Shabba Ranks

First Picture: My beautiful room. Seriously, it’s beautiful. Nicer than my room back in America. Well, bigger, at least. Compared to other Trainees, I am lucky because: My walls are concrete (which I think means fewer critters), I have a LARGE bed, I have a real mattress!, I have open space, I have a full-length mirror, AND I have tiled floors. This is not normal, but I dig it!

Second picture:  The side road to get to my Khmer teachers house. A beautiful trek through the middle of rice paddies.

Third picture: My house. JK. But isn’t it beautiful?

I’ll use this blog to explain more about where I live. So I am in Tramkak District, as part of Takeo Province. It is a pretty busy place, and is located right on a main road, where the traffic is always CRAZY!

On this main road is a gem, known as the Tela. It’s a gas station with a store attached, similar to what you would find in America. There is AIR CONDITIONING in the Tela! You can also buy soda, asian cookies and candy, ICE CREAM, and toiletries. No, we don’t need this, but it’s awesome to have it! I actually have only bought a handful of things from the Tela, because I don’t want to get used to such luxury. Today I actually bought some corn ice cream. And it was exactly what it sounds like. Ice cream that tasted like corn and even had chunks of corn all up in it. The Tela is right in the middle of Tramkak, and about 1 mile from my house. The market is also near the Tela. The market is a big, busy, sometimes frightening place where you can get everything from fruits and vegetables, to half dead chickens and fish, to cell phones, to plastic hampers and buckets, to handmade clothes, to toiletries, to toys, to jewelry, etc.

Yeah, now my house. My family is not a farming family. My dad works in the office of a police station in Takeo and my mom is a hardworking housewife. So my property is gated in (and locked up every night). But my neighbors are farmers, so I’m still surrounded by rice paddies. My house is concrete, as I mentioned earlier. It is one story, and well taken care of. There is a main living room area where I do a lot of studying. There are two main bedrooms. The bigger one is mine, and the smaller one my 4, and sometimes 5 siblings sleep in (yes I feel awful about this). Then there is a tiny kitchen-like area, which is connected to a bathroom as well as a dining-type area. The dining room is also where my mom and dad sleep behind a curtain. We also have an outside bathroom. There is no running water, so flushing is done by dumping buckets of water. The inside bathroom has a western style toilet, which probably makes life easier for males, but I actually prefer the squat toilet in the outside bathroom. I also like the increased privacy that comes with the outside bathroom. Both bathrooms have a tub of water that is constantly filled, and a bucket next to it used to flush the toilet and to shower.

That’s pretty much it. Except for the open garage type area. My dad has a car, so he parks it here. I also park my bike there, but my mother takes my bike inside every night because she doesn’t want to risk it getting stolen. This is also where the 2 week old puppies are.

And before I wrap it up, I’ll give you two short stories.

I was straightening up my room and trying to organize my room, so of course my little brother and sister want to come in and watch. In my trunk was a stack of blank letters and envelopes that my friends at home gave to me to write letters. My brother asked what it was, so I told him (luckily I had already learned Post Office vocabulary!). So he picked one up and pretended to write the following letter:

Ma,

My name is Leeny. This is an apple.

Hahahah maybe you had to be there? But I thought it was hilarious. I really think those are the only two sentences he can say in English.

Ever heard of Engrish fashion? Engrish fashion exists all over Cambodia. An article of clothing is Engirsh when it says words with the English alphabet that don’t make sense together. Or sometimes, it can be a shirt that DOES make sense, but says something awfully offensive. The wearer often has no idea what their shirt is saying. One day a few friends and I went to the market to buy some Engrish shirts. We found some cute ones. For example, we found “you want to smiling” and “you will like me, have a nice day”. We found one that was like “true love.. something something… rabbit?” and we found mine. My shirt says “Someone Perfect love. Bob Sinclair love you. Private property keep. Out unless you have really big boobs. Shabba Ranks.”

HAHAHAH what? I wore this shirt last Sunday on our trip to Kirivong. It’s a good shirt.

Overall things are good. We're approaching one complete month here in Cambodia. Still have a cold, but I’m optimistic is will be over soon.

Over and out. Shabba ranks.