I don't know what's harder: leaving home for 27 months or making a new country/culture/language your home for over 2 years when you don't speak an ounce of the language. Either way, here I am in Cambodia: the Kingdom of Wonder! My fellow trainees and I have been here for one week now. The first week has come and gone rather quickly, but it felt far too long, in a good way. It's been an exciting roller coaster ride for sure, what with supposed delayed departure from US, frantic packing, long layovers, and being thrown into Khmer classes, safety lessons, and technical training sessions. Now that I have finally settled into my host family's home, life feels a bit more structured. By all means, it's not simple. We go to training (i.e. school) 6 days a week and spend all our free time with our host families. It's only been 4 days of learning, and amazingly, I can do conversational and broken Khmer now! I've also become somewhat used to squat toilets, although I still don't find it sanitary or comfortable. I love having so much time each day though. I wake up at 6am, leave home at 7am to get breakfast in the market, go to class at 8am, go home for lunch at 12pm, chill with my host family, go back to school 1:15, learn til 5:30pm, stop by market for a dragon fruit (or some other fruit), head home around 6pm, hang with family while they help me do homework, eat around 7pm, and head to my room around 8pm. It's one little day but I'm doing so much and learning so much. It feels great to have 9 hours of sleep every night too. Learning Khmer is hard but I love it. The only thing I don't love is the heat...
Til next time!
1 Comment
Don Lancaster
7/24/2017 05:24:00 pm
Surprisingly, you'll adjust to the heat. After two years in the tropics, I was cold if temperatures got into the 70s when I returned home.
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Christine can be reached at [email protected].
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