In an effort to make up for my recent lack of blogging, here's the written update I promised when I posted the photos. Since the past month or so is impossible to summarize, I'll just give you a bunch of random anecdotes to help you picture different aspects of life here.

On March 10, after the Vietnam trip, semester two at RUA began. Or rather, was supposed to begin. Every day that week we came in, saying, "OK, this will be the first day of classes." And every time there was another reason why the students hadn't shown up. Like the fact that their schedules were all ready, but since one of the higher-ups hadn't signed them yet, they weren't technically supposed to start. By now, thankfully, we have classes underway, just in time for the two weeks off for Khmer New Year starting next week.

March is miserably hot. April is even hotter. My third-floor bedroom is a concrete oven, and I am the roast beef inside it, cooking in my own juices. I sleep with a fan on full-blast a foot from my head, inside my mosquito net with me, but most nights even being next to the fan feels like standing in front of a heating vent. I've started keeping a water bottle next to my pillow so I can spray myself when I wake up sweating. For awhile, I took the mattress off my bed and slept on just a rice mat on the metal bedframe because it was just too hot, but decided that waking up with bruised hips was worse than the heat. I've considered sleeping on the floor--usually you think of tile floors as being cool--but by evening, the tiles are hot on my feet. Heaven help me, it's not even April.

We're in blackout season. It always happens when it's hottest, because that's when too many people are using too much electricity, but the wealthier the area you live in, the less often the electricity goes out. The people with money blast their aircon so the people without money can't use their fans. The other night during one of the longer blackouts at my house, Seakly and I passed the time playing rock-paper-scissors to see who had to fan the other one with a book for 100 strokes.

Prices are going up like crazy. My Khmer teacher informed me that now rice here costs as much as it does in North America. His words (translated from Khmer): "In America, it doesn't matter if rice is expensive because bread is cheap. Here, bread is expensive, potatoes are expensive, and now rice is expensive...what are we supposed to eat? Grass..."

Typical Cambodian advice to you when you're upset:
"Don't think."
"Don't cry."
"Cut your heart down."
None of which have been too helpful for me.

There's a new mall that just opened by my house--the most modern and Western in Phnom Penh. My host dad took me over to see it awhile ago and said how glad he was that it would open while I was here--"So you can take pictures and show people in America that Cambodia has nice things too." Is that what you think I want Cambodia to be like? It just made me want to cry.

I went shoe shopping with my host sister last weekend, and she helped me buy a pair of teaching shoes (for $3.50). I reexamined them the next day and was struck by a few things: They're gold. They have bows. And rhinestones. And I honestly like them. Cambodia, what have you done to me?

I gave one of my classes a mini geography lesson last week. On a map of Southeast Asia, I was amazed at how many of them couldn't pick out their own country.

That'll have to be it for now, because I'm using the university computer, and the cleaning woman is waiting for me to leave so she can lock the building. Take care, all of you, and as always, I'd love to hear from you!

Here they are, at long last. More written updates in the near future, but now time at the internet cafe is up. Until next time!

I thought about writing this blog entry on the Vietnam trip and everything that happened there. There's certainly enough to write about. Sarah and I got on a bus and, only six hours and twelve dollars later, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and met up with Rachel Derstine, who is doing the SALT program in Hanoi and flew down to travel with us. It was an action-packed week: we visited pagodas and temples and a mosque, watched a traditional water puppet show, ate plenty of pho and spring rolls, crawled through tunnels from the American (Vietnam) War, biked along the coast, and swam (fully clothed, of course) in the South China Sea. We rode a public bus for three hours with six tied and screaming goats at our feet, stopped along the side of the road to chat (in English) with a Vietnamese woman who attempted to hook me up with her 23-year-old "baby boy," and tried, in vain, to avoid the stares of too many men at a beach where we were the only foreigners for miles around. I had my first Oreos and my first hot shower in more than six months, and saw my first dead bodies--three newborn babies in jars of formaldehyde at the War Remnants Museum, their tiny bodies fatally deformed by Agent Orange. Lots of things to process.

All in all, the trip really was what I needed--a break from routine, a chance to catch up with a good friend who knows me from my "previous life," a week of complete independence from host families and schedules, and an adventure in exploring a new culture. But most of all--and most unexpectedly--it was a reminder of everything I appreciate about my life here in Phnom Penh. They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. I say I'm just glad to have gotten a glimpse of that while I can still have it back again, before leaving for real.

I never realized how far I've come in feeling like I belong here until I noticed how much I didn't belong in Vietnam. It's hard to notice changes that happen so gradually. Six short months ago, I arrived a stranger to this place. Everything was new--the faces, the language, the food, the places. This time, as we were driving back, I couldn't help but notice all the little things that made it feel like coming home.

Home--it's where I recognize all the landmarks on the way back to the city. Where familiar smells in the restaurants make my mouth water. Where I can calculate exchange rates in my head without thinking twice. Where I can haggle with the moto drivers and tell them, in Khmer, not to rip me off just because I'm a foreigner. Where I know the rules of the seemingly chaotic traffic around me. Where I can navigate the back roads and shortcuts. Where the woman at the corner restaurant knows exactly how I like my coffee. Where the guards smile and wave me past because they recognize my face. Where the kids on the street yell my name as I bike past. Where I know someone will be waiting up to unlock the gate for me when I come home late. Where people notice that I'm slightly more sunburned than I was before. Where little sisters ask me to play. Where I've memorized all the steps and turns to my third-floor bedroom in the pitch dark. Where I know just how to shut the door so it doesn't creak. Where I can tuck in mymosquito net even with the light off. Where I fall asleep to bittersweet dreams, knowing how much I will miss all this when it comes time to say goodbye to this home and move on to a new one.