In which tharrrrrrrr be more maps

My goal was to finish not just one map, but TWO before Meghan deserted me forever, and WE DID IT!!!

This map is of Southeast Asia, because everybody's immediate reaction upon seeing Cambodia on the world map was "It's so tiny!!!"  So, we blew it up a bit.  By this point, we were all old hats at map-making, so it took about four work days to finish the whole thing.  They did the grid and drew the whole thing in one day, painted the countries on the second day, painted another coat on day three, and for the last day they labelled and sprayed on some finish.  This time we labelled in Khmer and English, because why not?

In other news, Srey Neeat is back yayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! She came home a couple days ago, and just walked into my room all nonchalant like she wasn't in a hospital for the past week or anything.  She's got to take some medicine every day for a long time, but other than that she's as spry as ever.  

And here is Chay Na in his shnazzy PJs.  

Meghan is 'jet deu winh howey' (soon to be abandon us forever)  and she has been giving me a lot of her stuff, in waves.  She has also started to give some gifts to her host family, seen here.

Later this week I am headed to Phnom Penh with Meghan and all of her stuff.  I will talk more about how Meghan is forsaking me in a later post.

In which I update you on everything

     The theme today is going to be another "What has Emily been doing for the last month or so?"

So, here goes.

In June, one of the volunteers, Joel, held a health fair at the secondary school at his site.  Meghan and I did a class together about brushing your teeth.  There were five, twenty minute classes, each with about 20-30 students.  I got to demonstrate brushing my teeth five times that day.  My teeth have never felt cleaner!

Everyone's got a bike now! Some are fancier than mine...

I visited the Upper Market in Siem Reap for the first time a few weeks ago.  It's a huge, Cambodian-style, open-air market that is on the international road, making it very busy.  I spotted some Khmer guys playing chess.

Then, the 4th of July happened!! For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to sign up to sing at the US Embassy with some other volunteers?!?  Anyway, despite my temporary lax in judgement, it was still a pretty fun weekend.  It rained just a little bit...

There was live music and delicious food, we sang some national anthems, I found a John Deere, and the Obamas, and the American Ambassador got dunked!

Ploughing Season has begun!! Rice is being planted, fields are being ploughed, and farmers are getting busy!

I bought a new book shelf!!! I have been wanting one for awhile, but they don't sell them in my village, and all of my books were in messy piles all over my bed.  But, one day when I was walking along the road, a truck full of these book shelves pulled over to get some gas.  I asked them if I could buy one, not expecting them to answer positively, but lo' and behold, they gave me one for $5!  Then, in exchange for helping me haul all of my books from my bed to the shelf, I helped my host brother with his English homework.

Since vacation has finally begun, I have been struggling to keep myself occupied lately.  Some days I study, some days I visit friends and family, some days I lay on a hammock all day reading a book, and some days I tag along with Meghan to visit some of her friends!  This particular day, we visited the family of one of my students, where we learned how to cut up pig food, among other things.

 

I had some visitors in my room.  This little one is my host cousin, Pitsey, the youngest daughter of my CoTeacher, who is married to my host mom's little sister.  Complex family systems.  Here, I believe she is trying to do "Sty", which is short for 'style'.

Kitties love me, as usual.  The one on the right is mine.  She's getting so big!!

Last week, my little host sister, Srey Neeat, fell in the bathroom.  It must have been a really hard fall, because she was bleeding a lot, inside and out.  She stopped bleeding after a few hours, but then the next day she started bleeding again when she peed, so they took her to the hospital.  I went to visit her for a couple days.  My host mom and grandma have been there with her the whole time.  They're not brave enough to ask the doctors what is going on, but they have taken a few X-Rays of her stomach, and she is on an IV and a soft diet right now.  The bleeding has stopped, but her stomach still hurts a little.  Unsure what is going on, but she seems to improve a little bit every day.  Hopefully soon she can come home!!

Home

In which we paint the world

     I would have to say that, secondary project-wise, this project is the biggest that I have yet done in Peace Corps.  I am very proud of it, because Meghan, many of our students, and I put a lot of hard work into this project, and because it turned out to be more spectacular than I could have imagined.  It began with a blank wall, a lot of math, hardware store frequenting, and coloring.  After that was a lot of measuring, and patience.  Trying to make a perfect rectangle of about 13 by 7 feet, and then dividing that into 52 by 28 squares to make the grid.  We used a chalk line to snap the lines for the grid.  Then, the drawing began.  First, we had a session in the classroom, where we got everybody used to what it's like to draw in a grid.  We made copies of sections of the world with a grid, for reference, and had the students practice a little on paper.  Then, once we were ready, we started on the wall.  My artistic abilities are certainly lacking, but with the grid, it wasn't as hard as you might think it would be to draw the world.  With that, our students are much better artists than I am, so although I helped a bit, I let them (and Meghan) do a lot of the drawing.  Those students who felt like I did, would then trace over the pencil drawings with permanent marker.

     That went on for a couple months, meticulously drawing each country every Monday through Wednesday afternoon.  With the sun blazing on our backs, everyone always remembered to bring their hats.  It took a long time, and we had to redo a couple of areas, including most of Africa, but that didn't deter us!

     Then came the painting!  We used nine different colors, and mixed them ourselves.  Before painting, some of the students helped me to color the paper copies of the map, so that it would be easier to tell which countries were what color.  Painting went very smoothly, and rather quickly, too; maybe only a couple weeks to paint all of the countries.  The islands were the worst, but they got the hang of it pretty quickly, using the tip of the paintbrush to paint each individual island.  After that were just a few retouches, some research on my part, figuring out what the newest countries were that weren't on our map, which was from 1994.  There have been about a dozen new countries since then, and thanks to Jason and Molly, who sent me a globe for my birthday, I was able to find all of them!  We also wanted to label all of the countries.  Usually, most volunteers label in English, but both Meghan and I decided that we would rather have it so that everybody could read the map, even those who didn't know English.  We thought it was more important for them to understand it, than to learn English from it.  We also figured that we will have time to teach those who want to learn about English geography later.  Thus, we had to find all of the names of the countries in Khmer.  Well, it turns out that there has never been a map with the labels in Khmer made before, so we didn't have just one map to reference.  Usually the maps that you find at schools are labeled in Vietnamese or English.  We had to ask various sources, Peace Corps staff, my tutor, and various dictionaries, in order to find the names of nearly 300 countries.  It was a process, but I think this map could possibly be the first ever that is labeled in Khmer, which is super exciting!  So, we (and by we, I mean our students, because although Meghan and I can write a little Khmer, it's nothing like a native speaker) labeled all the countries with permanent marker, and then stuck on a compass, a scale, some flags, and then just spray painted some finish at the end, and voila!  Roich howey! (That means "all done" in Khmer)

     Just like in my last post, I wanted to give you lots of pictures, and couldn't choose just a few, so I made another web album, called World Map Project.  You can click here, or on your right under the "Various Web Albums" tab.  Only 85 photos this time, and don't forget to check out the captions!

In which I have my first visitor

     May was quite the hectic month.  The highlights of which were when my dear friend Punch visited me from Thailand.  She had never been to Cambodia, even though it is only an 8 hour bus ride from Bangkok, so we crammed all that we possibly could into two full weeks of adventuring.  We visited Siem Reap, Angkor Wat, my lovely little village, and Battambang.  I took over one thousand pictures while Punch was here, so I couldn't possibly pick only a handful to post on here.  Instead, I created a web album on Google Plus, and manage to cut it down to only 346 pictures.  The link is on the bottom of this blog post.

     The first several days were spent in Siem Reap, visiting some modern pagodas first, and then getting the 3-day pass to Angkor Wat.  We saw nearly all the temples, except for only a few of the really tiny ones that we just didn't possibly have time to fit in.  After that was a stretch spent at my site, which Punch enjoyed very much.  She was quite enchanted by my family, especially my little host brother and sister.  (They are quite enchanting, though sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's not.)  She also went to school with me, and many of my students who have been learning Thai got the chance to practice their Thai with her.  From there we visited Battambang for a couple days. There we rode the Bamboo train, climbed a few mountains, saw lots of bats, a neat fishing village, and some more pretty pagodas.  Then, to end it all, we headed back to Siem Reap and saw the circus.  The circus is run by an NGO, (non-government organization) that takes children from orphanages and other unfortunate circumstances, and helps them out by giving them a place to live, sending them to school, and teaching them how to be awesome circus performers.

     I really liked to take pictures of the following:  trees, doorways, bats, clouds, and stairs.  I am not your average tourist.  Otherwise, I hope that you enjoy this album, and I look forward to showing you even more of the wonders of Cambodia in the next coming year.


My Web Album   <-- Click on it!

PS.  Don't forget to look at the captions.

In which I show you the wonders of the open market

Happy Labor Day!

In honor of this international Labor Day, I would like to share with you what an open market in Cambodia is like, with pictures from none other than my own village!  (Which shall remain unnamed due to legal purposes.)

The market in my village is generally open from about 6:30am-9:30am, weather pending.  Everything is freshly cut/plucked/picked/butchered, and at least one member from every family usually makes a market stop once every morning, making it a very bustling place.

First, there is the entrance, a long, brick-walled alleyway that leads to the back of the market.

And you usually run into someone familiar.

Here we see the parking lot, not free of charge.  Many people walk to the market, and some even attempt to drive the bikes or moto's through the market.  There must not be any rules against that...

First stop for us upon entering the market, is breakfast.  

This, my friends, is Meghan's new enriched baw-baw. (rice porridge) Much healthier than normal baw-baw, and so much tastier, too!  It's got rice, egg, squash, morning glory, and just a little bit of meat mixed in there.  Meghan got a grant in order to give 3 different baw-baw sellers the start-up costs for selling the enriched stuff, and with enough advertising, hopefully these sellers will make a big profit, and everybody will be eating this nutritious concoction.  

After this scrumptious meal, it's time to explore.  Next stop is a line of sellers that sell... various goods.

It's an everything store!

Afterwards we have some fruit and vegetables.

 So many watermelons.

Remember, girls and boys, to always wash your veggies before consumption.  You never know where they've been!

Next up: Clothes!

 Clothes Clothes Clothes

 For the kiddies!

Lots of clothes. A little difficult to find any in my size, though.  Guess I'm curvier than the average Cambodian.  

Then there's the fish. Lots of fish.

These two are sister-in-laws, Voleak's mother and aunt.  They were pretty embarrassed to have me taking their picture, but I got it, muahaha.  

It's that time of year again, you guessed it, mango season!

So many mangoes, but they're sooo delicious.  I wish I could send them to you all.

Speaking of delicious, here's my waffle lady.

Thirteen cent waffles, you can't go wrong.

This, this is durian fruit.  Looks funny, smells funny, and tastes terrible.  But, Khmer people love it.  

Yuck.

Walking out towards the front entrance, you'll see the jewelry and electronics sellers.  Here you can buy your cellphone cards, to top-up your balance.

Finally, we walk back to Meghan's house, where I park my bike.

To go along with the market theme, I reviewed fruits and vegetables with my 10th graders last week.

In other news, we finally finished the world map project!!! Pictures to come soon. Promise.

In which I miss my mom

Hey guys, it's been awhile. 

April 14th, 15th, and 16th was the Khmer New Year, a huge celebration in Cambodia where everyone, literally everyone, goes home from their busy lives in the city, or at school, or wherever they are, to their families, to celebrate the new year. It's a really big deal, schools get off for 2-3 weeks, and it's basically like Christmas in Cambodia. 

Cambodia, or the Kingdom of Wonder, as they call it, really is a wonderful place, which, makes it all the more sad that my mother never had the chance to experience it with me. 

On March 25th, 2014, Barbara Ann Baer: teacher, scrapbooker, cardmaker, tigger lover, traveler, photographer, singer, mentor, and my mother, passed away at age 59. She was an amazing mother, caring, kind, loving, and always there for me, whether I needed it or not. What else can I possibly say? She was my mother, is my mother, and will always be my mother. 

I did, though, get the chance to return home to America to attend the funeral, thanks to Peace Corps. I got to see my dad, brother and sister-in-law, and my aunts, uncles, and cousins who came all the way from California, and of course Athena, too. 60 hours on a plane there and back was totally worth it. 

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks, mom, for being you. Love you.