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.