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Published: February 27th 2010
Have I mentioned the heat?
The "official" temp that day was 95, but this this said 101.7 in the shade... My morning routine includes making coffee in my room. There is an electric pot to heat the water, and I have a French press that I left here last time, so all the necessary equipment is at hand. I bought Vietnamese coffee at the supermarket, and after a week and a half, I think I have finally figured out the right ratio of coffee to water. After I add the milk to my cup,the small black floating bits become more visible and I spend a few minutes picking them out. Sometimes I can’t really be sure whether they are bits of coffee grounds or ants. Probably both.
The ants are everywhere here. They are tiny, and apparently tasteless, as I have eaten dozens but never tasted them. (Jaz claims they're bitter, but I haven't noticed.) They are attracted more to moisture than to sweetness, so they party it up all over my bathroom sink (and sometimes my toothbrush) and anywhere else they find water. If you dribble a tiny bit of juice from a piece of fruit onto the floor, you will later find a small black mass of ants completely swarming that drop, and a line of
Our most frequent view of Sovann
As soon as we leave town, he takes off the official tuktuk vest and the helmet. hundreds more marching toward it.
Part of my evening routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays is to ride home from Knar school in the tuktuk (which takes about an hour) trying to text back and forth with Jaz about our dinner plans. I’ve never been a very proficient text-er, and doing it without my glasses, in the dark, while bouncing wildly along dirt roads makes for some extra challenges. I’m getting better, and I’m actually pleased that I’ve never dropped the phone out of the tuktuk. It would never be seen again, I’m sure!
And I have never appreciated the value of a good headlamp before this trip - when class is over, the car batteries are unplugged and the three bulbs go out - and then it’s pitch black. Sometimes on the ride home, the headlight on Sovann’s moto even goes out briefly (I would guess the bulb is loose), but as long as we’re not in the forest, there’s enough light to see. As the moon has become fuller over the last week, the night view on the road home has become more interesting. We pass one temple that has multiple partially-crumbled towers standing
in silhouette against the moonlit sky. Not a sight I see on my way home from work in Vermont…
The air is smoky lately. Smokier than usual, I should say. People are always cooking over open fires, and the smoke isn’t usually too prevalent in town, but as you head out into the countryside, you are more and more likely to see people burning…stuff. Sometimes I’m not sure what they’re burning or why. They may be burning garbage in a pile on the ground. It seems that sometimes, they rake up sticks and leaves and garbage all together and burn that - sometimes even in schoolyards. A few nights ago when we were teaching at Knar school, there were three enormous fires burning within 50-100 feet of the school. As the flames leapt in the air, Erin and I considered how dry everything is in this season and exchanged glances of concern, but apparently all was under control.
We stopped along the road yesterday to get a closer look at the roadside stalls that make and sell palm sugar. One after another, there are dome-shaped mud ovens next to palm-leaf shacks. The "ovens" aren’t really ovens
- they are for burning wood inside while an enormous metal pan rests on top. The palm sap is collected from the trees and boiled in the pan for a long time, stirred and then cooled and shaped into small lumps of candy the size of your fingertip. They are stacked together and wrapped in several layers of palm leaf. Sovann bought some and we tried it - not so different than maple candy, and apparently the process is almost identical, except for the slogging through the snow part when you collect the sap. Actually, I didn’t see exactly how they collect it; I’ll try to find out.
Last night was Erin’s last night teaching at Knar, though I will continue to go next week. Erin didn’t really want to announce this news, but I really didn’t want to cheat the students out of their chance to say goodbye (nor cheat Erin out of the experience, even if she didn’t think she wanted it!) After we worked on countable and non-countable nouns (a bit of a challenge for them), expressions of quantity, homophones, and some listening and writing practice, and as they finished writing down their homework assignment,
I told them the news. It was met with the expected frowns and expressions of sadness. They wanted to know
why she was leaving, and when she would come back, and then if they could have their pictures taken with her. Erin gracefully posed for photos and then they spilled out of the classroom and into the darkness, waving and saying, “Goodbye, teacher! Goodbye, teacher!” (One kid did ask me for some clarification about whether I was really returning on Monday; it seemed he wanted to be sure that he really had to do the homework.) It won’t be the same without her…
I went house-hunting on Monday this week. Erin and Jaz and I all piled into an ancient jeep with the reast estate agent and driver and went to see three houses for rent. We’ll have to do it all over again in September, but now I know more about the options and prices. We looked at three houses, two of which were divided into upstairs and downstairs apartments and rented individually or together. None of them were exactly what we would want, but each had some nice features. One had a lovely yard with a
Guest house bathroom instructions
"Cambodia is a developing country. The sewage system is what it is." lot of greenery and a palm-leaf palapa. The downstairs apartment was dark but very cool, while the upstairs apartment could only be accessed by a narrow circular iron stairway anzd was hot inside. No aircon or hot water in this house. The whole house (three bedrooms and two of every other kind of room) could be rented for $350/month. The next one was huge and further out of town than we would want. It also could be rented as one or two units (total $400/month, I think) and had a very odd layout. Sometimes rooms seems to have been tacked on as an afterthought, with odd-shaped doors or steps to reach them. In one house, to go from the living room to the kitchen, you had to walk through the bedroom. In another, three bedrooms were arranged in a row off a hallway that was at least 10-12 feet wide. Most had the typical tiled bathroom with a handheld shower head on one wall and a sink and toilet. One had a bathtub, which I've never seen before. Some bathrooms were enormous - ten feet square - while some were tiny. All needed a good scrubbing. You can see some
photos here:
House Hunting.
I always look carefully at the kitchens, thinking of Steve and the time he spends cooking, and I must say that all kitchens we saw were a bit disappointing. They generally have a small sink with cold water only, a one- or two-burner gas cooktop (almost like a camping stove) and a refrigerator not much bigger than dorm-size. If it's a nice kitchen, it may have windows, but sometimes they seem to be buried in the house in a windowless room. I have no doubt that Steve will create delicious food however spartan the conditions (and oh boy, I can't wait until he's cooking here!) but I hope we'll at least find a kitchen with a view.
The whole setting-up-house process should be interesting. We really won't be able to bring much with us as far as household goods go, as luggage allowances are small and shipping costs are high, so i suppose we'll spend some time at the markets buying some basic pots and pans, plates and cups, towels and sheets, etc. Houses generally come with furniture (usually very uncomfortable, heavy wooden furniture) but not much else. It's kind of fun to think
about what we will bring in our minimal luggage allowance...What couldn't you live without from home?
We had a lovely visit to the New Hope Community Center on Thursday, and I hope to write about it sometime soon. You can look at their website
here. I see (unpaid) job possibilties...
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potty training 101
Bill and I could have written that message. It is exactly what we told people to do on our boat! And remember Underhill? The septic system was practically non-existent, so boys and men - outside, girls don't flush unless you have to. Interesting layout of houses. 101 degrees!!!! Oh, lord, how I remember the heat!