Tea and Oatmeal

I just wanted to do a quick recap on the day, let’s run the numbers shall we?

30: (!) is the number of nursing students who will be sharing my house with me and my family for the next month.

12: is the number of times I listened to the lizard who lives in my room croak last night.

9: is the number of fish my family ate today

6: is the numbers of hours of functioning electricity we’ve had in the last 24 hours (and it wasn’t during the hottest parts of the day, or when it got dark).

5: is the number of liters of water I’ve drank today.

4: is the number of q tips I used on each ear this morning after my shower. Mmm dirty ears : )

1: is the number of bathrooms we have in my house (this is particularly hilarious when considering the first number).

Life is, as per usual, is pretty interesting. : ) Oh, Cambodia, I wouldn’t have you any other way…

I have this friend, her name is Katie, and she’s really persuasive (or maybe I’m just easily persuaded?). Any who, this persuasion landed me in our next door neighbor country to the east, the words I wrote in my journal to describe my experience in the country afterward were: Surprising, varying, pleasant, and intriguing. And I’d say that it was just that. That and it also included clean streets, fresh food, and mountains.

So I totally went last-minute, like…as last minute as it gets. I’d conceded myself to spending April at site, in a puddle of my own sweat, eating mangos to try to console my overheated body. April is the hottest month in Cambodia, and sometimes when I’m in the direct sunlight, I feel like I’m glowing like coals in a fire. It’s also Khmer New Year, so the schools shut down for the month, in true Khmer holiday fashion, and this is an opportunity for the english teaching PCV’s to take a much deserved vacay. So, since the lovely fellow PCV crew I spent Christmas with (Katie, Tim, and Kaija) was tripping it over to Viet Nam, I was able to lolly gag along and ever so graciously take advantage of the first leg of their planned stint. And as all of my time spent with these three usually is, it was wonderful!

I had no idea what to expect beyond getting my visa and bus ticket to the border. I felt like quite the Lone Ranger, out there in the boonies of Svay Rieng province on the way to Viet Nam (the second poorest province in Cambodia), staring out the window at the dried up rice paddies and dwindling water buffalo puddles. The world is the color of dried hay around these parts, it’s mud turned to dust, kelly green rice plants once hanging heavy with grains, chopped off and left to dehydrate in the unforgivable Cambodian sun. And it just keeps going, as far as your eye can see.

In total my stay lasted about ten days (a few extra more than I’d planned due to my silly little passport…we’ll get there). I arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) on a Tuesday afternoon, and nervously sat and waited for my friends to find me, only to grab the bull by the horns (a lose) and get myself lost in this new, jam-packed, bustling city. After dealing with the liar of a taxi driver who scammed me into a ride around the block without not actually knowing where he was taking me, I finally found the hotel I was looking for. A few minutes later, while I sat and finished my left over indian food from the night before, I got a call from Tim, casually confirming that they’d be there in a jiff, while I exclaimed in joy that they’d called me (I have this nervous habit of imagining the worst possible scenario at all times, which was at this point…me being totally on my own, worrying other people all the while, in a city I’d never been to before…gulp). But all was fine, they found me, we went and found spring rolls than internet and coffee. They told me about their day at the museum, and we gushed over a piece of carrot cake and chatted about how clean the side walks were. Then at 10 pm that night, it was off the second stop of the trip: Da Lat.

I had no clue how much I was going to love this place, sure, Saigon was new, but it was still a big, grumpy, busy big city, not exactly my cup of tea. But I knew nothing about Da Lat, just that it was “in the mountains”…sweet! So after a seemingly super scary bus ride taking mountain curves at much faster than Cambodian speeds, we arrived at 4 am, to a goosebumps inducing temperature in the air, and I swear the air felt just a little bit thinner, oh my lord it felt SO good. We made our way to this hotel Katie’s friend had recommended. She said it had stellar breakfast (and it was!). We knocked on the door and slept on the floor and benches of the lobby until they could hook us up with our rooms down the street. Oh, and what an upgrade it was! It was $12.50 a night for me to stay but read: Cushy comfy bed with a fuzzy blanket for the chilly weather and jacuzzi tub (AND one of those nice toilets the flush quietly). It was a little slice of Asian heaven.

I still can’t believe that I got to take a hot shower in cold weather. It was absolutely amazing.

It’s incredible what a little elevation can add to your life, not only did we get to spend the next couple of days riding a cable car over rolling hills covered in pine trees and walking around a lake, we got to indulge in the delicious produce and foods that developed agricultural systems and colder temperatures can afford. Avocados, beets, mullberries, strawberries, artichoke tea, wine, milk, almonds, coffee. Oh my belly was ecstatic with this little vacation it got to take. The city of Da Lat had been nick named the alps of Viet Nam, according to our guidebook, so there was a lot of hoakyness going on, but it was loveable enough. We spent our time relaxing and taking in the city, not being overly pestered my vendors and sellers, having the great conversations that always seem to crop up whenever I’m with these great people. Twas a glorious place to visit in Viet Nam, I’d say : )

Then next it was off to Nah Trang, a popular beach town a little further north of Da Lat. The drive down out of the mountains in the daylight was spectacular, getting to watch the vegetation change with the altitude was so good. It kind of induced this epiphany as I stared out the window on the way down. That’s one thing that’s really missing in Cambodia, for me: A change in scenery. Montana is so varying in its topography and it’s seasons, I’ve grown to love watching scree turn to short stubby little alpine flowers turn to tall scratchy bushes and trees. Watching the leaves turn in autumn and the snow melting to reveal ambitious greenery underneath in the spring. While it can be a nuisance, I’ve come to love that it can be 75 and sunny one day, and there’ll be a foot of snow on the ground the next. It’s Montana, that’s why you dress in layers…

But all the while, we arrived to Nah Trang, and I scraped my jaw off the floor after watching the beautiful country of Vietnam whiz by. We checked into our hotel and gave our passports over to the lady running the place (crucial plot changing point) and then we wandered out to go and find this brewery we’d heard of. It existed, and it had not one, not two, not three, but four different beers on draft, one of them being a delicious dark brew that I could’ve drank a lot of had it not been quite the pretty penny on our modest budget. With four people, we got one of each, and sat at this hyper touristy resort and passed to our left after each sip, each of us discussing how we liked each one, and agonizing over the lack of good beer in our lives. Then afterward it was indian food and bed time. The next day, Tim and Katie took a little ride out to the bay where Tim’s Dad was stationed during the Viet Nam War, and Kaija and I hoofed it over to a beautiful wat after an early morning coffee, shared a yummy veggie filled lunch, and went and caught some rays at the beach. After Tim and Katie returned, we went and I fulfilled my personal quest to eat some seafood. Then it was to bed early, since I had to return the next day on a 10 hour bus ride back to Saigon to get back to dear ‘ol Kampuchea.

Up at the butt crack of dawn, I slipped on my chaco’s as I groggily swung my back pack over my shoulder and made my way with the crew to go and grab a quick morning coffee. It was about 5 hours later when I mindlessly eaves dropped on an Aussie couple discussing who should hold on to their passports that I realized I’d left mine at the front desk of the hotel. Awww, man. This trip had been so nice so far.

And barring the slightly stressful arrival in Saigon, when I couldn’t manage to buy a sim card to call my friends that would work, and I couldn’t access the internet from my computer because of a program I had to download due to internet restrictions in the country, and I learning that I’d missed the last bus back to Nah Trang that night by about 10 minutes. All the while Peace Corps was accidentally erroneously deleting my communications about my needing to stay in Viet Nam to get my passport back and freaking out that I was dead in a ditch somewhere, while I panically schemed about how I’d hide on the bus to make it past the border (I’ll just explain it to my bus driver in Khmer, he’ll be on my team because I speak Khmer! How could it fail?)…that plan got nixed, in case you were worried : )

No, after a couple deep breaths and some ice cream, I returned back to Da Lat to meet up with the lovely Garrett, who hand delivered it to me as I spent a couple more days in the lap of higher altitude luxury, whilst spending some incredible quality time with friends, and having a pretty memorable deep convo to boot, can’t really complain! Everything worked out, and we all lived happily ever after.

Viet Nam was great, a pleasant last-minute kind of surprise. Here’s some pictures if you’re interested:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150798258055429.468346.642605428&type=3&l=b54bd63c88

I’m so thankful for the incredible memories, I’ll hold on them almost as tightly as I’ll hold on to my passport. Lots of love, folks : )

So, if you gander at the top of the screen, you’ll notice that I’ve added a bit of flair in the form of some new pages to the ‘ol blog. Just in case you get tired of my yammering all the time : )Here’s the quick and dirty on these new little additions, in conjunction with the explanations on each page.

1. Food!: First! Ta da! It’s a page dedicated to one of my true loves in life: Food. The blog is named after breakfast after all, right? And I guess I have previously owned two cats named Zucchini and Oyster. It can go without saying, I really really love everything about food. So, naturally, and masochistically, I’ve taken to the world wide web to fill this void in my life that used to be filled by a feverish cooking addiction. I figure it’s a better outlet than dragging other people into the sad sad foodie conversations about cheese and all the wonderful things we used to eat that inevitably leave me on the verge of tears (just kidding!…kind of). It’s just not fair of me anymore. So, the page is intended to be a bit of a release for me, but also, I hope that it can cater to the foodie in you, as I discover lots of little intriguing recipes and stories. I’m also planning on writing up some tidbits of info on food in Cambodia, because, in my opinion, food is an important part of culture, and I think it’s a great place to start in understanding it. We all gotta eat, right? Bon Appétit!

2. Hmm…..: These are things that I’ve read or seen that have stuck with me for a bit. Maybe because they made me think, made me smile, or something along those lines, at least enough that I’d like to share them with anyone who is interested. The topics are probably going to be all over the place, but you’ll probably notice a motif of Peace Corps and development, but beyond that, stay tuned. It’ll be a little cyber trail of the ways in which I spend my internet time, a look into my wacky interests. I sure can certainly learn something new every day with this great invention called the internet, and these are some of the things I’d endorse as worth the time of grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down and scanning.

3. Lovely: A big old mish mash of things that I find visually pleasing. Before coming to Peace Corps, I’d picked up from Megan and refined this technique of keeping lots of clippings of pictures and photographs that I found particularly beautiful or worth looking at, and collaging them all over where ever I was living. Inside the cupboard doors, in the corners of rooms, all over the back drop of my desk, old pictures of my Mom with big 90’s hair, postcards, close up photos of sunflowers and poppies, sweet hand written notes, cut outs from the discarded book covers of the creative arts library, stunning black and white photographs of alpine scenery, what ever struck me. This is intended as my digital version of that. Things that I saw and thought were incredibly beautiful plastered together in honor of this old habit I can’t wait to take up again someday when I return home and open up that old shoe box full of these little decorations littered with scotch tape on the back from all the moves I had in college. Enjoy.

4. Quotes: Words that have stuck with me, some poignant, some silly, most somewhere in between. What can I say, I grew up with a Dad that really liked to recite quotes. They’ve all served as good reference for some of those tough days. Sometimes you just read things and think “Couldn’ta said it better myself”.

But mostly, it’s Khmer New Year and the whole country has shut down for the month, so I have a ridiculous amount of free time on my hands. Which I suspect is not the case for the rest of you, but in any light, more blogness is now available. I’ll try my darndest to keep up. Happy April, everyone : )

We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. My Dad is good at recognizing MT county numbers on license plates and falling asleep in the early afternoon and always knowing which direction is north,my friend Megan can burp the ABC’s, start a conversation with almost anyone, and drink incredible amounts of beer. My stepmom, Gail is really good at being humble and making chocolate chip cookies. Doug’s freakishly skilled at remembering inside jokes. Jager (the dog) is good at stealthily stealing shoes. My little brother, John, is really good at riding his bike. My Grandma Dee has beautiful handwriting. Me? Personally, I think my strengths lay within the realms of coffee consumption, beet eating, over analysis of pretty much everything, and somehow being able to partake in physical activities where I wipe out pretty epically and frequently, miraculously without getting too hurt (knock on wood…). I can also make that clover leaf shape thing with my tongue.

I also have a weakness or two…or ten million. And the glaring one that neither me nor the people in my life are all that crazy about is a topic that I’d like to dwell on for a bit today (see? overanalysis!) mostly for the reasons that a) I’m not all that proud of this nasty little habit of mine b) I had a rather epiphanous conversation about the topic last week c) I owe a bit of an explanation to all of you lovely people.

Here it is: I suck at keeping in touch.

Ugh!! Why?! Why do I so epically fail in the department of maintaining contact??

This all came about, I must admit, because I just sat down to answer a couple of messages, to two lovely lovely people who have been so gracious as to write to me repeatedly during my time here in Peace Corps. It’s been…I don’t really want to think about it, but, at least a month? since they’ve sent me messages, for cripes sake! And when I just now began to compose my responses to them I was overwhelmed by a sense of guilt at having strung out our conversation into nothingness for so bloody long, but I also felt the urge to give some reasons (and hopefully not too many excuses, because, by golly, there just aren’t any!), for what they could ever be worth, as to why and how this behavior came about. And with all of this in mind, I figured I should put up this explanation for anyone and everyone (which is probably more than I’d like to admit) who has ever been confused or bothered by my occasional MIAness before or after I moved to Cambodia.

Historically, before PC, a lot of it was just me needing to grow up and stop being a crummy friend. And, especially since Megan moved to Spain and then chewed my butt a bit about it (that’s what friends are for, right?) it’s one of those things I’m always striving to be better about. It’s a perfect New Years resolution, keep in touch better, I don’t think I could ever be good enough at it, and it’s always worth pursuing. We all win, life’s good.

So when I went to Vietnam last week (I’ll tell you all about it in the next blog post!) I asked my ever so insightful friend and fellow PCV, Kaija, during one of our refreshing lets-analyze-the-crap-out-of-Peace-Corps conversations why have I been so demotivated to keep in better touch with all of these people who I care about so much? (Seriously, I should hire this girl as my full-time life coach), and here was the epiphany: Because as a PCV, it’s kinda hard.

But I want to preface all of this explanation with the very important declaration that I don’t think of any of this as an excuse that is meant to replace my efforts towards keeping in touch with you all. I promise to keep making that effort, because I still find all of you wholly deserving of that little extra sticktoitness on my end. I just hope that this can help answer any potential questions out there.

So, being a PCV means a lot of change, all at once. Sure you get settled more and more very day, but even when you think you and your surroundings aren’t changing, they are. It’s a bit relentless, and at times, exhausting. But it’s the name of the game. So this means, with nearly each day embodying some kind of internal struggle or external change, that in 8 months, my life has changed…a lot. All in ways that I can see, and in ways I won’t understand for up to even years after my service. It’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but some days all I can know for sure is that I am definitely not in Kansas anymore. My life is very very different, in almost every facet that I take the time to examine.

So sometimes when I’m not up to par that day, and I sit down to respond to communications, I don’t know where to start. And unfortunately, and I wish this wasn’t the case, but sometimes I just sigh and pick up a book instead of gritting my teeth and getting past that silly little mental block. And of course, the lovely irony of this little habit, is that each time I sit down, again and again to write back, with more time passing and more change occurring, it gets more and more baffling to cough up an adequate response.

That connection that you had with someone, that familiarity, it feels at times, sitting here in middle of no where Cambodia, fleeting. You go through so much of your own personal struggle and growth, that you suddenly realize you’re a little different, then one day, pretty different. So, sometimes it’s almost as if, the ways in which you can relate to this life you lived before coming here, are weakening. It kind of feels like you’re in a dream that you know you’re having, but you know that if you wake up and tell someone about it, it will sound crazy, it will only make sense to you. So what do you do when you can’t tell anyone? You turn inward, and you grow. You thicken your skin a little bit more at leading this incredibly autonomous existence. A lot of times, at the end of the day I find myself with me, me, and only me. I feel pretty John Wayneish some days.

But I also have distilled a lot of my feelings about my relationships with people. And gawl darnit, if I loved you before coming to Peace Corps, I reeeally love you now (be afraid, be very afraid). I would say that it’s almost as if the people who are still a part of my life from so far away have become more of a quality instead of quantity of people.

So, what to take away from this? Well, the moral of the story is that I need to make the effort and do more to respond to you sooner rather than later, because all of you people are undoubtedly more than worth it. I’m lucky to have each of you in my life, and I need to start acting more like I mean it. This can be counted as my formal apology. I really am sorry about falling off the face of the earth at times. But know that cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, I will continue to always make the effort to give you the responses you deserve when you’re kind enough to get ahold of me.

Just like Gail will always be good and only getting better at making chocolate chip cookies. I promise to always keep trying harder.

So, with that, I guess I’ve got a couple of emails to go write : )

Until next time, -S.

Letters on display on the walls of my room, reminding me each day how great each of you are.