Almost half done! (with training)

this is the cat. you will understand later.

I have today off because it's Sunday so a lot of us headed in to Kampong Cham town. Right now I'm sitting luxury. I have internet of a reasonable speed, a fan blowing straight into my face, electricity, a cold coke, and no mosquitoes in sight.

First some logistics. America, if you called me please call again!!! I'm sorry I keep missing your call! Also, i don't get caller ID for America so please leave a message so I can call you back. THANKS! Yea this happened to me 3 times. 
Also, I received some mail!!! It was awesome. One took only a week to get here and one took 3 weeks, but they got here and they were in pretty good shape. So don't be afraid. haha. If you send a package do it with a flat rate box. It takes longer but its wayy cheaper. My address is on the left side bar. I gtg to the market, but this will be updated in a few hours.

UPDATE: Alright, so these last few weeks have been cool. We just had practicum week where the health volunteers shadowed at various sites and then we taught in a school with education volunteers for one day and then we did a health survey. Teaching was sooo much fun. Which is weird because I usually hate teaching a class. It was definitely hard, but there's something about being ok with humiliation and making fun of yourself that is really liberating. This Monday was my bday, but I chose not to really tell anyone so it wasn't too eventful, but I was ok with that. Ironically, a list with all the bday's came out on Tuesday so everyone found out a day later. Then, i think it was Thursday night, my host dad broke out the christmas lights and I was extremely confused. He did the usual teaching me k'mai words and I didn't think much of it until my relative started coming over and then my k'mai teacher came over and then they broke out the cake. The cake had a sign that said "Happy Birthday Helen. We Love You" on it and I pretty much was 2 seconds from tears. Luckily, I ran upstairs to get my camera and had time to compose myself because it was a pretty epic bday party. Instead of singing happy bday my family played happy bday karaoke songs on the tv with our insanely good sound system, this eventually transitioned to Chinese children's songs. Picture me, sitting at a round table, surrounded by Cambodians, a home made cake (no frosting), and chinese children's songs blasting in the background with little chinese girls acting it out on the tv. Yea, it was an epic birthday.

On a random side note (Kerry you'll love this), a cat is in love with me. So one day, after an hour and a half of hard manual labor aka laundry, I was hungry and my mom made me fried rice. I ate pretty quick and there was a cat hanging around, which happens a lot during meal times. As I was eating there was a piece of garlic skin and i just threw it to the cat. It ate it pretty quickly and I didn't think anything of it. The next day I'm going back up the ladder to my room after my usual morning bucket bath and the cat follows me up. I don't think anything of it. That night it's in my room and it won't leave. I put it right outside of my room on the rug and it just come back in. I try to shut my door, but my door doesnt shut all the way and it squeezes back in. I'm ok with it until I try to get in bed and it tries to get in with me. Normally, that's not an issue, but the pets here are not vaccinated, don't have flea collars, and have numerous worms. If anyone remembers, I am extremely paranoid about fleas, though at this point I'm more worried about the worms. So i try to push it off my bed and it is holding on with its claws. The way a Cambodian bed works is that there is a giant queensized wooden bed frame, but a tiny twin sized "mattress" about as thick as a sleeping bag. And when I say tiny, I mean that it is about as long as I am tall. If i sleep with my head against one end, my feet are only about 2 inches from the other end. Some tall PCTs have to sleep diagonal. Anyway, so the cat is trying to cuddle with me, I finally manage to push it off my bed and then it just sits there staring at me for about 15 min meowing. Everytime I said "no" or "go away" it would just look at me with its sad cat eyes and meow. Then my little brother saved me by taking it downstairs. The next day everyone thought I had a fear of cats.

I thought that was the end of that. The next day i reaarange my room so that my door can close all the way. I hear it meowing a little, but I go to sleep. About 30 min into me snoozing, I hear this loud THUMP from above and I look up. There's something moving up there. The walls of my room don't go all the way up to the ceiling and I see the cat walking along. I'm like " shit, PLEASE don't jump onto my mosquito net and on my face." Luckily it just walks along the wall. I see it stop and try to jump in but it doesnt. Ten minutes later I hear Meows for help because it got scared of heights and got stuck on a book shelf... Now the cat just meows at me during dinner time, but I avoid eye contact so it doesn't get the wrong idea.

Next Saturday, I'll find out where I'll be living for the next two years. People are pretty nervous, but where ever I end up I'll just have to deal. And right after we find out, we'll be visiting the host family for a week. Things are happening pretty quickly and I'm trying to keep up with it all. 8 hours of classes and extra work after and trying to keep up with daily activities like laundry is tough. Laundry takes like 2 hours since I have to do it all by hand and it takes the entire day plus some of the next day to dry since it's rainy season here. I'll be back online the next saturday night and maybe during that week since I'll be traveling. Be prepared.  Also, pictures are up on facebook!


PS: it's been one month since I landed in Cambodia and a little over a month since I left home. crazayyy.