The Most Lovable Khmer Family I Know

            When I first arrived at my training host family’s house, I wrote a blog of character descriptions of my family members. But now that training is over, I know them so much better, I have so much more to say and with so much more love!

            I’ll start with my dad. Actually, my initial reaction to my dad continued for the next two months lol. He is totally harmless but a little creepy. But at the same time, he can be sweet sometimes. Examples. My favorite dad moment was one day when I was laying on a hammock reading, and my dad in his Chroma (kinda like a Khmer kilt) was up in a tree picking a fruit. Some of my PCT friends went running by our house, and he screams after them  (in an almost indecipherable accent) “HELLO HELLO I THINK ABOUT YOU MUCH!” hahaha, my friends never heard him, but I wasted no time telling them the story once I saw them again. Once he wanted so desperately to teach me the Khmer word for penis that he drew one on a napkin and gave it to me. I think he honestly thought the he was being helpful lol. Although he also knew he was being silly and absolutely ridiculous. Another time that he looked into my hamper when I was doing laundry, took out a bra, and started laughing. In the town, he's known as a prankster and one who enjoys a good laugh. I agree with this characterization whole-heartedly. Then there's the other side of my dad, which I love. One of my favorite things about my dad is that when he comes home from work or when he gets up in the morning he helps my mom sweep the house. He is always more than willing to help me put up my mosquito net, or show me how to eat Khmer food. His children obviously love him. Sometimes Leeny or Titi would sit leaning against him. Then sometimes he would kid around and rest his feet on their heads or shoulders. On a few special occasions, my dad and I shared a beer. When we ate dinner, every time he would serve himself more, he would always add something to my plate as well (sometimes to my dismay) and I would always get the best or most desirable portion or piece of meat.

            My mom was absolutely amazing in every way. It’s so cool how quickly she treated me just like any one of her other children. The woman works so hard. She’s always cooking, cleaning, doing tons and tons of laundry, taking care of her kids, etc. Then all the stuff she did for me was crazy. A lot of it was behind the scenes stuff too; stuff that I never even saw her do. For example, I never filled my own water filter. There was magically always clean water waiting for me. She would often help me with my laundry (I think she felt frustrated because I’m so slow at it). If my clothes were hanging outside and it started to rain, she always dropped whatever she was doing to go move my clothes to an inside line. Sometimes I came home and I found my clothes off the line and neatly folded on my trunk. Also, many times I came home to find my bedroom swept and dusted, even though I was trying so hard to be on top of that on my own. She was ALWAYS bringing me treats if I was home. I got delicious fruit after every single meal. Within a week, she knew all my favorite fruits, and always had the house stocked with them. Sometimes she would bring me iced coffee, fried bananas or potatoes, French fries (if I was really lucky), crackers, etc. Actually she just always was trying to feed me. She was only supposed to give me 2 meals a day, but she had a hard time not cooking breakfast for me too. Oh, and she is the jealous type. I felt SO bad every time I had to tell her that I was eating at a restaurant or at my teacher’s house because it was very clear that I was breaking her heart. My mom is just a lot of fun to be around. She LOVES to laugh and it is really easy to make her laugh. She loves a good joke, and will even laugh at a bad joke where the punchline is ruined because my Khmer is so bad. Saying goodbye to my mom was hard, but it was also the funniest goodbye I’ve ever had in my life. My ride was waiting outside and I was standing in the bedroom with my mom getting ready to pick up my stuff and go. I looked at my mom and gave her the most sincere thank you I could muster up in Khmer. Then.. she went in for the hug. Ok, so, Khmer people don’t hug, although I believe that through television they are aware of the fact that foreigners do hug. What do YOU think would be the problem with people learning to hug from television? Well, my tiny little Khmer mother nuzzled into my chest, and then groped me all over for a good 10 seconds. I didn’t mind. I love the woman, she can grope me anytime, but it took so much energy to keep myself from bursting out with laughter. It was long too. At one point I tried to pull back, but she had the death grip on me. I’ve had a lot of weird hugs in my life (have you ever seen a group of music majors hanging out?), but this one tops them all, and I loved it.

            My older sister Marady is one of my best friends here. If we went to school in the same country, she probably woulda been too cool to be my friend lol. I am always impressed by her confidence and her strength. She’s this tiny little thing with kickin curves and a sassy personality. I was so grateful for the fact that she could speak English, mostly just because I had someone to talk to at the end of the day. As I said before, her confidence is amazing. You don’t even have to speak the language, and you can just hear her speak and you could tell. I told her all the time that I just liked to hear her talk, even if I didn’t understand. She thought that was weird. She’s right, it is. She has a secret boyfriend in Phnom Penh, and I can tell that she is strong in the relationship. Possibly my favorite thing about Marady is how smart she is. Really, she is brilliant. Her English is amazing- and she wasn’t even an English major in college. She studied accounting, but also took English classes because she just loved learning the language. She told me that she wanted to study English, but her dad made her study accounting. Now she works in an office for a phone company. It is a good job, but she still says she would have preferred to study English. I also found out that when she graduated high school, she was top of her grade in Khmer language scores. I am not surprised! Marady is also very funny, as is everyone in the family. She loved to force me to eat a ridiculous amount of rice. By the end of my stay with her family, I knew never to let Marady touch my plate. Though sometimes I couldn’t stop her. She told me that she wants me to be fat. Thanks. Good sister lol. Often she wasn’t home because she was working or she was in Phnom Penh, but if she was home and had nothing to do, I always made a point to sit with her. We talked about everything, from boys to travelling to the past and the future. Funny thing- many volunteers very quickly start missing physical contact from home. Hugs and such don’t really happen here. If you are a woman, you will get touched, pet, pinched, slapped, and squeezed a lot, but that doesn’t exactly fill the void. Well, sometimes my sister Marady would stop next to me and put her arm on my shoulder or around my waist. Maybe its weird but I loved that. Every time I was like YAY SHE LIKES ME WERE FRIENDS SHES THE BEST SISTER EVER! Lol. Anyway, I am going to miss Marady so much. I hope we can manage to remain close.

            I only got to know my older brother a tiny bit. His name is Banyajuan (That’s probably not the right spelling). I think he’s a fairly decent guy? He lives in Phnom Penh and works at a Lucky Supermarket. When he visited, he did his own thing and he was busy, but he was still nice to me. It’s obvious that my Leeny idolizes him, and that is cute.

            I am so very happy that I got to know my younger brother Jimi better. When I first met him, I thought he was a typical 15 year old too cool to hang out with me. But really, he was just shy and it took a little while for him to come out of his shell. Once he did though, it was amazing. The kid is hilarious. The first time I really saw his sense of humor come out, he was driving a moto coming into the gate to our house. He didn’t know I was watching. Something happened.. I think he pressed the gas too much or something and he almost crashed. He was fine, but he purposely screamed like a little girl. I was like on the floor laughing, and I think that gave him some confidence to get to know me. Sometimes I would catch him wearing his mothers hat, just for laughs. Once he put a light tan towel on his head, put on big sunglasses, and told me he was Lady Gaga. I taught my siblings to play Uno, and he particularly loved it. I left behind an uno deck for him so he can play with his family. He was so funny playing uno with his facial expressions and little white lies about what cards he had and stuff. During practicum week, he was sitting with me as I was writing lesson plans. I explained to him what I was doing, and I was surprised that he was so interested. So, I invited him to come to my class. He looked SO happy when I invited him, it was so sweet. So the next morning, he put on his school clothes and came to school with me. Some of the stuff was a little advanced, but I know he got stuff out of it. I’m sure you can imagine that I always tried to give him a specific class that I knew he would succeed at. All in all he is just such a fun kid. And I am very appreciative of our pact- he was the only person in the house I could trust to give me a second helping of rice without going overboard.

            Titi is in a lot of ways a typical 12 year old. She’s just silly. She does silly things where you’re left being like… why?? And why is this funny?? Lol. She can’t walk into a room without making a silly face, or making a sound, or doing a little dance. Sometimes she would come into my room, pretend that she saw something she didn’t want to see, and then she’d back out of the room with huge eyes saying “I’m sorry” over and over and bowing. She liked to try to trick me into looking places. She would gasp and point in a direction, then as soon as I looked, she would gasp and point somewhere else. This would continue until I refused to look anywhere but her face. Another thing she liked to do was pretend to pop the moles on my arm. She would poke every one of them with her finger like a needle, then she would make a noise like a balloon running out of air as she dropped my arm. Then she would pretend to get an air pump to blow my arm back up. Weird, but kind of amusing lol. I taught Titi a little bit of ukulele. She learned fast. She also is an extremely talented artist. Like.. EXTREMELY talented. One day I went outside to go sit with her and I saw her drawing. I asked to look through her book and I was blown away! I asked her to draw a picture so that I could send it to my mom in America. When I came back from teaching that day, she gave me this beautiful piece of artwork depicting people working on the rice fields. I was sad to fold it up and send it to my mom. I wanted to keep it! When I go back to Tramkak to visit, I will ask her to draw me a picture. I said goodbye to Titi earlier than I left because she had to go to school. I guess she decided that wasn’t enough because she called me like an hour after I left to say goodbye again. It was sweet.

            It is time for bed, but I have one more sibling to report on! The infamous Leeny! I had actually joked with my PC friends about making an entire blog post just about Leeny. Well, I think I will actually do that. So, stay tuned. Leeny stories coming soon.

And, as I promised, more pictures from my Kirivong trip like over a month ago: