SEE REEVES

Niceavore

2012-01-23T20:30:00.002+07:00

I like meat, mostly. To be honest, I don't eat all that much meat on a regular basis. Let's rephrase that. I like bacon, a lot. I also don't have an issue with killing and eating animals. I believe in the food chain. We evolved to eat meat. That's fine. I love cheese. Seriously, LOVE CHEESE! In general, I am keen on animal products.

However, I recently decided that I cannot support the industry that supplies a majority of these products anymore. It was this video that did it for me [warning: this video is gross]. I am not normally one of those people that hears about (or sees) animal abuse and suddenly becomes an activist or a vegetarian. In fact, I am still not one of those people. Feel free to farm, kill, and eat animals. But for goodness sakes, you don't have to be cruel to them too. That is just unnecessary.

So I have become a niceavore. I am not sure if that is a thing. Google certainly didn't find anything. Basically, I want to only consume animal products from humane sources. This is a lot trickier than you might think. It is relatively easy to avoid meat all together and not too difficult to purchase local, humanely treated meat. Yet, even if I choose a vegetarian option, I still have to contend with the dairy and eggs. It is significantly difficult to track down the sources of all the dairy and eggs in food items I consume on a regular basis. Order a pizza? Where did that cheese come from? Want to buy a Sara Lee frozen pie? Any idea where the eggs in the crust are from? Love Hartzell's ice cream? They happily tell me that they use local ingredients for their flavors, but have yet to respond to my inquiry about where the dairy comes from. It would almost be easier to be vegan at this point. Instead of having to track down the details, I could just avoid it all together. That's not going to happen though. Did I mention how much I LOVE CHEESE!

Becoming a niceavore is going to take some time. I am constantly eating things with animal products in them without thinking. I had a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese last night. Somehow I doubt the dairy in that cheese powder came from a small, organic farm. But one small step at a time I am diverting my food dollars from factory farms and CAFOs to local or small growers with humane practices. One gallon of milk and dozen eggs at a time.

— Sara

2011 Year In Review

2011-12-31T22:00:00.004+07:00

I typically compose my Year-In-Review posts by looking back at my previous posts throughout the year. However, this year I have been a slacker when it comes to blogging. Instead, I will have to base it on the photos uploaded to the Flickr.

January
We welcomed in the New Year with Josh and Charlotte in Evansville.

Cale started 2011 off on the right foot, based on this facebook post:
"Cale: have you put any thought into your first breakfast of 2012?
Sara: uh, cale, its 2011:
Cale: I told you I don't do time."

We also celebrated Abby's 29th birthday in style, sinkin' the biz

February
It snowed.

It rained ice.

And we lost heat in our house out in Spencer.

So we moved closer to town.

We saw the Swing Rays play.

Santa was there.

March
With just the barest hint of spring in the air, Cale and Jake headed out to the disc golf courses.

I celebrated spring in my typical fashion, taking pictures of my bare feet outside.

April
Hudson Hornet played their first gig up in Indy.

Later they played the Players' Pub in Bloomington.

May
More Hudson Hornet. New drummer.

Memorial Day with the other Reeves.

And Cale bought himself another motorcycle. In pieces.

I also started my internship with the Indiana University Foundation and Cale started summer school.

June
I turned the big 3-0.

We went to Judah Fest.

Cale built a new seat for me on the back of his rebel out of an office chair. It made the longer trips more bearable.

We started getting produce from our CSA, Stranger's Hill. As the season wore on, we became less and less impressed.

As part of my internship, I attended the Big Ten Development Conference held at IU. I made this presentation.

July
We went up to Bristol to learn how to make casciatelli with Grandma Carusillo.

While we were there, the learned of Grandma Hoffman's stroke. Luckily, mom was able to make it out east to be with her before she died.

Cale went to the 2011 Wauseon National Swap-Meet and Flat Track Races. Where he saw a motorcycle that I might be able to ride.

As part of my internship, I attended The Fund Raising School's Principles and Techniques of Fundraising class in Indianapolis.

And I volunteered to photograph the rabbit judging at the county fair.

August
Cale made an emergency trip to Virginia to pick up a friend who was in a motorcycle accident (he's fine).

We celebrated Shar's 30th by sinkin' the biz. And with matching Olive Tot t-shirts Cale and I made with our screen printer.

September
Labor Day weekend was the wedding I had been looking forward to for months. Hannah and Jay tied the knot and we got to see all our Peace Corps friends again at Wedding Camp!

We saw Te Vaka at Lotus Festival.

Along with some other performers.

October
We went to our only IU tailgate.

Marian turned 23.

Hudson Hornet played again. Another new drummer.

And we celebrated Joe's birthday.

November
Remember that motorcycle Cale had in pieces at the beginning of the year?

We celebrated Phaelen's 30th birthday, sinkin' the biz.

We had Thanksgiving with family...

...and friends.

December
We celebrated a very Carusillo Christmas.

Somewhere in there we also went to school, some how I failed to photograph any of that. Cale got accepted into the honors program and started working on his honors thesis. I continued to work on the new SPEA Abroad program, ACCT International. Our proposal was accepted by IU Overseas.

Here's to 2012 when Cale will finish is Triumph. I will go to Kenya. And shenanigans will ensue.

— Sara

Name This Plant: Dragon Tongue Bean

2011-11-08T20:07:00.003+07:00

Thanks to Gopi on the facebook, we now know this is a Dragon Tongue Bean. With a name like that one would expect an exciting backstory, but my extensive research (i.e. googling dragon tongue bean) has not revealed any pertinent details. This web site tells me they are also called Dragon Langerie. However, if you google that you get all sorts of results for Dragon Lingerie. The image search results indicate to me that this is a common confusion.

Back to our beans. Both the bean and the pod are editable. The internets tells me they are best raw. Cale and I ate them steamed. When we cooked them they lost the fanciful coloring and looked like any other bean.

So now you now.

— Sara

Name This Plant

2011-11-07T08:17:00.001+07:00

— Sara

Name This Plant: Sandíita

2011-11-01T19:38:00.004+07:00

Thanks to Jess on Facebook, we now know this is a plant with many names. She calls it Mexican sour gherkin cucumber. Wikipedia has several other names: mouse melon, Mexican sour gherkin, cucamelon, Mexican miniature watermelon and Mexican sour cucumber. However, I prefer the Spanish name, sandíita, which apparently means little watermelon.

Also according to Wikipedia, these little Sandita (I know, redundant) were "domesticated before western contact began." So there you go.

I never opened one up, I just popped them into my mouth. This is what the internet says they look like inside:

Source: madeinpahrump.blogspot.com

— Sara

Name This Plant

2011-10-30T11:26:00.002+07:00

— Sara

Name This Plant: Guava

2011-08-13T03:09:00.003+07:00

Gopi has successfully named this plant Guava on the facebook.

The Purdue horticulture website considers guava to be "one of the most gregarious of fruit trees." How a fruit tree can be more or less gregarious, I am not totally clear. The origin of the plant is also not clear:

"The guava has been cultivated and distributed by man, by birds, and sundry 4-footed animals for so long that its place of origin is uncertain, but it is believed to be an area extending from southern Mexico into or through Central America."

Guava is so prolific that in some areas it is classified as a noxious weed:

"In many parts of the world, the guava runs wild and forms extensive thickets–called "guayabales" in Spanish–and it overruns pastures, fields and roadsides so vigorously in Hawaii, Malaysia, New Caledonia, Fiji, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Cuba and southern Florida that it is classed as a noxious weed subject to eradication."

Guava has countless uses as a food item, including: raw guavas eaten out-of-hand, seeded and served sliced as dessert or in salads, cooked, stewed guava shells (cascos de guayaba), canned, served with cream cheese, guava paste, guava cheese, guava jelly, guava juice, syrup for use on waffles, ice cream, puddings and in milkshakes, etc.

Source: Wikipedia

Finally, various parts of the plant are used for traditional medicine:

"The roots, bark, leaves and immature fruits, because of their astringency, are commonly employed to halt gastroenteritis, diarrhea and dysentery, throughout the tropics. Crushed leaves are applied on wounds, ulcers and rheumatic places, and leaves are chewed to relieve toothache. The leaf decoction is taken as a remedy for coughs, throat and chest ailments, gargled to relieve oral ulcers and inflamed gums; and also taken as an emmenagogue and vermifuge, and treatment for leucorrhea. It has been effective in halting vomiting and diarrhea in cholera patients. It is also applied on skin diseases. A decoction of the new shoots is taken as a febrifuge. The leaf infusion is prescribed in India in cerebral ailments, nephritis and cachexia. An extract is given in epilepsy and chorea and a tincture is rubbed on the spine of children in convulsions. A combined decoction of leaves and bark is given to expel the placenta after childbirth."

So there you go, guava.

-Sara

Name This Plant

2011-08-10T20:47:00.001+07:00

Mom was on a week-long medical mission trip to Honduras. She brought back a couple of entries to "Name This Plant."

You can find more of her pictures here.

-Sara

Name This Plant: Puya

2011-07-26T19:51:00.002+07:00

Janzee successfully named her own plant. According to Wikipedia, puya is an entire genus of plant and we are not sure which specific species this one is. The puya are native to the Andes Mountains and "many...are monocarpic, with the parent plant dying after one flower and seed production event."

The word "puya" derives from Mapuche Indian word meaning point. According to WalesOnline, the points on some puya plants can be quite dangerous:

"It has long, narrow leaves which are edged with vicious, hooked thorns – protection again nibbling animals such as rabbits, sheep and llama. But on the slopes of the Andes, where the plants flourish, if these grazing animals get too close they can become trapped in the puya’s spikes and starve to death. As they rot, they become compost and feed the soil around the puya. This helps the plant to grow bigger."

- Sara

Guest Name This Plant

2011-07-15T00:10:00.003+07:00

The Name This Plant feature has always been a favorite of the blog readers. Looks like I have a fan with a weird plant of their own. Janzee asks, can you name her plant?

— Sara

Name This Plant: Kohlrabi

2011-07-07T18:13:00.004+07:00

Congrats to Venkat on the blog and blueBear71 on flickr for correctly naming this plant Kohlrabi.

This strange, alien-like plant is actually a cabbage. According to Wikipedia, it "is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage that will grow almost anywhere. The name comes from the German Kohl ("cabbage") plus Rübe ~ Rabi (Swiss German variant) ("turnip"), because the swollen stem resembles the latter. Kohlrabi has been created by artificial selection for lateral meristem growth (a swollen, nearly spherical shape); its origin in nature is the same as that of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts: They are all bred from, and are the same species as, the wild cabbage plant."

That was a total surprise to me. I assumed it was a type of turnip or root vegetable, but that main, purple section you see here does not grow underground.

Source: Wikipedia

We were first introduced to kohlrabi by our CSA (community-supported agriculture), Stranger's Hill. The first batch were green, but all subsequent batches were purple. The CSA rep at the farmers' market claimed they were like cucumbers (or at least people used them in a similar manner). Wikipedia and I do not agree. I describe them more like a potato and an onion hybrid in flavor and a potato or turnip in consistency. We have had them raw on salads (per the cucumber comparison) and cooked in stir fry and other dishes. Personally, I prefer it cooked.

There is one thing for sure: They are strange looking.

Hopefully our CSA continues to introduce us to new plants and I can share them with you in the future.

— Sara

P.S. The leaves are edible too, obviously, they are cabbage (look a little like kale to me).

Name This Plant

2011-07-05T23:25:00.003+07:00

The return of everyone's favorite blog feature:

— Sara

Eight Years

2011-05-31T19:38:00.005+07:00

And I thought last year's seven was a long time.

Since Cale and I have work and school today (and I have a Telefund shift until 10 pm), we celebrated yesterday. The goal was to go to Nashville and play frisbee golf and drink delicious beers. However, we first went on a ride with Cale's motorcycle "gang." The tiny little seat on Cale's fender is not what I would call comfortable. By the end of that ride I really didn't have going all the way out to Nashville in me. So instead we lazed, which is also perfectly fine.

Fun anniversary tidbits:

The eighth anniversary gifts are stupid. Apparently the traditional US gift is bronze and the traditional UK gift is salt. The modern gifts are linens and lace. Salt? Really? Do you just buy salt or do you also get a shaker or grinder? Or are you supposed to be buying items made from salt? In honor of our love I got you this heart made out of salt?

Also, facebook made sure to remind me about my anniversary.

Nothing like a romantic facebook message to commemorate your anniversary, right? Thanks facebook for the suggestion.

— Sara

The Kids These Days

2011-04-08T07:25:00.004+07:00

It starts when you are jean shopping. There you are in the store surrounded by jeans and you find yourself thinking, "Where have all the [insert style of jean popular when you were 19 here] gone?" That's it. You've just become old.

It happened to me in Auckland. We were fresh off a plane from a year in 90+ degree weather and we found New Zealand just barely on the cusp of spring. It was in the 50s and 60s. I was going to need a pair of pants. So there I was, in the Auckland equivalent of a Plato's Closet, surrounded by skinny jeans and I found myself thinking, "Where have all the boot cut jeans gone?"

Thirty-year-old women in the 1980s turned circles in the middle of Sears looking for the bell-bottoms. In the 1990s, they wondered where all the acid-washed had gone. In the 2000s, they searched high and low for the ones that laced up in strange places. There I was, just shy of 2010 wondering where the boot cuts had gone.

From there it is all down hill. You find yourselves looking at the kids these days and wondering what they could possibly have been thinking when they got dressed that morning. This winter it was the leggings. I want to state for the record: LEGGINGS ARE NOT PANTS! In order for you to be wearing leggings properly, you need to be able to remove them (in public) and still be dressed. Leggings go under dresses and skirts and even sweaters and t-shirts that are so long, they are in fact dresses. However, leggings, alone, are not pants. End of story. Cale suggested a web site, www.haveyouseenyourass.com, where we could post pictures of all the cottage cheese thighs and dumpy asses that were parading around on campus encased in a think layer of cotton. Some words of wisdom for two girls in particular I saw this winter: 1. If when you sit down or bend your knees your leggings become see-through, they are not leggings, they are tights and that is even worse. 2. Textured tights are not leggings and are therefore even less pants.

Unfortunately, winter is the safe season when the fashions of the youth are hidden under those silly winter coats that look like your wearing a sleeping bag. The bad season is yet to come. With just hints, whiffs even, of spring in the air the children have shed their winter coats like molting butterflies. Please, for all of our sakes, but some clothes back on, its not that warm yet. More than a month ago I pointed out a girl walking in front of us to Cale. She was wearing booty shorts, but knowing it was only 40 degrees outside she had paired her booty shorts with tights. Slight problem. You know how tights have an area of darker material in a sort of rectangle shape in the crotch and thigh area (not control tops mind you...i am coming to that story)? The shorts were so short you could see this rectangle of darker material poking out several inches on the inside of each of her thighs as she walked. Classy.

Speaking of control tops. I almost stopped a girl a couple of weeks ago. She had decided that a Monday morning class was a perfect time to wear a skirt made entirely out of layers of see-through black lace. Layers that only minimally covered her ass. Once again, in deference to the fact that THERE WAS STILL SNOW ON THE GROUND she had paired her skirt with a pair of tights. These tights were control tops. I know because I could see the control top below the bottom of her skirt. "Honey," I imagined myself saying to her in a comforting, motherly tone, "do you have access to a full-length mirror?"

Of course, I probably shouldn't be mocking people for clothing decisions they made in their youth.

— Sara

Since I've Been Gone...

2011-03-07T01:30:00.002+07:00

Hello World. Sorry I've been away. Grad school, as it turns out, it sort of time consuming. I thought I would take a moment between this paper I just finished and studying for my finance mid-term to check in.

While you weren't looking, we moved.

It's wonderful to live closer to town. The almost one-hour drive to class is down to about 15 minutes. Cale's been cooking again and we were even to have friends over.

Smack was being suspiciously well-behaved since the move, but has finally made himself at home. After two weeks of only being allowed out on a leash or while under supervision, we finally started letting him out on his own. Then, in a three day period he got in a fight and had to have a series of puncture wounds tended to, killed a giant robin, and peed in the house. Ah, Smack, good to have the you we've come to know and love grudgingly back.

I've been volunteering at the Middle Way House since this semester started in January. I man the phone and the door every Thursday, however, I was also working on a grant proposal that I finally submitted last Monday.

"When most of us think of rooftop gardens, we see the posh penthouses featured in magazines. But, on the rooftop of its location in a newly renovated historic building in downtown Bloomington, employees of Middle Way House’s social enterprise, Food Works, are coaxing salad greens and herbs from tiny plots cobbled together from restaurant dish tubs and discount store window boxes two stories above the city streets. This effort yielded enough produce to keep side salads on the shelves of Food Works’ market into the second week of December and feed 115 people at a single catering event. More impressive than the green thumbs of the women Food Works employs are their stories of survival and their strength and determination."

Middle Way has a social enterprise extension, Food Works, which employs domestic violence survivors. When Middle Way began the renovation on their new digs, sustainability was a key part of the plans. In addition to the solar panels on the roof, they also planned for one building to have a green roof and the other to have a rooftop garden for Food Works. The grant proposal I wrote was to the Walmart Foundation for funding to complete to rooftop garden. Now we just have to wait to see if we are funded.

Last weekend a local theater produced the "Vagina Monologues" as a benefit for the Middle Way House. It was amazing. I had seen a professional, touring production back when I was at Mizzou (Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island was in that one), but this one was significantly better. Abby, Shar and I went together. I picked up a "Vagina Warrior" t-shirt afterwards and Abby bought chocolat vulva pops for the boys.

The Friday afterwards I was at my Early-College Mentoring lunch at Bloomington High School and mentioned to my mentee (if that is even a word) that I had seen the show. She likes to refer to it as the Vajayjay Monologues and said she doesn't like it when I say vagina. I told her that was actually part of the play, that people are not comfortable with that word. Somehow this inspired her and her friend to write down all the words they know for vagina (another part of the play actually). Are you familiar with the penis game? You know when two or more people take turns saying the word penis in public, each one louder than the next until someone has to yell it? Well, that was sort of what happened to the words for vagina. Part of me didn't have a problem with it. I mean, that is the entire point of that part of the play, getting people to be comfortable with these words. On the other hand, I am the responsible grown up here and I probably should be discouraging girls from yelling euphemisms for vagina while at school. I am not very good at being the responsible grown up.

Schools been uninterrupted work since the semester started. In one group project we are creating an evaluation plan for the Millennium Challenge Corporation's country selection process. In another we are working on an assessment to recommend a community to a foundation for funding to address hunger in school-aged children. Getting information on poor, rural counties in Texas and Arkansas sure is a trick. Soon my finance group will have to find a topic for our final project. In the one class without group projects, I just completed a paper on the "girl effect" in international development and will have to begin my Wikipedia on technology and development over spring break.

Speaking of spring break, it's only a week away. I'll catch up on my reading. Cale will install a solar panel at his mom's cabin. Oh, and hopefully some relaxing will be done as well.

More later.

— Sara

It's Been Snowing...And Raining Ice

2011-02-07T06:47:00.000+07:00

I hate winter.

— Sara

Federal Budget Cuts, As Explained Through My Weight-Loss Attempts

2011-01-27T20:42:00.002+07:00

So the federal deficit is going to continue to balloon out of control...just like my mid-section.

In 2009, approximately 40 percent of the budget went to the entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Yet no one wants to talk about cuts to these programs in order to bring the deficit down. So instead we are just going to nip around the edges of the budget with minor cuts in other programs that are minuscule in comparison to the entitlement programs.

This is similar to my weight-loss efforts. Let's say, for comparisons sake, that beer makes up 40 percent of my calorie intake (which I don't think can possibly be true, but work with me here). I want to lose weight, but I am not even going to consider cuts to the beer calories. So instead I will just have a salad for lunch. I am just nipping around the edges, but not really getting to the root of the problem.

What I am saying here is instead of Social Security the federal government needs to switch to V8 Fusion and vodka. Way less calories and a full serving of fruits and vegetables!

I am sorry, I am mixing my metaphors.

Do I have a solution to the Federal deficit. No. Do I believe that it is going to be fixed by refusing to even talk about changing 40 percent of the budget and continuing to cut taxes (do you like how I just threw those taxes in there out of the blue)? No. Does this blog post have a point? No.

But I did promise you more blogging. So this is what you get.

— Sara

By The Numbers

2011-01-24T21:01:00.005+07:00

269
Pages Of Reading Assigned
To Be Read For Today (Monday)

4
Classes I Took Last Semester That Were Requirements
And Didn't Teach Me Any Marketable Skills

2
Classes I Am Taking This Semester That Are Requirements
And Won't Teach Me Any Marketable Skills

1
Class I Am Taking This Semester
That Should Teach Me A Marketable Skill

25
Students In My Smallest Class This Semester

66
Students In My Largest Class This Semester

47
My Average Class Size This Semester

10
My Level of Disappointment
With My Class Sizes On A Scale Of 1-10

4
Pounds I Lost Since I Started
Eating "Healthy" After New Years

5
Pounds I Still Want To Lose

9
Months Since My Last Haircut

$10 USD
Cost Of That Haircut in Bangkok

$65 USD
Cost Of A Haircut Last Week in America

More later

— Sara

First Week of Second Semester

2011-01-16T21:35:00.005+07:00

I started this semester with an awesome schedule. Classes only on Monday and Wednesday. Nothing before 11 am. A semester-long three-day weekend. By Wednesday morning I picked up a 2.5-hour long class at 9:30 on Fridays. Dammit.

I was originally registered for V507 Data Analysis and Modeling for Public Affairs. I never really wanted to take this class. I initially registered for it because the Director of Graduate Student Services included V507 with Rubin in her list of classes not to leave SPEA without taking. However, I registered reluctantly. Later, I brought the class up with a professor adviser and mentioned my lack of excitement. Once again I was reassured it was worth it just to have a class with Prof. Rubin. I was never truly convinced, but I went along with it.

I discovered too late I had ordered the wrong edition of the textbook from Amazon. After our first class on Monday (where we were introduced to what appeared to be 3D math under the guise of "review"), I went to the book store on Tuesday and put down $140 on the book. Luckily I was sharing with Mike, who had agreed to be my homework buddy. That night I sat down at the kitchen table, cracked the shiny new cover and came to an important realization. THIS SHIT IS HARD. I don't even want to take this class. I don't even need this class. There are lots of other classes I want to be taking. Why am I doing this to myself?

And so I learned an expensive lesson ($70 for my half of a book I will never use, lost shipping costs on the book I ordered from Amazon and must now return, and $10 for the course pack I gave away).

I think part of the problem here is the way advising works for SPEA graduate students. There are not any dedicated advisers for the graduate program. There are professors who have volunteered to be advisers for certain concentrations. The first adviser I saw in the Nonprofit Concentration didn't seem to be all that interested in what I was talking about, probably because it is outside her area of interest (she is US nonprofit organizations; I am international NGOs). The second adviser I saw was definitely more up my ally, but still recommended I take this class I don't need, which I find strange.

Before juggling my schedule, I went to four classes on Monday. First was the this dreaded statistics class. The room was packed beyond the fire code capacity and not just because many people on the wait list had come to the class. Apparently, the class cap was already larger than the size of the room. There were definitely more than 50 of us. The professor commented on the unusual size of the class.

After two hours of GA work at the Institute for Development Strategies, I went to my evaluation class. This is a class I am extremely excited about. However, once again the professor commented on the number of us in the room. She had changed the syllabus due to the size of the class. No longer would we write a final paper, we would simply give a presentation on the work and write a short executive summary.

The the class started out well with a group in-class assignment that involved eating three cookies. You cannot really go wrong there. We were to evaluate these three different cookies. We had to come up with the purpose for the cookies, the evaluation criteria, etc. My group felt rather clever deciding we were evaluating cookies to find one for Cookie Monster to sponsor. As it turned out, at least three other groups were working for Cookie Monster as well. There was then some discussion on whether or not Cookie Monster still existed. Rumor had it he had become the Vegetable Monster. A little in-class internets research on the old Droid cleared up these vicious lies. According to the Muppet Wiki, Cookie Monster has always been a healthy eater (appearing on puzzles with fruits and veggies in the 70s and debuting a healthy foods rap in the 80s).

Cookie Monster responded to the rumor in a February 2010 tweet, stating "Time to put end to rumors. YES, me eat vegetables. NO, not going to be called Vegetable Monster! Dis whole thing silly." Cookie Monster tweeted about his healthy eating again in March 2010, stating "Maybe you hear rumor that me going on a diet. Not true. Me just eating healthy foods AND cookies. What wrong with dat?" In August 2010, Cookie posted a video on his official Facebook fan page saying that he eats three square meals a day, including many circular desserts. In September 2010, another video was posted, where Cookie names what he ate today: three varieties of cookies and tofu stir-fry. He adds "What? You think cookie all me eat?"

See the sort of important things I am learning? Who knew Cookie Monster even had a Twitter account? Maybe I should follow him.

Next up was my public finance and budgeting class. The teacher is an Uzbek Ph.D. candidate. My notes for this class include a story about his father working for two months to afford a pair of bell-bottom jeans, the Russian government under the impression it was going to develop an iPhone killer and zombies. I also have these two quotes: one is Winston Churchill, the other is the teacher's.

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter."

"Economists always assume some weird stuff."

The finance class, at about 30 students was my smallest class of the day, and, strangely enough, in the largest room.

After finance came my nonprofit and voluntary sector requirement. Once again another class packed to the gills with more than 50 of us in the room. I made a note to myself in the margins during this class.

First I did the Fourth Estate. Now I am doing the Third Sector. I like to get into industries during the worst times.*

*Get a degree in journalism and go to work in newspapers while the industry is supposedly in its death throes. Get a degree in nonprofit management during a economic downturn when all nonprofits are scrabbling for funding.

After my Tuesday night realization, I dropped the stats class and picked up Approaches to Development, my new 9:30 am on Friday class. I heart this class. First, I heart the topics. As the professor said, "I can't think of more pressing issues for human society than the issues we will discuss in this class." Second, I heart that as part of this class we will be participating in the WikiMedia Public Policy Initiative. Before class, we were assigned to read the Wikipedia entry on International Development, which is a complete disaster. We were also assigned to read policies on editing Wikipedia articles. I assumed with excitement we would be fixing this terrible article as part of class. However, it is ever more exciting than that. As part of this class we will write or significantly edit a public policy article of our choice (with in the confines of class topics) as part of this initiative to increase the amount of public policy information available on Wikipedia. The journalist in me is geeking out a little.

So there you, my first week of school. I will continue to try to keep up with my commitment to blog more.

— Sara

I Just Ate a Loaf of Bread

2011-01-08T20:46:00.006+07:00

..which is not in compliance with my diet.

In middle school, I had a classmate oh so kindly describe my hips as womanly. I didn't get around to loosing my baby fat (or growing any boobs) until I was a junior in high school. After that I was able eat just about whatever I wanted and fail to exercise without much worry (my lunch was chocolate chip cookies, french fries and frutopia...remember frutopia?). I think that's what being 17 is all about. Fast forward more than four years and I am working out at the Rec Center several days a week and attending Ab Lab in the hopes I would have muscle tone in my wedding dress and on the honeymoon (I had a friend describe me as pear-shaped at the time).

I live on carbohydrates, so two year later when I attempted the South Beach diet, things got desperate. The diet calls for two weeks without carbs. By the end of the first week, I was licking pretzels.

When Cale and I left for the Peace Corps in 2007, I was at my heaviest. Third-shift cubicle jobs aren't known for being healthy. While at work I could slam three cokes, raid the vending machine for pop tarts and never resist the candy bowl.

Samoa was the first time I had ever really lost weight. All it took was a slightly more active lifestyle...oh, and two months living in fear of the food (don't be fooled by that blog entry, it was back when I was still trying to say only good things in the blog, there was a point in training when I didn't eat anything for like three days), horrible boils and a terrible case of bronchitis. In this instance I lost more weight than I was interested in (20 pounds in two months) and even our medical officer prescribed me a hamburger.

I never got below 110 pounds, so I was never officially underweight according to the BMI charts on the internets. Though other people expressed concern over my weight at the time, I was pretty pleased. My thighs didn't touch; my stomach was flat. For the first time in my life I didn't really complain when my clothes didn't fit anymore, since this time it was because they were literally falling off my body and not because I was having a hard time squeezing my ass into them. There are downsides to losing a dramatic amount of weight. My ever so practical Hanes-Her-Way underpants hung in loose folds around my nonexistent ass; surely a sexy look. The biggest problem was the disappearance of my boobs (which weren't so big to start with). Not to get too graphic, but when you lose all the fat out of your boobs, you don't lose any of the skin. Things start to look a little like a National Geographic topless woman.

Unfortunately, all the time I was at this weight I was in Samoa where modesty standards and traditional wear had me in head to toe dresses all day. So there is very little photographic evidence.

We left Samoa on Nov. 30. By the end of January, I was back up to my pre-Samoa weight and pretty unhappy about it. I had made some clothing purchases when we first got back to America that I couldn't squeeze into anymore (at least without obscene amounts of muffin top).

Now that I have started to complain about being fat, I am going to have to diverge. You see, people don't want to hear me complain about my weight. Apparently, I am a petite person. Personally, I feel pretty average. Officially I am only a quarter inch shorter than average height for a woman in the US (though, if we start narrowing the demographics I get progressively shorter until I am more than an inch shorter than the average height for a white woman between 20 and 39 - which still doesn't seem that short to me). However, clothes shopping has indicated to me that everyone else in the world is much taller and larger than I am. I find this strange because I have met many people who are smaller than me. If I walk into a store and have to buy a small, where are these chicks shopping?

Part of being an inherently small person is that people don't want to hear you are unhappy with your weight or trying to lose weight. They also refuse to believe your true weight. Though I don't mind everyone around me erroneously assuming I barely weigh 100 pounds (HA!), it doesn't change the fact that I cannot fit into my clothes anymore.

I lost the America weight quickly when we left for Southeast Asia, but almost immediately began putting it back on again when we were back in the States. So here I am once again in America in January overflowing my clothes. And that brings me to that loaf of bread.

Grad school had not been kind to my eating habits (frozen pizza again? ok), so after the holidays were over I intended to eat more reasonably. I even borrowed the South Beach book from my mom (though the carb-less diet went out the window immediately with a beer on day two). However, I have no will power. I just don't have it in me to lose weight by controlling my food. We recently had lunch at Cale's aunt's house and she sent us home with a loaf of freshly baked bread. It was gone in less than 48 hours (and Cale didn't touch it, that was all me). I can be sitting on the couch — not hungry in the slightest — and hear the bread calling me from the kitchen, "I am so delicious and doughy and yeasty. Come, eat half of me."

As far as I can tell, my only viable weight-loss option is to leave the country. America makes me fat and I don't have the will power to do anything about it. The question now is if I am going to break down and buy bigger pants or try to tough it out through the spring semester.

— Sara

How to be Extremely Socially Awkward How I Spent My New Year's Eve

2011-01-04T20:54:00.003+07:00

Social awkward bonus: I react to all photographs by barring my teeth and stretching my neck (some where inside of me, I think I am smiling).

I recently took one of those personality tests on the olde internets and no one will be surprised to learn I am an introvert (especially not Abby). If you have a minute and would like to read a freakishly accurate description of Sara, click here.

Social Interactions: Stage One
For me, social interactions have a predictable cycle. First, I don't know anyone. Everyone makes me uncomfortable and scares me. So I sit quietly, by myself, away from everyone else if possible and try to make myself look busy (and when busy isn't possible, thoughtful will suffice). I eat lunch alone and try to make it look like its on purpose. Eventually I will find myself in a small group of other socially awkward people and hate it. You see, deep down, in my heart, I want to pretend that I am not so awkward, that I am in fact cool and that I can hang out with the cool kids. Also, these other socially awkward people are way weirder than me. My problem is a personality flaw. Their problem is they cannot find anyone to talk with about being a ninth level dwarf wizard or something. Lucky for me someone usually makes an effort to talk to me (heavens knows why) and I can slowly integrate myself into a small group of people who I have things in common with and who generally don't frighten me too much. I typically don't have more than 10 people that I know well and talk to in any give location.

For those of you who are wondering if I was just reminiscing about middle school or high school, I appreciate your vote of confidence in me. However, I was talking about grad school math camp...five months ago.

Stage Two
Stage two of being an introvert is successfully hanging out with these 10 or so people with minimal awkwardness for extended periods of time. Despite these new friends' efforts, I will stymie all attempts widen my circle of friends. This is followed by one of three stages, depending on the timeline.

Stage Three A
In this stage, there are no major holidays or big parties (this will make sense in stage three b). Instead, I continue to hang out with my new friends on a normal basis until I overload. Imagine, if you will, that Sara is like a cup. Each social interaction pours more liquid into this cup. At some point the cup reaches a point where it just cannot hold anymore. Hmmm...This metaphor is a little ridiculous. Imagine, instead, that Sara is a person who can only handle so much people before she can't anymore. I think is is working better than the cup situation from earlier. People overload is usually accompanied by headaches, bitchiness and a need to be alone in a quiet place.

Stage Three B
There are major holidays or big parties. This usually means that in addition to hanging out with people I know, I will also find myself in some sort of group social setting with people I do not know (friends of friends). There is also typically alcohol. I can A) drink between three and five beers and fall asleep on a couch somewhere or B) drink less beers, get more and more agitated by all the people I don't know and find a corner to sit in and read the news feeds on my phone (this is how I spent my new year's eve...so now I have fulfilled the title of this blog). The phone news feeds is a new addition. Prior to this technology my corner sitting was much less interesting. Those that know me understand I am just taking a break. Those that don't know me think I am a stuck up bitch.

Stage Three C
This is probably the most effective way for me to keep from getting overloaded by people. In this scenario I only see any given friend intermittently (once a week at most) and I fail to freak out.

Stage Four
I move far away (where I have to start this entire process over again) and I pretend am still friends with the people I used to know by following them on facebook.

Frequently I will reach a people overload point where I will think about becoming a hermit. I imagine that everything would be so much simpler and less painful if I simply stopped trying to make friends and stopped trying to hang out with people. However, the truth is I don't want to not spend time with people and not make new friends. It is just that I want it to be easier and not make me feel like throwing up a little on the inside (feel free to apply that "inside" to the preceding sentence as you see fit).

— Sara

2010 in Review

2010-12-31T09:40:00.000+07:00

January began our second month back in America. I sat the GRE early in the month and did pretty well. We visited my grandmother in West Virginia, found a set of dinnerware at Crate + Barrel called Samoa and discovered that soap goes a lot faster when you use it every day and you have hot water. Cale and I also found ourselves some filler jobs at Rockler and Noodles & Company (respectively).

February was the month we gave up on the bed and moved to a mat on the floor. Cale learned one of his students had gotten a job at an internet cafe in Apia. And I took the opportunity to thank all our friends and family for their support, including April and Rob (who not only cared for our jerk cat, but gave us a car when we got back).

March brought spring and our rejoicing after suffering through our first winter in four years. We ran into a friend we hadn't seen since Samoa and one we hadn't seen since our wedding (in 2003). I discovered I might be some sort of hippy. And two weeks before our flight to Bangkok, Cale discovered we might need visas after all and sent our passports off to the consulate in Chicago. Adventure would ensue.

April 1st found us on a decidedly not joking emergency road-trip to Chicago to pick up our passports from the Thai consulate. Our flight was Monday the 5th and on Thursday the 1st our passports were still in Chicago and not processed. Thankfully, everything worked out in the end and we flew out on Monday (with a layover in Chicago, oh the irony). More than 30 hours later we were in Bangkok, where the Red Shirts were in the process of ~~rioting~~ protesting. After some couchsurfing, we hooked up with two Peace Corps voluteers and spent Songkran in NancyMarie's village and Chiang Mai. Cale took a cooking class in Chiang Rai, where we also met up with a friend of a friend who is doing linguistic work with a local tribe. Next we moved on to Tak and visted with another Peace Corps volunteer and went to a Thai wedding.

In May we left Thailand for Cambodia and fell in love with Siem Reap. We ended up staying for three weeks, thanks to our couchsurfing friend Clem, who works at the Green Gecko Project. We also visited a Peace Corps who lived outside of Sisiphon and became show-and-tell at her school. Then we were off to the Nature Lodge in Sen Monorom and finished the month celebrating our 7th anniversary at a Mexican restaurant in Phnom Pehn.

June started off with my bus birthday wherein we traveled by packed minivan to another Peace Corps site. We went to a Khmer wedding, I got violently ill and we some how ended up in another city. We liked Kampot so much, we stayed there for three weeks too, mostly at the Green Man. We ran into another group of Peace Corps volunteers and went to Rabbit Island with Chris and his girlfriend who was visiting from California.

By July we were back in Thailand. We took trains from the border to Chiang Mai, where we whiled away the rest of our time motoing around and watching World Cup soccer. I had a 4th of July argument about marinara sauce and found the Wild West in Thailand. By the end of the month we were back in the States and moving into Cale's grandmother's house in Poland, Indiana.

We spent August country livin' and ended it with Cale's 30th birthday and the start of school. Cale was back in undergraduate after a business degree and I was going for my master's in public administration.

September was school, boycotting Target and wedding dress shopping with my sister.

In October grad school ate my life, Smack peed on everything and brought birds into the house, my little sister turned 22, and Cale got a motorcycle.

November saw Rob and Phaelen's birthdays and Cale's mom became sisters with her long-time friend Katie. Late November also began the winter suffering.

December was a Very Carusillo Christmas and a Very Poopy Solstice (which is odd, typically the poop is part of a Very Carusillo something).

So there you go. Tune in for 2011 when Cale and Sara tackle semester #2, get internships and suffer through yet another winter.

— Sara

The Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2010-12-27T20:56:00.004+07:00

An important lesson I learned this semester from my statistics professor.

I will refer you to this previous post in my apology for not blogging in such a long time. Though, in all honesty, I cannot blame it all on being busy. I have been busy before and still managed to blog, as just about any blog from the last few weeks in Samoa can attest to. I think one just has to accept that grad school isn't nearly as interesting (or picturesque) as being in the Peace Corps or traveling through Southeast Asia. There are just fewer things to blog about.

Cale and I have completed our first semesters back in school and had widely different experiences. Cale has been sitting in 200+ freshmen lecture halls with kids who were in kindergarten the last time Cale was a freshman. He could go an entire day without speaking to anyone and found refuge at my school where he could have adult conversation with my classmates. There are some youngin's in my classes as well, like the girl who was in middle school when 9/11 happened. We seem to divide into two groups, those who came to grad school straight out of undergraduate and those of us dancing around on either side of 30. There are some older outliers, but not many. Not surprisingly we seemed to have formed friendships within our age groups.

Those of you on the facebook know that Cale and I kicked some ass and took some names in the grades department this semester. Cale beat me by 0.015 for best GPA with a 3.94 (I am sure you can do the math to figure out mine). My 4.0 goals were defeated by an A- in Public Management. Cale also had an A- (in finite math), but with five classes his was not worth as much overall in his GPA.

Public Management was probably my least favorite class of the semester. It was entirely theoretical and taught entirely in academic-ease. The few occasions I endeavored to untangle paragraph-long sentences and complex three-dimensional diagrams, I came away with things like: "There needs to be accountability" and "Try having a budget." I think my favorite was the day I was able to sum up public management as the following: "Getting smart people to do smart things."

Needless to say, I stopped paying attention in this class more than a month before the end of the semester. However, I would like to point out there was a more pressing reason for why I was no longer attentive. Someone stole my seat. I like to sit near the front of the class. Not the front row (that's too goody-two-shoes), the second row. In the middle. It helps me see the board and stay engaged in what is going on. Though there obviously isn't assigned seating, people tend to gravitate to certain seating areas and sit there every day. I sat in the second row, in the middle. Everyday. Until one day there were no seats available in the second row and I had to move back a row. By the last few weeks of the semester I was sitting in the very back of the room, on my laptop, oblivious to what was happening down front.

The seating situation wasn't just a problem in Public Management. I also seethed quietly (well, not so quietly, ask my friends) over seat movers in my Public Management Econ class as well. Don't you understand? When you sit in a different seat, you have displaced someone else, who will find a new seat, displacing yet another until the entire room is in complete chaos. Chaos I tell you. Stop fucking with my seating arrangement!

Did I mention I am anal retentive?

Public Management Econ is also the class I cried in public over (and it wasn't because someone took my seat). The professor of this class was fond of assigning case studies that had only the most tenuous connection to in-class materials and were in fact ridiculously more difficult and required concepts never discussed in class. This teaching method made me angry. I arrived at his office hours already angry after spending the entire night before hating at the assignment only to discover more than 20 other students also had no idea what was going on. As the group office hour session progressed, I kept getting angrier and angrier at his lack of help. I pointed out that the number of students in his office hours should probably indicate to him this is something that needs to be discussed in class. He didn't seem to agree. I got angrier. However, when he followed it up with a little speech about how this is what it is like in the real world, you are presented with things you don't know how to do and you just have to figure it out, my anger boiled over. For one, this professor is the same age as I am (in fact, he might be a year younger than me according to his undergraduate graduation date). What exactly does he know about the real world that I don't? Furthermore, I am paying for the privilege to be taught these things so I don't have to just muddle through in the real world. If that is how it works, why am I even bothering with grad school? I can just go figure out things on my own for free.

For those of you that don't know me well, I have an inappropriate physical response to anger, particularly anger paired with frustration. I cry. The angrier or more frustrated I get, the more I cry. It is pretty hard to be taken seriously in an argument when you are bawling. The only time I ever came close to having a fight in high school I started crying and the other girl just laughed at me and walked away.

And so I cried in anger at my professor in front of 20 other students. In my attempts to explain, I kept repeating how angry I was at him. If anything, I think I scared him. I wonder if all my good grades after that could be attributed to him protecting himself from the crying, crazy lady.

I wasn't the only person to cry in front of an audience this semester. Our first Law and Public Affairs professor cried in front of the class. He was talking about how his son wasn't injured in the 9/11 attacks and got all choked up. Later in the same class he cried a little over due process. The first half of the semester was a complete disaster in that class. The professor was terrible, he taught us nothing and then gave us a multiple-choice scantron mid-term. This is grad school here, you really shouldn't be able to assess us with a multiple-choice scantron. Several of us complained about the class and how it was wasting our time and money. The administration at SPEA responded rather quickly and found us a new professor and the class improved greatly for the second half of the semester.

That leaves Statistical Analysis for Effective Decision-Making. The only class in which nothing too crazy happened. There was the lab when our professor referred to us as fetuses and after much prompting we established that she was only six months older than I am, which is probably why we watched this video in class:

Fabulous.

Also, for you statistics nerds out there, there is this etsy store.

So there you go, my semester in a nutshell. I will try to blog more regularly, I promise.

— Sara

What are Oranges Doing in My Chai?

2010-11-24T19:56:00.002+07:00

Dear Bigelow Teas,

I appreciate your interest in marketing your new tea flavor, "Constant Comment." I also appreciate your decision to give me one for free. How kind of you.

However, when someone gets up all bleary-eyed in the morning, opens a new box of Vanilla Chai tea, goes through the tea-making ritual (its Chai, I have to heat water and milk) and sits down to a nice cuppa Chai, they do not expect a mouth full of oranges. Maybe if I had been a little more awake and not stumbling around in a dark kitchen I would have noticed the teabag on top looked a little suspicious, but I didn't.

Granted, one cup of unexpected tea is not the end of the world, but I just wanted you to know that I did not appreciate my cup of tea this morning.

Sara

Grad School Ate My Life

2010-10-26T20:20:00.003+07:00

Dear Grad School,
I know that no school wants to get a letter like this, but I've been a little concerned about your health. As a good friend, I cannot just let this go. Grad School, your looking a little, well, obese.
I didn't say anything when you were eating up hours out of my weekdays. I mean, that was understandable and even welcome. You were so emaciated before, you needed to eat something. Up to eight hours a day, five days a week is a healthy diet. But, Grad School, things have started to get a little out of control.
First you started eating up my weeknights as well. Then you started in on the weekends. First just nibbling around the edges, but more recently swallowing them whole before I can even get them out of the oven.
Sure, I was noticing you were looking a little bloated, but I chalked it up to just retaining water or an adjustment period. I figured once things go settled you would slim down to a nice healthy weight.
Instead your appetite grew. Weekdays, school nights, weekends, free-time. You just snacked your way through my week. When was the last time I exercised, washed the dishes or cleaned the bathroom? You get to them before I can and keep packing on the pounds.
I think it is time for an intervention. Grad School, you need to go on a diet. How about we start small? You cut back on your between week snacking and do a little portion controlling during the week and I'll let you keep all those weekday hours and even an occasional between week snack when necessary.
Sound like a deal? Please circle yes or no.

Love,
Sara

Smack

2010-10-01T19:59:00.002+07:00

I love our cat, Smack, but he hates sleeping humans.

At first it was pouncing. You try sleeping with a cat jumping on and gnawing your feet every time you move them under the covers.

Next it was the door attack. When we couldn't take the pouncing any longer, we would lock him out of the bedroom at night. So he took running at full speed down the long hallway, launching himself at the top of the door and then scratching he claws all the way down to the floor. Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...... Once, in a sleep deprived stupor Cale got up and zipped him into a duffel bag.

"What did you do with the cat?" I sleepily mumble.
"I put him in a bag," Cale replies.
"You can't put him in a bag, he might suffocate. Let the cat out of the bag," I explain (enjoying the ability to use that cliche for real).

Then he learned how to flip light switches, leading us to believe intruders were in the house in the middle of the night.

Next it was the standing on the bed at 4 in the morning (remember I was working at newspapers and not getting home until after midnight) and screaming about being inside when he could be outside and why don't we let him outside?

When we moved to Samoa and left Smack in Indy with friends we felt guilty, but we looked forward to sleeping. Unfortunately we quickly discovered that roosters and Samoans also hate sleep.

Now that we are back and Smack has been living with us again he's been acting out in new ways. The stress of the move and being reunited with his family irritated his bladder (apparently this is a normal thing) and he took to peeing all over the house. Hooray. He also got in fights with the neighbor cats and required medical attention for a black eye. These problems might not seem like sleep-hate, but they are. Since Smack was ill and on medication, the vet recommended keeping him in the house. However, he was also refusing to pee in his litter box because he associated it with pain. If we didn't let him outside when he demanded he would pee on our things. So once again it is the 4am cat demanding to go outside.

With all these sleep-hate activities, last night took the cake. We had let him out and left the cat door open and crawled back into bed. We had barely had the chance to fall back to sleep when there were strange noises. It sounded like another animal was in the house. My first thought was that Smack had brought another cat back in with him or a small dog. Cale got up and could see in the gloom that Smack had deposited something on the rug just outside our bedroom. Cale turned on the light and with the audience he wanted finally paying attention Smack bit the head off the bird he had captured and proudly brought home with him.

Thanks Smack. Just what we need, 5am bird carcass cleanup.

— Sara

Late Night Adventures

2010-09-19T10:03:00.002+07:00

I suppose 10:45 pm isn't really late night, but it is for us old folks.

Cale and I had given up watching the Back to the Future marathon on the ion channel (which appears to be some sort of wholesome broadcast channel that usually only shows reruns of Without a Trace, Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer) and were heading to bed when Cale noticed someone running across our lawn with a flashlight. Seconds later our neighbor was at the door, "Your horses are out."

I am sure you have already figured there is no way that Cale and I own any horses, but our other neighbors do and two of them were out in the middle of the night, running next to a state highway with a 55 mph speed limit (the highway, not the horses). Not good for the horses or for the unsuspecting driver that might hit one.

Luckily they galloped back through our yard and into the neighbors'. The pony ran back into the corral and the owners were able to get the other one on a bridle (I don't know horse terms, but there was some sort of rope involved) and lead it back into the pen (if horses have pens).

Strangely enough this isn't the first time we've dealt with our neighbors' loose animals or with escaped horses. Three weeks ago, while celebrating Cale's birthday, some of their goats got out and Rob used his expert country skills to wrangle them back into their pen. Two years ago Cale and I were house-sitting up the hill from Apia (capital city of Samoa) when we looked outside to discover horses on the tennis court. They ran out on to the road and galloped up the mountain. Cale stood in the middle of the street and directed the horses home when they came pounding back down the hill. He's lucky he didn't get trampled.

On an unrelated note, we've been nursing a sick cat. Smack's been acting a little strange the last few days (though he hasn't peed on anything in a week [a week ago he peed in our friend Lindsey's purse. That's right, in, not on. On her phone to be exact]). He had a large, raised scab on his head. Yesterday day, he'd been favoring that area of his head and hadn't been opening his right eye all the way. We broke out the scissors and clipped all the fur from around his scab and started fussing with it. After aggravating it a little, the most amazing amount of puss started to pour out (oh, no, there goes Sara taking about puss again). That's right, Smack's gone and gotten himself an infected abscess again. With all my boil experience, I know how he feels. We've been cleaning him out and putting bactriban on it and he seems to be feeling better. Hopefully we won't have to take him back to the vet, the last visit was pretty pricey for what they eventually diagnosed as an imaginary disease (yet still prescribed steroids and antibiotics for).

Last night we went crazy and stayed up until 11 pm. Looks like tonight we are going to try for midnight.

— Sara

What's the Opposite of Phallic Symbol?

2010-09-18T09:23:00.002+07:00

Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that the new Glade Sense and Spray looks questionable.

— Sara

The Purchasing is Political

2010-09-04T21:05:00.004+07:00

Dear Target,
You've broken my heart. Over the years I thought I had gotten to know you, trust you, even love you. You were everything I was looking for in a department store. Where else would I go when I needed a cat toy, new bedsheets, school supplies and t-shirts in one stop? Walmart? Walmart is the evil empire, but you are Target. You were different. Maybe I was just letting the graphic designer in me cloud my judgment with its love of you displays and products. I thought you were more than just a pretty face, I thought I saw something good on the inside too (founding sponsor of Weekend America, you).

Now it's like I don't even know you anymore. I gave you my wallet and you've gone and thrown it in the trash. Target, how could you do this to me?

I think we need to take a break. I have started seeing other stores. They can't give me everything, the way you once could, but they don't cheat on me with bigoted politicians either.

This doesn't have to be the end of us. I could see it in my heart to take you back if I knew you were truly sorry and I could trust that you had changed your ways.

Regretfully,
Sara

PS. Tell your friend Best Buy I am not talking to him anymore either.

Wait...Where Am I?

2010-09-03T17:37:00.003+07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was in a computer lab having a class on the program I will be using for my statistics class (it is called SAS in case you were curious) and I was having strange flashbacks to Samoa. Someone has drawn an Excel table on the whiteboard. There were more students then there were computers ("you're just going to have to find someone to share with"). In-class notes were Word documents saved to each student's computer (though in this case they were downloaded from the online class management web site).

Computer programming: The manipulation of data by means of writing instructions in a particular computer language

Computer language: A collection of words and symbols assembled according to a precise set of rules and are interpreted by the computer to accomplish a variety of tasks.

Syntax: The set of rules of a computer language.

Computer program: A set of instructions written by a user in a particular computer language in order to carry out one or more tasks. In this class, our computer programs will be used to read, format, organize, manipulate, analyze, and report data.

Record (AKA observation): Any one of the horizontal rows of a file representing all of the data maintained for a particular unit of observation

Field (AKA variable): Any one of the vertical columns in a file that represents a single piece of information about all of the entities of interest

All my fellow Peace Corps Samoa ICT volunteers know what I am talking about.

But this time I was the student, not the teacher.

One other note from my statistics lab last night. Visual proof that Lotus 1-2-3 references still exist in the real world too:

— Sara

Back to School

2010-08-31T07:55:00.005+07:00

Today was the first day of classes for Cale and I in our going back to school adventure. I have spent the last two weeks in math camp and orientation, while Cale has been scratching his eyes out with boredom.

Mondays will be easy for us. Our first classes do not start until 2:30pm. I only have one class on Mondays; Cale has two. Both of Cale's classes are freshman business school classes: finite math and business computers. My only class of the day is Public Management Economics, which was way more interesting than it sounds.

Things have changed since we were last at school. For me that was more than seven years ago and for Cale it was at least five. One of Cale's classes is a huge lecture hall that requires the students to have a clicker, which is basically an electronic way to "participate" in the lecture.

My economics class is presented by Prof. Ross in a pretty interesting way. He styles his class on instructions on how not to kill people and starts the lecture asking questions about whether or not seat belts should be on school buses and referring to the FDA as an effective killing machine. Ask yourself:

1. There are 531 billion barrels of known oil reserves in the world. Annually, 16.5 billion are consumed. When will we run out of oil?

2. Why do so many cities and towns run out of water in Southern California?

3. A valley is flooded. Houses in the plain are damaged, while homes higher up are not. Who, if anyone, should we feel sorry for?

Keep in mind this is an econ class when attempting to answer these questions.

Cale and I both managed to have articles of clothing that required Oxycleaning by the end of the day. Cale dug through piles of empty ammo boxes at the army surplus and filthed up his brand new dress pants. I was surprised by a slightly early visit from Aunt Flo. Thank goodness I was wearing my brand-new, bright-white underpants from Victoria Secrets.

< . Side Note >Can I just take a minute to talk about my undergarments?

<. Side, Side Note >People not interested in Sara's breasts or women's panties should probably skip this part. <./ Side, Side Note >

So its been more than two years since I bought a bra. The last bra I bought was over the internet from Target while in Samoa. I went to Samoa with about four bras and three sports bras. Several of them had been stored away in ziplocks to preserve the elastic, but even that wasn't enough. It's been so long since I have owned a new, appropriately stretchy bra that I forgot what they were like. Supportive. That's what they are like.

Sunday I went shopping for undergarments at Victoria Secrets. Aside from three pairs of panties purchased at the mall in Los Angeles immediately after our return to America, I have never shopped there before. Holy Shiznit! I have never owned such comfortable bras in my life! Usually, after a particularly strenuous day one of the first things I like to do when I get home is take my bra off. For get that. After school today, I wandered around the house without a shirt with just my new bra. That's how comfortable it is. Furthermore, I was always under the impression I had small, flat terrible, boobs. Apparently what I had was bras that gave me small, flat, terrible boobs. You know what I have now? Cleavage! I have never...ever...ever had cleavage. I just though it was something my boobs couldn't do. Shows what I know. My boobs are so spectacular is these bars if it wasn't for my belly fat, I would want to wander around outside without a shirt on just so the general public could enjoy my breasts as much as I am.

Also, I now own underpants that can be called panties. I usually have sturdy underpants. These underpants get the job done. They are no nonsense. They are Hanes-Her-Way. They can be washed on the heavy-duty cycle and come out is the same condition as they went in. They are underpants. What I got in Los Angeles from Victoria Secrets are panties. They are delicate. They have ribbons or lace. They do not react well to the type of washing that happens to clothes when you are backpacking around Southeast Asia. My new panties from Victoria Secrets are slightly more utilitarian from the last, but are still delicate and luxuriant and I have promised to wash them on the hand-washables cycle in the washing machine.

Enough on my undergarments <. / Side Note >

Where were we? Oh, yes, the first day of school.

Cale got called Sir. I discovered I cannot seem to print on any computer on campus. We both came home to find piles of books shipped from Amazon waiting in our mailbox and on our front doorstep. What more could you ask for?

— Sara

PS. Do you know how tricky it is to add ironic html code into a blog entry when blogger supports html? it just hides all your ironic coding as if it was code. Unless there really is an html code for side note.

The Name Game

2010-08-23T00:39:00.002+07:00

Cale and I have this game, the goal of which is to come up with names that will fit into the rules. However, we don't really have any rules. You just know a name that fits when you hear it.

Venn Diagram

Vector Graphic

Do you see the trend here? First name Venn? Middle name Diagram? It is a thing and it could be a name. Also, the word that is the first name isn't so weird that it is unbelievable.

There is more to the game than that.

casE sensitive

casE is pronounced Casey. The capital letter is key here; making the name itself case sensitive. I know, you are amazed by the cleverness of this name.

Also, if you happen to be a French/German couple:

Reaux Beaux Kaup

You get it? Robo Cop. Another kid that will never resent his parents.

We also have ones that don't quite fit into that category. Like brothers Alpha Male and Beta Male. I suppose it sucks to be the younger brother. Or an entire family of boys: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Tamerlane Khan. I suppose this one would work better if Khan was your last name and not as first and middle names.

Cale, as you know, goes by his middle name. That's right folks, some of you out there don't even know Cale's real first name! Shocking. He likes the idea of kids going by their middle names (I suppose so they can suffer through first day of school roll call the way he did). Cale also happens to be named after his father and likes that idea too. So he has suggested:

Also Cale Reeves
and
Other Cale Reeves

Names I am sure that any kid would appreciate.

What about you? Have any names that would fit into our game?

— Sara

Country Living

2010-08-13T21:08:00.005+07:00

McCormick's Creek State Park. Only 10 miles from our front door.

I am a city girl at heart.

At least that is what I kept insisting as Cale and I slept outside on mats in tiny towns in Southeast Asia and Samoa, like this one.

Also, I do not camp.

Anywho.

I didn't grow up in a big city like New York or Chicago, but Indianapolis is still the 14th largest city in the country (population-wise). I think I might have gone to an apple orchard as a field trip in elementary school. When my parents took us to the state fair as kids I saw farm animals in cages. And that is about the extent of my country living in America. Even when I left Indy for college, I still moved to a respectably-sized town. Columbia has a population of over 100,000. My first job was in Evansville (a city I considered way too small) with a population of more than 120,000. Next on the list was Orlando, population more than 230,000 (metro area, more than two million).

However, outside of American Cale and I like to stick to the tiny towns. The entire population of Samoa is just slightly more than Evansville, Indiana. Our village, Faleula, had an estimated population around 2,000 (the smallest place we have ever lived). In Thailand, Bangkok was obviously too big (nine million people in the city alone), but so were Chiang Mai (just under 150,000) and Chiang Rai (62,000). We had to get out into the country in villages of less than 10,000 to be comfortable. Our favorite place in Cambodia had a population of less than 40,000.

Now we are in Poland for our first attempt at small town living in the States. Poland is unincorporated, so it is tricky to find population information, but it appears there are about 2,000 of us out here. In Samoa we were 20 minutes out of Apia (38,000). In Poland we are five minutes out of Spencer (20,000).

We've decided to approach our new lifestyle here with the same sense of adventure we used to explore the rural in other countries. We've already been to a county fair (take note that one of the top links on the site is hog wrestling), swam in a farm pond and burned our trash in our backyard.

One of the benefits to living in the country is all your friends and family have huge gardens and are constantly insisting you take free food with you.

In the spirit of more food than you can possibly eat before it goes bad, Cale and I have decided to start experimenting with canning. Recently we turned about 20 pounds of tomato (and other ingredients) into seven pint jars of salsa.

I am also learning about maintaining huge tracts of land (actual farmers will of course mock me and my "huge" three acres, but it is immense to me). In the picture below, I am not driving a lawn mower (as you city folk might think). That is in fact a tractor. A surprising number of things in the country are tractors.

However, this thing, that Cale is driving, is a lawn mower. Yeah, it confuses me too.

I quickly learned that my delicate hands aren't used to all this manual labor. Took the skin right off my thumbs after raking for only 10 minutes (there was much more raking in my future as well).

Cale promises to take me to "the races" and fishing! Stay tuned for more country living adventures.

— Sara

Smack wanted to help can.

I Guess You Get What You Ask For

2010-08-06T22:11:00.002+07:00

I suppose it is a little contradictory of me to refer to our return to school as part of our continuing effort to not grow up and then complain about being treated like a child, but this is ridiculous.

{SCREEEECH} COMPLETE BREAK FROM TOPIC

I have noticed lately that when I start typing a blog entry, I usually start with the sentence that should probably be found halfway down. I have provided no explanation or set up for the above statement. It's just dropped out of no where. In previous entries I have gone back and cut the offending sentence from the beginning and moved it to a more appropriate place, but in this instance I am leaving it. I am not sure why my mind works this way, but its been doing it for a long time now. Back in my magazine writing class at Mizzou I did the same thing with several stories. We were asked to re-write a story our professor (and editor-at-large at GQ magazine) had written. My lede was a scene halfway through his story when the protagonist finds himself sitting in his backyard with his gun collection thinking about shooting himself. When I wrote a profile on one of the guys inside the Truman the Tiger suits, I started it with him on the steps of the basketball stadium with a bloody fist. I just like to start in the middle I guess. Either that, or it is a cheap gimmick to make up for the fact that I am not that great of a writer to start with.

{SCREEEECH} AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM

So things have been a little entertaining on the Cale-is-going-back-to-school-as-an-undergraduate front. First we had to be back in America in mid-July so he could attend one of those welcome-to-college days where fresh-faced freshman wander around with their parents in awe and sleep in a dorm for the first time. Granted his was specifically for transfer students and was in theory less geared towards 18-year-olds, but not by much. They still seem to assume you are 19 or 20 years old and transferring from a community college where you probably lived with your parents. There were sections on renters' rights and the dangers of credit cards. For all the jumping through hoops and presentations, all Cale really needed to do was see a academic advisor and register for classes, yet he wasn't allowed to simply do that. He was required to attend one of these welcome events. They don't seem to offer any sort of option for adults who are returning to finish their undergraduate degrees. It was frustrating enough for Cale, but I am trying to imagine what something like that would be like for, say, a retiree, who decided to go back to school. You're 65 and you have to watch 20-year-olds give you talks about managing your money and using the library.

Cale is going back to school for a business degree. Very few of his existing credits count toward this degree, but he has is electives totally taken care of. He joking refers to all his 300-level classes that are meaningless now. "You mean my credits in playwriting don't count for anything in the business school?" However, his life experience doesn't seem to count for anything either. Cale has run a million dollar restaurant, he was a corporate fixer who went around to failing franchises to set them straight and he was self-employed when he was making studio furniture, but there is no way for him to get out of the mandatory careers in business class.

Recently Cale received an email from school telling him he must complete a two-part, multi-hour online alcohol education course before he can register for classes in the spring semester. He even called to ask if he could get out of it. "I'm 30 years old," he explained. Doesn't matter. So Cale spent two hours watching videos of edgy teen-agers read from scripts about drinking, drugs and healthy relationships.

He was asked questions like:
"How likely are you to get in trouble with your parents for your drinking."
"How likely are you to drink more than four drinks in a night and be taken advantage of sexually"

And had to account for his living situation.
At home with mom and dad? Off-campus apartment with friends? Living with his steady girlfriend/boyfriend?

It seems surprising to me that there is not an admissions option for transfer/returning students over a certain age that would exempt them from all these requirements obviously created for teen-agers or people living away from home for the first time.

Oh well, at least Cale is getting almost weekly reminders that he is currently successfully continuing to not grow up. Or possibly daily reminders that despite his best efforts, he may have inadvertently grown up — just a little bit.

Cale's response? "I'd better hurry up and buy a motorcycle."

— Sara

Making Grandma's House Our Home

2010-08-01T05:29:00.002+07:00

Before Cale and I joined the Peace Corps in 2007 we sold everything we owned. Had we moved into a married-student slum while attending IU, it would have been one empty apartment. No furniture. No dishes. No nothing. One of the benefits to moving into Cale's grandmother's home is it was already furnished. However, we still wanted to make this house feel like our home.

The first step creating a home was to bring our family back together. For the first time in almost three years we have been reunited with our cat, Smack. I have to thank Rob, April and Jason for caring for him while we were away. He was with them for almost a third of his life.

The final stepping in feeling at home was breaking out the boxes of artwork we hadn't seen on almost three years either and finding them a place on the walls.

With our family complete and our walls decorated we feel pretty comfortable. Sure, we are still sleeping on the floor and find the couch too comfortable, but it is a start.

— Sara

PS, The top picture looks better to me, but this one is a better picture of Smack.

We're in Poland

2010-07-30T20:54:00.004+07:00

Wikipedia

Poland, Indiana that is.

As you already know, Cale and I are going to be pretty stationary in good, old Indiana for a while. Exotic adventures abroad have been put on hold temporarily. Luckily, we can still imagine we are traveling right here in our new home in Poland, Indiana. We are southeast of Brazil. And southwest of Lebanon, Peru and Mexico.

Cale's grandmother owns a house in Poland, just outside of Spencer, Indiana. She rarely lives there, spending most of her summers in her other Indiana home and her winters in Arizona. When she learned we would be moving to Bloomington for school she offered her place to us rent-free. At first Cale and I were interested in living on campus, but after applying for married-student slums and being assigned to a crappy, one-bedroom apartment with rent of $707 a month, Cale's grandmother's house looked like a god-send.

Cale and I moved our belongings down here two weeks ago with the help of Rob and Connor. Everything we own fit in the back of the jeep and Rob's trunk. We've unpacked and settled in. Stay tuned for more on Poland in the coming days.

— Sara

The Next Big Adventure

2010-07-28T23:15:00.004+07:00

In our continuing efforts to refrain from growing up, Cale and I are going back to school. You should be able to find us in the vicinity of Bloomington at Indiana University for the next three years-ish. I will be working on a Masters in Nonprofit Management at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (maybe with a little Comparative and International Affairs and Policy Analysis thrown in for good measure). Cale will be in the Kelley School working on an undergraduate degree in business with a focus in Entrepreneurship. Cale likes to say that I'll cover the nonprofit and he'll take the profit and one of us should end up managing something in the end.

There were probably be fewer cultural revelations in the blog for the next few years. Or surprising foods. Or unidentifiable plants. However, I will do my best to keep it interesting. Stay tuned for fascinating stories on life with air-conditioning, travel in your own car and restaurants, restaurants, restaurants galore. Oh, and possibly some studying.

— Sara

Discover Card is Slightly Less Crap Than Previously Indicated

2010-07-26T04:45:00.002+07:00

www.slashphone.com

You may remember a little rant I posted to the blog a month ago. Long story short, we were having a problem with our Discover card. We had been told we could use our card in Thailand. It wasn't true. We were told we could use our card at Western Union. It wasn't true. We were told we could do cash advance transfers to checking. It sort of wasn't true (we hadn't made three "qualifying" payments).

Earlier this week Cale received an email from Dawn at Discover card. She had been made aware of our blog entry and wanted to apologize for the situation. Apparently, we could have accessed Emergency Cash while in Cambodia. However, in order to access this cash, we needed to know the secret code. Though we repeatedly told the customer service representatives we were in a foreign country and that we really wanted to get money from our Discover card, none of them seemed to know any way (well, any real way, they offered plenty of false ways) for us to use our card. According to Dawn, we needed to tell the customer service rep on the phone to transfer us to Global Traveler’s Assistance, From there that person would have been able to get us the Emergency Cash. Unfortunately, because we didn't know the code words (Global Traveler's Assistance) we weren't able to get our multiple customer service reps to transfer us to the people who could help us.

To Dawn's credit, from her email I get the impression that she was prepared at that time to do whatever it took to assist us. She did not know we were already back in the States by then (since we had told Discover we were going to be overseas from April to August), so she provided us with this information in the hopes that we would use it if necessary. She also credited $75 to our account for our troubles, which was appreciated. Furthermore, when we were back in the States Cale made a transfer from Discover to our bank account. After seeing this transfer and knowing that we were supposed to be overseas still, Discover put a hold on our account (though, now that I think about it, I don't think they notified us about this hold). When the card wouldn't work any more, Cale called them, told them we were back in America and that these were authorized transactions. I appreciate Discover cards quick action to prevent our card from being misused when they had reason to suspect that it was not us making the transactions.

So, long story short. Discover card could definitely do a better job in educating their customer service reps on what options are available to card users overseas, otherwise they are less crappy than previously indicated. Dawn, we appreciate your efforts on our behalf.

— Sara

Final Southeast Asia Tidbits

2010-07-22T23:34:00.002+07:00

Homes and businesses in Thailand and Cambodia with tin roofs will frequently have a roof sprinkler system. It can be an actually garden sprinkler on the roof or simply a hose with holes or advanced professional systems. Whatever the method, they will turn it on during the heat of the day cooling the tin roof and helping keep the temperature down inside. Brilliant. I see no reason why this wouldn't be effective in Samoa (at least in the places with abundant running water). Our PST village had free water pipe and a river, I bet it would be easy to cool off houses in this manner.

On the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok we saw the place where toilets go to die. It was a massive porcelain graveyard.

It happened frequently enough for me to wonder if it was just a language issue. Someone would tell you how much something costs or how many of something they have saying one number while holding up a different number of fingers. They would say five and hold up four fingers. Mostly it happened in English, which is not their first language. However, usually the number they were saying was the correct number and not the fingers. Also, Cale said he had it happen to him a couple of times in Thai and Khmer.

Cale and I had an argument over whether or not he could tie me to the table (don't ask) with is flip-flops. I don't think it could be done. He seems to think that they plastic-rubbery straps of his jandals would be enough to hold me.

Wow. I thought I had more tidbits than this. Looks like my last entry on Southeast Asia is mercifully short. Tune in next time when Cale and Sara go back to school and hi-jinx ensue.

— Sara

Final Details of Southeast Asia

2010-07-22T20:52:00.002+07:00

*Audience Participation Portion: Please imagine the red dot is on Indianapolis and not Bangkok. The map was originally made on a Mac with Illustator and now I have Inkscape and cannot open the EPS to edit it.

So, yeah, we're back in America. I mentioned that earlier. I figured I would fill you in on the final details of our trip and the last few tidbits I have to share.

Saturday, 10 July, we caught the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok at 2:50pm. This time we got sleeper seats. They were not air-conditioned and I found that way more comfortable than the air-con seats we had on the ride in the opposite direction. This time around we were too smart to fall for their meal tricks. However, we were also arriving in Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning, so they weren't offering an overly-priced breakfast on this train anyway.

Once again, the views from the train were lovely. Train travel, especially over long distances is way preferable to the bus. Even if we had splurged for the first, first, first-class bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok it still would have been like 12 hours in a seat on a bus. This way we could walk around and then at night we had relatively comfortable beds. The only disadvantages is they do not turn the car lights out. If you want dark for sleeping you need to draw your curtain. However, if you want the breeze from the fan (especially for top bunk people with no window) you need to leave your curtain open. I opted for the open curtain.

Cale and I settled down to sleep pretty early (it was like 8 or 9pm). It was pretty good that I started sleeping so early. Even though I had taken a Benadryl to aid with my sleeping, I still woke up every hour or two. No reason for that; I just couldn't seem to stay asleep.

Our train was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at 5:30am. Maybe that is the time we crossed the line into the Bangkok metro area or something because we sure didn't pull into the train station until 7am. Oh well, the subway didn't start running until like 6am anyway, so if we had arrived at 5:30 we would have just had to wait around.

We went immediately to the train to the subway. We switched to the skytrain at an interchange station and took that to the stop for the Buri House (where we had stayed with Nancymarie and Hayden three months ago...almost to the day even). While sitting in the Buri House waiting room we ran into Portia (another Peace Corps volunteer we had met in Chiang Mai...it's a small world after all). After checking in we proceeded to crash for several hours in obscenely cold air-con. We already had a full day and it was only like 9am.

We quickly discovered that the Buri House is in a pretty expensive part of town. The roads are lined with high-end malls and interior design shops. If you are getting married this must be bridal row or something, with all the dress and bridal-planning shops. Cale was still a little weary from a bout of stomach problems he had experienced in Chiang Mai and didn't want a repeat just as we were going to begin our 30-hour airplane adventure, so he didn't want to eat street food. The restaurants in the area were pretty expensive (one Korea joint we went into had a buffet that cost 500 baht..that's $15USd!). So we ended up eating McDonalds in the mall (don't tell anyone...or that we had KFC in the mall for dinner).

The check out from our guesthouse was 12pm Monday, 12 July. Our flight wasn't until 12:30am Tuesday, 13 July. For those of you who have trouble with the whole midnight/noon am/pm thing, that means our flight was so late Monday night it was really Tuesday morning. It also meant we had 12 hours to kill from when we checked out of our guesthouse until our flight took off. At first we considered seeing a movie and getting food and wandering around. However, we had all our luggage to deal with, the area of town we were in was expensive and, well, we are lazy. So instead after checking out from our guesthouse we caught a taxi to the airport. That's right cats and kittens, only 12 hours early for our flight.

How to kill almost 10 hours in the Bangkok airport before even going through security:

1. Wander around the entire pre-security area. Get a feel for the restaurants and 7-11s. Keep an eye out for any electrical outlets near chairs.

2. Find a comfortable place to set up camp at one far, abandoned end near the restrooms. Choose seating strategically to keep an eye on all the electrical outlets. For some strange reason, all seats near electrical outlets were taken and most of the people in the seats weren't even using the outlet. Also, note to BKK, why go through all the effort to wire up that support beam and put an outlet in if you are only going to include a single plug. Why not two plugs? Or, heaven forbid, several?

3. Watch Alien on the laptop and drink a beer (cause you can do that anywhere).

4. Experience false advertising after ordering the "Burger Set" at the Black Canyon Coffee outlet in the airport. I counted, I got less than 10 fries with my burger and I won't even get into the burger.

5. Read

6. Take turns walking around.

7. Watch Where the Wild Things Are on the laptop and drink a beer.

8. Take turns walking around.

9. Read.

10. Get really excited about the prospect of checking into your flight.

11. Get your hopes dashed and return to waiting.

12. Check in for your flight. Watch an old man in line ahead of you open his suitcase and pull out socks and pants and proceed to get dressed while waiting in line.

13. Passport inspection.

14. Security.

15. Now begins the waiting on the other side of security.

We were flying with two large groups. One was a group of sporty looking people from Nepal. The other was some sort of large group of people who all appeared to work for the same company (the matching windbreakers were the clue). Both the Nepalese and the employees were wearing laminated pieces of A4 like unaccompanied minors that listed all their travel info and their names and whatnot. Can these grown people not travel on their own? Is there some worry they might get lost? I suppose if this is their first international flight. But they were more than 20 people in each group, I feel like it would be tricky to get lost.

Anyway, we fly to Korea. I have very little memory of this. It was five hours. I think there might have been breakfast. I think I made the mistake of choosing the rice porridge, which would have been fine if I hadn't added the "green tea" flavor packet that contained seaweed. Had I known about the seaweed I would have left out the packet.

Next we waited in the Seoul airport for four hours or so. This was done mostly in a delirious haze in and out of consciousness. Before boarding the flight to the US, Cale was made to throw away his bottle of water, even though he had just bought it on the other side of security.

The flight to Chicago was 12 hours. Our seat mate was a little too chatty for my liking. I now know all the details of his life. Where he used to live, where he lives now, why he was in Bangkok, his wife, his divorce, his dead grandfather, etc., etc, etc. I think he took the hint when I put my earphones in and didn't remove them for the next 12 hours. I watched Alice in Wonderland, Date Night, and Youth in Revolt. I tried to watch Bounty Hunter and Valentine's Day, but they were too terrible to continue with.

Lunch was chicken and mashed potatoes (my seat mate doesn't eat meat, but doesn't advance order a vegetarian meal, instead he just lets you know he cannot eat anything on his plate, do you want it? so I gave him my salad). Dinner was either Korean noodles or seafood. Even though our seat mate could see the Korea noodle dish in front of me and Cale (and how it was entirely vegetables) before making his choice, he chose the seafood. After opening it he discovered it was full of (surprise) seafood, which he could not eat. Also it was in a cream sauce and he cannot eat milk. Or gluten. I am sure the stewardesses love him. Some time in the middle of the night (to be honest, I have no idea what time it was) they came around with a snack, either these crazy pizza sticks or tuna-rice balls that were in a triangle instead of a ball.

Aside from the time I walked in on an old lady in the bathroom (you have to pull the lock so the door says occupied!) the flight was pretty uneventful. Just long.

We landed in Chicago and drank a beer that wasn't Chang or Angkor (or the like). I also showed an old lady with very little English how to use the automatic flush toilets. There is just something about me and old ladies and toilets I guess.

When we finally arrived in Indy we had been in transit for more than 40 hours. Our Tuesday had been more than 30 hours long and it was only 4pm Tuesday there. We still had eight more hours of Tuesday to get through.

The last of the tidbits will be in the next blog entry.

— Sara

Name This Plant: Eucalyptus Deglupta

2010-07-17T19:03:00.003+07:00

Jane has successfully named this plant the Rainbow Gum Tree (that's Eucalyptus Deglupta to you). According to Wikipedia, this is the only eucalyptus tree native to the northern hemisphere. It is most commonly grown for pulp wood in making paper and for ornamental purposes.

"This tree is also grown for ornamental purposes, due to the showy multi-coloured streaks that cover the trunk. Patches of outer bark are shed annually at different times, showing the bright-green inner bark. This then darkens and matures to give blue, purple, orange and then maroon tones"

I had no idea such a tree existed. Cale and I were walking around in the national park up the mountain from Chiang Mai, when we happened to turn the corner and stumble on this tree. At first we thought it had been painted, until we realized that they were everywhere and all the trees were equally colorful. Cale describes them as Picasso trees. They are my new favourite plant.

— Sara

Name This Plant

2010-07-17T02:25:00.000+07:00

— Sara

In America

2010-07-17T02:17:00.002+07:00

I am sorry. For those of you following the blog who are not on the facebook, I failed to mention we are back in America. I will post the final entries of our Southeast adventures very soon. Things are a little jet-lagged and hectic here at the moment.

— Sara

Name This Plant: Longan

2010-07-11T16:59:00.002+07:00

Peak Ness has successfully named this plant Longan in a facebook comment. She does have a slight advantage though, what with living in Thailand and all.

According to Wikipedia, the names for this fruit in Chinese and Malay mean "dragon eye" and "cat eye" respectively. I would not argue with this assessment. Longan falls into the category of eyeball fruits.

Wikipedia

Mark Kaplan guessed this fruit might be lychee or rambutan (also via facebook). You may remember rambutan from the very first Name This Plant. Lychee, also like the longan and rambutan, has an outer shell with an eyeball-like fruit inside. All three fruits are frequently sold on the roadside here in bunches still attached to small branch.

Lychee/Wikipedia

According to Purdue's horticulture web site, logan is often named in reference to the lychee:

"Closely allied to the glamorous lychee, in the family Sapindaceae, the longan, or lungan, also known as dragon's eye or eyeball, and as mamoncillo chino in Cuba, has been referred to as the 'little brother of the lychee', or li-chihnu, 'slave of the lychee'. Botanically, it is placed in a separate genus, and is currently designated Dimocarpus longan Lour. (syns. Euphoria longan Steud.; E. longana Lam.; Nephelium longana Cambess.). According to the esteemed scholar, Prof. G. Weidman Groff, the longan is less important to the Chinese as an edible fruit, more widely used than the lychee in Oriental medicine."

Though I am a fan of the flavors of all these fruits, I am not a big fan of their consistency and eyeball-like qualities. I rarely eat them.

— Sara

Back to Bangkok

2010-07-11T06:06:00.000+07:00

— Sara

Tidbits

2010-07-10T09:57:00.002+07:00

Sara, why are you posting so many blog entries all at once?

Because we are almost ready to leave and I haven't caught up with our adventures. It would be silly to be back in America and still blogging about Thailand.

Oh..ok...well hurry up already.

The people of Thailand seem to have a thing for the old American West. There are country-western bars and whatnot around. However, this resort/campground outside of Chiang Mai really takes the cake. I am not sure if you can sleep in the teepees or not.

I did find it strange that the hot springs that are in no way affiliated with the above resort also incorporated Native American stuff.

You can also buy dreamcatchers at the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Market.

Dear tourists, your hand does not actually emanate a force field.
For some strange reason we have been witness to a strange phenomena. A group of tourists will be standing on the side of the road waiting to cross the street (usually these groups appear to be family groupings with kids in tow) and the leader of the group will just decide that now is the time to cross, regardless of the traffic. They will step out into the street and put out their hand at the oncoming cars. "Stop in the name of the farang!" They don't actually say that, but that is the impression that I get. What exactly do you think you are accomplishing with your hand? Either the traffic sees you and will stop or they don't. Do you think that with out the hand signal the drivers see you but aren't sure what to do and will run you down? Stupid tourists, wait for a break in traffic or, this is craziness, cross at the designated cross walks where there is a light and a button you push to indicate you want to cross.

Speaking of Chiang Mai traffic, it is insane. At least around the moat. All the traffic goes one way in a circle on the road inside the moat and all the traffic goes the other way in a circle on the outside of the moat and there are occasional places to cross over. It makes getting somewhere specific an adventure of U-turns.

Thai and Khmer people are practically born on motos. These guys can drive a moto like nobody's business. They weave in and out of traffic. They are up and down one-way streets, regardless of the direction of traffic. It is almost an art form. However, they also drive four-wheel vehicles like they are motos and that not a good idea. Note to drivers of cars and trucks in Southeast Asia, your car is much bigger than a moto and cannot fit into that space. Also, it is recommended that you stay in between the lines indicating the lanes. I have never seen a person in Thailand or Cambodia park a car without a passenger getting out to direct the parking (and I am not just talking about parallel parking here). I have also never seen any one pull out of a parking space or parking lot with out either making an elaborate 19-point turn or having a security guard with a whistle stop traffic so you can pull out. Craziness.

Things you might not consider luxuries, but that I do:
Cold drinking water
Hot showers, with soap, and a real towel afterwards
Dry, ironed, folded laundry

— Sara

Happy Birthday America or The Great Marinara Debate

2010-07-10T09:05:00.007+07:00

Cale and I wanted to do something American for the 4th of July. We learned about this official event* the day before. Though it was tempting (four different salads!), we thought the 300B price tag (about $10USD) was a little high. Instead we decided to resign ourselves to eating hamburgers. Cale had scouted around a little the day before and had found what he thought might be an American bar. The Chiang Mai Saloon sort of had the feel of a Texas Roadhouse-type restaurant and we thought we would have burgers there.

*How can you not love that official American food includes Polish and Italian sausage and quesadillas and tacos? Those all are truly American foods.

When we finally sat down to dinner, I realized that I wasn't up for a burger. I just haven't been a big fan of burgers for, well, years now. Too much meat in one place. Instead, I was excited to order the mozarella sticks. The menu describes the mozzarella sticks as such:

Mozzarella Sticks
Italian breaded and deep fried, served with marinara sauce.

When they arrived, things looked a little fishy. To start with, they were not Italian breaded and deep fried. Instead they were tempura, which was good enough. However, the dipping sauce was obviously not marinara. I decided to give it a go anyway. It tasted a little like the sweet chili sauce often served with spring rolls or samosas, but it was not as clear as that sauce. I held up my sauce to the waitress and asked her if she had any marinara, as this was chili sauce or something. She returned with mayonnaise. Hmmm....

Now let me put forth a disclaimer. Had we been anywhere else in Southeast Asia I would have just moved on. I am used to getting Western foods that are not as advertised. I am in Thailand, I should be eating Thai food (which I do, but it was America Day). Bu, we were not really in Thailand, we were in the Disneyland Epcot-like equivalent of America town with a wild west theme and I figured I should be able to get the advertised marinara sauce here of all places. Finally, they have spaghetti bolognese on the menu, so I should be able to get the spaghetti sauce, no?

At this point the waitress is confused. I tell her that marinara is like spaghetti sauce. She heads back into the restaurant (we are out on the patio) and I find a menu and follow her. She is talking to a woman behind the bar. This woman tells me they don't have marinara. Once again, I normally would have let it go at this point (ok, no sauce, not a problem), but I know they have the spaghetti on the menu. I point to the marinara listed next to the mozzarella sticks on the menu and then tell her it is like the spaghetti sauce (and point to the spaghetti bolognese), can I have the spaghetti sauce? She tells me that I cannot, that they make that sauce special for the spaghetti bolognese with the meat in it. I say fine, can I just have whatever sauce you use without the meat. She tells me that I cannot. This sort of angers me a little. You have this spaghetti sauce, but I cannot have it? So I tell her that she shouldn't advertise marinara on the menu if they don't actually have marinara sauce.

This is where it gets interesting.

The woman behind the bar starts to insist that what was given to me is in fact marinara sauce. Listen lady, my maiden name is Carusillo and I know a marinara sauce when I see one. I don't go around telling you what is and isn't Pad Thai do I? I am not asking for grandma's homemade red sauce here, just a little Prego or Ragu or something out of a can is just fine. Obviously, I don't tell her this. I do explain that marinara is like the spaghetti sauce they use in the bolognese (obviously sans meat) and that this (indicating what I was given) tastes more like chili sauce. She is still really adamant that this is marinara and explains to me that they use tomato sauce (which is what they call sweet ketchup here) and add tabasco sauce to it. Voila, marinara. She also insists that no one has ever complained before.

At this point I don't want to be having this argument anymore. I have established that I will not be getting any sauce for my sticks and I just want to eat them. So I thank her and go back to the table.

She follows me back to the table! Where she continues to insist that it was marinara and tries to take away my food, telling me I can order something else. I keep insisting that I am hungry and I am going to eat the mozzarella sticks. She keeps wanting to take them away. When she finally decides I can keep them, she makes a point of telling me that if I eat them I have to pay for them. Well, no duh. Thanks for that.

Anyway, so that is how I spent my Fourth of July, arguing with a Thai woman over what is and is not marinara sauce. Hope you enjoyed your holiday.

— Sara

PS. After I went through this whole episode a guy two tables over ordered something off the menu and we could clearly here him ask, "This comes with marinara, right?" We were so super tempted to stick around just to see what he got and whether or not he thought it was marinara, but decided not to.

Name This Plant

2010-07-10T07:22:00.001+07:00

— Sara

Back to Chiang Mai

2010-07-09T21:18:00.005+07:00

When we leave Chiang Mai on a night train back to Bangkok Saturday afternoon we will have been here for about 10 days. Ten days is the length of some people's vacations. For us it is the time to kill between Cambodia and our flight home.

Chiang Mai is a completely different city this time around. Songkran is over, it is the low season and the protests in Bangkok significantly affected the tourism industry. Chiang Mai is almost a ghost town when it comes to tourists. Don't get me wrong, it is still crowded. The city itself has a population of 150,000 (just under the population of all of Samoa) and the metro area is home to just under a million people. Its just the farang that are missing.

We've had a chance to do some things we didn't do when we were here the first time. We rented a moto. After a significant amount of experience in Cambodia, Cale was feeling more confident about driving in Chiang Mai traffic (which is still ridiculous) and I was no longer deathly afraid of the moto. We motoed out to Bo Sang, Baan Tawai and other handicraft "villages." Talk about deceptive marketing. These are not villages where people make things, these are outdoor strip malls where every store sells just about the same thing. We were less than impressed. We were also less than impressed with the hot springs. I think mainly because it was already hot outside. Hot springs are better in colder weather. That and the geyser wasn't natural, there was a pump. You can buy eggs and put them in the hot water to boil, but we weren't hungry, so we didn't.

We also motoed up the mountain, Doi Suthep. We skipped the mountain-top temple (the only temple that charges admission in the city) and the tourist clap-trap village that has sprung up at the entrance and continued on to the Doi Suthep National Park.

We also visited the Night Market repeatedly. When we were here the first time Cale told a musical instrument vendor that he would come back at the end of our trip to buy the instrument. Two months later we returned and the first thing the guy said to Cale? "You're back!" He had remembered Cale. How crazy is that?

We saw Holland kick Brazil's ass at a bar we originally thought was called Holland House, but have since discovered is called The Wall. The Dutch owners just covered it in signs saying Holland House to encourage Dutch football fans to watch the games there.

Cale had a suit custom tailored. I got a manicure and pedicure. We ate an excessive amount of Mexican food from Miguel's. And I had a 4th of July argument with a Thai woman about marinara sauce (more to come on this one later). All in all, I would say a good time was had by all. Tomorrow we are back on the train for another 14 hours back to Bangkok.

— Sara

29 Hours

2010-07-09T18:56:00.002+07:00

Tuesday, 29 June, we were up early to catch a bus to the border. Our Cambodian visas were set to expire the next day and we planned to be in Thailand before that could happen. Our bus was at 8am. Sophara said he would pick us up at 7:45am. How we ended up at the bus station before the 7:30am bus left, I will never know. Anyway, we hung out at the bus station for a while and then hopped on our bus to the border. It was a bus to Poipet (border town) and then on to Bangkok. We were not taking the bus on to Bangkok though, we were taking a train.

The bus ride was about three hours. When we arrived in Poipet the bus dropped us at the Capitol bus station because our tickets were to Poipet. However, after leaving us at the curb, it then continued to the border crossing. Had we stayed on the bus, we would have saved ourselves a long, hot walk. Whatever, we needed the exercise. Doing the walk in reverse was an interesting experience. When we had crossed into Cambodia two months ago and were walking from the border to the bus station we couldn't beat the taxi drivers off with sticks. You may remember we were shadowed at slow speeds by one taxi driver that really wanted to drive us somewhere, anywhere for most of our walk to the bus station. This time around, no one was interested. We could only be going to the border and that wasn't that far away (in the grand scheme of things).

Once at the border we found ourselves in line behind people who had been on the same bus as us earlier. After we want through the checkpoint, Cale accepted an offer for a ride to the train station. The man phoned a truck that had already departed the crossing back. Surprise, surprise, there were the same barang (sorry, we are in Thailand now, farang) that were on the bus with us before. They were sitting on the benches in the bed of the truck and we were put in the back seats (extended cab) with the air conditioning. I started to wonder, about the bus to Bangkok from Siem Reap. I assume that the Capitol bus dropped them at the border and they crossed. However, it doesn't appear they just get on another bus on the other side of the border. Instead they were taken by this truck to a way station of sorts, where I suppose they were waiting for another bus. However, there were only farang on this ride. Where did all the Khmer (or I suppose Thai) people who had been on our bus go after they crossed the border? Weren't they also getting a bus on to Bangkok? They couldn't have been riding to just Poipet or they would have kicked them off at the Poipet bus station. Or would they? Maybe they were just to savvy to get off the bus there and saved themselves the long walk we had.

Anyway, we get a ride to the train station. The ride to the train station cost us more than the train ride to Bangkok. Hmmm.... A fifteen minute truck ride is more expensive than a six hour train ride?

The train wasn't going to leave until almost 2pm and it was only just noon, so we had a bit of a wait at the station. Cale bought some meat on a stick and wrapped it in the bread we had bought before leaving Siem Reap. Instant sandwich.

The train ride to Bangkok was way more enjoyable than the bus ride had been coming the other direction. You could get up and move around a little if you wanted to. People walked the aisles constantly selling drinks and snacks. There was leg room. However, the best part of the deal was the scenery. The view from the bus is just highway and industrial wasteland and mammoth gas stations. The view from the train is so much more enjoyable. One thing we noticed immediately is the difference a little rain makes. When we arrived in Thailand three months ago it was dry, dry, dry, dry. Did I mention it was dry? Everything was brown and dust and dead. Out the window of the train three months later and everything was lush and green and gorgeous. It was exactly what Thailand was supposed to look like.

The train came into Bangkok under the cover of night. As we entered the city. the train ran parallel to the BTS (Skytrain) for quite a while. In the shadow of the BTS supports was the most extensive shanty town I have ever seen. It continued on after the BTS veered off in another direction. Just miles and miles of houses and businesses constructed out of scrap wood and leftover roofing irons set up between the "real" city and the train tracks.

We pulled into the main station 30 minutes too late to catch one of the overnight trains to Chiang Mai, the only overnight train with room left in the sleepers. Instead we got tickets on the next train that had no sleeper seats left. We settled on air-con rather than fan seats. We had a two-hour wait before our train left and were famished. We had been up for more than 12 hours and it had been a long time since breakfast at the guesthouse. The street meat and bread also seemed a long way away. None of the cheap food stalls in the station food court were still open, so we had to settle on KFC. That's right, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The KFCs in Thailand serve chicken fried rice and some sort of green curry fried chicken; however, they also have original recipe. We got a meal for two for about 250B. Considering you can usually eat for 30 or 40B it was sort of a pricey meal.

Whew. This blog entry is getting long and I still have a 14-hour train ride to go. What do you expect though, I am covering a lot of ground here?

So 10pm comes and we get on the train. The seats in the aircon car are not horribly uncomfortable and the leg room is more than ample. In fact, I found myself wishing there was less legroom so I could have something to prop my legs up against. Also, one of our seats was broken and it could only recline. No seat backs in the upright position for that chair. Luckily we were provided blankets as we soon discovered the aircon was more than adequate. A group of four French guys took the seats in front of us. While Cale went to locate us some drinks in the "dining" car, these guys basically removed their clothes (seriously, they were standing there in their boxer shorts) so they could change into warmer attire for the train ride. Flash forward 14 hours and they will once again strip in public so they can change back to shorts and t-shirts.

Speaking of temperatures, the next day when the sun finally started to warm the train and the temperature inside became comfortable (i.e. I could sit not huddled under the blanket) someone went around and turned on a line of high-powered ceiling fans. It went back to being uncomfortably cold with the added bonus of being intermittently hit with a blast of cold wind. Hooray.

Also, speaking of the "dining" car. Less dining, more train car with no seats and some dirty tables bolted to the wall. Cale asked to see a menu and baffled everyone affiliated with the car, including me at that point. Can't you see this is not a place for food and definitely not a place with a menu?

At some point in the middle of the night a man came around waking people up and asking us if we wanted breakfast. A clever ploy indeed. Wake people up in the middle of the night to ask if they want breakfast. The answer was guaranteed to be a confused and groggy yes (at least from the uninitiated). So I mistakenly agreed to this breakfast. Flash forward about eight hours and it is morning. We have been up for a while (or in my case, all night as I could not sleep in the chairs) and have seen no indication of this breakfast. Women have been hopping on the train at stops and selling drinks and food stuffs. I have Cale buy us two packets of sticky rice for 20B. Pesky breakfast problem solved. Except the man with the breakfasts finally shows up about an hour later and presents us with plates with eggs, hot dogs, apple slices and bread. I eat my bread, eggs and apple slices. We are also given what is quite possibly the worst coffee ever in all of the world. The breakfast man has disappeared and I start to wonder out loud to Cale how this works. We are the only people in the car that got the breakfast. If it was part of the ticket price you would think that other people would have gotten it as well. So that means there has to be a price associated with this, but when will we pay, how much is it, how does this work? Just as I am wondering this, the breakfast man is back. We do have to pay. 260B!!! I cannot put enough exclamation marks on that. You may remember that we got two packets of sticky rice for 20B earlier and now we are being charged more than ten times that for this. We learned that lesson the hard way. I am not sure what a breakfast at Denny's costs these days, but I think it might be cheaper than that. I know I could get a Burger King breakfast for cheaper.

Finally, around 1pm we arrived in Chiang Mai. So we had left our guesthouse in Siem Reap not long after 7am the day before and traveled almost continuously for the next 29 hours. When I mentioned that we had just traveled that long on facebook, some friends had assumed we had returned to America. Oh no, we were just back in Thailand. We still have to do the 30 hours of Tuesday when we travel back to America soon.

— Sara

Back to Siem Reap

2010-07-08T13:36:00.002+07:00

We were only back in Siem Reap for a day. We arrived the night before and would leave the next morning. In the time we had, we had some very important tasks to accomplish. Namely, eat $1 tacos and drink $1 margaritas and $.50 drafts at !VIVA!. Mission accomplished.

We also did a little souvenir shopping and mocked some tourists (behind their backs, obviously). I still don't understand what it is about vacation that makes people think what they are wearing is clothes. Seriously? Your bikini and an oversized t-shirt that, mercifully, covers your bum? What makes that walk-around-town clothes? Would you wear that out to the grocery store at home? I would like to give all the guys the benefit of the doubt and assume they left their guesthouse complete clothed that morning and they were accosted by gangsters who stole their shirts some time during the day.

That night we went to the Peace Cafe so Cale could have his last language lesson ever. Just as the lesson was ending it started to rain. I am sorry, I meant to type RAIN!!!!! It was insane the rain. We waited as long as our empty stomachs could bare and then we braved the downpour to walk back to our guesthouse. We quickly discovered that the actual rain had diminished to a sprinkle but the streets of Siem Reap were flooded. We waded through shin deep poop water (lord only knows what was in there). After a brief knees and below scrub, we went downstairs and had dinner there, not wanting to head back out into the flood.

The next morning we began our journey back to Thailand.

— Sara

More Than a Decade Ago

2010-07-08T09:17:00.005+07:00

I know this had nothing to do with our trip, but I have been thinking a lot about getting older lately. I am sure it had nothing to do with my then impending 29th birthday when I started to evaluate my mental image of myself in late May. I had realized that the picture I have of myself is a decade old. Every time I look in the mirror I am a little surprised to discover that I am not still nineteen. I still imagine myself as this tiny, cute anime-like character with giant eyes and a button nose.

Sara: The Younger Years

However, my eyes have been shrinking and my nose has been growing. There are more lines around my eyes and mouth, more sun spots. That mole by my eye keeps getting bigger. WTF! I am getting old.

This morning I was doing my morning exercises for my bad back (it's all downhill from here). As I stretched over to the side and reached for my toes, I thought to myself, "I remember a time when I could touch my nose to my knee." Then it occurred to me, it is quite possible that the time I am remembering (which probably comes as a miracle to those of you that are familiar with my memory) was when I was on the track team at Cardinal Ritter High School...in like 1996. Have I reached the age when you look back with bittersweet nostalgia on your high school days? I have at least reached the point in life where you can remember things from more than a decade ago and not realize it is ancient history.

I know I am gonna catch heat from all the really old folks out there that read the blog (I hear that some of them are even older than 40! mamaws and peepaws). I can hear my mom now, "Your complaining about being old. You're only 29!" I am not really complaining about being 29. My problem is I haven't been able to bring my mental picture of myself up-to-date, so I am constantly surprised by not being as young as my imagination would like to believe. I just need to eliminate the element of surprise. Resignation, that is what I need. I must resign myself to never been nineteen again. How depressing.

— Sara

Name This Plant: Tamarind

2010-07-06T20:16:00.003+07:00

Anonymous has successfully named this plant tamarind. When I first photographed this fruit in the Big C in Bangkok, I had no idea what it was and no English labels to clue me in. It wasn't until we visited Mike in Tak and he picked these seed pods up off the ground and pulled the fruit out to share that I discovered what they were.

To me tamarind doesn't resemble any fruit I am familiar with and has a very distinctive taste. It is native to Africa but found through out Asia and Central America. According to Wikipedia we are familiar with it in Western cuisine in Worcestershire sauce. In Thailand it is an important part of my favourite Thai dish, Pad Thai (which tastes absolutely nothing like what they served at Noodles & Company, let me tell you). Wikipedia also tells me that it is combined with some poisonous yams in Ghana to make them safe for human consumption. I am not sure how that works.

It is hard to tell from the picture below, but the fruit is the dark brown, almost black thing that you see where the outer shell has been broken. Under that are the seeds inside the fruit.

www.kerala.com

According to the Purdue Horticulture page:
"Few plants will survive beneath a tamarind tree and there is a superstition that it is harmful to sleep or to tie a horse beneath one, probably because of the corrosive effect that fallen leaves have on fabrics in damp weather. Some African tribes venerate the tamarind tree as sacred. To certain Burmese, the tree represents the dwelling-place of the rain god and some hold the belief that the tree raises the temperature in its immediate vicinity. Hindus may marry a tamarind tree to a mango tree before eating the fruits of the latter. In Nyasaland, tamarind bark soaked with corn is given to domestic fowl in the belief that, if they stray or are stolen, it will cause them to return home. In Malaya, a little tamarind and coconut milk is placed in the mouth of an infant at birth, and the bark and fruit are given to elephants to make them wise."
— Sara

Thirteen Hours

2010-07-06T11:54:00.002+07:00

We we set out for Siem Reap by bus we weren't 100% how long it was going to take. We hadn't come straight to Kampot from Phnom Penh, so we had no idea how long that bus ride was. We also couldn't remember how long the trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh had been the first time. However, in our minds we thought it might be eight hours or so. We were wrong.

Our bus left at 6:45 in the morning. We had with us just over a half loaf of Sisters II bread for snacking and didn't bother to eat when the bus stopped later in the morning for breakfast. Our second set of tickets (from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap) said the bus left at 12pm. At it approached 11am and we were still not in sight of the city, we began to grow concerned. We had thought the ride to the capital would be about three hours and it had now been four. We finally pulled into the bus station at 11:55am. Cale leapt from the bus and found the baggage handler unloading the luggage. He needed to figure out where our next bus was and get us and our baggage there; we only had five minutes. However, after a little initial confusion we learned the bus wouldn't leave until 12:45pm (I am sure they wanted to know why this barang was so up in arms over a bus that wasn't leaving for an hour).

We got on the next bus thinking this ride was four hours. Under the impression we would be in Siem Reap for dinner time we didn't get food when the bus stopped along the way. Though I had complained I was hungry, the easily portable and familiar foods were always over priced at these stops. Can o' Pringles-like chips? $4. Bag of unidentifiable fish products? $0.50. We could wait to eat in town. But the hours kept ticking by and we didn't appear to be any closer.

When we finally arrived in Siem Reap it was after 7pm and raining hard. Cale had called Sophara from outside of town to tell him we were arriving by bus and to ask if he could give us a ride to our guesthouse. He met us at the bus station outside of town and drove us to Happy Guesthouse in the pouring rain. Because we were friends he kept insisting we couldn't pay him and Cale practically had to wrestle the cash into his hands.

We dropped our things in our room and immediately went down stairs to order food. It was a replay of our first night in Siem Reap almost two months earlier. We arrived late and famished. I ordered the fried rice, Cale the amok (strangely enough, none of the info on amok I can find on the internet sounds or looks anything like any of the amok we ate while in Cambodia). We stuffed ourselves and then immediately to sleep. It was barely after 9pm.

— Sara

Landen and Amanda

2010-07-06T10:20:00.004+07:00

Nita kept mentioning friends she wanted us to meet. They were American, we were American. It was a match made in heaven!

Landen and Amanda have lived in Kampot for almost year. Originally from Texas, they settled down there after a long travel through Europe and Southeast Asia. Their son, Pax, is six months old.

Landen has published five books. One is a travel memoir from Thailand and the other four are works of fiction (and are conveniently all available in a single book called, Four Books). It pretty much rocked our worlds to learn that he makes enough off the sales of those books (and his publishing house doesn't even provide advertising or marketing) for the family to live on in Kampot. Note to self, become author. Of course, Landen says he can show you a whole pile of rejection letters that came before he ever published anything. I am sure the story of every author.

Landen is quite the character. He is easy to spot in a crowd with a mane of bushy, untamable, curly hair that leans more towards red than it does dark blond. More often than not is it tapped down under a baseball cap. He speaks with a Texas drawl and with Southern manners. A collector of information, he is just as likely to ask you your astrological sign as your favorite car (though, he is guaranteed to ask you your astrological sign). Amanda is one of those tiny barang we kept hanging out with that made me feel like an ogre. She, too, has a little Texas in her voice. Though tiny, Amanda must be a pretty strong woman. She had Pax at home, in a foreign country that isn't famous for its medical care (that would be its neighbor, Thailand). Obviously everything went well. Landen and Amanda consider it a relatively normal thing. Nita, on the other hand, is obviously awed by Amanda's choice to have her baby at home and considers it an amazing accomplishment. Amanda said that afterwards Nita was by their house with every imaginable kind of medicine and vitamin she could bring from the local pharmacy.

We hung out with Landen, Amanda, Pat the Aussie and Nita are last night in Kampot at The Green Man. The next morning we were catching a bus to Siem Reap.

— Sara

Random Day

2010-07-05T09:56:00.003+07:00

Kampong Trach

Kampot is famous for its pepper. Most the packaged tour deals in the area include a visit to a pepper plantation. Cale and I are not packaged tour people. Instead one day we decided to scoot out to where the pepper plantations were indicated on the map and have a poke around. The moto up the hill (mountain?) itself was beautiful. The first sign we passed indicating a pepper farm also had a kid outside flagging us down, so we decided to stop. The kid was probably about eight and had enough English to give his pepper spiel (i.e. walk you over to a small pepper garden patch, point at plant, display tiny peppercorn buds, indicate they take about 6 months to grow and walk us over to the stand to buy pepper). Cale was happy to buy pepper from the source, especially because it was dramatically cheaper than in town. While we were there we saw a tuk-tuk blow past with a tourist in the back and we decided to continue in that direction. Maybe there were more informative pepper plantations ahead. We stopped at another one, but the best we can tell a pepper plantation tour with out a hired tuk-tuk tour guide is simple a walk around fields of tall, staked plants. Hmm.. scenery was still pretty and Cale got a mess of cheap, awesome pepper.

Since we were in a scooting mood and already out in that direction we decided to continue on to Kampong Trach, which is just outside of Kep. We were motoing down a dirt road when a kid on a bike pulled up next to us and kept pace (it was an extremely pitted, bumpy road, so we were going slow). His English was off the hook and he was extremely chatty, wanting to know all about us and where we were from. We just thought he was super friendly, but eventually we came to the catch. He was one of the kids that guide barang around the cave shrines. Not having anything else to do we paid our dollars and followed him into some caves where lots of Buddha statues and other religious relics have been set up. This kid also had a whole spiel prepared and pointed out all these rock formations that sort of look like animals and whatnot.

After we had poked around in the damp, dark caves for a bit I called up the local Peace Corps couple and asked if they could recommend a place to eat. They suggested a nondescript place with incredibly cheap, good fried rice. We sat there for a while and an older gentleman came by and tried to engage Cale in a conversation that was a mix of his minimal English and Cale's Khmer. One thing I have noticed here is people are super eager to practise their English and seem to have no hangups over just diving into conversation head first with no worries about getting in over their heads. It is the best way to learn. Cale is always saying he knows just enough Thai to get in over his head. He can say enough for the Thai speaker to think he knows Thai and then they just let loose a long, paragraph-like sentence that leaves Cale standing, mouth a little agape, brow creased in concentration, completely baffled by what has been said.

Anyway, that was are random drive around day and find ourselves being shown around by small children.

— Sara

Name This Plant

2010-07-04T05:58:00.002+07:00

— Sara

Tidbits

2010-07-02T16:46:00.005+07:00

Cale brought me this drink. On the back it comforts me by saying:

"The appearance of milk particles in this product is natural and does not affect the quality. Contains permitted food additives of non-animal origin."

Ok. First of all, "milk particles?" What the hell is a milk particle? Second, it is called Melon Milk and there are cows pictured on the front, why would I be concerned to find milk inside? Also, why would milk be associated with lower quality? Finally, "non-animal origin?" Can I assume that is the melon portion of the Melon Milk or are we talking about something more sinister here?

Also, I suppose you would not be surprised to discover the above item looked like green milk. It didn't taste too bad. I liked the Winter Melon Tea better.

A constant theme on this trip is that Cale and I are ok-sized white people. People in Lauren's village said we were appropriately sized. A kid in Kampong Trach wanted us to know that he saw Americans when the Navy medical ship came and they were too "long." He said this in comparison to us. We, apparently, are not too long. The waitresses at the Warehouse in Siem Reap were surprised to learn we were Americans. Since we weren't fat they had assumed we were English or Australian. When the learned we were Americans they said that were a good size, not tall or fat like the other ones.

Quote of the day from Cale (in reference to scantily-clad, skinny tourist), "What's nice to look at is not always nice to squeeze." Sara questions which one she is. Answer? "I'll squeeze you with the lights on."

Construction practices in Cambodia are awesome. First you need to create a forest of bamboo to hold up the concrete form for the second floor. Then you need to have a guy on the ground toss bricks one at a time to a guy on the second floor. If you are a particularly good brick tosser you can do it by snagging the brick with a stick and lobbing it up two or three stories. If you have to get a particularly heavy thing up several floors? Try rigging a pulley and having two guys on the ground take off running with the end of the rope.

Winnie the pooh is huge, I mean HUGE, in Thailand and Cambodia. Do you know why?

It seems to be a rule that at a certain age a Cambodian grandma just begins chewing things in her free time. Apparently it is usually betel nut. Grandma's in Cambodia are old. Really, really old. I have no idea what their actual age is, but time has not been kind to these women. Their faces are worn and wrinkled like crumpled paper. More often then not they have no teeth. One grandma (that's honestly what all old women are called, at a certain age they refer to themselves as grandma) we saw at a bus stop was chewing on something. Because she lacked teeth her entire face would collapse in on itself and shrink in size by more than half as she brought her gums together, it was amazing. However, the best was the grandma at the Phnom Penh bus station who had herself an external chewing device. Because she lacked teeth she would put the item she wanted to chew in her mouth and sort of work it around a bit and then take it out and insert it into some sort of nutcracker-looking item and grind it almost mindlessly while she worked another wad around in her mouth. After a while, she would switch.

Things Cale said about Kampot that I forgot to include in the Kampot blog entry:

"It's been easier to be here I think than anywhere we've ever been."

"How can you not like this. There's a mountain with a cloud toupe and a cow family out for a walk."

Speaking of cows out for a walk. Some cows are free range cows, meaning they seem to just wander all over (including down the middle of national highways). Some cows, on the other hand, need to be taken for walks. You can moto down the road and see people out walking their cows the way people walk their dogs in the States. I doubt they pick up the poop though.

One industrious kid walked the riverfront in Kampot with a scale one night. He was so popular! For 200 riel you could weigh yourself. It was in kilos, but Pat the Aussie's cellphone converter claimed it said I weighed 116. Not only is this kid making bank weighing people, but he is making them happy because his scales are off! There is no way I weigh less than 120 right now, probably 125.

Darren threw a double, double bullseye while we were playing darts. He named it the vampire robin hood.

In Cambodia, you can pee anywhere. If you are offended by the sight of men peeing on the sides of roads, buildings, trees, light posts, bushes, or just in the open; you might want to keep your eyes closed all the time.

Another quote from Cale: "This country I will remember as the squeaky toy country." Throughout Cambodia there are people who come around collecting your recyclables (and possibly other useful trash). They all indicate their presence by constantly squeezing a squeaky toy as they walk or moto by. There are lots of them.

A quote from Sara from 8 June: "What's today? July?"

More later

— Sara

The Riel Deal

2010-07-02T07:55:00.004+07:00

Wikipedia

The national currency in Cambodia is called the riel (pronounced by all the barang as real).

Before I go any further in my post about money in Cambodia, I would first like to point out how awesome it must be to write headlines about money for English-language publications in Cambodia. The potential for puns is just outrageous. Anyway, moving on.

In addition to the riel, USD is also widely used in Cambodia. That's right good old greenbacks. At the current exchange rate $1 USD is worth 4,190 KHR. Prices will frequently be listed in either dollars or riel, but, I have notice, rarely both. With the riel to dollar ratio so close to 4,000 to one a strange sort of phenomena has developed. The dollar has become, well, the dollar and the riel has become the change. 1,000= 25 cents. So if something costs $2.50 you usually pay two dollars and 2,000 riel.

When an economy is using two separate currencies, whose value in relationship to each other fluctuates, things can get a little tricky. Furthermore, it is easy to convert the riel to dollar ratio to 4,000 to one, but that is not completely accurate. It is closer to 4,200 to one (right now, but as I said, it can fluctuate). So if a price is listed as $2.00 and you pay them two dollars you are actually paying them almost 8,400 riel. But if you were to pay them only 8,000 in riel (not dollars), they would most likely accept that too. On the same note, if a price is listed as 4,000 riel and you pay with a dollar, no one i going to give you back those 200 riel in change. So when you pay for prices listed in riel with dollars you loose 200 riel for every dollar and when you pay for prices listed in dollars with riel you save 200 riel. Tricky, tricky. It is to your benefit to pay in riel. Your, tiny, tiny benefit. But those 200 riel can add up over time, right?

On only one occasion did we ever have anyone question this whole accepted 4,000 to one concept. We purchased something at the market for $6 (price agreed on in dollars). Cale gave the woman five dollar bills and 4,000 in riel. She counted the money and explained to him that he still owed her 200 riel because the exchange rate is closer to 4,200 to one. What? No one ever points that out! And there is no way that if the quoted price had been 24,000 riel and Cale had given her $6 USD that she would have given him his change of 1,200 riel. Well, I suppose I cannot say that for a fact. Maybe she is meticulous with the exchange rate going both ways, but no one else is.

Wikipedia

In more rural areas you will find that the riel is more commonly used as the currency. Prices in rural areas are lower than in cities and tourist places. It would be hard to use dollars when you are talking about prices of 500 riel and less. The biggest riel note Cale and I have had in our possession is 10,000 (about $2.50), though Cale has seen a 50,000(about $12.50). Rumor has it there are riel coins and Wikipedia seems to agree. However, Wikipedia points out that they are not being produced anymore and no longer in common circulation. I would agree with that, as I have never seen one and prices are such that they would be useless. I have never paid for anything that is less than 100. I think of 100 riel like the penny.

Cambodians are also very particular about their USD notes. They need to be as new and as crisp as possible. When you pay the vendor may inspect your bills, not for fakes, but for any small tears or fold creases. Poor condition bills will be rejected. The new USD notes are adding an interesting element to things as well. It appears the new $5 has been around long enough for it to be accepted. However, I tried to pay with a new $10 at a grocery store and the cashier was having none of it. She asked if I had any other bills, which I did not. She then called over a supervisor, who called over another supervisor. Before it was all over I think everyone in the store had inspected my $10 and asked me if I had another method of payment. I kept insisting it was a real, valid $10 note and that I had nothing else to pay with. Eventually. it was accepted, reluctantly.

Cale and I were give a $2 USD note with a mint date of 2006 as change while in Kampot. Neither Cale nor I could remember if two-dollar bills were still being printed. I remember being given two-dollar notes as presents from my grandparents as a kid, but I haven't seen one in so long. I get the impression that people believe they are collectable. I had no way of knowing if the the US was still printing two-dollar bills as recently as 2006. To be on the safe side we spent the $2 immediately in Kampot rather than risk bringing it home to the States and discover it was fake.

— Sara

Rabbit Island

2010-07-01T13:06:00.002+07:00

The Khmer name for Rabbit Island is Koh Tonsay (Koh meaning island and Rabbit meaning Tonsay), but being a barang people only refer to it as Rabbit Island in my presence. As in, "You go Rabbit Island tomorrow?" It is located just of the coast of Kep and is a popular spot for tourists and day-tripping locals.

Wikipedia seems to be under the impression that the island gets its name from its shape (apparently similar to a rabbit?), but Kep's official web site begs to differ. According to this site the island gets its name from a play on the Khmer word rumsay (which the web site does not bother to translate, but the internets tells me might mean "to spread out troops") from an incident involving the Khmer Rouge and someone stationing troops there. It seems strange to me that this island would have gone nameless until the 1970s or later. Regardless, there is a tiny island of about 2km off the coast of Kep and everyone who heard we were going to Kampot told us to go there.

At first we were hesitant to visit the island. The main draws everyone raved about were there was a nice white-sand beach (white sand my ass, that sand was brown like east coast Florida beaches) and you could sleep on the beach in a hut. The beach-hut-sleeping seemed to be the big, novel attraction. Cale and I, spoiled by constantly sleeping in huts on the beach in Samoa, were a little jaded, "So what? You sleep on the beach in a hut? How else are you gonna sleep on the beach?" Also the boat ride to the island was $20, which seemed a little pricey to us.

When we ran into Christian (the PCV) and Jessica Friday night, they wanted to go to Rabbit Island, but they too were also concerned about the tuk-tuk to Kep and boat ride price tag. Happily we agreed to go with them and share the costs.

Saturday morning we stopped at a shop for our typical going to the beach supplies: vodka and juice. Christian and Jessica went for the sangria and corn flakes. Then Christian talked a tuk-tuk driver into taking us to Kep for $8 which seemed pretty cheap to me, though Christian seemed to feel we could have gotten him down to $7. Once at the dock where the boats leave from we ran into another group of barang heading to the island as well. They immediately asked if we wanted to share their boat (it is $20 per boat, so the more people, the cheaper the ride for each person). However, that made a group of seven and the ticket seller insisted that a boat could only handle six barang. Eight Khmer was no problem, but barang are bigger and six is the max. The weather was particularly windy that morning and the water was very choppy. After we were underway and the boat rocked in the waves we were glad to only have the four of us on board. Due to the waves and wind, they couldn't land us on the side of the island where the huts were. Instead we were dropped off on an easier side and trekked through the jungle for about 15 minutes (at most) to the accommodations.

The huts here are a little fancier than your basic fale in Samoa. Once again, sticking with local construction techniques they are all enclosed (why do people who live somewhere so hot build houses with so many walls and such tiny windows?). However, there was the added bonus of an attached bathroom with toilet and shower head. There were Khmer-style lunch huts on the beach which were much closer to a Samoan beach fale, but these were just for hanging out in a hammock and not for sleeping.

After settling in, we immediately set to the difficult task of relaxing. The wind was still blowing like crazy and the day had become overcast. Instead of jumping in the water, we did some hanging out (literally, Khmer is a hammock culture) and reading. That night Cale, Christian, Jessica and I set up camp in one of the lunch huts and shared our supplies while anticipating an amazing sunset. Unfortunately, cloud coverage interfered with that, but it was still beautiful.

I was feeling a little bad for Jessica. In addition to hogging her boyfriend (who she had flown around the world to see) talking about Peace Corps and living in the third world stuff, it also just so happened that Christian had a lot of Samoan friends growing up in California. So we had twice as much to talk about. Best part? "Can I ask you guys a question," Christian asks. "Did you eat a lot of hot dogs?" OMG! Like there isn't at least one cold hot dog in every styrofoam clam shell meal you are given at an event. Apparently his Samoan friends subsisted almost entirely on hot dogs.

The next morning brought with it calm winds and a sky full of sunshine. It was the perfect day for beaching. Before hitting the water Cale and I stopped for breakfast at one of the beach hut establishments. The menu offered an item called pancake with fruit salad. In my experience that is a pancake with a mix of cut fruit on the side. The price listed was $1-2. That usually means there is a small and a large. When I ordered it and the lady asked me if I wanted one or two, I assumed this was the difference between small and large, did I want one pancake or two. I went for two. I chose wrong. Not long after the woman came back with two plates. On each plate was a pancake (more like a crepe) that filled the entire plate. Each pancake had been covered in chocolate, sweetened condensed milk and fruit (pineapple, mango, etc). It was insane. I turned to Cale for help. I was able to make my way through one entire pancake, though I was moaning at the end. It was extreme sugar shock. Cale ate all the fruit off the other and was already feeling the effects when his omelet arrived. He had ordered omelet with bread, but they were out of the bread and decided to make up for it with extra egg. The plate set in front of Cale was mounded high with eggs and veggies. He bravely set to work and was only able to make it halfway through before he had to admit defeat.

We spent all morning lazing in the water or on the beach. For a late lunch we ordered some "potatoes in hot oil" which turned out to be french fries, as we had hoped. By late afternoon the wind had picked up again and the clouds were setting in. That night we had dinner with Christian and Jessica before turning in.

The next morning we were up early to catch our boat at 9am (when you buy your boat ticket it is for the return trip as well, you are supposed to take the same boat there and back, that is how the guy gets paid fairly since there is the same number of people on both trips). It was not a promising day. It was overcast and raining intermittently. In the process we picked up two stray travelers who apparently had not left with the same group they had arrived with. Phone calls were made and it appeared they could share our boat despite not having arrived on it. We trekked through the jungle to meet the boat. However, as we trekked the rain picked up. Not long after we arrived it began to pour and we could not longer even see the not-so-distant coast of Kep through the curtain of water. Though we had no expectations of leaving at nine, as 9am became 10 am and there was still no boat we assumed they might be waiting for the rain to let up. We were right. Once the rain turned to sprinkling around 11am a man jumped into one of the four boats anchored just off the beach and began to bail it out. When he had finished he indicated he would take us across. Not long after we crossed the halfway mark we saw a boat coming towards from the dock in Kep. It was the boat we had take across Saturday morning on his way to get us. He too had been waiting for the rain to stop. We waved wildly to get his attention and he turned around and followed us back.

We parted ways with Christian and Jessica, who were headed to Christian's site by bus from Kep, and tuk-tuked back to Kampot with the two other travelers we had shared the boat with. By the time we dragged ourselves into our guesthouse room (which we had just kept for those two nights rather than pack all our stuff up again and store it) we were tired, soaked through and freezing. Opening the door to the room and collapsing on the bed felt like a homecoming. The hot-water shower that followed was glorious. When we finally felt like humans again we went to the Wunderbar for dinner where we watched Portugal just massacre North Korea. A group of South Koreans had come to watch the game and root for the North, but they left out of desperation before halftime even began.

More later

— Sara

Leaving Cambodia

2010-06-29T06:57:00.002+07:00

— Sara

K3s

2010-06-28T17:52:00.002+07:00

So we were having the breakfast at Sisters II. Cale was taking note of a group of barang eating on the patio. There was something about their American accents that drew his attention. When they started talking about food ("I'll eat this and carne asada, just watch me."), he knew he had Peace Corps on his hands. "Pisikoa o tagata lea." However, he knew for sure when he heard one of them mention the names of nearby married Peace Corps that we had planned to visit. Without hesitation he headed over to the table. "You guys must be Peace Corps, yeah?" Of course he was right. We had accidentally run into a group of K3 (unlike Samoa where we just say Group 79 or whatever, other countries seem to refer to their groups by a letter designator usually from the name of the country). These guys were almost one year into service with another year to go. Later we learned they had been discussing us as well. They had decided we weren't tourists or ex-pats so we must work for an NGO. It fit nicely into their framework that we were RPCV from another country (though some previous RPCV experience from them had been with some strange birds).

We exchanged pleasantries and they informed us of some live music happening later that night at the Bodhi Villa. After a failed attempt to see the sunset at Utopia, we headed back to Bodhi to meet up with the K3s and see some music. The music ended up starting past our bedtime and Cale and I bailed early. However, this was not before we spent some time talking with K3 Christian and his visiting girlfriend Jessica. They were thinking about heading to Rabbit Island the next day, but were hoping to find someone to share the boat ride coast with (it is $20 per boat, regardless of the number of passengers). We had also been considering Rabbit Island, but didn't want to spend $20 on the boat. Like a match made in heaven, we discovered we were staying in the same guest house and made plans to meet the next morning and head out to Rabbit Island.

More on the island to come.

— Sara

Sisters II

2010-06-28T17:37:00.003+07:00

I mentioned we started our breakfast routine in Kampot at Epic Arts Cafe, but had to abandon it after the great coffee debacle. Next we moved to Coco House. It was just around the corner from our guesthouse and offered cheap western fare (eggs and bread for $1.50). However, we knew we had to seek out Sisters II as soon as possible, as it had been recommended to us by two difference Peace Corps volunteers.

Let me just say, WOW.

The food at Sisters II is simply amazing. There are pumpkin pancakes that are so delicious that I would keep eating way past full and never really regret it (though I would moan aa little and hold my stomach). In addition to the pumpkin pancakes there was also homemade syrup and butter. Honest to goodness homemade butter. AND! cinnamon rolls and brownies and apple pie and chocolate pie and lime pie. Dear god, it was amazing. If you ask ahead you can also purchase an entire loaf of their amazing bread at an extremely reasonable price. This was the bread that sustained Cale and I during our 13-hour bus ride.

Added bonus, the lady that runs Sisters II is wonderful. Super friendly. She and her husband recently adopted a baby boy. They named him Moses. How powerful a name is that? She grew up in an orphanage with the two other women who make up the sisters. Though not related by blood, they consider themselves sisters. They have locations in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh (where I can only imagine the other two women live).

If you are in Kampot you must eat there. They have all-day breakfast and lunch items that are also delicious. Run, don't walk to Sisters II. Just don't go on Sunday, they are closed.

— Sara

Hello, Moto

2010-06-26T10:39:00.000+07:00

One of the reasons we have been able to stay in Kampot for so long is the moto. Cale has been determined to learn to drive one since we arrived in Southeast Asia. Kampot was finally the perfect town and Nita obliged Cale's request. Since then we have rented a moto most days.

Having a moto has opened up the countryside to us in a way no other transportation can. We traveled by bike or foot in the other places we have visited and the distance we could travel was limited. It never really occurred to us to rent a car (and not just because of the price), but in a car its more about the destination than the journey. By moto we often simply pick a direction and head out, the scenery along the way is enough excuse for the trip.

We have tooled around Kampot, been out to Kep and Kampong Trach, visited pepper plantations and strange cave shrines. We've swam in resort pools and seen the river views from far out guesthouses. We go to the Wunderbar on the edge of town and eaten mashed potatoes frequently. This was all made possible by moto.

Cale is insistent that when you go to a new country you must begin traveling like the local people as quickly as possible. He is right. It gets you away from the other tourists and the package deals. It lets you see the country more authentically.

I am becoming a better moto passenger. You may remember my first moto ride was by moto-taxi at Mike's site, with a 25 pound pack on my back and at speeds of 60km an hour or more. I held on for dear life and imagined all the horrible things that could happen while convincing myself I wasn't going to throw up. Today, at city speeds, I don't even have to hold on to the sissy bar. I still hate cornering and highway speeds and I still occasionally imagine what would happen if the bike tipped over in a turn or if I fell of the back. But I am showing improvement. Nita keeps insisting I learn to drive. I think it is too early for that. Maybe when we come back for our retirement.

— Sara

Kampot

2010-06-26T10:37:00.001+07:00

I am getting out of order again. That is what happens when I am so far behind in my blogging. However, we are leaving Kampot tomorrow and I haven't had the opportunity to explain why we have stayed in this tiny, riverside town for three weeks.

Cale has already declared Kampot at the top of his list of places to retire early (we just have to figure out how to retire early...which I suppose starts with having jobs to retire from) and I am inclined to degree. There is something about the atmosphere here. The people in Cambodia have all been overwhelmingly nice and welcoming and Kampot seems to take that friendliness up a notch. Someone we met once at dinner will come up to us days later at a bar and ask us how we are doing. The owners of Wunderbar will be tooling around on their moto, see us at a riverside cafe and wave happily. Its nice.

Kampot is also a Khmer city. Granted, it is a tourist destination and the riverfront road feels pretty much abandoned right now in the low season, but even empty riverfront road feels lived in. At night we watch families out on motos and the kids at the playground. Tourism is obviously not the overwhelming purpose of this town, unlike Siem Reap (another city we enjoyed).

There is also the buzz of revitalization in the air. Everywhere you look construction is underway. Old, French-era row houses are being gutted and rebuilt. Public, park-like promonade spaces are under construction in the middle of town. When the heat of the day has passed you can see kids playing hackey-sack-like games in the one that is completed. There is a sense of determined people committed to growth and rejuvenation. Of course, all this development can have its downside too. Up on Bokor Mountain where the decaying remains of a French resort sits like a ghost town and new resort is all ready under construction in the years to come a golf course, casino and hotel will spring up and the French ruins will not longer stand, shrouded in mist.

When Cale and I arrived we thought we would stay a week before continuing on to Kampong Trach and meeting up with the Peace Corps volunteers there. However, in addition to being actually sick, I was sick and tired of being on the move. Also, the PC volunteers were busy that first weekend. So we decided to unpack our stuff, make Paris Guesthouse (great place) our home and settle in for another week. We started to look at our options of where to go next. We thought that next weekend we wold visit the PCs and then head on to Battambang. The next weekend came and the volunteers found themselves in the whirlwind of activity surrounding the arrival of the US Navy's humanitarian hospital ship (which was in Samoa almost this same time last year). Should we just break camp and head to Battambang, we wondered. We looked at the calendar, our visa expiration dates (30 June) and our flight home (12 July). Did we really want to leave a city we were enjoying so much for one we were unsure of with two weeks left on our Cambodian visas? The answer to that was no. And so we left our backpacks in the corner and called Kampot our home for another week.

Unfortunately, the time to leave has finally arrived. Our visas expire in four days. Travel logistics will not allow for us to travel directly to the border from here (we want to arrive at the border in time to make the train to Bangkok). We have decided to spend one more day in Siem Reap before heading to Poipet. Tomorrow (Sunday) will find us on the bus to Siem Reap and on Tuesday, with one day left on our visa, we will cross the border and be back in Thailand.

I am sad to leave Kampot, but to be honest I am also a little excited. We are reaching the end of our travel and I am ready. My mind is already in Bloomington and going back to school. We got confirmation of our student loans, we found a place to live (thanks Grandma Hellman), we are thinking about the future. We are still more than two weeks away from that flight home, but packing up tonight and getting on a bus in the morning are the first steps we have taken in that direction in three weeks. I think I am ready to be on the move again.

— Sara

Rusty Keyhole

2010-06-25T11:52:00.000+07:00

Meera's going away dinner was held at a restaurant called the Rusty Keyhole. Only a month ago they were located on the riverfront. but their landlady raised the rent and they moved to a location outside of town with nice breeze and a beautiful view of fields and the mountains. The pictures on the web are from the old location.

At that dinner Cale had immediately tuned to the rack of bbq pork ribs on the menu. Unfortunately, some one else had just ordered the last one for the night. We knew we were going to have to return, so a week later we found ourselves out there again for lunch.

The ribs were a different cut then we are used to in the States, but it seems to mean that you get more meat than the typical bbq rib cuts in America. They were outrageously delicious. They meat was fall-off-the-bone, melt-in-your-mouth tender. The sauce was amazing. Cale took note of honey, garlic and citrus flavors, but it was hard to tell just what all went into it. They even point out on their menu that several other restaurants on the river have attempted to replicate their bbq to no avail. There was so much food that I almost immediately went into a food/meat coma. When the last bite was gone I had to instruct Cale to drive me directly back to our guesthouse where I laid in a stuffed stupor on the bed.

I promise that our time in Kampot has not just been eating. We have done other things and I intend to talk about them in future blog entries. However, there will also be more blog entries about food. I want to make sure to point out any places we have found really good, just in case some one out there reads the blog and then travels to Kampot.

— Sara

Wunderbar

2010-06-25T11:50:00.000+07:00

If The Green Man is our official hangout in Kampot, Wunderbar is our unofficial hangout. We have been there at least seven nights since we arrived almost three weeks ago. We first went with Az, Olivia and Darren. Cale had seen a sign advertising their dartboard so it was inevitable we would end up there. I discovered they had mashed potatoes on the menu so it was inevitable we would return.

Every time we have gone I have ordered the same thing, the chicken satay bbq with mashed potatoes, with one exception. Out of guilt over not being adventurous I ordered a toasted sandwich that included salami and olives. Though it was good, I immediately regretted not ordering mashed potatoes. More recently I have been ordering the satay and mashed potatoes with a side of extra mashed potatoes. Needless to say, I am gaining back the weight I had lost in the previous few weeks.

We go back to the Wunderbar to watch World Cup games, eat mashed potatoes, play darts and pool and hang out with the Swiss-German owner and the cool staff. I think the Chile/Honduras game was the first World Cup game I have ever watched. I am not a sporty person, so it was surprising to me when I discovered I liked watching rugby sevens in Samoa. Now I am surprised to learn I like watching World Cup football. The Chile/Honduras game was fun, even if the Chilean players were throwing themselves on the ground in obviously-fake pain every three seconds. Cale and I took to referring to the Chilean players as Nancy and Sally and asking them if they had gotten their periods. "Maybe a Midol will help you get up off the ground and play a little football, Sally?" Nothing like a little misogyny with my mashed potatoes.

Currently Wunderbar is located on the road to Phnom Penh a little outside of central Kampot. However, they have recently bought or rented space on the riverfront and have a move planned in the future.

— Sara

Epic Arts

2010-06-25T11:46:00.003+07:00

While we were still in Siem Reap staying in Clem's lunch hut, we met another couchsurfer, Meera. Meera is from England and was traveling over the summer break after completing her undergraduate for pre-med. In the fall she will return to Oxford. She was up in Siem Reap for a four-day national holiday, but she was staying Kampot where she was volunteering with an organization called Epic Arts.

According to their web site:

"Epic Arts is an arts charity established in 2001. We organise and run visual art, drama, dance and music projects for people with disabilities in the UK, Cambodia and other international locations. Our projects celebrate the creative potential of those with whom we work, by offering new skills and giving each participant an outlet for their creative expression. Epic Arts works with the philosophy that Every Person Counts (EPiC)."

"In Cambodia, Epic Arts provides a range of professional dance, drama, music and art programs to people of all abilities and disabilities in order to promote empowerment, integration and acceptance. This is vital is a country where an estimated 1 in 10 people have some form of disability."

They also run a cafe in Kampot.

When I was finally able to try food on Sunday after my first Saturday of illness in Kampot Cale brought me back some oatmeal (porridge on the menu) from the Epic Arts Cafe. It was the perfect mush food for someone who found swallowing painful. I still was only able to handle a couple of bites, but it was a good start. When I was able to leave the guesthouse the next day we breafasted at Epic, I had the oatmeal again. This time I was able to eat more and added some of the palm sugar it is served with. It was pretty good. We at breakfast at Epic the next two or three days in a row. They had an impressive-looking menu that included a lot of delicious-sounding dishes...if a bit pricey. However, I only ever had the oatmeal.

Cale had been ordering other breakfast items and a french press of coffee. He was less than impressed with the coffee. It was expensive and not very good. After several days he decided to bring his own coffee and mug with him and just ask for some hot water. On the second day one of the barang employees (or volunteers, I am not sure) came over to talk to Cale. She took issue with him bringing his own coffee into a cafe where they sell coffee. Cale could understand her complaint and explained that their coffee wasn't very good and he was perfectly willing to pay for the hot water, but they were having none of it. It was strange to me. We were there every morning ordering pretty sizable breakfasts and yet they were raising an issue over a cup of coffee. Cale was angry enough that he didn't want to return. We started breakfasting at Coco House around the corner from our new guesthouse (Paris Guesthouse). The breakfast there is cheaper, just as delicious and they are more than accommodating of Cale's request for some hot water.

Cale says he has mixed feelings about Epic Arts. He loves the work that they do for artists, but is less than happy with the cafe. "Promoting the idea of professional artists is one of the things that makes a civilization."

When we finally made our way down to Kampot we planned on looking Meera up, but it occurred to us that we might have missed her. She was only volunteering for a month and it was three weeks ago that we had met her in Siem Reap (she was a week into her volunteer work at that time). We texted her and discovered that the same weekend I was sick she had gotten food poisoning in Phnom Penh (and later we discovered that Clem also had food poisoning in Siem Reap, how odd is that?). She was just getting back to work on Wednesday after taking several days off and then Friday was her last day. We ended up meeting up with Meera at her going away dinner from Epic Arts.

At dinner Meera introduced us to another American who is staying Kampot and is on couchsurfing. Tony told us he was from Detroit and Cale and I refused to believe him. "You don't sound like your from Detroit." You know why? Because he went to high school in Indianapolis. He graduated from Ben Davis two years before Cale and I graduated from Pike. It is a small, small world.

The place we had dinner with Meera and the Epic Arts crew was impressive that I am refraining from naming it now so I can give it its very own blog entry. Tune in later to learn about the barbecue pork ribs we had in Cambodia that rival the best ones I have had in the States (even Dreamland Joel, even Dreamland).

— Sara

Az and Olivia and Kep

2010-06-22T15:24:00.002+07:00

My first night out of the guesthouse Cale and I ran into Darren at The Green Man. He's from Australia and married to a Khmer woman. He as a small boat and runs sunset cruises on the river. While having a drink with him he mentioned that he was taking some guests from the Rikitikitavi out on the river that night, would we like to come along?

The sunset cruise was a delight and not just for the scenery. We also met Az and Olivia. They are a Welsh couple on a three-month vacation that takes in Southeast Asia, Australia and Hong Kong. After mostly running into such young travelers (kids as young as 18) it was nice to hang out with someone in our age bracket. Cale was also pretty pumped to have a guy to talk to. He had recently been noting that all the people we have been hanging out with since coming to Cambodia were women. Not that Cale doesn't love hanging out with women and talking about menstrual cycles and makeup tips, and not that Cale is some burly guy who wants to chug beers and talk about sports, but sometimes it is nice to have another guy to hang out with.

Darren and Az

After the boat trip we had dinner with Az, Olivia and Darren and we played a game of darts. Cale was in heaven. Other boys and darts! Woo hoo!

We ended up hanging out with Az and Olivia several nights in row. When they made the move to the Veranda resort in Kep it turned out it was the same one we had scouted the day before and had determined to return to the following day to use the pool.

The Veranda sits up the side of a mountain in Kep, a seaside city just outside of Kampot. Cale and I had motored over there for the day to check it out. In comparison to Kampot (a tiny town) Kep is miniscule. We were less than impressed with the available diversions and after the restaurant attempted to cheat us on the lunch bill were weren't too inclined to make the move from Kampot to Kep. Besides, it was only a 40 minute moto-ride away, we could always return when we wanted. After determining the beach also wasn't too exciting, we motoed up the mountain in search of a hiking trail. Jenn, a Peace Corps volunteer outside Kep, had told me that the Veranda resort sat very near to the head of a hiking trail. The trail turned out to be part of the Kep National Park. After ascertaining the location of the trail and discovering that we could use the Veranda pool if we bought $5 each in food or drink, we knew we had a plan for the next day. We would hike this trail, get good and hot and sweaty and then luxuriate in the pool.

The trail is incredibly well maintained and an easy hike. In fact, we saw both motos and tuk-tuks on the trail. However, we wanted a little exercise and decided to hoof it. There are several openings in the tree coverage where local groups or guesthouses have sponsored benches and you can see spectacular views of Kep and Kampot in the distance. We saw innumerable amounts of butterflies (Cambodia is just chock full of butterflies) and heard monkeys (though we never saw them). Just before the "summit" there is a large clearing with several benches and signs indicating what is in the distance and how far away it is. Unless you plan to hike clear around the mountain (approximately a 7k trek) this is the best stopping point. After the view the trail continues to this so called summit which offers no view other than a flag. Very anticlimactic.

As planned Cale and I had gotten quite hot and sweaty and were ready for the pool. We knew it wasn't going to be difficult to spend $5, seeing has how the margaritas we started with were $4 each. After we had been there a bit, Az and Olivia arrived. It had started to rain just then, so we sat at the pool-side bar enjoying drinks (cheaper drinks, but not by much) and goat-cheese pizza (that's right people, goat cheese). When the rain let up we were all back in the pool until our entire bodies had turned pruney. Then Cale and I hopped back on the moto and returned to Kampot.

— Sara

The Green Man

2010-06-22T15:00:00.002+07:00

While I had been convalescing at the Sunrise Guesthouse, Cale had been out exploring Kampot a little bit. One of the first places he happened upon was the nexus of weird. The sign, however, says The Green Man.

The Green Man is a bar/restaurant run by Nita and we have been there practically everyday since arriving in Kampot. The first night Cale went out for a wander and was drawn by a man with an iPhone in pieces. The following day he passed by with a bag bulging with laundry. Now friendly with Nita, he stopped to ask if she knew a place that did laundry by the kilo (the laundry across the street from the guesthouse only did laundry by the piece, which as insanely expensive). "You do here for free. No worries. I have washing machine. You see. Do laundry here for free." Cale, skeptically, followed her to the back of the shop where indeed there was a large laundry machine. But why would she want him to do his laundry here for free? Throwing caution to the wind he decided that free is good and washed the clothes there. As he left, he passed a magazine on a table. The headline? "The Great Clothes Robbery." He wondered if that was a sign. Returning to the room he told me we either were going to get our clothes cleaned for free or lose everything but what we had on. Either way, it would make for a good story.

Nita, of course, turned out to be a sweetheart and not a clothes thief. She regularly offers us the use of her daughter's moto for free (which we always decline, choosing to rent one instead so as not to deprive her daughter of transportation), she lent us the bikes she usually rents for a $1 a day for free and we have done our laundry at her place several times since. She was also the person who finally taught Cale how to drive a moto (he has been trying to get someone to do that since we arrived in Cambodia).

"Nita," we ask, "if you keep giving everything away for free, how will you ever make any money?" She is making some cash off us. We visit her every night for a beer or two and there are rarely ever other customers (this is the low season and barang are scarce around these parts).

Nita has introduced us to her array of regular customers, which mostly consist of expats.

One of these customers is entering into my newly formed category of John Waters' characters who have retired to Cambodia. You may remember the two we met in Sen Monorom? Well, there is one here in Kampot as well. Not surprisingly he also moved from Sihanoukville (which I am starting to form quite the strange mental picture of) recently and rented a house in town. He has the magical ability of always being where you are and you are less than excited about it. He is always, always just a little bit drunk and more thank likely more than a little bit drunk. He wobbly rides his bike from one bar to next and makes very little sense when he is speaking. To be honest, my instant reaction to him was he was the oldest e-tard I had ever met. There was one day he was hanging out at The Green Man in men's pajamas and asked another patron, "Do you go out in your sleeping costume?" The other patron replied that no, only women went out in pajamas here (you may remember my mentioning that pajamas are clothes?).

Hanging out with Nita is always an adventure. Sometimes it is harder for me because she speaks English with both a Khmer and French accent (she lived in France for several years). Yet even when I am not 100% sure what is going on, it is hard not to join in with her infections laughter. Nita has a collection of friends whom she always refers to as having good hearts. According to her, we too have good hearts.

If you happen to find yourself in Kampot, seek out The Green Man on the river road (it's hard to miss) and you won't be disappointed.

— Sara

Dang Tung Part II: The Wedding

2010-06-22T14:55:00.002+07:00

One of the women who works in Lauren's village market was getting married and Lauren was invited. She asked around and we were invited too. I love how it is no big deal for a guest to bring along two uninvited and unknown guests to a wedding at the last minute here and in Thailand. I get the impression it is the more, the merrier.

Lauren thought it would be fun for us get the traditional Khmer dress-up treatment with elaborate hair and makeup. I was all for it. In the evening, after Lauren had finished school for the day we headed over to the beauty parlor. There were several women there ahead of us, so we waited our turn.

Lauren went first and as expected her hair was immediately teased to huge proportions. A significant amount of hairspray and bobby pins were added. A crimping iron came out. The finishing touch was a jeweled tiara that was added to her beehive-like hair at a jaunty angle. We all agreed she had the look of a retro prom queen doing the morning after walk of shame. It was awesome.

When my turn came the hairdresser first started out teasing my hair up, but quickly realized there was too little and it was too thin to tease. After a brief assessment she switched to twisting pieces and stabbing them into places with sharp, tip-less bobby pints. Things started to get really spectacular when the jeweled chain came out and she wove around the twists. We all thought the the giant yellow and orange flower pinned to the back was the finishing touch, but we would later learn there was still fabulousness to come. After completing my makeup, the hairdresser dug into a bag and produced a ponytail of black hair.

"That's real hair isn't it?" I asked. Oh, yes. Yes it was real hair indeed. Completely disregarding the drastic difference in hair colors the hair dresser proceeded to pin this ponytail to the back of my head and arranged so it draped over my shoulder in rigid, hairspray curls. Talk about awesomeness. I took to calling it the muskrat. We were not at the wedding for very long before I had to rather aggressively pry int from my head. The hard, hairsprayed curls made it impossible for me to turn my head to the left. The would stick fast to my right shoulder and pull at the hair they were attached to when I turned my head.

The actual wedding portion of the wedding had taken place through out the day and we were arriving for the reception. Though some of Lauren's market friends wanted us to join their table we were ushered to another, half-empty table. Apparently, a table could not receive food unless its seats were full, so the arrival of three more people was very important to this table. Plus, we were informed that some of the people at this table spoke English. With the music blaring so loudly from the band, I am not sure how a conversation in any language could have taken place.

In addition to tons of food there was also plenty of alcohol. I was trying to drain my first glass of beer so I could pour some water into the glass instead. However, every time I looked down, I discovered my half-filled glass was full again. The lady to my right was keeping me topped up. Cale (who was between me and Lauren) had a safe glass, so he drained his and filled it with water for me and I passed him my never ending glass of beer.

The table was presented with rice and an assortment of Khmer dishes. I have a hard time eating things I cannot see and in the dim light nothing was distinguishable. Lauren was kind enough to tell us what was in all the dishes, but I still could not bring myself to brave the unseen items. I ate only rice and the carrots from one of the soup-like items (I was informed later it might have been a pickling brine?). The best quote of the night came when I pointed to a soup situated between me and Cale saying, "Something in that soup wants out." A cricket of some sort had made its way into this viscous, brown gravy in front of us and was desperately swimming its way to the edge and grasping at the slippery sides. However, at first glance, in the dim light and in my overwhelmed state, my first reaction was to assume that there were still-live elements to this meal. Cale gave the cricket a hand and I pretended that soup didn't exist anymore.

Not long after the food came out the dancing began. There was a band playing Khmer karaoke music with hired singers tunelessly belting out the music. In order to show our appreciation for being invited, Cale and I (who are not dancers) joined in for a couple of numbers. However, when they began to play more popular music that involved actually dancing attempts (and not just walking around in a circle and moving your hands a little) we bowed out. Our decision to sit out the dances was upsetting to some drunken men who literally tried to pull us bodily on to the dance floor. There was one man in particular (who appeared to be part of the staff serving the food and providing the tables and chairs) who would have absolutely none of our sitting and watching. He repeatedly grabbed both Cale and I and tried to drag us from our seats.

The bride

One difficult aspect of the wedding experience were the can kids. There were several young boys and one young girl who were wandering from table to table with long strings. They would scavenge for empty beer cans, check to see if they were in fact empty (usually by drinking the last swallow) and then add them to the string. Lauren explained to us (as she asked for an extra bowl and spoon, filled the bowl with food from the table and handed it off to the kids) that these kids were motherless or fatherless and were scavenging the wedding for recyclables to make some money. To see the way that kid attacked the food Lauren had given him was a clear indication that they weren't scavenging for a little extra pocket change. They were looking for money for dinner in these beer cans. One of these kids we had in fact met earlier in the day. He lived near to Lauren and had come by her house. We were informed, in Khmer, with the kid standing right there that his mother was recently dead. It had a feel of, "Oh, this one? This is the one with the dead mother."

It wasn't until several hours after we got home that night that I learned that something I ate at the wedding hadn't sat well with me, which led to the tale of my illness and our journey to Kampot, which you have already heard.

Tune in next time to hear about what it is like in Kampot when you finally leave your guesthouse after 48 hours of drinking water, lying around and living on a handful of french fries and a banana.

— Sara

Dang Tung Part I

2010-06-18T12:08:00.002+07:00

Thursday morning we went with Lauren to her village market. Lauren and I had Cambodia breakfast*. Cale was not hungry. Lauren had some sort of curry rice. I had a noodle soup, with unidentifiable meats...oh and clotted blood. I sort of ate around the meats and blood.

*I am starting to get the impression that it is only western cultures that have special foods that are only supposed to be eaten at breakfast. Thais and the Khmer both eat rice or noodles dishes as breakfast foods, the same as they would for lunch or dinner. The Samoans would have toast or eggs or something for breakfast, but that is something I think they inherited from the missionaries. A more common Samoan breakfast dish was saimini (raman noodles). Of course, I could be totally wrong about this and my outside the US breakfast experiences are limited to these three countries. So ignore this and we can go back to the regularly scheduled blog entry.

Lauren took us to meet her favourite seamstress so she could alter one of Lauren's Khmer outfits for me to wear to the wedding on Friday. When I had tried the top on the night before a deep breath had burst three buttons off the back. Lauren is a pretty tiny girl and I am a ogre in Southeast Asia. Interestingly enough Cale and I were told by two separate people in the market that we were a good size. They were used to foreigners being so much bigger and liked our size better.

Even though Lauren is smaller than me the alterations to her top and skirt were oddly to make them smaller in places. Instead of making the skirt larger to accommodate my hips, which would have been a trickier alteration, instead we just hitched the skirt up higher so that my hips went into an already larger area and then she made the waist a little smaller so that it wouldn't bunch up funnily. I have no idea why they decided to make the top smaller, as the entire reason it needed fixing was that I had burst the buttons. When I wore the top to the wedding the next day I had to refrain from breathing in deeply.

You may notice in the pictures of this alteration process I suddenly am quite well-endowed in the chest area. I didn't suddenly grow boobs while I was away. All Khmer dress-up clothes for ladies have built in boobs. They are these have spheres made of sturdy cloth. Lauren once specifically requested an dress made without the "balls" as they are called, but it was refused. She was told that she needed the balls to be beautiful.

When I took off my shirt to try on the top of the outfit there was sudden interest in my sports bra. In the end I had to take it off so the seamstress could look at it. I apologized as I handed it over, explaining it was both damp and stinky. Lauren explained the use of sports bras versus regular bras. When I put my shirt back on later, I didn't have the bar on and there seemed to be some sort of disappointment in my boobs. One of the ladies gave me the scoop half of the Laura Hanks "scoop and slam." I didn't get it translated, so I am not sure what they were saying about my boobs. Then they were all entertained as I attempted to put my sports bra back on under my shirt.

Later in the day we heard rumors of a exorcism occurring nearby. Lauren's host brother had gone to it taking his oldest daughter. We were told that it should start around 1pm and go until 4pm. In the afternoon we headed out in search of this exorcism. It was quite the bike ride away from Lauren's house. She rode on her Peace Corps bike and gave her cruiser bike to Cale. I sat side saddle on the luggage rack thing on the back of the cruiser bike, a very popular way to share bikes around here. Occasionally, Lauren would stop and inquire further directions, narrowing down the location of the exorcism. We finally found ourselves wandering through dry rice fields, avoiding cows and their droppings to the complete astonishment of any local children. Eventually we ran into Lauren's host brother who told us the exorcism was already over. We had missed it. Later, while we hung out with some of Lauren's host relatives she tried to determine why the exorcism had ended so early. She was told because there was only one, but she couldn't determine if it was because there was only one ghost to be exorcised or because there was only one magician/wizard to do the exorcizing. It was all very confusing.

We ended the night eating dinner with her family and showing them some of our pictures from Samoa.

— Sara

Sara's 29th Birthday or Adventures in a Share Mini-Bus

2010-06-18T11:53:00.002+07:00

If you remember we spent most of our anniversary on a bus under the impression this would save me from spending my birthday on a bus. Well, there goes that idea.

We thought we would spend the night of Monday the 31st in Phnom Penh and then take the bus out to PCV Lauren's village the next day. The day before my birthday. However, Lauren suggested it would be perfect if we came to her place on Wednesday instead. We would get in Wednesday evening and then could hang out with her on Thursday, her day off from school. So despite our best laid plans, we ended up on a bus for my birthday anyway.

There isn't really a bus to Lauren's village. There is a mini-van. We learned the mini-van to her village would probably be leaving from the market at 1:30pm...which means more like 2 or 2:30pm according to Lauren. Unsure of where we were going and how long it would take to get there Cale and I ended up at the market where the mini-vans depart from around 11:30am, a little early for our trip. The tuktuk driver looked around and found the van going to Lauren's village. The van driver then showed us a phone number on his cell phone, we compared it to the number for Lauren we had saved into our phone. They matched! We knew we had the right van and we didn't even have to attempt any verbal communication.

Seeing has how it was going to be like two hours before the van would even think about leaving Cale went off in search of water and a money changer to get our dollars changed into riel. I have a future post planned about money in Cambodia, but it is sufficient to know that USD and the Cambodian riel are both accepted currency. However, the more rural you are the less use you will have for USD, except maybe $1s. While Cale was off, the mini-van driver indicated I should sit in the van. I was the only passenger at the time and it was a little warm in the van so after 20 minutes or so, I gave up and moved outside in the breeze to wait.

When the van finally headed out Cale and I were thinking that we were in for a pretty luxuriant ride by Cambodia standards. There were only six or seven passengers in the van including us and a baby. Normally these sorts of modes of transport are stuffed to the gills. Granted the trunk was so packed with bags of flour and cement and our bags and a couple of plants and car parts that it couldn't shut. But I have never seen one of these vans on the road without a trunk that is propped open with stuff and tied down with rope. More car parts were tucked into the floor space inside the van, but in general it was pretty roomy. Along the way we picked up packages and letters from people on the side of the road. We picked up a lady and a baby on the side of the road. She had large wicker shelves with her and they put them inside the van in such a manner that Cale and I had the entire back seat to ourselves and the wicker shelf took up another one of the backseat spaces. Now we were feeling pretty confident that we would have a roomy ride, there was furniture hindering other passengers from sitting next us. However, we had gotten excited too early.

At the first stop outside of Phnom Penh they took out the wicker furniture and strapped it to the roof. Then we picked up several more passengers ensuring that there were now two other people sharing the backseat with me and Cale. Cale, unfortunately, we sitting on the end where the roof of the van curved down. He was too tall and could not sit up straight without hitting his head on the roof. For a significant portion of the ride, he stuck his head out the window. All in all there were more than 15 passengers in this seven or eight passenger mini-van and that does not include infants or children sitting on laps.

There were two babies being held on laps in front of us. One of the moms' favourite baby diversions was "look at the barang" and they would hold the infants up and encourage them to look at us. This has happened to us a lot on our travels. I feel a little like one of the characters in Disneyland, like I am Mickey Mouse or something, and all the parents are constantly bring around their babies to look at me or pointing me out to the babies. I try to oblige by making funny faces.

The girl sitting next to me on the bus was fascinated with my tattoo. After a while of staring, she worked up the courage to touch it. After a brief touch, she then did some more aggressive rubbing. The best I can tell is she was trying to determine if it would come off. She also kept pointing back and forth between our hands. I know that the Khmer and Thai are very skin-colour conscious. All skin/body products (including deodorant) around here are whitening. I was guessing she was saying something about the differences in our skin colour, but I couldn't be sure. I asked Cale if he knew any colour words, but he wasn't sure either. Lauren thinks she was probably commenting on my skin being white and beautiful and hers being dark (and therefore, not beautiful). Immediately after the hand comparison she started pointing out all the holes in her jeans to me and at this point I was complete confused as to what this could possibly be. So I just smiled and repeatedly said I didn't understand.

After several hours in the van we were dropped directly at Lauren's door, which was nice and saved us having to figure out how to get there. Lauren had seen it was my birthday on facebook. She suggested we go into town, pickup up some typical Khmer dessert and bring it back to her house to stick a candle in it. So we did.

The dessert we had is called Tuek Kawk, which breaks down to water ice, but what we would call shaved ice. The shaved ice is mixed with your choice of "toppings" (the topping goes on the bottom), which are not traditional Western dessert items: corn, black beans, green beans, etc. This is all covered with lots of sweetened condensed milk and sugar syrup can also be added. It is pretty good. I cannot find anything on the internets about the Cambodian one, but this wikipedia page on other similar asian desserts should do.

And that ladies and gentlemen is how I spent my 29th birthday.

Tune in next time when Sara gets fondled by the women in the market and we go in search of an exorcism.

— Sara

Travel Fatigue

2010-06-18T11:52:00.000+07:00

At first I just figured it was a reaction on being sick. But sick is almost two weeks behind me and I am still in the same frame of mind. I might just be a little bit done.

Cale and I have been talking about it and we think it comes to down to the fact that we are inherently incapable of going this long with out something concrete to do. We have been traveling without specific purpose, without jobs or missions for more than two months now. It looks like our aimless limit is two months, once we go over we start to get antsy.

We have three and a half more weeks before our flight home. One and half of those are in Cambodia before our visa runs out. We are still hoping to meet up with a married couple Peace Corps volunteers and then we figured we would see Battanbang before heading back to Thailand. In Thailand we need to keep ourselves occupied for just under two weeks. Seeing as how riding trains was a big part of these travel plans since the beginning and we haven't managed to do any of that yet, hopefully we can get in a train trip before we leave.

I know it sounds petty to complain about a long vacation in Southeast Asia, but it is something that you have to take into account before you head of for a long adventure. Just how long can you go before you need a job or a mission? Looks like for me it is two months. Good to keep in mind for the future.

— Sara

Discover Card is Crap

2010-06-17T11:48:00.003+07:00

*Update: About a month after this post was made, Discover card found it and contacted us in the hopes of remedying the situation. You can read about it here.

Before we left the country to travel to Southeast Asia, Cale called Discover card. He wanted to know if our card would work in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. He was assured by the woman on the other end of the line in customer service that the card would work at any ATM in Thailand that carried the Diners' Club logo. Granted, we knew that these would probably be rare, but we figured we would be able to find one or two in the big cities. She couldn't say if there would be anywhere to use the card in Cambodia or Vietnam.

We quickly discovered that our card didn't work in Thailand. We located several ATMs with Diners' Club logos and none of them would take our card. At first we weren't to concerned about this, however, as time progressed we were more and more interested in having access to our Discover card. We wanted to keep as much real money in our bank account in case of an emergency and use cash transfers or cash advances from credit while we were overseas. Once we got back to the States we would pay off the credit from the bank account.

While in Phnom Penh Cale called the Discover card's 24-hour customer service line using Skype. He complained to the person on the other end that he had been lied to about being able to use his card in Southeast Asia. The customer service rep seemed to be surprised that some one had told him the card would work at Diners' Club ATMs and assured him his card would not work in Asia. Yeah, we had kinda figured that one out. However, this new rep assured Cale that he could use his card at Western Union to get a cash advance. Eager to test this information Cale went out in a down pour to a Western Union around the corner. They looked at him like he was a crazy person and had no idea what to do with his card. Cale returned to the room and took a look at Western Union's web site. They claimed to only support Visa and Mastercard.

He called Discover back.

He told the new rep that the last two reps had lied to him about where he could use his Discover card. This new rep was surprised that someone had told him that he could use his card at Western Union. "Oh, no. Western Union doesn't support Discover." Yeah, we had kinda figured that one out.

Cale was starting to get a little frustrated. However, he is significantly nicer than I am in these sorts of situations. I would have been getting a little irate. In fact, I was from off the phone I was furiously scribbling pointed notes and angry questions that I wanted Cale to repeat into the phone. He tried to ignore me.

Cale went from one rep to another, explaining to each one that the information provided by the last one wasn't true. He continually asked why they couldn't just enable the balance transfer feature that would allow him to transfer a cash advance from Discover to our bank account online. The answer, because you have to make at least three "qualifying" payments and though we had paid Discover card more than three times since getting the card, these payments were not "qualifying" because they had not been done through the Discover web site. At this time we had a $0 balance with Discover and would have to make a purchase online with the card so we could then pay them back using their web interface to get the qualifying payments. How stupid is that. Cale also repeatedly asked how it was that because he had the wallet protection program if he lost his card they would find a way to get him $1,000 no matter where he was, but because he still has his card they cannot help him.

"I don't want to lie to you guys and tell you that I lost the card, but that is the only option you are giving me at this point."

I am not kidding when I tell you that at one point while Cale was on the phone with a rep told him to "Hold on, let me get you some real information." Seriously? Now you are going to get the real information? What was all that previous information you were providing us with?

Long story short? We are still in Southeast Asia and we still cannot use our Discover card and Discover seems to have no problem with that even though they repeatedly claimed there were ways to use the card here.

Discover card is crap.

— Sara

Phnom Penh Part II: The Busiversary

2010-06-16T17:03:00.001+07:00

And so we spent a significant portion of our seventh anniversary on a bus from Sen Monorom to Phnom Penh. It is possible the seats on Cambodian buses are even smaller than Thai bus seats. Cale and I are not big people, but both our shoulders are slightly to wide for the space provided for the seat and one of us always has to sit to the side or our shoulders overlap during the ride.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we walked to our guest house (much to the consternation of every moto, tuk tuk and taxi driver in the entire city). Cale had picked out a road on the map near the river that seemed to have a collection of better class guesthouses than the one we had stayed at by the lake. The one in particular he had in mind, Nordic House, turned out to be just fine and we decided to stay there.

It didn't take us long to notice there seemed to be an underlying theme to most of the other establishments on the street. The Candy Bar. The 69 Bar. Hmmmm.... Later, at dinner, I read through the Phnom Penh Drinking & Dining guide and discovered that just about ever establishment on our street was a "hostess" bar. Hostess appearing to be the preferred word for ladies who will sit on your lap and giggle and dance with you and probably go home with you (or at least upstairs). Yet in the middle of all these hostess bars stands the Nordic House and very nice, very clean, very well air-conditioned. In general, great.

For dinner we went to the Cantina, a Mexican restaurant that had been recommended to us by an expat in Sen Monorom. The food was decent. We had been instructed to have the strawberry margarita. It was on the menu, but when we ordered it we were delivered regular margaritas and then told they didn't have strawberry ones.

The next night we went to Phnom Penh India. If the name wasn't an indicator it is an Indian restaurant on the river. It was fabulous. We ordered two starters thinking we would do those first and then order a main to share. Before the starters they brought out the Indian equivalent of chips and salsa (free, unlike the chips and salsa at Cantina). The starters themselves were huge and delicious. When we finished them we were full to bursting and I even had to get the remainder of mine for take-away. We were so sad that we didn't have room for more food that we ordered some naan for take-away too. Just when we thought we were finished and were going to ask for the bill they brought around some sort of tiny dessert item. The waiter came out and set these tiny bowls in front of us saying, "For sweet." For sweet indeed. At first I thought I was looking at a large grape in a sugar or honey sauce. I was totally shocked to put it in my mouth and discover it was some sort of dough item soaked in this sweet syrup (it might have been this). Whatever it was, it was delicious. If you are in Phnom Penh, I highly recommend Phnom Penh India on the river.

Tune in later to learn how Cale spent that night fighting with Discover card on the phone.

— Sara

Nature Lodge

2010-06-15T18:28:00.002+07:00

Mondulkiri is a beautiful, mountainous region with a dramatically different than anywhere else we had been so far. I saw expanses of rolling hills draped in vivid green with patches of brick red exposed earth. It is also, apparently, one of the most jungle-covered regions. The road to Sen Monorom was only finished recently (in the last year or so), before that it was a muddy dirt track filled with truck-swallowing pot holes.

We stayed at the Nature Lodge, two kilometers outside of Sen Monorom. The Nature Lodge is a collection of cabins and A-frames on the side of a hill. The main lodge houses a restaurant/bar and a tree-top platform filled with hammocks. It is an ideal place for relaxing. That first night them temperature was low enough I changed into my jeans for the first time since we flew out of the US. Walking back to our A-frame, Cale and I were shocked to see lightening bugs. I literally have not seen those in years.

Friday morning I was up around 7am. Lying on the path between me and the lodge were the family's four cows. I side tracked around them. As I approached the lodge, I discovered the family's three horses inside the entry way where I assumed they had taken refuge from the rain during the night. It was a surreal experience. Cale walked into town and spent the day wandering in the hot sun. Having learned my lesson, I chose not to join him and spent the day toning pictures and reading. That night we played Scrabble while wearing long pants and sleeves.

Saturday I walked into town with Cale to see some of the sights he had discovered and do a little interneting at an "internet cafe." I meant to use the ironic quotes. One of the restaurants on what I assume is the main road has a collection of three mix-and-match computers set up on the porch. Everything about it reminded my of my computer lab in Samoa when I first encountered it or the computer set up in the school office, right down to the cluttered desktop and warning on the screen indicating that you might be using an illegal copy of windows and might be a victim of copyright infringement (or something to that nature). I know all the computer teachers in Samoa have seen the "this is not a genuine copy of windows" screen before.

Cale introduced me to the proprietor of Middle of Somewhere. Lonely Planet accurately describes it as an "NGO-run 'drop-in center' for Phnong people" and as "the best source of information on sustainable tourism, village homestays and elephant rides." Bill is something straight out of a John Waters' film, missing one eye and cuddling an orphaned, baby monkey. Cale was interested in doing an elephant trek, but we were really concerned about the treatment of the elephants. Bill told us we were right in our concern. Even the local tours that claimed humane elephant treatment are still not what we were looking for. The elephants still have to carry passengers in baskets in the middle of their back, which is bad for them and painful. They are still kept from normal elephant behavior, like throwing dust and water on their backs (and therefore on the tourists), by way of clubs. He couldn't in good conscious recommend a single elephant trek. There is an elephant sanctuary in the area, but it had just closed to tourists for the rainy season.

Cale also introduced me to an expat who runs a restaurant of sorts called Bananas and has lived in Cambodia for over a decade. A John Waters' character herself, she seems to subsist entirely on cigarettes and red wine. She has been in Sen Monorom a relatively short period of time after having left Sihanoukville. According to Tania things have gotten quite dangerous in Sihanoukville, especially in the expat community where people are in the habit of killing each other quite often. As she explained her motivations to move, "You don't go around killing other people. It's just not done." She also explained that murder is rude.

We spent four nights at the Nature Lodge doing just about nothing. We read books, lounged in the hammocks and enjoyed the cooler temperatures. When it was time to go we spent some time debating when to leave. Did we want to stay an extra day and have our anniversary here? Did we spend our anniversary on a bus so that we could keep from having my birthday on a bus? In the end we decided to leave Sen Monorom on the 31st, which meant spending most of our anniversary on a bus. We did this under the impression it meant that we would not spend my birthday on a bus. As you will learn later, things do not always work out as planned.

The share toilet at the Nature Lodge was very nature indeed. At times a little too nature, what with the shower head attached to a tree crawling with ants and termites.

— Sara

Phnom Penh Part I

2010-06-15T18:22:00.003+07:00

On Wednesday, 26 May we left Siem Reap. It had been a good three weeks, but we needed to see more in Cambodia. We were headed to Sen Monorom in Mondulkiri. By all accounts it was supposed to be beautiful, mountainous and cooler. Also, avocados were supposed to be in season and this was the only region of Cambodia with the right climate. We made a reservation at the Nature Lodge. A Peace Corps Cambodia volunteer had stayed there in April and her pictures on facebook had looked great. We had to get there first.

If you look at a map of Cambodia you will notice a dearth of roads. You will also notice that Phnom Penh serves as a hub with all the national highways running in and out of the capital city. Much like Samoa, Cambodia suffers from "you can't get there from here." We took a six-hour bus ride into Phnom Penh on Wednesday and booked into the not-grand Grandview Guesthouse (if you remember is a recent Tidbits, I mentioned how terrible it was). We immediately left in search of the station belonging to the only bus company in the country that services Sen Monorom. Cale had their address and a general idea of where they should be on the map. We set out on foot, flabbergasting and frustrating every tuktuk and moto driver we passed for the next hour. Neither Phnom Penh, nor any city in Cambodia, is built for pedestrians. The traffic is pure insanity and follows absolutely no traffic rules. I recently read an article describing traffic rules as "do whatever you like but if you hit someone you have to pay them money." When we were lucky enough to we on a road with sidewalks (pavements as our UK friends call them), we already knew to avoid them. Thanks to our Siem Reap experience we knew that sidewalks weren't for walking. They are for parking cars, motos, tuktuks and bikes. Or for setting up your mobile food stand or bookshop. Or for increasing the size of your store or restaurant by spilling out on the sidewalk. We were the only people out walking.

Finding the bus station proved to be a little trickier than anticipated. We ended up at a tour company and after much discussion back and forth among the entire office staff we were given some both vague and complicated directions in broken English. I asked Cale when we stepped out of the shop, "So. What did he say?" "I am not really sure," was the reply. Luckily we were able to find the bus company and purchase our tickets for a bus at eight the next morning. We also discovered we had come at the station the back way and had in fact passed the correct road to turn on earlier in our search. We headed back along that route.

As far as I have been able to gather from my limited experience in Cambodia, it is common for cities to have trash pickup. It is also common for the garbage trucks to dump said trash at some designated place in the city where the poor can then search through the trash for recyclables or other useful things. I then assume the remainder is collected again later and carted somewhere else or these spots would become landfills. According to Clem, they used to dump the trash between the river and the Old Market in Siem Reap until someone pointed out that piles of rotting trash are not too appealing to tourists. Well, the road we walked back on appears to be a place where trash is dumped. There wasn't a fresh load, but it was still less than fresh as a daisy.

That night we ate at the Lazy Gecko, where we ate overpriced food and were told the advertised free wifi was down (even though Cale was picking up the signal with the computer and just needed the password to access it). We suffered through sleeping in the dingy guesthouse by putting our own ie down on the bed so we didn't touch their sheets and Cale tried desperately not to touch the filthy wall the bed was pushed up against.

Thursday we were up early and walked back to the bus station, this time with our packs on. Two barang walking with giant backpacks through the streets of Phnom Penh cannot really blend in. Every tuktuk, moto and taxi driver for miles found us. I had gotten used to "you need tuktuk? and "you need moto?" and "you need ride?" However, they were trying a new tactic now and guessing where we might want to go. So you have all these random me walking up to you and just picking a destination at random (actually, I assume it is where they were going anyway) and asking you if you are going there.

"You go Siem Reap?" No. "You go Battambang?" No. "You go Sihanoukville?" No. "You go Killing Fields?" No.

While we waited at the bus station, another tourist seemed keen on making friends with Cale, though Cale tried his best to be curt. According to this guy, his friend had recently lost all his stuff (including wallet and passport) because he had put is bag on a moto and sent it to the bus station ahead of him. This tourist guy was sharing this information as a warning. Seriously? You handed over everything to a moto driver and just let him drive off with out you? And you were surprised that it was stolen? Just how retarded are you? We are always with our bags when traveling except when they are in the trunk of a taxi or the under carriage of a bus. In those cases we still keep our passports and other important things in our possession.

Eventually the bus came and we piled on. There were two other barang couples on the bus and outside of town we picked up another couple. Eight barang on the bus to Sen Monorom. We learned later that this was pretty rare. It was like an invasion of barang for Sen Monorom when we eventually arrived seven (or was it eight) hours later.

More on the Nature Lodge later.

— Sara

Need a Tuk Tuk in Siem Reap?

2010-06-14T12:22:00.000+07:00

Sophara is for you.

http://siemreap-tuktuk.blogspot.com

— Sara

Shadow Puppets

2010-06-13T13:11:00.004+07:00

Our last night in Siem Reap we went to the shadow puppet show at the Bayon restaurant. Previous, when we had been staying at a guesthouse, our room window had a view straight across the pool below to the balcony of the Bayon where we could see the back of the shadow puppet show behind the screen. We decided after seeing the show backstage we should see it from the front.

According to Wikipedia, shadow play is "an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque...figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images."

I was hard pressed to locate much information specifically about Cambodian shadow puppetry on the internet. This article at everything2 offered quite a bit of information, though I have no way of telling how reliable it is.

According to the article, there are two types of Cambodian shadow puppetry: Sbeik thom (big skin) and Sbeik touch (small skin). The skin refers to the medium used to create the puppets which are traditionally made from animal hide. When we visited the Roluos temples in Angkor we visited a small workshop where shadow puppets are made. The artists were all young boys who were learning the trade. Each puppet for sale has the name of the artist on the back. When we picked one out to purchase the kid was called up to do the transaction and have his picture taken with is work. According to their instructor each kid received a percentage of each of his sales. I would like to believe that this workshop was more like an extracurricular activity and the kids were learning a useful trade and that it wasn't just a child labor workshop. I have no definitive way of knowing, but it didn't have that sort of sketchy vibe.

At the Bayon, the puppet show is held on the second-floor balcony. The balcony forms a square around an opening in the middle that looks down on the entryway to the ground-floor restaurant. On the far said of the opening is the screen behind which the performers manipulate the puppets. To the right is the live band that accompanies the show. We were on the opposite side of the opening. As it was low season our group sat at one of only three occupied tables. Before the show began we were given a sheet explaining the plot of the three plays we would see as the dialogue would all be in Khmer.

After the initial novelty of the shadow puppetry had worn off and the marveling at the intricacy of the puppets had passed, we started to discover that it was less than exciting. Additionally, someone at the restaurant thought that in the middle of the puppet performance would be an excellent time to break out a loud garden hose with sprayer and hose down the entryway immediately below the opening in the balcony and water the plants. It was a noisy distraction from the performance.

Overall, I cannot recommend the performance at the Bayon. Technically, the price of the show is advertised at $4. We are not charged for the show (most likely because it was low season and they were happy to have anyone). The food was way overpriced (especially for portion size) and the drinks were outrageous. It is common for menus here to advertise a price for a spirit and a separate price for the mixer. However, they will also usually have a list of mixed drinks at set prices. The Bayon had a gin and tonic listed as a cocktail, but there were no prices on the menu for the cocktails. We learned the hard way when they delivered each one of us our own shot of gin and can of tonic water. Granted, it made of a strong drink, but a very pricey strong drink.

If you are looking to see a shadow puppet show in Siem Reap, you might want to shop around to another venue.

— Sara

Why I Could Never Be a Photographer

2010-06-13T13:11:00.001+07:00

I often find myself watching a little scene unfold before me that would me a wonderful picture. Nothing dramatic. Usually very calm moments of daily life.

A young girl of maybe eight leads two brahmin cattle down a dirt path between rice fields. She's topless and coils of rope cross her chest the way a bandito might wear a gun belt. Red dust streaks her black skirt and cakes her bare feet. Oh to snap a photo! But I don't. There is something about the act of capturing the moment that can ruin it. In this instance it would have involved stopping the moto we were speeding past on and switching lenses. By then, the moment has passed.

The monks are out gathering their daily offerings. They travel in pairs, identical bald heads, orange robes, orange umbrellas against the sun, bare feet on blistering concrete. In Thailand they were only out in the wee hours of the morning, but here in Kampot the monks like to sleep in as much as I do and we see them making their rounds at nine or 10 in the morning. I am obviously a tourist and to take their picture makes me feel like I am telling them I consider them a tourist attraction. I can rarely bring myself to take pictures of strangers, especially strangers who see me taking their pictures. It feels invasive and rude.

So more often than not, I don't take the picture. Part of me regrets it, but a bigger part of me is learning to simple see things and enjoy the moment and later the memory.

— Sara

Name This Plant: Eggplant

2010-06-13T13:00:00.002+07:00

We have a winner! Anonymous's husband has correctly named this plant eggplant. Those of you in the US might be suprised to discover that eggplant comes in varieties other than the large purple ones we have at home. The small green ones seen above are in fact egg-sized. Cale also used an even smaller variety. These pea eggplants are, naturally, about the size of a pea.

www.foodsubs.com

One of Cale's dishes uses eggplant

— Sara

Last Templing

2010-06-11T18:37:00.002+07:00

Ta Nei

With only a couple more days left in Siem Reap we wanted to use the last day on our seven-day temple pass to see some temples we had missed.

One of them was Phnom Bakheng, a temple we had passed literally every time we had gone from Angkor Wat to Angkor Thom. The portion of the temple that faces the road has a sign strung across keeping visitors away and I had always assumed it was closed. However, as it turns out, you just enter from around the back.

Bakheng was constructed on top of an existing hill, making it higher than any of the other temples in the area. One would think this would lead to arresting views. The hike to the top of the hill itself is not very scenic as the hill has extensive tree coverage even interferes with the views from the specifically constructed scenic overlooks. To get a truly good view, you need to get to the top of the temple. Did I mention it had insanely steep stairs? We all know how Sara loves insanely steep stairs. See this entry.

After Bakheng, we decided to head to Ta Nei. Ta Nei isn't quite off the beaten track. There is in fact a beaten track. It is, however, off the roads that lead to all the other temples in the Angkor complex. We took a left turn at a dirt path and headed into the jungle. The humidity in the air immediately rose dramatically. When we came to the fork we realized that our Ancient Angkor book hadn't really been too specific in indicating how exactly to get to this temple. When we came to the second fork we started to wonder if we were lost. When the path ended in a clearing where a logging operation was clearly taking place we knew we were in the wrong place.

Cale was able to use his improving Khmer skills to ask the man hanging out by the wood how to get to the temple and was able to understand his response. We were to head back the way we came and turn left at the second opportunity. It appears we had chosen poorly at the first fork.

When we finally came on the temple it was clearly rarely visited and in a state of extreme disrepair. Just the way we like our temples.

We had planned to continue on north of Angkor Thom to see more temples on our last day, but decided to head home. Cale and I had been borrowing bikes for the last several days rather than renting. The bike I was using had a broken seat. It was a little uncomfortable, but nothing noticeable for short trips into town and back. However, after riding around on it all day I discovered that my backend was in agony and my lower back and neck were starting to join in the complain fest. Cale gave my bike a brief try and was shocked to discover just how uncomfortable it was. The trip home started to get tricky because I could only ride the bike for short distances before I needed to get off and walk it for a while. Cale had a hard time riding the bike as well. Not only because the seat was so poor, but because he couldn't pedal without hitting his knees on the handlebars. We found an eventual compromise where I road Cale's bike and he sat on mine while holding on to the back of the one I was pedaling. So I provided the power for both.

And so finished our last day at the Angkor temples.

— Sara

Kampot

2010-06-10T12:28:00.002+07:00

— Sara

Tidbits

2010-06-10T11:42:00.002+07:00

Kelsey's family had a pet bird. It talked. The talking wasn't too impressive to me, as the bird spoke Khmer and I had no idea what it was saying. However, the bird did spot-on impressions of cellphone noises and ringtones and that was awesome.

In rural Cambodia it is common to come across a device called an "engine cow" (or for the bigger ones: "engine buffalo"). Basically it is a seat, two long handle bars and an engine. You can attach just about anything to it: plow, cart, wagon. It's pretty multi-purpose. Cale thinks they are awesome.

When we arrived in Sisiphon from Kelsey's village we sort of expected to be dropped off at the bus station. However, the taxi driver handed us off to another taxi driver in the middle of a random four-way intersection. Granted this new taxi driver was going to Siem Reap, but we didn't want to pay for a taxi. We wanted to take a bus, they are cheaper. Try as Cale might, he could not get them to take us to a bus company. He drew pictures of buses, he used all the Khmer words he knew and they were having none of it. Everyone kept acting like they had no idea what we were talking about and could not imagine what this picture Cale was drawing could possibly be. When the hand off took place the first taxi driver had taken our bags from his trunk and deposited them in the trunk of the new driver's car. After much insisting we got them to give us back our bags and we were perfectly happy sitting on the side of the road until we were able to call Kelsey and learn where the bus station was. However, the new taxi driver was pretty keen on getting our fare. Through hand signs and numbers written in Cale's notebook, he told us that it was $50,000r per person to Siem Reap via the taxi. We knew it was $15,000r per person via the bus. Cale wrote that number down and drew an arrow to the bus pictures. More hand gestures and it appears he was agreeing to drive us to Siem Reap for the bus prices. So what the hell, we hopped in the taxi and gave up on our search for buses. The minute he had secured our fare his inability to understand what Cale could possibly mean with these strange drawings evaporated and he was able to tell Cale the Khmer word for bus.

If you look closely you can see Cale's corners.

Cale got a haircut in Siem Reap. It seemed safe when he was just going to have it clippered all over. When we got there he changed his mind and decided he wanted the sides trimmed up and left long on top. It was quite possibly one of the worst haircuts Cale has ever gotten. He was keen on pointing out that his head now had corners and that it was the perfect haircut for someone with a square head. The best part of the haircut experience wasn't the terrible cut or the face "massage" that involved the woman sort of slapping Cale about the head and face. As she was cutting his hair she was doing the bit where you clean up around the ears with clippers. She started around the back and came around the front to where she would straighten out the sideburns only to discover his sideburns continued on to a face covered with fur and it was obvious she had no idea what to do. You could see the confusion all over her face. If I shave here to clean up the side burns there will be a weird bald patch between head and face. Do I shave it? Do I just leave it alone? Arrgghh! She sort of wavered there for a while and then mimed shaving his face with the clippers and looked at Cale questioningly. Cale agreed to it, telling her to leave the goatee and mustache area alone and she proceeded to just run the clippers up and down his cheeks on each side. It was hilarious.

For some strange reason I expected that the one patch of continuously paved road in Cambodia would be from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. I figured it must be the most well-travelled of all routes. However, it is not. Much of the trip is dirt road. I was surprised.

The Grandview Guesthouse in Phnom Penh is not grand in anyway. Do not believe the pictures on the web site. Our room was tiny and dingy. One of the beds was covered in ants. The sheets on both beds were worn, torn and stained in frightening ways. Worst of all the walls of the room were just filthy with what looked like dirt and smeared boogers. If staying in Phnom Penh, stay away from the guesthouses on the lake and try the ones on the river. I highly recommend Nordic House.

While sitting at a cafe for dinner I overheard a girl with what could have been a Scottish accent talk about something called "chaps and cheese" for like 20 straight minutes. I have no idea what she was talking about, but it ended in a great quote.
"No, it's not a cheese day."

We've been in Cambodia for more than a month now and we have traveled a bit. In that time I have seen at most 10 gas stations. I don't mean 10 types. I mean 10 gas stations. Total. Most gas is distributed from glass Coke, Pepsi or Fanta bottles from roadside stands. Sometimes there will be an oil drum with a strange apparatus on top and a long tube that dispenses gas as well. These are operated by a hand crank. While walking to town in Sen Monorom we saw a woman cranking gas from one of these set up on a hill through the long tube to a man standing on the road below. He was holding a plastic bag like they might put your gum and candy bar purchase into at a gas station. That was where the gas was going. I am not sure small plastic grocery bags are the recommended container for gas.

We are sitting in a tuk-tuk. Another tuktuk drives by. The driver leans over, "You need tuktuk?" Seriously? We are in a tuktuk right now!

Cale is sitting on the back of a moto on his way to find me at the pharmacy the day I was sick. Another moto driver comes by, "You need moto?" Seriously people? Is business that slow? Do you really expect that Cale is going to reflect on the current situation and think, "You know, on second thought, yes I do need a different moto. This moto is just no good."

— Sara

Name This Plant

2010-06-09T09:30:00.000+07:00

— Sara

Jayavarman's Revenge?

2010-06-08T14:52:00.001+07:00

I've been trying to catch up with my blogging in chronological order though I am desperately far behind. Recent events were interesting enough for me to blog about immediately and then return to my chronological thread later.

Friday we went to a wedding in Lauren's village (more on Lauren, her village and the wedding later). I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me because the wee hours of Saturday day morning found me up and my stomach contents out. Unfortunately I was also dehydrated which made for one of the least enjoyable pukes of my life. I had only eaten rice and carrots at the wedding and so my bodily was forcing this giant, dry mass of rice out with all its might. It was uncomfortable to say the least. I started sipping water, which gave my stomach some liquid to add to my later pukes.

I suppose this is another one of my blog posts when I should have warned you ahead of time to put down your sandwich or wait until after lunch to read. I would also like to make a special apology to Teresa. She hates vomit.

Anyway, at some point I either caught something in my throat or scratched/burned my throat is such a manner that it felt like something was caught in my throat. It was an amazingly painful sensation. Lauren said it was pretty common for people to get fish bones caught in their throat and they usually remedied the situation by swallowing balls of rice. Though rice was really the last thing I was interested in ever eating again at this point I was willing to try anything. Most families will still have rice left over from the night before around so early in the morning because they haven't fed it to the chickens yet. Her family was out, so she went next door and brought back a plate of cold rice. At first I was chewing the rice, which Lauren seemed to think was counter productive. Next we tried her wadding and swallowing technique. I added a little water to the mix since the rice was so dry I couldn't get it down. Lauren was unimpressed with the size of my wads, but I literally could not force anything larger down my throat. Also, it didn't seem to be helping.

At this point I sort of lay down on the mat next to the bowl of rice, tired, still nauseous and still feeling like something was trapped in my throat stabbing me. I hadn't put my glasses on for the morning, so this was the first time the rice came into focus.

"My, this rice is just crawling with ants," I pointed out.

"Don't worry," Lauren comforted me. "Those ants are fine to eat."

Good to know.

At this point I was a little concerned about having something tearing into my esophagus and told Cale we should probably ask Lauren where the nearest medical-like facility is that might be able to do something about this and how we would go about getting there. All of this was happening under a sort of time crunch. We were supposed to be leaving with Lauren at 7am to go to Kampot. She was meeting a friend in the city. It was now 6am and we still needed to pack.

It was suggested that a recently-graduated, Khmer/Canadian medical student who happened to be visiting his family in town could come by and look at me. It was also suggested I drink hot lime water. We tried both. The hot lime water burned with the fire of a thousand suns. The medical student was unimpressed with my symptoms. I think he thought I was overacting to a post-vomit sore throat. He poked me a little and told me that it would be fine in a couple of days. Even if something was caught in my throat (which is voice indicated he highly doubted) he was sure that my body could handle it and I would be fine.

So we packed our bags and ran out to the remark that was waiting outside Lauren's house, hastily thanking and saying good bye to her host family.

A remark is basically a cart about the size of a pickup truck bed being towed behind a scooter. There are benches along the sides and in across the middle. This one had a roof for shade. I threw an ie over my head and shoulders to protect against the sun and dust, put my head down and proceeded to ignore the outside world in a nauseous haze.

This first ride was only about 20 minutes to a nearby town (I am checking with Cale on these details as I was entirely unaware). There we switched remarks for one heading to Kampot. This one did not have a cover so it was open to the sun. The next trip was two hours over unpaved dirt roads in the hot sun (even though it was still early morning). I hear the scenery was beautiful. Once again, completely unaware. I had relinquished my glasses to Cale and was either cradling my head in my hands (when it was really bumpy) or resting my head on Cale's lap (when it was less bumpy). I was also in the process of getting sunstroke.

I had already started the morning out dehydrated. I had been drinking water, but I had also been prompting puking it back up. Now the act of swallowing was excruciatingly painful; so I wasn't all that interested in drinking water. Every once in a while I would come out of my haze, realize my tongue was stuck to the roof of my completely dry mouth and request a sip of water. A painful, painful sip.

When we arrived in Kampot we were immediately set upon by moto and tuk-tuk drivers. People kept grabbing my arm and poking my side to get my attention. I just repeated over and over in useless English, "Stop touching me." I had complete tunnel vision and the inability to interact with all the commotion. I got out of the remark, found a patch of shade (I have no idea where) and squatted in it, waiting for someone to remedy the situation. Cale and Lauren came to squat by me and discuss what we could do. I could hear Lauren explaining to Cale where he could go and how to get there (we needed both a guest house and an ATM). She was constantly interrupting her instructions to rebuke the moto and tuktuk drivers in rapid-fire Khmer. They refused to back off, and were in fact now squatting on the ground all around us, poking us and asking if we needed a ride.

Though I really had no idea what had been said, Cale asked me what I wanted to do seeing as how I was the sick one.

"I don't want to walk anywhere, but at this point I am going to walk just to spite these guys," I said gesturing at the moto drivers.

So, we hugged Lauren, shouldered our packs and walked off. Basically, we made it around the corner, at which point I am pretty sure I started to lose it.

"I need to drink some water," I said

"Ok, I will get you some water," Cale replied.

In my mind I took a couple of steps and then stopped. "I need to drink some water now."

According to Cale, I hadn't moved at all. Also according to Cale I wasn't doing a very good job of walking or paying attention anyway. He handed me what was left in our water bottle and sat me down on a bench in the shade of a shop where a woman said hello to him in English. While I waited he came back with a cold water.

"Can you ride a moto?" he asked. Cale was quickly gathering that there were very few tuktuks around. Mostly just motos.

"I cant' balance." There was absolutely no way I was going to be able to balance myself and much less my pack at this point.

So, it was determined that I would stay here on this bench by the nice lady who could at least say greetings in English while Cale found an ATM (we were out of cash moneys) and a guesthouse and returned for me with a tuktuk.

My memory of the following period of time is not exactly clear. I was sort of wavering in and out of awareness. I would sip water and sweat. My entire thought process was centered around that. Later Cale asked me what I was thinking when he was gone. "Sweat." That's it. My mind was thinking sweat. Also, I was hoping that someone would help me. At some point the nice lady came over and noticed the shade had retreated and I was partially in the sun. She indicated a more shady part of the bench.

"Move here. Sun hot."

Yes. Sun hot, indeed.

After was seemed like an insanely long time Cale returned on the back of the moto. I have no idea what he said to me when he came up to the bench. I said, "Help me." Then I leaned over the edge of the bench and vomited all over the side walk. It was my must enjoyable vomit ever. It was only 11 in the morning.

Cale put me in a tuktuk pulled by a bicycle. We went to a guest house. I walked up stairs into a room. I removed all clothes. I stood in a cold shower. I drank water. I did not leave the room for 48 hours. During that time we drank more than 10 liters of water (and some Royal-D and Propel. The Propel tastes way better than Royal-D). I ate 1/4 cup of oatmeal, two of the tiny bananas and six french fries (but that wasn't until the second day).

When I finally left the hotel room, I was surprised to discover that Kampot was a cute little town. I literally had no visual impressions from the day I arrived. My entire mental image of Kampot was "hot." It has been almost four days and my throat still hurts, but it isn't as bad as it was. I am still sticking to mushy foods.

So there you go. The tale of how Sara got travel sickness.

— Sara

PS. Later Cale told me about why it had taken him so long to return to my bench of sweat. He had been in such a hurry to find money and a guesthouse that he lost track of how to get back to where I was. At the guest house he jumped on a moto and told the driver to take him to the pharmacy (as it turned out, the shop I was sitting in front of was a pharmacy).

"You want drugs?" asked the moto driver.

"No, no, no. I need to find my wife, she is sick." Cale explained.

"You want a wife?" asked the moto driver.

Great, Cale was thinking. This guy thinks that I am looking for drugs and prostitutes. Cale had to call Lauren and ask her how to say the name of the place the remark dropped us off and was eventually able to get the moto driver to backtrack to the pharmacy where I was sitting. Cale is sure it all became clear to him when he arrived. Ah, a pharmacy! Ah, a wife! And then I vomit on the sidewalk. Ah, she is sick!

Apsara

2010-06-02T10:02:00.004+07:00

According to Wikipedia, an apsara is "a female spirit of the clouds and waters in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. Frequently encountered English translations of the word 'Apsara' are 'nymph,' 'celestial nymph,' and 'celestial maiden'." You may remember my references to the apsara being one of the by-products of the Churning of the Sea of Milk. Apsara are an amazingly popular decorative motif in Angkorian-era temples (and in modern homes as well).

In the Angkor temples the apsara are typically depicted in two ways: standing topless in long skirts and elaborate headdresses as you see above and kicking their feet up as seen below.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Apsara are particularly famous for their dance skills which have been recreated by human woman in Cambodia since the beginnings of Indian influence in the region in the first century. The apsara dance in Cambodia took on its own unique elements and by the Angkorian period was unique to the Khmer. According to Wikipedia, apsara was no longer performed in public after the the Thai sacked Angkor in the 15th century and was essentially lost until a Cambodian queen revived the art in the 1940s. I am not sure how lost the art was. We have been told that the apsara dance we see performed today is in fact recreated from the gestures and movements seen in the apsara carved into temples. Though it appears the movements could have also been passed down unofficially. The dance again faced extinction during the time of the Khmer Rouge who were set on destroying all things cultural.

We saw a free apsara dance performance at the Temple Club on Pub Street. I was a little reticent of seeing the show, as I did not expected a free show at one of the biggest barang bars in town to be high quality. Boy, was I wrong. The performance was amazing.

The dancers first performed what was described as a blessing dance. According to Web of Cambodia:
"Cambodian Blessing Dance (or Robam Choun Por in Khmer language) is a Khmer traditional dance to mark special holidays with certain dances from the repertoire of Cambodian classical ballet. To mark the occasion such as this Cambodian Community Day event, a performance of the Blessing Dance is in order. This dance is performed by a group of young and beautiful girls to entertain and wish guests of honor as well as the audience, good health, happiness, prosperity and success. This dance features the dancers move gracefully and elegantly, holding golden goblets. Inside the goblets are flower blossoms. The blossoms are symbolic representations of blessings from the gods. As the dancers pluck the blossoms from the goblets and gently toss them forward toward the audience, the gesture symbolizes the blessings of the gods falling upon the audience."

This was followed by the coconut shell dance. Which is not an apsara dance, but another traditional Khmer dance. According to Web of Cambodia, "Khmer Coconut Shells Dance (or Robam Koah Trah Lauk in Khmer language) is a classical dance describes the traditional use of natural resource for entertaiment in Cambodia countryside. Like other rural populations, Cambodians who live in the provinces and harvest the country."

Next came the official apsara dance.

A folk dance called the Pailin Peacock dance followed. According to Wikipedia, the peacock dance is "a dance which highly focus on Peacock style included Dress and Movement style. A ethnic group in Cambodia, Kula people in Pailin which come from Burma, create this dance depend on Burmese costume."

According to the program, the next dance was the Ream Liak and Joop Liak dance. As best I can discern it tells the story of a defeated enemy and mighty warriors. However, I cannot find any information on the internet.

Finally, they performed the fishing dance. According to Canby Publications, "the romantic Fishing Dance [is] usually [an] adaptation of dances found in the countryside or inspired by rural life and practices." This was by far the cutest dance with wonderful storytelling of boy meets and woos girl and fabulous facial expressions.

One of my favourite parts of the dance where the expressive nature of the dancers' feet. I had been interested in the depiction of the apsaras' feet in the bas relief.

They were so large and cartoony. It was amazing to watch the dancers make their own tiny feet seem bigger than life and so expressive.

— Sara

Bokator

2010-06-02T07:56:00.002+07:00

Bokator is a Cambodian martial art that was almost lost entirely during the time of the Khmer Rouge. People who were skilled in the art were high on the kill list. Those that survived did so in exile or refugee camps or in hiding.

As Cambodia emerges from its recent destructive history, interest in reviving lost cultural arts has skyrocketed. There are countless schools teaching a variety of traditional Khmer techniques in a variety of the arts and Bokator is no exception.

The kids at Green Gecko have been learning Bokator and we got to see a demonstration of the girls' skills. The littlest Geckos showed off fighting moves in the form of a dance.

The older girls displayed weapons moves.

When the girls were finished, San Kim Sean (considered the father of modern bokator) showed us how to kick ass using only a krama (piece of cloth).

— Sara