It's the Little Things...

7/20/10
"It's the Little Things..."
As we settle into living in a third world country as expats, I'm learning it's the little things in life that get you excited:
~finding skirt hangers - hey I looked in every market we went to! I found regular dress and shirt hangers, but no skirt hangers. So today Tim and I walked to the "Total" shop right down the street. It's actually a gas station, but has a shop inside too. Kind of like a glorified Circle K or Kwik Trip. You can find anything from toiletries to milk, dishes and hangers.

~drinking a cold Pepsi. When all you drink is bottled water, a good cold Pepsi is great. Actually I'd trade my first born for a tall glass of iced tea about now. :)

I'm also learnig that living a developing country as an adult is much different that living in one as a child. As a child my mom did most of the work and we had house helpers who did our laundry, cooked and drove us around (house helpers are normal when you are a missionary; you're actually providing work for the locals and its very inexpensive). We played with our friends, went to school and had fun! As a MK (missionary kid), I grew up enjoying the food from the vendors and never worried about what to eat and drink. I also spoke the language.

Now, Tim and I don't speak Khmer (pronounced kmi, long i sound) and we are responsible for finding and fixing our own food. We also have to find our own transportation, kiind of like being an adult in the States, but you don't speak the language or don't know where anything is yet. But we'll learn. We are learning quickly and getting around just fine. Our landlord has children who speak English a little, so they translate for us. The people at the market speak just enough to say, "what you look for...I have" and they dollar amounts. Oh, and they take dollars here. They love dollars and you can pay for anything in dollars, just not coins. So you have to pay in dollar amounts and they'll give you change back in Riel (CAmbodian money). You can pay in both dollars and Riel together if you want - pretty cool. :) But DO NOT pay in torn or worn out dollars; they won't take them. Very picky about dollars but not their own money. :)
We know how to say no and thank you in Khmer. The language is hard to learn and has French roots and over 60 vowel sounds alone, not to mention the many different ways to pronounce consonants like "T"; there is a hard T with no aspiration (breath), there is a T with breath coming out and a T that just stops dead in its tracks and doesn't really sound like a T at all but more like a D that suddenly got hit by a car.

We are getting acclimated to the weather. Currently it is rainy season here. Which means it is supposed to rain every afternoon or evening, but it doesn't. If it rains late afternoon or evening, it cools off and is beautiful! But if it rains during the hot day, it just gets more sticky afterwards - yuck! If you're out and about walking and it rains, you just wait under a over hang or in a shop for a bit and it usually doesn't last too long, but it does downpour when it rains. After rainy season comes "cool" season, kind of American fall - from Oct/Nov - Jan/Feb. It can get down to the low 70s in the mornings and evenings and mid 80s during the day I think. About March it start really heating up again and by April and May it is stiffling - hot and dusty!! Can't wait! Tim and I are already sweating so much, we figure it's a great weight loss program! LOL Imagine if we were actually exercising too (besides our walks to the market and stores). There is an Olympic size at the school so we're hoping to get some laps in before or after school :) even if to just cool off!

For transportation, most locals use a "moto" (small motorcycle like a Vespa), or a "tuk tuk". You can see pics of these in our previous blogs. They are everywhere! You can hire a moto dop, that's a guy driving a moto. He will transport you and everything you have! I've seen whole families on motos - amazing! We are currently taking a tuk tuk everywhere, if we're not walking. Tuk tuks are safer, people can't yank stuff off your shoulders and you are out of the elements when it rains. We use a tuk tuk driven by Webol (W pronounced with a V sound, not a W). He is a Christian and speaks English quite well, and he's on time - which is good for here!
A tuk tuk ride is around $2.50 one way and if we use him every day for school we can make a deal and pay $2.00 one way - so about $80 a month. We figure it's still cheaper than buying a moto and paying for fuel (VERY expensive here) and repairs, etc. Plus we just don't want to deal with the traffic yet! :)

Cost of things are more expensive if you are a foreigner. Of course if you go to the store, you can't bargain. but if you go to the market, you can bargain. They start the price higher for you of course than for a Cambodian. Usually to bargain, you offer half of what they asked for, then dicker back and forth. Sometimes if you walk off, they will comply.

Ok, as I write this there are people wandering throughout our house. :) The aircon guys are here adding freon to the aircon in our bedroom. And here comes the landlady with the money in her hands. She's following the guys around making sure they are doing what they are supposed to do. Oh, and look here. The land lady's dog just joined in the parade. He must have followed her in. Once she noticed, she shooed him out immediately. Khmer people are very friendly and they don't ever want to offend.

Time here is like rubber - it stretches. In Indonesia we actually called it "rubber time" - "jam karet." We were told last night that the aircon guys were coming at 8 a.m. this morning. So, we called our tuk tuk driver and rescheduled for him to come pick us up at 9:30, to be on the safe side. So of course 8 a.m. rolled around and they weren't here yet. Finally at 9:20 we told our land lady, via her daugther, that we had to go, we had an appointment. She said, "they called and they promised they will be here at 9:30." We said, no, sorry, we can't wait, we have to go.
They asked when we'd be back and we said 2:00 p.m. Later, we got a call from the school secretary saying the land lady called and wanted us to know that the guys said they'd be here at 3:00, not 2:00. And sure enough, they showed up about 3:30, not bad. :)

So, I HAVE to tell you about our first night here! We get into the airport about 11:2o p.m. Friday, the 16th of July. After getting 7 pieces of luggage we met Dan Ohlin, Director of Development for Asian Hope. He takes us to our house. We walk into a hot, but clean apt, threw all of our luggage in the large living rm and head for the bdrm, where there is an airconditioner. We had no fans yet for the rest of the house. We finally find some toiletries, shower and fall into bed. Tim goes to plug our alarm clock we brought from the States. We had brought a transformer with us too, so we plug that in first, then our alarm clock. We hear a loud pop!! and the electricity dies!! We are saying, Oh my gosh! Did we kill the whole apt building? Now what? it's going to be looog hot night! Then Tim, my ever resourceful handy man looks around for a flashlight we had brought along; we had help from street lights too. :) he finds the electrical box in the living rm and sees that we had blown the breakers. So he switches them back on and voila! Air con and lights back on -yea!! We realized that the transformer we bought in the States was actually only an adapter. *sigh* So...we finally got to bed about 1:30 and then were up by 5:30 from streets sounds - cars, motos, vendors, people talking and yelling and someone drilling and nailing. Remember we had no fans yet to cover noise. So went our first night/morning in Phnom Penh :)

We were off for at 9 am Sat for a quick tour of the city and to get a few things - thanks agian to Dan Ohlin! and then supper with his family and then the night market that night. the night market is loud, but much cooler. Since then, we have been to several markets, to school for a tour, had dinner with another teacher and his family and then just checked things out.

Tomorrow - Wed, we are doing some fruit shopping at the local market right beside us. Then off to MetFone to order internet for our house. Then we've been invited to another teacher's house for dinner. They have 10 kids, yes 10! They homeschool; 2 are in the States in college.

New teacher in-service starts Monday, July 26. School begins Aug. 9. So we have time yet to acclimate and learn our way around and contine to get settled in. Catch ya later...Joneses in Cambodia - over and out.