The First List

I have only been in Cambodia for three short (long) months and while I do recognize similarities between my life in America and my life in Cambodia (I still eat three meals a day), there are a few drastic differences ("meal" = "rice").  Who doesn't like life lessons? So for your enlightenment and my sanity I have made a list of:
 

10 things I have learned living in Cambodia (thus far)

1- The bogey monster of socks is real and lives in every country! I do laundry by hand and hang the clothes up myself, never losing sight of any items and I still end up with an odd number of socks.  WHAT?! How does that even happen?! What happened to that one other sock that has disappeared so you are forever left with an unmatched sock? The world may never know. 

2- Some things just aren't meant to be - like electricity.  The electricity is a tricky thing here, more often then not it's just not working.  And since it's rainy season the sky is always overcast and thus solar power chargers have no solar to draw power from.  Thank you Johannes Gutenberg yet again for the printed word. 

3- You don't learn a language through osmosis - at least I don't. People think that just being in my village and listening to Cambodians speak rapid-fire Khmer all day every day makes me fluent in three months. What it does is make me confused, gives me a headache, and trains me in the art of zoning out.  Learning a language is hard and takes a lot of work. Don't even get me started on the written script with its consonants and subscripts and two sets of vowels that all sound the same with no spaces between the words. I would give up my American candy stash to be able to speak to someone in English once a week for an hour. And in rice-land, that's saying something.

4- Bugs will find you, they will bite you, and they will go after aforementioned American candy stash.  Long before I started missing home, I waged war on ants and smaller ants and red ants, and then flying things that I can't name.  Cambodian insects are magical ninjas and have found a way to evade the Ziploc bag and teleport (or something like that) to the sugary sweetness that my mother's care packages bring.  Luckily for me (or whatever), I have grown used to this and usually just wipe them off and eat my candy anyway. 

5- Priorities change (see: brushing off bugs in favor of candy). I won't pretend like my favorite part of the day isn't playing power rangers ninja warrior with my boan brohs, or hide and seek around the single-room house where there's nowhere for me to hide.  Working in the ANC room at the health center, I get to meet Cambodian mothers who will do literally anything to ensure their children are healthy - even listen to a young barang with broken Khmer tell them about serving food they may be too poor to buy. I travel to Phnom Penh or Sihanoukville and wander the streets to locate that one sandwich shop, or spend three days pay* and two days worth of being sick for a chocolate shake. Yes, it's worth it. You try going on a rice diet for three months and we'll see how judgy you are over a shake.

6- Happiness depends on food. If you have been following my blog and can read English, you should be able to tell that my days begin and end with the thought of food. What am I going to eat today? Does it involve rice? and, how do I avoid rice? are all questions that I wake up with. Cambodians don't live to eat like we do in America, they eat to live. What a tragedy. Moving from the attitude towards food New Orleans has to the rice-laden culture of Cambodia might be the hardest thing I've ever experienced. And I'm a Cubs fan! Truly, if I've learned anything about myself thus far it's that the way to my heart is through my stomach.  Have you ever heard the term "hangry"? It's when you're irritable and angry just by virtue of being hungry. And then you eat a delicious falafel sandwich all stuffed with hummus and onions and maybe even fries and suddenly all is right in the world and you've just sponsored a Cambodian child with a cleft lip for a mere two cents a day. Congratulations, you have overcome hanger. 

7- Check your shoes. This applies in the literal sense and as a metaphor. Every day I go running but before I do, I turn my left running shoe upside down and knock out the toad that takes up residence there every night (I've named it "pleitchurn" ...it means "shoe" in Khmer - I'm very original). A few weeks ago I washed mold off of my favorite pair of sandals and put them in the sun to dry - only there is no sun because it's constantly raining and thus that was the end of those shoes (tear). The cork and leather flip flops I trudged home in that fateful dentist visit day have turned from brown to red on the main road of my village.  My shoes take me everywhere I want to go and that makes them my most valuable possession. Forrest Gump's mother said that you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes; where they've been and where they're going. In Cambodia you take your shoes off before entering a building so EVERYONE gets to see your shoes and your feet.  They really do say a lot about where you've been, and it's hard to know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

8- Little things are just that: little. There are going to be big things to get upset about: the ridiculously intelligent precocious student who has to work in the rice fields instead of going to school to earn money for dinner, the corrupt police who halt the women's empowerment project you've been working on for six months, those kids in the next village over who aren't getting enough rice to eat. You can't let the little things get to you too. You'll go insane and end up back in America...where apparently all of the crazies reside (see: American politics).

9- Flexibility is key.  I'm not talking about being able to climb through Cambodian architecture with a small child to get into that room you accidentally locked yourself out of.  I'm talking about the mental capacity to be able to let the little things go and pick up a tease of an idea enough to make it into something good.  There is no shortage of excuses in the world.  When someone can swallow their excuse and keep on keeping on - that's someone you want on your team.  I know I'd want them on my team.

10- Most things in life can be accomplished while laying in a hammock (new verb: "hammocking").  I find I am mildly suspicious of anything or anyone who tries to imply otherwise. 

Life remains good.
Xo-Amanda 


*Ok, I'll admit it, I exaggerated for effect. It's probably more like a day and a half of pay. But still.