Permanent Site

I recieved my permanent site placement on tuesday. For security reasons, I can't give you any specifics, but I am going to a northwestern provence of Cambodia about 50k down a dirt road from the nearest highway and only another 20k to the border of Thailand. My hostmom is a midwife and works at the local health clinic/field hospital where I will be volunteering two days a week and my dad is a ministry official. I met my counterpart, an English teacher who grew up/lives in the community, this week in Phnom Penh as part of a large country-wide counterpart conference where each trainee met a counterpart from each of their site placements. He told me that my high school has over 3000 students, one school director, and about 50 teachers (total). He said that a typical class size is about 60 students, depending on the rice harvesting/planting seasons which will see a pretty dramatic drop in student attendance.

Tomorrow I will get on a bus leaving from one of the markets here in PP to make the 7hr (if nothing goes wrong/the bus driver decides to wait to fill up the bus in one of the larger cities before continuing on) trip out to visit my site and my family for two days. We still have a month left in training before we are sworn in, but this visit marks the beginning of our true commitment to Cambodia, and to our particular community. I cannot wait to see my site, and meet my family, my school director, and the director of my health center. The paperwork I was given says that the health center is really understaffed and desperately needs someone to help work with new mothers to promote baby health and safety as well as mosquito erradication in homes, and their new vaccination program that goes to other districts around my town to give vaccinations to children. It seems now, on paper anyway, that this community is receptive to having me there, and hopefully once I arrive as a full-fledged volunteer I can help make a difference.

I have also completed Practicum, which was a six day work week where all the trainees were in charge of teaching classes of about 40 Khmer students in our training villages for an hour each day. I taught my kids some tounge twisters, as well as some spelling games, and then adapted the national english currciulum for the rest of my lessons. It was amazing how after the first day of teaching, suddenly every student who was in the same grade level as me would smile at me wherever I went in the village and say "hello teacher! where you go??!!". It was just a tiny taste of what I will do at the school in my permanent site, but it got me really excited about teaching here. Students are, for the most part, extremely eager to learn anything you have to teach them. Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that I am foriegn, and anything foreign as we all know, is interesting... at least for a little while. Everytime I go to the school I wear a sampot and a collared shirt. A sampot is a long (ankle-length), wrap around skirt made of stiff fabric with traditional Khmer embroidery on it. I have pictures on my camera, but getting them from my camera to any sort of device that would be able to download onto the internet is a bit of a mystery at this point im afraid... The sampots I have are pretty beautiful, and I really dont mind wearing them, except for the fact that it feels like wearing a full-length carpet in 100 degree tropical weather AND its a totally new battle to try and ride my mountain bike down my dirt path in that thing while dodging cows, dogs, chickens, and small children on the way to the school (my host family thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen the first time i very awkwardly mounted my mountain bike in my full length khmer sampot to roll out to school... they laughed for about 10 minutes).

Hopefully I will have a chance to write again after returning from site visit, but until then, I hope yall are all happy and healthy, and stay in touch!!!

xoxo
K

The Floating Village

I went to a floating village on the huge lake that divides Cambodia in half (the Tonle Sap) today. This village has everything- including wats, cell phone shops, butcheries, farms, gas stations- all floating on the lake. People get around on tiny boats that are painted brilliant colors from one floating platform to the next. Apparently crime in the floating villages is pretty high due to the lack of opportunity and resources that these people are afforded living on the outskirts of a giant lake, pretty far removed from the closest town or village. There are also issues with water sanitation- the water is used for everything from cooking, cleaning, waste, etc. etc. and there is no way of sanatizing the water except for boiling water which we weren't sure if that was a practice that people employed frequently or not. All that being said, it was a beautiful and unique part of Cambodia that I had never heard about before.

In other news, I was told by one of my bosses last week that I have been accepted as one of 10 health volunteers here in Cambodia. We will be the first group to seriously focus on health issues in Cambodia as Peace Corps Volunteers (as this is only the third year that Peace Corps has been in Cambodia). Basically what this means is that in addition to teaching in a high school at my permanent site four days a week, I will also spend one to two days at the local clinic conducting community needs assesments and building health programs around the needs of my community. This will be an amazing opportunity for me to reach out to my community beyond the borders of my school, and to show the government of Cambodia that Peace Corps can expand into other sectors of the Cambodian culture than just education. I still have five weeks of training to go before I move to permanent site (I still don't even know where that will be yet), but I cannot wait to get started. As for now, I will enjoy spending time with my other trainees, and learning as much as I can about Cambodia before I officially become a volunteer.

xoxo,
K

family

I have been living in Cambodia for about three weeks now. I am very quickly falling in love with this country and its rice patties, its gap-toothed smiles, its motos, its resilient spirit....

I will fill you in on a few details, and then I will transcribe an entry from my journal from a few days after I moved in with my host family that I think describes my situation with more clarity than I could now after a sleepless night, a forty minute tuk tuk ride to the closest internet cafe, and at seven am in the morning.

I live with a host family of five (I make six) about 2k down a dirt road in a tiny village of about 200 people. My mother worries about me constantly, and doesn't smile very often but when she does I know I have done something to touch her heart. My father has the most heartwarming smile of anyone I have ever met. I have an older brother who is 23 who is headed to Phnom Penh in the fall to go to University (the first in the family). I have a sister who is 20 who makes me laugh like no other and has been very kind and patient in my slow climb to learn Khmer. I have a little brother who is 17 and only has one arm though he plays volleyball everyday and is on the local team. We live on a farm in a wooden house on 10ft stilts with no electricity and no running water. The water we use for cooking, cleaning and bathing is collected in giant clay jars from the rain that falls everyday. my sister and mom do all the cooking in a tiny room removed from the house where they use scrubbrush and dried palm leaves to make a fire to heat the woks. my dad and brothers work very hard to take care of the cows, chickens, dogs and cats we have on the farm running around in addition to working the multiple rice, potato and tomato fields my dad owns. I arrived right in the middle of transplating season, so my family is constantly busy.

The Peace Corps training schedule is pretty intense, we have four hours of language lessons every morning before lunch, and four hours of workshops and lectures after lunch every day excpet for sundays. As intense as it is, I am grateful for it because it supplements all the new information that is coming my way everyday all the time from my family and their neighbors who are all VERY curious about me. Now on to my journal entry-

things I hear: my dad fixing a moto, children playing a game, chickens, my mom talking in Khmer to my sister, wind in the trees, cows, dogs

things I see: straw mats, blue walls, mosquito net, pink blanket, ox cart, gardens, palm and coconut trees, my sarong, the wooden house next door.

things I do differently: I use a trough full of rain water to bathe (with a small bucket), I do my laundry by hand in a bucket, I have to worry about things like dengue fever and malaria, I am stared at wherever I go and sometimes collect very curious crowds of people, I never ever wear anything that shows my shoulders or knees, I do not have electricity, my feet are always swollen from the heat, I never go out past dark because it is innapropriate for women to do so and very dangerous, I never show the bottom of my feet or sit crosslegged (both for women is considered rude), I am in bed by eight and normally up by 5:30 with the sun and the roosters, and I havent used toilet paper since I was in Phnom Penh.

things that are the same: I eat, I breathe, I sleep, and I drink iced coffee everyday (yes, they have that here).

I have only been here for a short time, but I know I have a purpose, and I love this place so much already. Ill save you the gushing wax-poetic words of a person in love, but really, truly, this place is great.