Exotic

Our hotel is more than adequate, despite obvious shortcomings that are to be expected. For example, the mosquito nets do not close. Luckily the mosquitoes are only bad at sunset, and we are yet to find any in our room. The bugs are not too bad, although that may be because there are dozens of homeless cats all around the hotel. The shower doesn’t have a curtain, and the tile isn’t inclined, so the bathroom just becomes a swimming pool and Jessica (roommate) and I find ourselves scooting the water with our feet towards the drain after each shower.

The humidity is unreal. I have yet to straighten my hair and have instead taking to looking like some sort of swamp animal. We shower four to five times a day, and by that I mean rinse because there is literally no point in washing oneself as one will be filthy and drenched with sweat only minutes after toweling off.

So after checking into our hotel, we had a few hours of rest before we went to the Documentation Center in Cambodia (DC-Cam as I will refer to it throughout the rest of the trip). We are working for DC-Cam, and its literally one block from our hotel. We spoke to the director, who is one of the most intelligent and insightful people. While he has designed and led this center since its inception, as soon as the new center he has designed is underway, he will be stepping down because, as he puts it: Cambodians get too comfortable and are quick to point fingers and thus people do not step forward to lead here. He told us that while we may all personally take to their stories and their histories, it is not our place to fix them; the healing and the leadership and the change has to come from the Khmer people. I guess this took a load off to hear, although it made us all feel just as powerless at the same time.

Then we went to dinner with people at the center. A really really nice dinner that they set up in a private room on the top floor of this restaurant, like six stories up. However, they gave us a traditional Chinese- Cambodian dinner that consisted of: a chicken with face, heart, feet all on the tray. Pigeon with all of the same- in fact we watched the director eat the pigeon head and listened to the skull crunch in his mouth and then spit out the beak. Shrimp. PIG EARS- mine had a perfect ear bend. That was lovely. 

I'm Here and Alive

I've been here for almost two full days now. We've all been sleeping well, although I am sure jet lag is still at play because I'm alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic right now... and it's only 7:30. A clear sign that my body is still a little off.

After a non-eventful 12 and a half hour flight over the Pacific, we arrived in Taipei Saturday morning. The four hour layover would have been non-eventful, except that the gates at this particular airport are themed. Ours happened to be a bright pink, Disneyland-like "Hello Kitty" themed gate. No joke, everything down to the pink telephones and pink chairs with Hello Kitty's face on them. It was quite a shock to say the least. 

Here's what I wrote flying into Phnom Penh (it's unedited and I was a little frustrated by some disturbing things, so bare with it and m

e

):

"Flying over the country for the first time is an emotional experience. The countryside, and even throughout Phnom Penh, is splattered with craters full of water ranging from the size of trampolines to olympic pools, no exaggeration. These craters are the remnants of U.S. bombings from 1970-1973. Our pilots were given no targets and told to "bomb the hell out of them", and it shows that they just followed orders. It's disgusting how much Nixon's secret bombings changed the landscape of the country and their course of history, bringing to power a maniacal, paranoid leader who would unleash another forgotten genocide of the twentieth century. How resilient Cambodians are to just use these craters as their water sources almost four decades later. 

It's also perplexing and a tribute to the Cambodian people to see the impressive, expansive irrigation system and know these people built this with their own hands under  Pol Pot's brutal "Super-Great Leap Forward". They are a people, a country that has endured hell on earth with visible scars serving as reminders that here "Never Again" really is never."

This was all of course, after 22 hours of travel. But all the pent up hostility softened away upon meeting our Professor's siblings and people who work at the Documentation Center in Cambodia that met us at the airport.  We all climbed into a mini-bus (that we'll be using the whole time we are here), and had our first driving experience in the capital. To say that lights, stop signs, and sides of the road are irrelevant is an understatement. Rule and order do not rule, but are instead replaced by a cut throat, dont get hit, dont get run over mentality. The most common form of transport here is the motorbike; we have seen up to four full grown men on one bike. Two to three people per bike is the norm, but it seems to be even the familial vehicle of choice, similar to a Volvo is in the US. 

More to come as I have time to write.

But your first Tiffany-ism, as in "leave it to me for this to happen":

I blew up my computer charger, along with the power in our hotel room among others after being here for maybe two hours. Luckily, other girls use apples too and their chargers work. I will be making a trip to the Apple store upon my return.