These Are a Few of my Favorite Things

It’s Saturday morning. Usually Khmai people don’t have two day weekends but, ever the American, I insisted on not teaching class Saturdays to save this sacred ritual. Today, my only plans are heading to the school at some point to start organizing the English library with Ratha and Monny (I found huge sacks of unused English books – from Steinbeck to children’s picture books – in the cupboards), and getting coffee with an awesome girl from New Zealand who I just met. While eating breakfast, I was thinking about what I would be doing if I were at home. Probably making peanut butter pancakes, texting Steve-O about getting lunch later, and planning some late-night activities in State College. Of course, if I were still at Hamilton, I’d be sleeping in to an obscenely late hour and then getting Dunkin Donuts with Laura before sitting down to work on The Continental. And by work, I really mean gossiping about whatever we did Friday night. This reminded me of one of my very first posts. Before I left, I made a list of the things I thought I would miss most about home. Thinking back on what I wrote, I realize it isn’t the *things* themselves that I miss. Mostly because you can buy almost anything in Cambodia, even if you have to pay an arm and a leg for it, and because my family has been sending me a steady stream of letters and care packages containing all the comforts of home. For lack of a better word, what I miss most are “temporal memories.”

In other words, I miss the events, people and things in my life associated with certain times of day, month and year, which are now absent. Oddly enough, I usually miss home most in the morning when I first wake up. I attribute this to the fact that for the last 22 years I have done one of two things every single morning: 1.) Wake up, get ready for school and go to class or 2.) Wake up, shuffle around in my pajamas until brunch, and laze around. My host family, like most Khmai families, wakes up between 5:00-6:00 a.m. (me along with them) to begin their daily routine. Mine starts with boiling fresh drinking water for the day. Boiling water? What? What happened to scrambling to finish a few more paragraphs of my thesis before meeting with Margie or sleeping in until 10:00 a.m.? I’m sure I’ll get used to this new life, but for now, I can’t help feeling a little disoriented when I wake up and have to remind myself that the day here starts very differently than the day in America.

For those of you who know me well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear how much I’ve been missing fall either. In a land where the seasons never change – hot to hotter doesn’t count – I have difficulty noticing the passage of time. It still feels like summer here, so my mind wants to believe I’ve only been here a few weeks when, in truth, summer has faded into fall on the other side of the world. Fall has always been my favorite season. I can still remember sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse with my father playing “I Spy” as the harvest moon rose above the pine tree in the yard. I like to brag that living in the North East is ideal because each season has a distinct personality. Every year I look forward to breaking out my sweaters, the smell of turning leaves, farmers’ markets, pumpkin carving, Halloween, fresh apples (and apple pie), football games, Thanksgiving, the start of a new school year and the anticipation of the holiday season to come. It’s practically the American Dream.
Thankfully, I’m not the only one who feels this way, so some of my friends and I are planning to celebrate Halloween together, which happens to fall on the King’s birthday, so we won’t have school anyway. It’s funny how much I look forward to those moments of “celebration.” Cambodian people rarely indulge in many of the pleasures we take for granted as part of our leisure lives. I don’t know a single Cambodian who enjoys reading for pleasure, I have difficulty explaining why I cross-stitch in my spare time when it clearly has no functional purpose, and hobbies are almost nonexistent aside from young boys playing pickup sports after school. Unless you’re in a major city fueled by tourism, it’s safe to say that there is no happy hour, there are no nightclubs, there are no movie theaters, no one has picnics in the park for fun, no one goes canoeing Saturday afternoon. That’s not to say Cambodian people don’t have fun – it’s just that their leisure time is spent very differently than Americans’. They work so hard on a daily basis, that when there is a moment to spare, they just want to sit down and be with each other. I sometimes forget that Westerners work very hard … but we play very hard as well. I actually think I may have forgotten how to truly relax somewhere along the way. In the States, I load myself down with extracurriculars and social events. But here, I’m learning to find a stillness in myself that has been buried under hours of piano lessons, cheerleading practice, Bundy parties, road trips, and dinners at TexMex. Knowing myself, I don’t think I will ever give in to that stillness. Already, I find myself trying to fill my days as much as possible because I have always been happiest when I am on the brink of being entirely too busy. Whatever you want to call it – a full social calendar, the pleasure principal, being young – I miss it.

And finally, I miss the people. I know, I know – I said people don’t count because missing them is a given. But the way I miss them is almost a physical lack. Like I left part of me in the States. When I lived in Paris, it was a little different because the culture and my life as a student were parallel to what they would be in the States. Cheap cell service, living with the girls, and the easy pleasure of college life in one of the greatest cities on Earth were luxuries that, although I didn’t always appreciate them at the time, made that experience unforgettable and incredible. The multitude of other differences here make being able to text my brother the minute something ridiculous happens, going to Panera after church every Sunday with Gray, bantering with the family over dinner, curling up with Xena before bed, crashing in Megan’s apartment every weekend this summer, and meetings with all the familiar faces from professors to sorority sisters, seem that much more far away. So for all of you who I left in the States: I think of you often and take you with me every day because you are my home.