Was a full-on day: In the morning Avuth, Yvette(Yvette is Avuth's mom), and I, went to visit a baha’i lady in “tul kouk”; then went to Avuth and Yvette's house for lunch; back to the apartment to wait for Ramini and le team of super-kids to go visit Popov's children's class out in Phum Russie (bambo village); then dropped off at the orphanage to teach my class; then over to Neissan's for some guava juice and jokes; then to the riverside to try out typical khmer food with Avuth; then finally back home!
The visit in the morning was a little random, but pretty sweet. We had to walk through a row of little one-room apartments on either side, and then walk through a series of giant water-filled clay pots, then up a rickety wooden staircase onto a rickety wooden floor, and then navigate our way to the lady's place. It turns out that the lady we visited has been a Baha'i for a while, but she's been off the radar because she's busy just taking care of business. Aparently she's the slum-lord who owns all the one-bedroom places that we walked past on our way to her home. I mostly just sat back and ate some stickyrice-and-bean mixutre while getting occasional translations from Avuth. The lady had two daughters (one of whom played some songs on little keyboard for us), and both of them wore matching pajamas.
Lets take a paragraph to really explore this pajama thing. Women and girls here act like they don't realize they're wearing pajamas all the time. Seriously it's like pajamas are the panacea to thier fashion problems: out shopping? Wear some pajamas! Going on a bike ride? Wear some PJ's! Taking a walk with your friends? lets all wear pajamas! with well-dressed friends? Just wear pajamas! Going out for lunch? Pajama time! Facing an economic crunch? Wear some pajamas! I'd almost go so far as to say that a welll-coordinated set of pajamas could be a contender for the national costume.
They also had a small shop that faced a railroad track...and when I say faced I mean came face-to-face with the actual tracks. I thought it was strange until I took a good look around, and realized that as far as I could see on both sides, there were shops and houses that treated the tracks like a road. Anyway, cool place, and we had fun! and I distributed banana-cake to our hosts, and bought some guavas...and they decided to start up a children's class and a junior youth class for the little ones that live in the neighborhood.
Lunch at Avuth's was also suposed to be an afternoon monopoly experience, but I had to get back to my place to catch a ride to "bamboo village" with Ramini. We were basically going to go and just shake up thier class a bit by teaching them new songs, and sharing some stories. The class was a little awkward, because our super-kids that we brought along had some stage fright, and took a while to get thier voices warmed up. After that was conquered the class went fairly well. Also, even though I know you don't know him - Popov's the man.
Right so by this point in the day I'm pretty much exhausted, but now I gotta get to the one class that I was actually prepared for! It was sweet. The kids didn't memorize the quotes that they were supposed to (except for my star student), but they also didn't mind spending time memorizing them in class. We didn't get a chance to play an active game, but we did get to play games learning the quotes and we sang a lot. Today's quote was "O Friend! In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love..." This time, however, I came prepared: I printed off the quote in khmer and got them to write it in english. It seemed to help the childrens really get a grasp on the content of the class, so I felt like it was a worthwile experience for me and the kids. Also, thier singing (and mine?) is improving quite a bit.
After ALL of that, I went with Avuth to the riverside to try some khmer street food. First, let me relay that I tried street food the day before, just outside my apartment (fried rice cutlets with green onion iside) and it took only about an hour to run through my system. So I was slightly more cautious, but still up for whatevs. So we go to this temporary restaurant that's been set up on a street corner. With plastic chairs, folding tables, and a portable grill. They serve us some
fresh veggies in ice to start, and I let Avuth order a sample of whatever he thought I shoudl try. We got duck-eggs, deep-fried frog, and oysters. I couldn't bring myself to eat the duck-egg, because my heart has been softened somewhat by my vegan girlfriend (and the eggs have already been fertilized). It was actually pretty gross. The oyster ( or other random unidentifiable shell-fish) was pretty good, and we ate it with a frsh-garlic spicy sauce. Then we tried deep-fried frog...which I never thought I would ever try, but it was alright. Avuth was really excited about chicken wings, and our restaurant of choice had run out, so we went to two or three places just looking for those wings. Finally we found them, and it turns out that Avuth's aunt runs one of these shops. So I tasted some bbq wings, and they were aight. The best part of the whole thing was that spicy sauce. Avuth's aunt turns out to be the queen of that sauce, and she gave me a whole container for free! The sauce is basically sliced fresh garlic sitting in random spicyness. Avuth reccomends just eating it with steaming hot rice. I will let you know how ithat one goes.
The long day does not end there, but I have an interview at 5!
Peace!
I'm sure most of you know that I love Indian food. This is not becuase I lived in india - I swear - it's just becuase Indian food is that good. Today's veg. thali reinforced my love. I highly reccomend eating indian food the the next time you eat out. So far Khmer food is still a little bit too much for me...and I eat almost anything. They have a lot of 'soups': seriously somehting like 75% of the dishes are some form of liquid with random bits of other things thrown in. The most off-putting of the "other things" is congealed chicken's blood. They all say it tastes good, but vegetarianism starts to look more and more appealing! I had an amazing fish dish cooked in a coconut (Fish amok)...either it was cooked in the coconut, or served in it, but either way, it was tres bons. I'll try to delve deeper into the perilous depths of Khmer delicacies, but don't expect too much besides photos, because some of this stuff is actually crazydawgs to the donkeymax!