The Kingdom of Wonder

I made it! I am here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The flight this afternoon was only an hour long (and they still served us a whole meal) but I did figure out that I am a full 12 hour time difference from home - Chicago (central) time. K5 - the group here before us and in the country for a year so far - met us at the airport and it was quite a surprise! It was very fun to meet the previous volunteers and very overwhelming. My group and I have been traveling for over 24 hours. This journey has been a mix of sleep, plane rides...and sleeping on planes.
  I am so exhausted-the kind of fatigue that seeps into your bones and turns to lead, making your body want to be closer and closer to the ground with each step you take as fighting off sleep becomes the primary reason of your existence. Until jet lag wears off I think the only thing that will be on my mind is "when I can get sleep?" and "why am I not sleeping?". Airports have become another sort of hotel where one of our group watches bags while everyone else cat naps and turns are taken. Southeast Asia is beautiful, and I say that even if the only parts of it I have seen are hotels, airports, and streets on the bus ride. In Bangkok a few of us decided to take a walk around our hotel and met a few of the locals at street posts and food stands. They yelled, "America!" at us and offered us whiskey which we politely declined.
  As soon as the plane landed in Cambodia, upon request and full of Tulane pride, the first thing I said in Camboda and while wearing my Tulane baseball jersey was "Roll Wave!" haha Go Green Wave. All we have learned about each other in my group has been where we're from and what college we went to. Rapport has been built on the Big Ten, the midwest (yea midwest pride) and football (obviously). It's been quite the trip and it feels SO good to finally be in Cambodia.
  Nevertheless, as adult life will teach everyone and as we have learned so far: building relationships is the key to EVERYTHING. Some of us met with the previous volunteers for drinks, dinner, and conversation. We drank a "beer tower" (shown uploaded and only $3.75!) of Ankor which is a Cambodia beer. I heard one K4 describe it as a "Bud Light" - it's more like just a watered down beer. They gave us a lot of good info on wearing bug spray to avoid dengue, the fact that ants have a "lemony taste" and that fried frog legs are very common. I am so excited to begin training and learning Khmer (pronouced "Koom-I" or "k'mai") and will depend a lot upon my host family and site to learn. One of the most interesting things to hear was that Khmer is a very basic language and easy to learn - for example, "air conditioner" is just "cold machine" in Khmer...just like "airplane" is "air machine" etc. I am not sure that I'll be learning how to read and write but speaking is for certain. Here goes nothing!

 Excitment abounds!

 xo-Amanda