My last training post!

Well, training is winding down, so I thought that I would take the time to fill everyone in on what is happening here…. Oh, and sorry for the obnoxiously large text in my last post, I don’t know how that happened….

The past week has consisted of training as usual, but Keiko, JaNise and I did a community project. We went to the health center in town and got abate, which is a chemical that you put into standing water to kill mosquitoes. We bagged the abate and made a handout in Khmer with information on mosquito borne-illness, how to prevent getting bit and mosquito reproduction and how to use abate. We walked around the market and handed out the abate and the handout. It was a lot of fun to do something that was actually Peace Corps because so much of what we do so far consists of being together in a room and talking about how to do community activities, if that even makes sense. We were able to meet a lot of people at the market, which was such a great time. Since most people do not have refrigeration, they make multiple trips to the market everyday, so going to the market is the best place to meet people.

Right now, Cambodia is celebrating Pchum Ben, which is like a 15 day Thanksgiving festival. All of the LCFs (our language instructors) went home to their hometowns to be with family. JaNise and I went to the pagoda last week to celebrate with my host grandma and host sister. We walked into the pagoda and offered food to the monks, who sit in two lines and eat together. We lit some incense (which symbolized Buddha, health and family) and gave about 25 cents to the emcee of the day for a blessing, I am assume it was for us and our families. Pchum Ben’s last two days are a really big deal, so traffic, which is already nuts here, is even more nuts. People are travelling all over the country to be with family. There will be a feast tomorrow night with my host family. I am pretty excited about it.

As for the traffic, my friend Terry did his community project on traffic in Cambodia, and I wanted to fill you in on some stats he told me:
-Cambodia has the highest percent of accidents in all of Asia
-5 people die everyday in Cambodia from traffic accidents
-1 person dies every month in the town that we are living in (this month has been much higher, since 5 were killed last week alone and one outside my house this morning)
It is a really big issue here because the country is so poor. Sorry if this is a sad one, but I wanted this to be a segway into the next topic, which is basically how the novelty has worn off and I am now an actual volunteer and my focus is shifting to preparing myself to actually doing work to improve this country. Some of the things that we will be tackling are pretty huge issues and it is going to be a tough two years, because our work is cut out for us. I know what I want to work on, it is just going to be tough to do it. For instance, we will all be doing work with HIV/AIDS prevention, since 1% of Cambodians are living with AIDS, which is the highest in South East Asia. Having said that, there are some really positive factors of being here. For instance, when I came into my room the other day and my host sister Liney was reaching through my window to borrow some baby powder and I straight up caught her red handed. I was annoyed because we here in sessions all the time that Khmer people always share and it is difficult to draw the line between mine and yours. Then, my other sister wanted to use my hair brush, when her brush was right there. I was really annoyed and left the house and met up with Keiko at the gas station. I came to the realization about an hour later that I shouldn’t be so quick to jump to get mad about stuff like that. I was a younger sister and I pulled acts like that all the time growing up. I would steal my sister Katie’s stuff ALL THE TIME. Why did I steal it and not just ask? I honestly don’t know the reason for stealing her things, but I do know that I thought her stuff was cooler and I wanted it. I also knew that no matter how many times I would do it, she would always forgive me and we would move on. So, maybe it was a good thing that my sisters feel comfortable enough with me to talk my stuff, because if they didn’t, and they stole from the American and got caught, it would be a big deal. This probably doesn’t make sense to anyone, but I am just trying to fill you in on some of the weird things that happen when you are an American living in a developing country.

I still don’t have a host family in Battambang, but there are two really good options and Peace Corps will sort it out soon. I take my final language exam on Tuesday, move out of my host family’s house on Wednesday and swear in on Friday and leave for Battambang on Saturday. It is pretty crazy, but I am excited to get to site and start being an actual volunteer