I forgot to mention a few more crucial details about my house.
1. I have electricity that is pretty darn stable. And I am very happy about that.
2. There is this awesome outdoor area with hammocks set up. On really hot days I like to go out there and study, although it’s very hard to not fall asleep.
Now on to the next topic of discussion. I talked a bit about my family. Then food. Then my house. How about critters in Cambodia? That’s an exciting topic.
We’ll start with bugs
1. Mosquitoes. Hate em. Here there are daytime mosquitoes and night time ones. And both are bad. Daytime ones can carry dengue fever. Nighttime ones can carry Malaria. I do wear deet every day, but I still have bites especially all over my legs. I actually have an issue bathing. I can deal with bugs normally, but when I’m taking a bath, I get freaked out X 4636385. There’s something about being naked and vulnerable with a bug. I have the bites on my butt to prove it.
2. Spiders. A lot of your normal every day spiders that you would see in your America. But then there are the giant spiders that I am not too fond of. They are about the size of my hand all stretched out. I like to tell people in Khmer that I am afraid of spiders because they just about drop to the floor laughing. No one is scared of spiders here.
3. Ants. I think I might hate them as much as I hate mosquitoes. The ants here are magical. You can be sitting at the table eating, look to the left for 3 seconds, and then look back and all of sudden there are 30 ants eating your food. Where did they come from?? They also just crawl all over you. It’s amazing how ordinary it is to me now that a few times a day I feel that tickle on my arm which means that somehow an ant got on me and is now trying to battle through my arm hair.
4. Fire ants get their own category. Fire ants SUCK! Probably about 3 or 4 times a week I find myself being attacked by fire ants. Just today I happened to park my bike near an army of some, and when I went back to get it, all of a sudden there were ants climbing into my sandals. Its kinda painful!
5. Beetles. The size of my thumb and bigger. I don’t really like them, but I guess they cant hurt me.
6. Stupid miniature green bugs. Also completely harmless, but just ANNOYING. These can get through my mosquito net and they just kind of bounce around everywhere. My notebooks are full of tiny green bug carcasses.
7. Scorpions. I missed the scorpion because I was unfortunately late for class the day that it was sitting in our classroom. Supposedly my teacher stabbed it with her pen. She’s hardcore like that. I’m sure I will get to meet another scorpion soon enough.
Wow, that’s a lot of exciting bugs. I wanted to write about animals too, but I think I’ll save that for the next post. Critters part two.
Picture descriptions:
First is a picture of two friends riding with me on our way to language class.
Second is a picture of farmers working in the rice fields
Third is the classroom that I have language class in. This little grass room is at my teachers house.
Finally is a picture of a spider on the roof of that classroom. Before teacher Siphen attacked it with a broom.
Tomorrow is my day off, thank goodness! I'm going to get my laundry done and do some lesson planning! I think I mentioned before that next week I will be teaching in an 11th Cambodian classroom for 6 days. I met my co-teacher today. She is sweet but... She was trained to teach Khmer and not english, She teaches 8th grade english, not 11th, and... she doesn't speak English. So this should be challenging.
No comments:
Post a Comment