snagged the teaching times for this trainer and another trainer, and was able to let them know that I’d love to start teaching with them.

And then I was informed that classes wouldn’t actually begin until next week, because of a big test that happened Saturday.  So I spent the remaining days of the week showing up for an hour or so just to “angoi laing” (“sit play”), which simply means hanging out with other trainers and administrators at my school.  I think I’m slowly beginning to understand more of the jokes being made around me…except when they’re about me?!

On an even more successful note, Chris and I ventured to the market a number of times, and even spent some time getting to know the people at the post office on Thursday as we mailed some post cards for a fellow Volunteer in our province.  It was one of the best experiences thus far- we simply sat and chatted in Khmer for thirty minutes, and about all of the topics I know!  For example, we discussed our ages, marital status, that we don’t have kids, that we are volunteers, teachers, where we teach, that we like Khmer food and cook it for ourselves, and all about the members of our family- both in Cambodia AND in America.  It was truly perfect- all the things we had learned for seven weeks in PST really paid off!  Thanks PC Cambodia!

The flip side of this though is all of the down time.  We spent a portion of our days simply sitting in our new home, either making food, or organizing the information we had received that morning about schedules, or composing life-altering blog posts like this one.  At times, I’ve had to fight the feeling that I’m doing something wrong by having down time and remind myself it’s not supposed to be crazy hectic yet- IT’S THE FIRST WEEK!

And so, that is our current life in a nutshell.  As you read this, I’m likely teaching soon-to-be teachers or something like it for the first time in this country and I may be rewarding myself with a Coca Cola afterward for doing so with a smile on my face.

Cheers, and go grab yourself a little sweet reward- it’s Monday, after all.

Pre Service Training: The Path to Becoming a Volunteer

Here I sit, on the other side of nine weeks of acclimating to Cambodia, fondly referred to as “Pre Service Training.” PST is a required element of all Peace Corps posts, and is generally just like watching tennis: you either love it and could do it anytime, anywhere OR you freaking hate it and one more second spent watching tennis (er…in PST) is one more moment where you just want to tear your eyeballs out with your bare hands.

Luckily, Chris and I both fell in the former camp, and thoroughly enjoyed PST. 

(Now, watching tennis, that’s a whole other topic. Don’t get me started.)

Throughout the nine week process of adjusting to the weather, studying the language every day, learning the realities of Cambodian classrooms, and getting used to be in a completely different cultural situation, I constantly had to remind myself that the real work begins when we become official volunteers. During PST, you have a schedule created for you- you have somewhere to be, something to do.  You have people responsible for ensuring that you at least try to learn to speak Khmer for three or more hours a day.  You have a built in support system in the form of 20+ other Americans in your training site, and you can meet any one of those Americans at any moment of the day inside the glorified gas station that has become your sanctuary (SANCTUARY!) due to air conditioning and the promise of ice cream bars and cold Coca Cola.  If you’re bored on a Sunday, you can bet that a fellow trainee will be up for some volleyball, or a bike ride, or has a Cambodia host sister that will paint your nails for you.  At the end of training, there is a language exam meant to give you a baseline of your skills and encourage you to study and practice more to fully integrate in our new country.

I loved and relished in every one of these realities during PST.

On the flip side, I know that some of my fellow trainees felt stifled by the scheduling of our time, by the requirement that we learn the language, actually try to use it on a daily basis (?) and pass a language exam to show our competence, and completely freaked out by the general atmosphere of training.  Many a times did I hear other trainees speak longingly of “when we’re volunteers.”

And I can’t help but ask, doesn’t the hard part begin NOW, now that we’re volunteers? Now that we don’t have a host country national willing at any moment to help us arrange a ride in a tuk-tuk for a fair price, to help us remember how to say “I don’t like dried fish stuffed with pig intestine, thank you,” or to simply help us figure out what our host grandmother meant when she said “hey-oh-way?” (For the record, it’s one way of asking if you’re hungry or not.)

Granted, I’ll admit that the freshman-dorm-like atmosphere that PST took on at times was frustrating, and I did have to remind myself that for many of my fellow trainees, this was their first step after college, and didn’t I have many of the same fears and remarks and attitudes in my first six months in TFA, teaching middle schoolers?

Of course I did.

And whether you’re 21, or 26, or 46, PST is a gauntlet you just have to survive- whether you flourish, perish, or complain the entire time is entirely up to your maturity, frame of mind, and desire to succeed.  I’m happy to say that Chris and I survived and lived to swear in. We both passed our language exam, and can pretty successfully navigate situations that were terrifying two short months ago, like going to the pagoda, or ordering food, or just chit-chatting with the ladies in the market.

Here’s to the next two years, and “finally being a volunteer.”

On the merging of blogs

I have been out of the United States for nearly 12 weeks, and I am beginning to question my sanity in keeping two separate blogs for my "life" and my "life in Cambodia."

I thought having a separate "travel" blog was good because I could write about specific travel type issues and thoughts and leave this blog for my daily ramblings.  It worked well as we went through the application process, but now...

Now, my daily ramblings ARE travel issues and thoughts.  It's getting...tiring maintaining two blogs and I have wracked my brain all this week trying to brainstorm separate topics for my travel blog and here.

So I need your help. Is it a good idea to keep the separate blogs? Should I simply merge them, and then be able to update things more frequently here?

I'd love your opinion!

Also, if you're on Google reader, hop over to my site because I spent a bit of time (and money, as we buy internet per KB here) on updating the design a bit. I bought the image off istock right before we left- I had credits expiring- and finally used it.  It's a nod to my former wedding life.

Happy Friday- I'm off to bed!

Update:
thank you all a ton for your thoughts!  consider it merged and i am already feeling a bit saner! you all rock.

fotos, days 7-11, cambodian sweat featured

we continue the parade of not so great fotos, featuring my mac's photobooth this time!  for some reason, i'm thinking using the photobooth app isn't what the original creators had in mind when they created this lovely little challenge- but in cambodia, you do what you do to get it done. you know?

day seven

fruit

pineapple, how i love thee, i could just count the ways! this week, topher made my favorite combo here in cambodia- stir fried pineapple and beef.  it's so delicious with some garlic and onion.  in khmer, pineapple is "plia minoah." go ahead and call it that!

day eight

a bad habit

i contemplated taking a picture of my battered cuticles, but photos never do them justice. so here is a photo of me that probably strikes you as quite normal.  and therein lies the issue. i have a terrible, no good, very bad habit of making ridiculous faces in photos.  i just can't smile nicely. there is some terrible urge that gurgles up in my belly to my face that shrieks "don't make just any face- don't you dare smile! smirk, or open that huge mouth, or look awkward. just dammit, don't smile!" thusly, i end up with 900 photos of me doing this face. you're welcome, future children.

day nine

someone i love

now just look at that handsome fella!  i have so many photos of this crazy kid, but his passport photos just seemed more appropriate, us living in cambodia and all.  take a gander at that sweet kid on the left- that's my darling husband at the ripe age of seventeen.  the right passport is our official peace corps passport, with a photo taken just in april of this year.  i just love the look of terror/kind of terrifying look on topher's face in his first passport.  just lights my fire, ya know?

day ten

childhood memory

ok. serious moment here.  from age ten to nineteen, i had the stirrings of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  for example, i had to only use white or tan or yellow towels.  getting out of the shower, i had to lightly kick the side of the tub ten times with each foot before getting out.  i had to turn the light on one-two-three times (because odd numbers are lucky, and evens just cancel any of the luck out.) i had to make my bed the same way before school or else i'd have a bad day.

which brings us to the hair ties.  this is the last remnant of my OCD.  to this day, i still have some weird belief in odd numbers being "better" or "luckier" (but the caveat is two or ten. ten is my number from sports/life, and two just seems so happy like a pair of mates in love, eh?!), so i still have to maintain three, five, or seven hair ties on my wrist at all times.  five is preferred, seven is next best, and three is just ok.  in this photo i have four on- because the fifth is in my hair.  this is completely fine, as long as the the hair tie safely returns to my wrist post-ponytail.

now, as you might imagine, this has led to many an interesting moments in recent adult years.  many friends (mainly women) have come to notice that i wear hair ties at all times, and thus will sometimes ask me to borrow (use/keep) a hair tie.  i love being of use and helpful, and i truly gladly hand over a spare hair tie. however, i then, covertly, remove another hair tie to ensure i have that odd number.  i also sometimes have a spare in my purse just for these moments, because i really do love sharing the hair ties! i just have to honor this last strange OCD tendency.

also, you get a picture of my weirdness because, really, what childhood memory do i have access to in cambodia to photograph?! exactly.

day eleven

something blue

and this here is the blue spoon i just used to eat some nutella.  i got it from a gas station mart here in my town, and i loved it for it's wonderful usefulness spooning chocolatey-hazelnut deliciousness out of the jar for me. thank you, blue spoon. thank you.

The Canon Almost DSLR SX40- Here at Amazon. 

and on a final note, here is a photo of the almost-dslr i wished i had saved up to purchase prior to the move to cambodia.  did you know my birthday is in eighteen days? and did you know you can in no way afford a camera like this, nor get it safely shipped to you while serving as a volunteer in this here country? le sigh.  i enjoy from afar and dream of the day two years from now when i can really ask husband for this lovely little item.  it's just the perfect little gateway camera to a real dslr, don't you think?!

that gets me thinking i should do a 'when i turn twenty eight out of the peace corps birthday wishlist' post. i've never done one of those little wish list posts before, but this could the perfect time to start...

thoughts, comments or reactions?

Joining the October Photography Challenge...from 11,000 Miles Away!

I had a good internet source and an hour to spare today and I got the chance to catch up on many of my favorite blogs!  In perusing these said blogs, I found the October 2011 Photography Challenge from my fellow bee alum at Our Wired Lives and I said "I may live in Southeast Asia with my crappy point and shoot, but dammit, I'm in!"

You know, a week late.

But still. I'm in!  And here are my first six photos, in which I cheat a little bit because they're mainly from the last month or so, but from photo seven on, they will all be from the correct day!

Day One: A Self Portrait

Two: What you wore today

Granted, this is from a few weeks ago.  However, it in essence captures how I spend the professional part of my day- in a Khmer skirt, called a sampot, and a shirt I had made for me here in Cambodia.

Three: Clouds

A view of clouds from the back window of our training home.

Four: Something Green

And pink!

Five: From a High Angle

New friends from the inside of an elevator in Phnom Penh

Six: Low Angle

My first "frozen" drink ever in this country. A Pina Colada!

I'm excited to see what else friends in the challenge have taken!

Official & Have Awesome Shirt to Prove It!

A week ago, 59 Americans starved for cheese, air conditioning and anything but rice descended upon Phnom Penh for five days of fun and our official Swearing In as Peace Corps Volunteers!

Though the days were marked with great trainings, the real focus (sorry PC Cambodia!) had to be the food. Fellow trainees and I had been planning these five days of western food with great care. Priorities included Mexican, Italian, good breakfasts, cheesecake and in general all types of food that we won’t get for two months after we move to permanent site.

Eating delicious western food!

With our goals aligned, we pursued these ends to great success.  Some (ahem, Chris) may have suffered the ill effects every single morning of dairy products on their system, while others were quite able to eat a pizza, and then a cheeseburger, and then a chocolate and caramel tart and wake up refreshed and ready for more come daylight. Sorry husband! J So worth it though, no?

CHEESE!

After four days of cheese and more cheese, the time arrived for our official swear in as volunteers.  For the momentous occasion, fellow trainee friends and I had “wedding shirts” made.  These special occasion shirts are a bright or white color and made of the most uncomfortable polyester fabric imaginable, and covered in sequins and all manner of sparkle.

You know you want a shirt just like these!

They are, put simply, awesome.

So donned in these beautiful, albeit uncomfortable Khmer clothes, we took our solemn oath and became the official fifth group of Peace Corps Volunteers to enter Cambodia.  You can read an official news report here! I’m famous!

After one more day in Phnom Penh (and a few more meals centered around, what else, cheese), we backed our bags and bussed it to our new permanent home. 

I haven’t dived deeply into our permanent home due to a desire to play it safe, but know that we’re in the same province in which we did our training, living in the provincial town. Because I work in analogies, imagine this:

• A province is to Cambodia as a state is to America.
• A provincial town is to Cambodia as a state capital is to America.
• A district town is to Cambodia as a “larger” town is to America.

We live in a provincial town, though of the 25+  provinces in Cambodia, our provincial town is not the largest, nor the most modern or populated.  It IS the most populated, modern city in our province, but many other provinces- like Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat is, or Battambang, also in the North, near Thailand- have much larger provincial towns, with commodities similar to Phnom Penh.  Commodities meaning western food, access to reliable travel out of Cambodia and the like.  Our new home has two small universities, a teacher training center (where I work), two high schools, many primary schools, and one “western” food restaurant- called GFC, where you can buy fried chicken, fries, and something resembling pizza and burgers (though the pizza apparently has no cheese and comes with small shrimp. Hrmmm...)

But the kicker of permanent site is our home. Our abode is nothing like either of us expected when we joined the Peace Corps.  As a married couple, the amazing Peace Corps staff works incredibly hard to ensure we have a small semblance of privacy.  They worked wonders for us.  

We are living in a small home on the same land as our host family’s home. Yes, we have a separate home/building all to ourselves.  This gorgeous home has a gas stove, “running” water (we still bucket flush, but WOAH! A shower head!), a refrigerator and even a washing machine.  

We also have a small room for guests with a separate bed, and our own common room space with a small television.  

In PC, there’s a term for this- “Posh Corps.” It took Chris and I a few days to adjust to the guilt we felt settling over us when we visited our home a few weeks back.  But now, we’re reminded that everyone’s situation is different, we appreciate our good fortune, and are looking forward to many visitors, Peace Corps and family alike in our guest room!

*You can read this post, plus another one at my Travel Blog at www.marshmellowtravels.blogspot.com