So much for not writing for a long time, eh? Well, I have to do something to keep my mind occupied while I’m waiting for the time to go pick up Mom and Dad, so I thought I’d type up some of my thoughts from yesterday’s cooking adventures for you.

It sounded innocent enough—learning to make fish amok from our dear and diminutive Khmer teacher. It had escaped my mind how graphic the experience of buying fish at the market can be. I was following along rather blindly, daydreaming about something or other, when a loud thud brought me back to reality. The fishseller had a live fish in one hand, as long as her arm from hand to elbow and twice as thick, and a wooden club in the other, with which she was beating the fish over the head. I think I just stood there staring with my mouth open until she grabbed a second fish, and I snapped out of my mesmerized state just in time to assure her that we only wanted one.

Then she set to work cleaning the thing—chopping it in half, pulling out the internal organs, slicing off the scaly skin like the peel off a cucumber. The most disconcerting moment was when the half with the head, which I had long presumed to be quite dead, started flailing about while its tail end was being skinned and filleted on the chopping block next to it.

I’m not usually one for watching living things suffer, but this fascinated me. It was one more reminder of how full of life everything is here, and how close it all is to death. Life in Cambodia feels so real, so raw, so vivid. It’s so full of color, in every sense of the word. Sensory overload from every direction. Chilies that burn your throat and limes that pucker your mouth and coffee that hurts your tongue with its sweetness. Sun that bakes your flesh and beggars who grab your arm and mosquitoes that gorge themselves on your blood. Smells of frangipanni flowers, urine, frying garlic, and rotting garbage all invading your nostrils. Horns blasting, kids screaming, wedding music blaring through amps hooked up to car batteries. Orange-robed monks, neon cartoon-character shorts, gold-and-rhinestone flip-flops. And now it all feels perfectly normal. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so alive, so beautifully and painfully aware of my physical state of living, so beautifully and painfully aware of how precious that is.

So many of the protective layers that separated me from my surroundings in North America are stripped away here. Take away air-con and enclosed vehicles and soundproof walls. Eliminate space between houses, closed doors, shrink-wrapped Styrofoam trays of bloodless meat. When things happen here, I feel them.

When it’s hot, I sweat. When it’s cold, I shiver. When it rains, I get wet. When the roof leaks, I move my desk. When the sun rises, I get up. When it gets dark, I go home. When the electricity goes out, I sleep. When it’s mango season, I feast on mangos. When jackfruit is cheap, I stuff myself with jackfruit. When rice gets expensive, I eat less. When gas prices soar, I ride my bicycle. When the mosquitoes come, I hide inside my net. When the gate is locked, I stay home. When there’s no water, I forego the shower. When the neighbors have a wedding, I don’t sleep.

It makes everything feel so close. Makes me feel so close to everything. My food, my environment, my fellow human beings. So many things are simply out of my control. It used to frustrate me to no end. Now, I’m addicted to the freedom that not trying to be in control affords you. These weeks, these months have been full of intense pain, intense joy, intense hope, intense life. I’m afraid, two months from now, of sitting in an air-conditioned classroom, walking down a sterile, sanitary grocery store aisle, driving down a smooth, straight, sidewalked street, perfectly comfortable, going perfectly crazy, aching for something to make me sweat, itch, feel, live like I have here. It’s not pretty, maybe, but it’s real. I want my meat to bleed.

Not till the end of my time in Cambodia, of course. That would be far too sad. But now there are approximately 36 hours until my parents, God willing, will arrive in Phnom Penh! I've got all kinds of adventures planned for these next two weeks with them, so I just wanted to say I probably won't be writing for a little while. Until then, stay well and happy!

This is a common command in my house, directed from my host mom to my host nephew, who inevitably wants to play every time I try to read or work or think. I, or course, am "older French sibling," since the word for French has been co-opted to mean foreigners in general. The humor of it hit me one day, and I decided it was about time for another quiz for you. Can you come up with the English equivalents of these literal translations from Khmer?

1. To fry uncooked
2. Street eyebrow
3. Bee tiger
4. To raise heart water
5. To peel to turn over
6. Rice house
7. Fire flowers
8. To cross river
9. Protect hat
10. Eye water
11. To practice life
12. Activity to show to lead to give to know
13. To be friends near hand of bananas together
14. Medicine to eliminate bad smell
15. Expensive mother

...

Ready for the answers?

...

1. To bother
2. Sidewalk
3. Bear
4. To encourage
5. To translate
6. Kitchen
7. Sparks
8. To give birth
9. Helmet
10. Tears
11. To exercise
12. Introduction
13. To be close friends
14. Deodorant
15. Mother-in-law

So you get awesome sentences like, "Don't forget your medicine to eliminate bad smell when you go to practice life," and "There will be much eye water when I say goodbye to my near hand of bananas friends." Beautiful, isn't it?

Two days ago, he was sitting in my class. Today I was sitting at his funeral. This skinny little line between life and death is so terrifyingly easy to cross—but only one way.

I thought they were joking, the other students, when I walked into the classroom this morning and they told me that most students wouldn’t be there, that there was an accident yesterday, that Bora died, that they were going to Kompong Chhnang Province for his funeral. They were smiling. Laughing. I looked from one to the other. “Are you serious?” “Yes, teacher. Bora, who sits in the back. He’s dead.” Still smiling. And those seconds, those long seconds it took me to realize that these were not joking-around smiles but crying-is-unacceptable-so-we’ll-laugh-instead smiles, took me from confusion to disbelief to fighting back tears. Unacceptable.

Cancelled class, walked back to the office, found the Korean IT volunteer there. Told him the story, had a brief conversation about how accidents are so common in Cambodia, how there aren’t so many in Korea. Heard Lauren walk through the door. “Erin, I heard a student passed away—” Looked up. Nodded. “Mine…” Choked on my words, on my tears, and he’s gone, and life is cruel and life is short and life is…over.

Students came, told me a car was leaving, did I want to come? No, I… Yes, I… don’t want to, but I need to. Cancelled classes for the rest of the day, stuffed a roll of toilet paper in my bag to clean up my face, joined my smiling, dry-eyed students for a three-hour trip in a rented van to Kompong Chhnang, to Bora’s house.

I’d seen and heard dozens of Khmer funerals in the streets, but this was the first one I’d been to. Big outdoor tent, chairs draped in golden cloth, traditional music and chanting blaring through the speakers. Greeted Bora’s father, ate rice, picked up more details of the story. Yesterday, 3:00. One moto, three people. One van. One fateful second. Two dead. Twenty-one years old. No one knows who took him to the hospital. No one could even recognize him. Dear God…

Went inside to pay our respects. Torn between the toothless old women who pressed sticks of incense into my hands, guiding me toward the coffin, and the pair of Christian students who told me we shouldn’t do those things. Sat in front of the coffin, held another student’s hand as she wailed, asking forgiveness for never telling him about Jesus. Watched as Bora’s friends carried his body to the monks waiting in the truck. Walked in procession through the streets with my flowers and incense. Was secretly grateful when the sky cried with us, soaked our clothes and concealed our tears. Said goodbye one last time.

What would I have said to you, Bora, if I had known it would be my last chance? How can I make sure the rest of you know how much you mean to me, before this bitter, beautiful life is over?