Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for dinner.

I feel as though I am back on the bookfield! I wake up at the crack of dawn to a rooster, take a cold bucket shower, hightail it out of my hq to a breakfast spot where I meet the kids who live around me, and then after a good breakfast we bike to our lessons and begin an intense day of studying Khmer language and culture. For any non-bookperson reading this; I'm on a tight schedule that helps keep me focused on my day.        

   My bed is covered in a mosquito net soaked in Permethrin to aid in my fight against the Dengue fever and other mosquito transmitted diseases.  It's like my very own personal fort, and I didn't have to use my only blanket to build it! As you can see from the bathroom photo, squat toilets are the norm along with bucket showers and no sinks. 

 You might be thinking, "bucket shower? That sounds awful." But when I wake up sweating in the Cambodian heat and then hang out it in all day, throwing a bucket of cold water over my head three times a day is EXACTLY what I want - and I get to call it a "shower" :).  The hardest thing to get used to is taking care of hygiene business every day with no sink.     
   Early in the week, my host brother-in-law asked me if I wanted some coconut milk. I said, "sure" and got my phone and some money thinking we were going to the market. NOPE! He got a long stick with a hook at the end called a "t'ra biet" in Khmer, told me to follow him to the top of the roof, and picked a coconut right off of the tree next to the house! After it had fallen he took a long machete-looking knife with a handle and proceeded to take off the top and the bottom and keep chopping until we got a hole in the top.  We went through 5 empty coconuts - because, as Mao put it, "the moon drank the milk" - before finding two full of water, with which we put straws in and had a refreshing drink.     

   My days are full here.  After a breakfast of rice and some sort of fried meat, I meet with a small group for language study for about 4 hours.  We break for lunch of rice and "sum-lan" (any food that goes along with rice) before getting back together for culture study for another 4-5 hours. At the end of culture study I either head to the high school to play a game of soccer, or to a guesthouse down the street from my house to use the internet and get some Khmer iced coffee.  We like to refer to it as our "Khmer Starbucks". Anywhere from 6-7o'clock I head back to my host family's house to help the prepare dinner (rice with anything) which we eat around 8pm.  In my free time I am trying to remember Khmer and how to pronounce the words correctly.     
   Tomorrow we are heading back into Takeo for what is called a "hub site" day.  There we get to see and train with the ETTTs (English Teacher and Teacher Training) as well as access some luggage and go through safety.  If only we had more rain!


 Lia howee! ("goodbye" in Khmer)
 xo-Amanda