A year has passed since I left the
Land of Plenty and Plenty More and entered the maze that is Cambodia. Though I can hardly claim to be an expert on
any subject involving Peace Corps, the country of Cambodia, or the Khmer, I
have (with my undiluted and extremely acute powers of observation) unearthed a
few new pieces of information over the past year. Some of these discoveries sober me, other
observations I still find completely mysterious. Daily occurrences remind me that though I live
here, Cambodia is not my home, though I speak this language, I do not fully
understand it, and (most importantly) though I eat Khmer food, it never really
fills me up.
I do, however, have some skills that have significantly
improved over the last year that I am quite proud of. The top eight skills I have included below
(this was a fun list to make).
8. I am really good at charades now.
7. I can ride a bike relatively long distances in
an ankle-length traditional Khmer skirt.
6. I can successfully use a squatty potty without
getting completely undressed and while wearing a backpack…and not soil any of
it.
5. I can haggle the market ladies down to about
half the price they originally quote me.
4. I can go many days without electricity or
internet.
3. I can shower(ish) with a seriously restricted
amount of water (about a bucketful) and still get clean.
2. I can hand wash a weeks’ worth of clothes in
under an hour
1. I can cook rice. (Not sure if a happy face or a sad face should follow this comment)
And throughout this year I have discovered some things about
myself. The best ones (or, the ones that
I can be posted online) follow:
1. Watching American television shows is more
difficult here than it is in America.
This is because I get distracted largely by the food (any PCV will
readily admit that they have dreams about food in America…have you read my rice
post?). For example: in almost every
single episode of everything, there is a bowl of fruit in the background of a
scene. Why is there a bowl of fruit? No
one has a bowl of fruit just sitting at their houses - that’s silly because if
you leave fruit out it will rot and draw bugs and even in my large family if
someone did want to eat fruit, they certainly wouldn’t eat an entire bowl of it
at once and not all of it would get eaten which leads to the rotting food and
what a waste that is! People go into the
cupboards for the good food in boxes with labels like “Hostess” or “Cheez-it”,
anything that says “full of sugar” if you read between the lines. But anyway, I am sitting in my village having
not even seen real blueberries for the last year when all of the sudden in the
episode of Nashville on my computer there is a bowl of blueberries in the
background and I get distracted by the food.
I start thinking about the blueberries and how good they would be in pie
or pop tarts, or just washed and in a bowl like they are depicted and suddenly the
scene was 27 minutes ago and in the meantime the main character has a secret
brother who is also a CIA agent cheating on his wife but the wife is running
for President and pregnant to top it off and the whole plot line has gotten
away from me because of a bowl of blueberries!
Forget about scenes that take place in bakeries. No, I don’t have ADD. Really, I don’t. It’s the food!
2. Feeling
clean is half the battle to getting
clean. And “clean” is a subjective term.
3. I am the happiest person I have ever had the
pleasure of getting to know. I like to think that it radiates off of me like sunlight and everyone around me is trying to get a tan from my happiness. Or at least that's what I'm aiming for.
4. I will be getting very fat upon my return to America. See #1.
And though I swore when got off the plane a year ago that by
today I would be an expert in Khmer culture and language, I have to admit that
I am still nearly (okay, completely) in the dark about most things. I had hoped to at least be under the illusion
of having secret knowledge that can only be gained by living in my village, but
alas, I am still a foreigner who communicates mostly through body
language. I still have an atrocious
American English accent when speaking Khmer and I still leave most of the rice
in my bowl during dinner.
Can you believe it’s been a year? I can’t.
xo-Amanda
On the next episode of “blog post by Amanda” come more
lists- “Best” and “Worst”.
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