Diana At the Crossroad: Ritz Crackers and Fluff

A lot has been going on, but it’s tough to pick one things to write about that will actually hold the interest of my readers. So I guess I’ll just give you a brief overview.

I’ll start with a project I’m working on. 3 other volunteers and I are working to plan Cambodia’s first National Fine Arts Festival. It’s a big project that we hope can become an annual thing for PCV’s to facilitate. We are calling it Create Cambodia. The idea is that PCVs all over the country facilitate arts clubs in their schools. They can do basically anything, based on the interests of their students. We don’t know what exactly we will have yet, but some examples we gave were drama, comedy, music, dance, creative writing, visual art, fashion, architecture, etc. Then in May we are going to have a 2 day festival where all the clubs come showcase their work. We also will have performances and booths run by professionals, and some universities will be represented as well. So, as you can imagine, this is a pretty huge project with a considerable financial undertaking. We took the route of a PCPP grant (Peace Corps Partnership Project). This means that YOU can donate to this project! We are trying to raise 75% of the budget, and our groups will be responsible for fundraising the final 25%.

Here is our website: http://createcambodia.wordpress.com/

Here is a promotional video I made for the project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Evp8WIa_jq0

Here is the PCPP donation page: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=303-022

I have one other big project happening. I will be developing a library at my high school with one of my co-teachers, Lina. I have made a PCPP grant proposal for that as well, but due to a lot of frustrating obstacles, it is not yet up on the website. I will let you know when it is. However, do keep this project in mind as you donate to Create Cambodia. I will really need the support of my friends and family to fund this project.

I was in Phnom Penh for almost a whole week for IST (in-service-training). The training was pretty typical for Peace Corps. Really long days. Long sessions. Some useful information. Some not useful. Typical. Sessions were from 8AM-5PM, and lasted 2 days.

After those sessions, I then went to 2 hour meetings for the curriculum development project. Really quickly I’ll explain that Peace Corps is very much involved in writing a new curriculum and developing new textbooks for all students to learn English in Cambodia. This will be a long drawn-out project and will take place over a couple generations of volunteers before the new books are finally used in classrooms across Cambodia. The curriculum for grades 7-9 has been approved, and PCVs are now writing the textbooks. We also got the go-ahead to start writing the curriculum for grades 10-12. I was assigned to grade 10, which is awesome.

IST was over Friday, and I wanted to go back to site on Saturday, but I stayed to work on the curriculum with my team. I figured no problem, I can go home on Sunday.

I went to the bus station on Sunday and went to buy my ticket to Prey Veng. The seller said “Sorry, there is no bus to Prey Veng today.” Uhmm… what?? Prey Veng is the only province with only one daily bus to and fro. YOU CAN’T CANCEL IT’S ONLY BUS. So I was stuck in Phnom Penh another night. I know this doesn’t sound so bad (air conditioning, American food, etc…) but I had NO money for this, and I was really hoping to go back to teaching on Monday. Alas, no good.

I got over it. Eventually.

Then on Thursday, I was on the road again. I was invited to the wedding of one of my Khmer teachers from training. He lives in Svay Reing, which is the province right next door. So it should have been easy to get to, right? WRONG.

I got up at 5AM.

I rode my bike 15k to the provincial town.

I left my bike at a fellow PCV’s house.

I walked to the bus/van station.

I argued with motorcycle taxi drivers, who lied to me and told me that there were no vans going to Nyek Loung today.

Then I was hounded by 3 different van drivers, all going to Nyek Loung.

I screamed at one of the drivers to stop touching me.

Luckily I knew one of the drivers, and got on his van.

We drove the 30k to Nyek Loung, which is a town in Prey Veng. Nyek Loung is one route that you can take to go to Phnom Penh, but it involves a ferry. People going to Prey Veng usually don’t take this route, but people going to Svay Reing do.

I got out of the van at Nyek Loung and a nice man helped me find a different van going to Svay Reing.

I squished into the over-flowing van. I listened to the people talk about me for a while before I let them know that I can speak Khmer and I know what they’re saying.

The driver stopped to buy me a nom pow (a sticky bun with egg and other stuff inside-actually delicious).

Finally, I was dropped off in the town of the wedding, at the local high school, where another volunteer was working. I got there 6 hours early for the wedding (because I had no choice), so I hung out with said volunteer.

Then, as other volunteers attending the wedding arrived, they picked me up in their van and we drove the 6k to the village the wedding was in.

The wedding itself was pretty fun. I’ve been to a lot of non-fun weddings. This one was alright. I danced with Samon (my teacher and the groom). I met his wife, who was GORGEOUS. I danced with other volunteers. I danced with random Khmer people. I yelled at Khmer men who hounded me. Then after the wedding, all the ladies went back to the house we were keeping our belongings to sleep. There, we slept on rice mats on the floor- true khmer style. We played truth-or-truth, and drifted off to sleep. In the morning we woke up to a giant tarantula on the wall, and rat poop all around us. Love Cambodian creatures. I'm really glad I went because Samon was so happy to have us, and it was so good to see all of my favorite teacher from Training again.

Going back to site was just as exciting as getting there. Just backwards.

I came back to the hottest day I’ve had in Cambodia yet- and no electricity. I was told our electricity was going to be out for 3 days because of a storm in Vietnam. There was no escaping the heat. At night, my host family slept outside on the porch, trying to entice a few breezes that wouldn’t reach them in their humid room. They invited me to join them, but I just put up with it and slept with my windows open.

The next day (yesterday, aka Saturday) I rode my bike back to Prey Veng to charge my computer and my phone at my friend’s house. We hung out, went to the market, and watched a bit of a soccer game. He bought oreos. I bought another Engrish shirt. This one says “Youtube myspace, and I’ll Google your Yahoo. Hahaha.

And that’s my last 2 weeks in a large nutshell.

Now enjoy some pictures.

P.S. Ritz crackers and marshmallow fluff are DELICIOUS together!

Sitting in front of Buddha. This was before I was encircled by about 10 grandmas petting me and spitting on me as they told me they love me and I'm just like what they see on TV.

Parade around the building 3 times.

The woman in the center with the gold on her head is my mother. She is the mother of my host brother. She lives in Phnom Penh but loves to come visit me.