OHHH MA GOODNESS.

Just finished OFFICIALLY submitting my grad school applications.

Got the email receipt to prove it and everything.

Celebrate people. It's a holiday. Like my birthday, only not so holy.

That basketball pic is in honor of my father, who watches sports. I think.
It was also the least creepy picture that came up when I googled "celebrate"
which is more than I can say for some of its compatriots:

What the heck, Google?
(P.S. It looks like she's in that one PetoBismal commercial where they have this disturbing choreographed dance imitating gastro-intestinal issues)

The Water Festival

Last night was rocked by the tragic deaths and casualties of many, many Cambodians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23cambodia.html

No Peace Corps Volunteers or staff were at the event, nor was any member of my immediate or extended Khmer host family, a fact that I thank God for since my host sister, baby niece, aunt, and brother were in the capital, not to mention the many members of extended family there.

From what I hear what happened is this:
There was a concert on Diamond Island which far to many people were allowed to attend. A few people fainted which caused others to panic and stampede towards the small suspension bridge connecting the island to the mainland. During this time and the rest of the incident people began to be trampled. Once the crowd reached the bridge they bottle-necked. At the top of the bridge were the police who tried to stop the crowd by blasting them with a water cannon. Exposed wiring on the bridge caused people in the crowd to be electrocuted, further panicking them. Also at this point people began to scream that the bridge was breaking. Both of these things caused people to jump into the water below, the sad fact being that very few Cambodians know how to swim.

In short, last night was a terrible night for Cambodia and its residents, foreign and Khmer alike. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by the tragedy.

It's not witchcraft Goody Proctor, it's science!!!

So I have this funny little habit where I am convinced some piece of information needs to be kept secret, which leads me to tell a select few of my family/friends, which turns into telling most and/or all of my family/friends, which leads to large swaths of people across the use being convinced they must under all circumstances protect the sanctity of a secret that I have shared with them; a secret that everyone else just happens to know. I’m pretty sure I just get bored with keeping things to myself. Or I’m a complete narcissist and can’t imagine why everyone wouldn’t want to know every little thing that happens to me. It’s one of those beautiful little quirks that I posses and no, you can’t return me to the factory because the warranty has been violated. So stop thinking about it.

One such mythical instance is that I’m currently working through the process of applying to at least one graduate program that I will start the school year immediately following when I get back. I guess that since I’m not planning on broadcasting which schools I’m applying to the whole veil of secrecy thing is legit, so anyone who reads this is still bound by any blood pacts that may or may not have been carried out.

As if grad school isn’t difficult enough, the process of trying to pick one for international degrees is like trying to organize the horses of different colors in Oz. Every program has a different title: International Relations, International Development, International Human Rights, International Security, International Political Economics, International Studies, International House of Pancakes. Every program is just slightly different enough so that it requires a ridiculous amount of time spent dredging through the underbelly of shady school websites, desperately seeking any real, helpful information.

Because it wasn’t confusing enough, every program has different requirements; having taken economics courses, submitting an undergraduate thesis, work experience (some want eight years- that’s almost a quarter of the entire time I’ve been clogging up this planet). I tend to weed out programs that want writing samples for two reasons: 1) I don’t have one and 2) most programs that require that to be admitted are going to be more theory centered than practice/skill centered (a hidden third reason is that I just don’t want to write one). Having to take an economics course would require me to put off going to school which, granted, has its own merits (letting me get settled in to being back in the US, able to save up money for college).

One problem area I’ve ran into is having to look carefully at my motives for being interested in certain programs. I might like the idea of certain programs simply because they come packaged in a hoity toity school, despite the fact that it’s not the specific degree I’m most interested in or the climate of the program isn’t what I’m looking for. Some of the best programs in my field of interest are housed at schools that don’t come with the term “Ivy” attached to any other words, such as “League”. I have to reign my competitive nature in a bit when I realize that I fall in love with programs due mostly to their status, instead of their content.

The whole process makes me feel like I’ve been subjected to emotional whiplash, especially with my top choice program. One minute I’ll feel confident that I’m a good candidate, the next I’ll be pulling out my hair in anxiety because my GPA is a tenth of a point below the incoming average. Another scenario is where I’m going through the website (which I should just make my homepage at this point because I’ve spent a good week camped out there and have bookmarked every possible page) and get excited about all the opportunities in the program and then get depressed and anxious over being able to actually pay for any of it (though this program gives automatic scholarships to students with good undergraduate GPAs). It doesn’t help that nearly every time I talk to someone from the states they feel the need to tell me about how terrible the job market is and bemoan the state of America. NOT exactly something a returning PC volunteer wants or needs to hear. I don’t know if they think I don’t know or they think that I need to be reminded, but the next person who does it is getting permanently cut from my Christmas card list.

To deal with all of the above issues (and because not so deep down I am a total and complete nerd) I created a series of quasi-exhaustive charts that categorize, list, and rank all the different aspects of the schools based on desirability of the programs (International Development, which I want, versus International Diplomacy, which I don’t particularly want), funding, when I could feasibly apply, if they want writing samples, and the amount of damage they would do to my wallet/what financial aid they offer. Which helped me realize that 1) the program that would benefit me most was NOT the hoity toity one (hoity toity school’s program ranked below top choice school’s program on a list done by Foreign Policy magazine) and 2)…well I forgot what number two was, but it helped me work out several tiers of plans should my first one not work out.

So that has basically been my life for the recent past, aside from teaching and having my family padlock me inside the house when they went to the market one morning, which was fun.

And because there is nothing I love more than when science tells us that men’s brains respond to women like they’re rewards/narcotics: SHAZAAM

Economics Professor Loren suspects this may be a case of mass inflation.

Happy Independence Day!!!

Happy Cambodian Independence Day, everyone!

Not much going on in Ang Sdok at the moment, just waiting on the Peace Corps office to tell me whether I'm going to get the time off I requested for my Dad (and possibly his entourage) to visit. I've been a slug lately so today I got out of the right side of the mosquito net, did laundry (which thankfully included my bedding which I kept putting off due to the monsoons and my lack of desire to sleep on no/wet bedding) and cleaned/organized my room. Next step is to get my schedule in order and stick to it so I'm not stuck with so much down time to think. Onwards and upwards!!!

'Nuff said.

This is how I feel at the moment.

Introducing Maybell, who may or may not be a transvestite cow.

My family's cow finally gave birth! The calf is so wee and fuzzy. I decided to name her Maybell. I also decided she's a she. So perhaps Maybell is a boy who is pretending to be a girl. I don't judge cow orientations. Especially when she wags her tail while milking. Adorable.






To the left is Sanyi, one of our puppies. He's a bit smaller than his sister, Julie, who tends to assert her dominance by sitting on top of him until he whines for mercy. Kinda reminds me of my brother and me.







This is the food I prepared for my family the other day. The brown stuff that is completely unappetizing would be a batch of unsolidified no bake cookies. Pretty good with bananas, especially since Hersey bars are $3 here.





This is my big sister Vibol enjoying my American culinary ingenuity. As always, everyone's favorite Cambodian. She did lose points the other day by informing me that if I was thinner like another volunteer she had recently met in my province I would be so much better looking. Good looking out, Vibol, thanks for not letting that one pass you by.






And last but not least, some food for thought for all you in the first world:
I may not get to enjoy plumbing, electricity, the application of everyday logic, chocolate, or privacy but I do get to live with this right outside my window:

Enjoy your traffic and toilet bowls, suckers.

Someone call the AP, Hell has frozen over...

...or at least Cambodia seems to have done so. I actually found myself thinking "it's a bit brisk today..." before catching myself and making the sign of the cross. It's NEVER cold here. Ever. On top of that everything has been smelling like America the past few days. I rolled down my window in Phnom Penh and thought that the city smelled like the Cerritos Mall. Just so you get the full picture, Phnom Penh is a third world city with little or open and above ground sewage systems. Obviously I have a brain tumor or something.

That brown lumpy mass on the table? Yeah, that's all my doing.

Just to clear things up, the “cheeses” referred to in my last post was in fact the area of the body commonly known as the chest. So Madrina, I hope that Mason isn’t pulling out people’s chests. That would be painful.

So at the moment I just want to say this: I love being a volunteer and love living in Cambodia. It’s a wonderful country and I am so incredibly blessed to have been placed here. I know that a lot of times when I talk to many of you it seems like I am harassed, beleaguered, and very put out by Cambodia. This is mainly because I use my phone cards to vent (Cambodia defies logic and hey, it’s dang hard to live here). This being said, I do love this country. Just today I went to the computer store because my computer chord was damaged. When I went back in to pay for the repairs I admired the necklace the service clerk was wearing. It was a golden gourd pendant on a woven chord (I collect gourd jewelry-don’t ask). After asking her where she got the pendant, I complimented her on her chord necklace and asked where she had bought that. She couldn’t remember where she got it but she promptly unhooked it, removed the pendant, and gave the woven chord to me. Just like that. I have to say I wasn’t surprised she did it. It was a true representation of Cambodian culture: the utterly open friendliness and generosity. The whole experience was a wonderful reminder of how lucky I am to being such a beautiful culture, as well as how much I have to live up to as a volunteer here because I know that I will never be able to give back as much as the Cambodian people and culture have given me.

So this week has been rather eventful. At the beginning of the week my computer chord sparked then caught on fire. Luckily being raised by a pack of wolves colloquially known as the Kibler family enabled me to respond to any impending danger with a cool calm intellect and lightning fast reflexes. In other words, I screamed words that are less than lady like and whipped the flaming appliance around till sheer wind force put it out. In a surprising move, I was actually able to get my chord fixed at a shop in Phnom Penh. All you stateside cannot appreciate how amazing this fact is but trust me, it is, and I’ve been telling every volunteer I come across and we both revel in the blessing that is my fixed computer chord.

On top of all of that I have multiple ailments going on from having a cold to having an infected mosquito bite ON MY FACE. I wish to add that those are the more socially appropriate ones, there are others that I don’t care to publish on the internet.

The other night it was pouring harder than any other time I can remember in Cambodia. Granted, we are in monsoon season but this was insane. It sounded like my house was under a waterfall. The sheer roar of the water cut right through my ear plugs. Despite this, it wasn’t the noise that woke me up. What woke me up was the fact that it was raining on me in my bed. Cambodian houses are not hermetically sealed like American ones. My windows have shutters and bars, no glass, and the roofs are not flush against the walls of the house (nor are they usually hole-free). This all leads to when it a) rains hard enough or b) rains with strong enough wind, the water starts pouring into the house. My response was to flail about in search of my ipod and cell phone, shove said electronics under a box, and scoot down so I could pull my covers over my head. True Peace Corps Volunteer grit there, folks. Realistically it came down to moving versus staying where I was and getting sodden, and I was too lazy to move at one in the morning.

Yesterday was momentous: it marked the first day I made food for my Cambodian family, or at all in Cambodia for that matter. Technically I used the recipe for no bake cookies but they ended up being a chocolate-y peanut buttery oatmeal-y dipping sauce that was 75% sugar. My family was deeply impressed by my culinary prowess. The resulting “food” was not by any means savory looking but it was chocolate-y. Fun fact (actually not fun at all for me) for all you people who aren’t in a first world country: a Hershey bar here costs three dollars. THREE DOLLARS. Which is exactly why I am requesting that my mother stuff my Christmas package as full of chocolate oranges as possible. Or put the word out to anyone with a heart: SEND ME CHOCOLATE. Preferably chocolate oranges. Remember: I am a poor volunteer and that I deserve mercy. Especially in the form of gifts.

Show me exactly where the pain in your cheese is.

Spent yesterday at a temporary health clinic set up by Esther, the Korean missionary who lives in the next village over. She had a mission team visiting from her church in America which included several doctors so we trekked out to Pray Kcheeay (a village that is, unbelievably, more rural than Ang Sdok) to dole out free medical care to villagers who most likely had never received any medical care in their lives.

In a true case of “it’s a small world”, Esther’s home church is located in Irvine and I rode past in on the bus everyday my senior year at UCI.

One of the members of the mission team had a daughter who served in Peace Corps Africa about ten years ago and she kept giving me hugs and telling me “what a good girl I was” and “what a good job I was doing”. In America that would have made me feel a bit like a dog being praised for properly doing its business outside of the house, but PC has lowered my standards so I just basked in the attention.

At the clinic there were several stations:

Barber

Acupuncturist

ENT (ear, nose, and throat)

Optometrist

Dentist

Pediatrician

Internist

I ended up dealing with crowd control since I had no discernible useful skills or knowledge and I spoke the language. If anyone has ever been to Cambodia, or even some other South East Asian country, they would have a concept of the Khmer grasp of “waiting patiently and/or in an orderly manner”.

It was utter chaos.

The way the system was supposed to work is this.

1. Villagers show up

2. Villagers go to registration table to list symptoms

3. Villagers wait to hear their number called by me and hand me their paper so that I can direct them to the proper station

4. Villagers wait (if need be) at said station for their turn

5. Villagers receive free, top of the line health care

6. Villagers go home

Obviously this system was dreamed up by someone from a country where people wait in lines. I however, have spent the last year in a country where I once yanked a fully grown man out of line by his shirt when he was the tenth person to cut in front of me. That being said, I was dubious at the success of the system without some kind of electric fencing to keep order.

The most difficult station was the dental station. If there was some sort of Newsweek list for countries with the poorest oral hygiene Cambodia would be a strong contender for some of the top spots. Baby teeth are thought to be disposable and as traditional Khmer cooking generally involves at least two cups of sugar per dish (including vegetables), this leads to many cavities in children which are left untreated, causing the baby teeth to rot up past the gum line. Adult oral hygiene fares little better.

The point of all this is that there was a lot of bloody, screaming action at the dental station. All the hooplah drew a crowd of gawkers that took a great amount of morbid joy in watching the jerking and squealing of whatever patient happened to be in the chair. The creepiest onlookers just stood there silently with these pleased, happy smiles on their faces. Seeing as the dentist was trying to give shots and extract teeth, having a crowd breathing down his neck (they were literally five inches behind him) was not the safest situation.

All of this ended up with me trying to shoo people back to the designated waiting area (which by the way, there’s not a word for in Khmer because they don’t have them in Cambodia). Many of these people were old aunties and grandmothers who outlasted the Khmer Rogue and didn’t take too kindly to some foreigner trying to ruin their fun. When said shooing was attempted I was informed of this fact and promptly wacked. Now I know Peace Corps is all about cultural understanding but I was hot, had a sore throat from yelling numbers, and didn’t really want to contribute to some poor dental patient having the wrong tooth pulled or getting a Novocain shot to the eyeball. While I fantasized about poking one specifically obstinate auntie, I basically ended up herding them like cats for hours on end.

One of the highlights of my day was the attempts of the Khmer students who spoke some English working at the registration table to write down symptoms. Some of my favorites include:

Pains in cheeses (there were many problems with people’s cheeses)

Stroke patience

Itchy but (with one “t”- so he had a very itchy conjunction)

One of the less favorite parts of my day was people coming up to me and showing me their ailments (I’ve never seen so many ailing cheeses in my life). This especially applies to people coming up to me and showing me their falling out/decaying teeth. I am weird about teeth, even talking about dental issues makes me cringe and make faces. Seeing them black and cracked and falling out made me want to dry heave.

Listening to: Super Junior (Korean Pop Music)

Reading: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Eating: Grilled Dragoon and Beef with Rice