Just Keep Biking...

Picture this: sitting in a sarong after a cold bucket shower listening to the geckos and beetles prey on mosquitoes and the flies run into the ceiling from the comfortable confines of your mosquito net... This is my life in Cambodia. Since arriving at my training host family’s home last Sunday, this is exactly how I spend my nights after dinner and following about an hour of extra-help language class with my younger sister. I go to bed between 9 and 10 and wake up to the dogs barking between 5 and 6. And then the day begins with 4 hours each of technical training and language training. This schedule means that the days are long, but the weeks fly by. Today marked the end of my 2^nd week since I met the other PCTs in DC for staging.

My host family is absolutely wonderful! I have a dad, mom, grandmother, and two sister (older and younger). My house is quite big with an open-air downstairs equipped with 3 hammocks, and upstairs bedrooms. My parents are farmers and my older sister teaches high school Khmer. We have 2 cows, 3 dogs, 4 pigs, and more chickens (here they have few feathers to speak of) than I can count. For the first few days I thought that I had a younger brother too, but it turns out that he is just a neighborhood kid that comes over all the time and likes to record me singing American pop songs with my sister on his phone without me knowing. Embarrassing…


I live about a 3 mile bike ride from the center of town - one of the, if not THE farthest CHE trainee houses. Definitely good exercise… Here is my beautiful mountain bike that helps with the dirt roads and washed out paths (because of the monsoon rains) between the rice paddies that I have to navigate on my way to language class at my Language and Cross-Culture Facilitator's (LCF) home everyday. 

Motor-bikes, taxis, and tuk-tuks got nothin' on me!

My Khmer is… coming along. The structure is not too bad (i.e. there are no verb conjugations!), but pronunciation has been hard to pick out thus far. Hopefully with time I will start to pick up more and more. My sister says that I am doing well, I say that I am trying…   

Until next time! Joom reap leah!
(I will post pictures later.)

"Pre-Service Training is like taking a drink from a fire hose."

My Pre-Service Training (PST) technically started a few weeks after I accepted my placement and the submission of numerous pre-departure materials. However, when most people refer to PST they are talking about the 8 weeks after you step off the plane in the country. So after a long day of staging in D.C. and an even longer weekend of travel to Tokyo followed by an overnight in Bangkok, we finally arrived in Cambodia on Sunday. After stepping off the plane in Phnom Penh (PP), we carried our luggage through a tunnel of some 40 or so cheering current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). I have never felt so immediately welcomed and/or reassured as I did walking out of that airport. And right then and there we took a picture: 

K6 fresh off the plane! See if you can find me...

Yesterday and today included a lot of introductions, policy overview, house-keeping, and exploring the city's markets. We travel to and from our guest house by tuk-tuk (motorcyles attacked to rickshaw-type things...) which dodge and weave in and out of traffic carrying as many as 7 crammed inside. To give you some idea of the organized chaos of the traffic in PP: no one follows the traffic laws/rules, so crossing the street is like playing a ginormous game of Frogger. However, when it rains - it is monsoon or rainy season so afternoon downpours that don't cool anything off are almost inevitably - the streets clear out a bit. Yesterday, the roof of the tuk-tuk I was in had a major leak so I was drenched within minutes. A shower in a tuk-tuk? It sure does save time. Although I am sweating so much due to the intense humidity that really I am soaked for most of the day...

It is hard to believe that tomorrow morning we leave for our training village and start the Khmer (pronounced Kha-my) language training. I can't wait to be able to start conversing more with shop keeper, tuk-tuk drivers, and the Khmer PC staff. During the past few days our group has had to rely heavily on the PCVs that have been assigned to help us transition. They are absolutely wonderful, patient people who I am sure are ready to get rid of us (I know I would!). 

I probably won't have much internet for the next 8 weeks, since as you can see from the blog post title, PST will probably be a bit overwhelming or a lot to digest... we shall see...

Live Curiously

While I was listening to the radio the other day, a 101 year old woman gave the advice, "live curiously." A good reminder to try new things and push the limits of my comfort zone.

It seems quite surreal that almost exactly a year ago, I began the process of applying for Peace Corps (PC) before my Senior year. At that time I was not convinced that PC was something that I wanted to do, and I was exploring a variety of options for post-grad. Then everything started falling into place and before I knew it, it was February and I was accepting a position as a Community Health Education Extension Agent (say that 5 times fast!) and 27 months of service in Cambodia. 

 
Cambodia (green) in relation to the rest of Southeast Asia.
population: 14.8 million people (65th most populous country)
area: 181,035 square km or 69,898 sq mi (88th) or roughly the size of Missouri
   
Basic map of Cambodia's major tourist sites, cities, and provinces.

Fast forward to now. In less than 12 hours I will be checking in for pre-orientation ("Staging") in Washington, DC and 24 hours later boarding a flight with a final destination of Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital). I leave the US on Friday the 13th and arrive in Cambodia on Sunday the 15th - 11 hours ahead of Eastern Time (ET) and over 9,000 miles from home.

At a Thai restaurant called Indochine in Wrightsville, NC a few weeks ago. 

I will arrive in Cambodia for the rainy season (hot & humid!) with 57 other Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) at my side -about  half in Community Health Education (CHE), half in English Teaching and Teacher Training (ETTT). We are the 6th PC group going to Cambodia so we are known as K6. After a few days in Phnom Penh (PP) we will head to our Pre-Service Training (PST) site for 8 weeks of training. If all goes well, I will receive my post and be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in early September. I don't know how much internet access I will have during PST, - and at my post for that matter! - but I will update this blog (and respond to emails) as often as I can.


Mail may take a couple of weeks,but if you love snail mail as much as I do... feel free to write to: 

Meghan Henshall

Peace Corps/Cambodia 

P.O. Box 2453
US Embassy
Phnom Penh 3
CAMBODIA
Asia

So here I go. Moving forward with excitement and curiosity. Thanks for all the love and support.