Tuesday, September 11, 2012

A Place to Call Home


Well, the moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived.  I am at the site where I will be living for the next two years!  I’m living in Takeo Province and I could not be happier with my site placement.  I’m the first volunteer to work at my site, so that has definitely been interesting, since the people here are not really used to seeing a lot of foreigners.  Being the first definitely comes with it’s own set of challenges, but I’m also definitely excited to blaze my own trail. 
My school is fairly large, with about 2,000 students.  And I know you’re all wondering about the library situation.  So am I.  As far as I know there is a library, but I have yet to actually see it.  Perhaps when school starts I’ll actually get to take a look.  The market in my town is fairly small, but if I just bike about 3k (that’s right, I use the metric system now…although I still don’t really understand it) there is a HUGE market AND a place that sells ice cream.  It really couldn’t be better. 
My host family is also pretty wonderful.  I live with an older couple and an eight-year-old boy.  I’m pretty sure he’s their grandson, but I honestly have no idea because I don’t know how to say that word.   He was pretty skeptical of me at first, but I gave him some bubbles and now we’re pretty tight.  I will be sharing the upper part of the house with another teacher, who is currently residing in Phenom Phen, but she teaches at my school during the school year.  It should be pretty nice to have another teacher with the inside scoop staying with me.  However, the ladder that goes down the bathroom is in her room, so I’m not really sure how that’s going to work when she gets here…
School does not start until October 1st and I am counting the days until then.  It’s definitely different coming from training where almost every minute of my day was structured, to here, where I literally have nothing to do.  However, I have a little checklist and I try to do at least two things a day.  Today I went to the bank (it’s air conditioned!!!!) and found where the coffee place is.  Ambitious, I know.  I also got locked out of my house for about an hour.  Not exactly on the list, but it was still something I did. 
So sorry this blog post is kind of lame, but I’m hoping to have some more pictures/embarrassing stories soon.  But I wanted to assure you all that so far, so good. It’s definitely difficult adjusting yet again, but with my improved Khmer language skills, things are going much more smoothly this time around.  Basically, I’m pretty pumped to call this place home for the next two years.  

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