I Finally made my way back to visit my training host family, after almost 4 months of not seeing them. I was SO excited, but careful not to let my expectations get too high. There was the chance of it being awkward, since I haven’t seen them in 4 months. Also, there was the chance that my family would be too busy to see me much or spend time with me.
But I went. And it started off as a disaster. The bus decided not to go to PP (Phnom Penh) that day. So I called a van. The van decided to go to PP a different way that didn’t pass my house. So no good. My last hope was one last van. But the van already passed my house. I had to catch up to the van, and basically jump on while it was still moving haha.
I got to PP with a 2 hour layover until my bus to Takeo. I treated myself to a $5 meal of pizza and a coke. You know how occasionally you go to a restaurant, and you see the person who is eating alone. And you think, oh that poor person has no one to eat with. That’s sorta embarrassing. Well, that’s me, and I have no problem with that. I eat by myself all the time in Phnom Penh. That probably looks even weirder because what “tourist” goes alone? Haha. Whatever. Nothing can come between me and my pizza.
Then once in Takeo, I got on a tuk-tuk, and arranged a $2.50 price to take me to my house. But then the tuk tuk driver pawned me off on another tuk-tuk, with other people. So I very clearly said that I will not be paying the same price, because I am now sharing the tuk-tuk. Well, when I got to my house, I gave the driver $1.25, and he flipped out. We argued about it for a while. Eventually I just gave him $2.00 and walked away. He was not happy. Neither was I. I hate being ripped off. I know for a fact that the Khmer people on the tuk-tuk paid on $.75 each.
But then things turned around, and I had an amazing weekend! My mom saw me walking up to her house, and she came out to meet me. She gave me one of her famous awkward hugs. We went inside and sat down to do some catching-up. Lyny was home sleeping, so she woke him up to come say hi. He decided to be shy any not speak to me right away, so instead I just made fun of him. While I was sitting there with them, my Dad came home from work. He got out of the car to open the gate to his property, and then he saw me. He struck a sketchy pose and gave me a long Hellooooooooo! So he came in, and I dazzled them all with my much-improved Khmer language.
I took a bath, and then sat with my mom while she cooked. FINALLY, I could adequately tell my mother things I could not express before, such as what foods I like and why. Titi and Jimi came home from school and said their hellos. Then Marady came home too. She had a rough day at work, so I didn’t see much of her the first night. She went to bed. But I had dinner with the family. I almost forgot about how my training family would just put food on my plate. My dad will take a scoop of fish for himself, then another scoop for me. I get it, they’re making sure I feel comfortable to eat a lot, and they want me to have the best parts of the food. But what they don’t know is… I don’t want ANY fish! Lol.
My mother brought me an apple and cut it up for me to eat, just like old times. Then we watched a bit of TV and went off to bed. My old bedroom is SO nice. I had a HUGE comfy bed and a fan right above me. Not to mention a tiled floor and concrete walls. No mice. No nearby busy road. Not even any need for a mosquito net.
The following morning, I was awakened by my father hocking loogies, just like old times. I went out of the bedroom, and my mother made me some fish soup. I used to DREAD this fish soup. Who wants to have fish soup when they first wake up? But it was actually.. good! Not because it was different, just because I guess my taste buds have changed. She bought me some bread to dip into the soup. I enjoyed it.
An hour or two later, Princess Marady woke up. We went to the market together. I saw some old friends, and we met up with her friends. We had coffee at the market, bought some groceries, and came back home for lunch.
After lunch I went to go visit my language teacher, Siphen! I was SO excited to see her! I spent about 3 hours there, just talking with her about everything. I can relate to her so well because she is a strong woman, and her values are so close to mine. I wowed her with my language skills. I admit, I was showing off a bit, particularly because there was a group of Australian people there. Siphen has a Home Stay Guest House type thing. I got to watch her teach the Australian dudes how to do laundry by hand. It was SO amusing. But mostly we just sat and shared fruit and shared stories. I am honestly honored she took 3 whole hours out of her incredibly busy life to sit with me.
Then I went home and sat with my mom, Titi, and Lyny for another couple of hours. We laughed SO HARD. I haven’t laughed that hard at who knows how long. I was the butt of some jokes, mostly for my pronunciation. I have trouble with the word for “older” and the word for “egg”. So to make them laugh, I took the sentence “older sister likes duck eggs” and flipped it up to say “older duck likes sister eggs.” My mom and I came up with animals for Lyny and Titi to imitate the sounds of. You can imagine how that would be entertaining. Then my dad took out his camera phone, and took videos of Lyny acting like a crazy person (often zooming in on me, probably to show off to his friends at work). It was just so good to have no work to do, and to “sit-play”, as they call it in Khmer.
I bathed, and then played some UNO with Titi and Lyny. I miss having younger siblings to play games with me.
Dinner was one of my favorite meals! The baby clams with basil. And of course she topped it off with my favorite fruits.
After dinner, I went to my bedroom. Shortly after that, my sister Marady came in. It was a picture-perfect sister moment. I’ve never had a sister, but I imagine it would be like this. We sat in the bad together for hours talking about everything from culture to boys to our health. We were up til past 11PM, which is ABSURD here.
The following morning, I ate more rice porridge than I ever thought possible. My mother put a bowl in front of me. I waited for others to come because I assumed it was the family’s bowl. But no, that was my personal bowl. I ate until I felt sick. Then I said my goodbyes and took some pictures. Once again, my mother’s was so memorable. She just holds on around the waste. She’s strong too. She grips on and doesn’t let go. Then she gave me 8 or 9 swift spanks on the butt. We laughed so hard. Then Marady took me to the bus stations. We drank coffee and waited for the bus.
I was really really sad to leave. I miss them very much. Don’t get me wrong, I love Prey Vang and I love my new host family, but it’s just very different. At my old site, I was very much just a part of the family. I was one of the brothers and sisters. And it was such a loving family. They had their quarrels. Sometimes Marady didn’t get along with her parents, but mostly it was just so loving. And as I said before, I really miss having brothers and sisters my age and younger.
Speaking of having siblings my age, turns out Marady is actually 24. She’s only a year and a half older than me. She told me she was 25 because they go by the Chinese calendar year.
Back to the love. I loved watching the family love! Seeing Titi sit snuggled into her mothers’ side. Having every older sibling and parent (including me) make sure that Lyny takes his bath before he eats dinner. Lyny playing a joke on his dad by putting his big round belly in his dad’s face. Then seeing Dad kiss his belly, before smacking him away haha.
One of the things I talked about with Marady was how men have so much power over women in Cambodia. A father will tell her daughter what she is allowed to study in college. A husband will tell his wife whether or not she is allowed to work. In both of my host families, the husband disallowed work for the wife. My mother in Takeo told me she wished she could work. She is actually a trained pharmacist! But my Dad told her to stay home. We discussed the reasons for this. Dads want the moms to looks after the kids and clean the house and cook. My feminist self was highly offended by this. But Marady told me, it’s also because my Dad loves my Mom so much and doesn’t want her to have to work too hard. Oh. That’s.. really sweet.
I smiled almost the whole way home to Prey Vang. And the cherry on the top of the love cake was the old Khmer couple sitting next to me on the bus. They barely ever said a word to each other, but they held hands the whole way. That is rare in Cambodia, but it was so adorable.
Some days/groups of days just really make you regain faith in people and their ability to love one another.
1. Good ol' Lyny.
2. Me and Marady
3. Marady, Titi, and me. Easily the most beautiful girl in this picture is Titi, but they disagreed because her skins looks dark in the picture.
4. My mom with her death grip on me.
5. Me and my mom again.
6. Remember my puppy?? Not so little anymore! And... white! She used to be black! By the way, her name changed to "duit", which means small. I agree, Diana is a terrible name for a dog. Besides, I wouldnt want to hear my mother say my name with the tone of voice she uses to talk to the dogs.
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