Bundling Up For Winter

Today marks the winter solstice, but winter came early to Cambodia. Six days ago. Last year I could count on one hand the number of times I wore a slept with a blanket and this year I have had to ask my host family to borrow another one and sleep with socks, a hat, and multiple layers more than 5 times already. As I type I am now wrapped up in a blanket huddled under my mosquito net… mid afternoon. So how cold is it really?? Drum roll please……….. 19 degrees! (Celsius that is. So 66.2 degrees Fahrenheit.) I am not complaining, at all. Having different seasons is something that I miss about home and so waking up cold and having the temperature climb 13 degrees before mid day is a change. And a welcomed one at that. It has been a odd cold “dry” season as it is because it has actually been raining. Last week it rained almost every day and there was general worry about the rice would not dry fast enough - the rice is laid out on tarps anywhere available for drying (takes 3-4 days typically). But now the rains have stopped again, at least for the time being. Who knows what surprises the rest of this winter will bring.

My daily schedule, as is everything else here, is very dependent on the weather. As a result the past 2 weeks have been a bit unusual (and that’s not mentioning the nationwide MMR and polio vaccination program and multiple births at the health center that changed things up - I will write more on this later…). However, I did promise a post on my daily schedule although no one day is quite the same as any other. But here is an “average” day in the life of Meghan:

6:00 - 6:30am - wake up and either go for a run (I have been slacking lately) or do laundry or just read my book for an hour while drinking coffee and eating oatmeal in my room or head to the market for breakfast

7:30am - my second alarm goes off which signals that I need to get my butt moving

8:00am - arrive at work which is a 2min. bike ride east of my house past the elementary and high school, bookshop, a few tailors, a moto wash and an assortment of roadside stands

8:00 - 10:30 or 11:00am - @ the health center - depending on the patients at the health center which can vary drastically I do a number of things including: weighing babies and charting growth on charts and talking to mothers about childhood nutrition; shadowing the ANC check-up midwife, watching and assisting (if possible) births; talking about breastfeeding with new mothers; informing about birth planning methods available; and one week helping with diabetes screening.

11:00am - head back home for lunch with the family or by myself 

11:30am - 1:15pm - read or naptime

1:15pm - when my afternoon alarm goes off telling me to get off my butt

2:00pm - I am usually out the door and off to somebody’s house to visit a baby, newborn, new mother, friend, village chief, village health volunteer etc. that is if the health center doesn’t have a meeting which I present an activity at each time and on Wednesdays I have a standing English club and then a girls club meeting back to back.

4:00pm - I head back home and end up stopping and chatting with neighbors for a while.

5:00pm - a little yoga or playing with my host siblings/cousins

5:30 - 6:00pm - dinner sometimes with the family, sometimes by myself.

6:00pm - typical bucket shower time

6:30 - 7:30pm - teaching English or watching cartoons on my computer with the host cousins

7:30 - 8:00pm - get under my mosquito net

8:00 - 9:00pm - watch TV or read

9:00pm ish - bedtime…

Does that sound boring? On paper it doesn’t look like much, but it is hard to have a typical day and to describe "normal" because something will always remind me that I am in Cambodia and that what I am doing is quite unusual. Whether it is a comment on the way to the market “Woah. This is weird. You are a foreigner going to the market. Oh and you are fat.” Or a spontaneous conversation about sperm donation with my neighbor. Or talking about the normalcy of cohabitation pre-marriage in America. The schedule may be similar but the conversations and interactions can deviate drastically. Life is odd. For those who have come to visit me I hope that they get a sense of my life here, but at the same time I know it is a lot to hope for in such a small span of time to condense the past 17 months into a nice box and tie it with a bow. Every day is an adventure for sure.