Departures and Arrivals

8-3-08

It's been hard to sit down and write, mostly because I've been kept pretty busy, but also because it's all so much to take in. Two weeks ago I was just another recent college graduate, flying to San Francisco. Now I'm sitting in a hammock at my host family's house in Tuk Phos district, Kampong Chanangg province, Cambodia. Getting here was a whirlwind of activity, and it's hard not to feel detached from all that is happening around me. I went through the same thing when I first arrived in Japan. I'm guessing it will take a few weeks, if not months, for it all to really sink in. But what all has happened so far? It's been quite the journey.

I arrived in San Francisco on the 20th and made my way to the BART, San Fran's mass transit system. I successfully made it to my stop and heaved my bags through the streets, looking for the correct bus. This proved more difficult, as the instructions I had failed to mention that the bus I was looking for was actually on the other side of the street from where the station exit was. Fortunately the driver of the bus I got on corrected me. I probably looked like a huge dork dressed like I was and with all my luggage.

Somehow I managed to get to the Kabuki Hotel, a disturbingly Japanese-style hotel that made me feel like I was back in Tokyo. The hotel itself is located in “Japan-town,” and so a lot of the street signs and advertisements were in Japanese. Fortunately I didn't freak out too much over this.

Staging itself was packed with icebreaker activities, which got a bit old after a while. But it also contained lots of hard information on where we were going and what we would be doing, something I think we all really craved. I didn't really get much of a chance to look around San Francisco; I mostly stayed in the area around the hotel. A bunch of us did go out and see a movie the night before we left, so I guess that's something.

I'm going to pause to state that several cows just wandered by my house. Far from escaping cows, now I see them all the time, and far closer than many people would be comfortable with. Chickens too are always wandering through the yard and around the table where we eat. Everyone here likes to go barefoot, but it will be a long while before I am comfortable with that.

Anyway, on Monday the 22nd we boarded our plane and flew eleven hours west to Tokyo. Being back at Narita International was even freakier than being in Japan-town. Even though we only were there for two hours, it brought back all sorts of feelings and memories.

The flight to Bangkok was hellish, because I was incredibly tired but can not sleep on an airplane. But seven hours later we were checking into our hotel for a four hour stay. Like the first group of PCV's had suggested, the hotel must have been a five-star resort. It was the kind of place I wouldn't even have been allowed to enter back in the US. And the three and a half hours of sleep I got there was the best sleep I've ever had.

Too soon, however, we were up, dressed, and on a Thai Airways plane to Phnom Penh. We landed at about 9:00 in the morning, local time, on the 24th. The jet lag wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, which was good because we were going to be busy all day every day. We still are, for that matter. We stayed in Phnom Penh for the night, having some meetings, going over more information, and meeting the staff in country. We also went to the Royal Museum and took a boat ride on the Tonle' Sap river. The next day we went to the Peace Corps office, ironically located close to the North Korean Embassy. There we did even more paperwork, got some shots, our cellphone, and sat through some more presentations. There were several active PCV's there too, which was neat because we got to pick their brains. I've really got to hand it to K1 (Kampuchea 1, the first group of PCV's in Cambodia. Our group is known as K2), they've done a great job with helping us newbies out.

Some woman I've never seen before just led a cow through the gate and into my yard. I'm going to assume she and the cow are supposed to be there, because I certainly don't speak enough Khmer to ask her what's up.

After the office we loaded up all the vehicles and drove an hour or so north to Kampong Chanangg. We moved into a guest house there, and stayed for about a week. The Peace Corps wanted to keep us all in once place for a few days, because there was a national election on that Sunday, and while the chance of unrest was low, they weren't taking any chances. This guest house is also our “training hub site,” and basically HQ for K2's training. We started language classes the next day, as well as teaching workshops, history classes, and classes on how to do laundry by hand and how to go to the bathroom on a squat toilet with no toilet paper within a hundred miles.

After a week they split us up into three groups; one group per village. Two groups went to the north and south along the main road from Phnom Penh and Kampong Channang. I am in the group that got sent to the more rural district, Tuk Phos. It's to the south-west, closer to the mountains. I really like it here, cows and chickens notwithstanding. I certainly have no complaints about the family I'm staying with. But more on that later.