Freedom!

90 days. Just 90 days. We weren’t supposed to leave our provinces for the first three months of service to give ourselves time to fully “integrate“ at site. Now, some of us -may or may not have taken this mandate more seriously than others, but the fact of the matter is: our travel was limited no matter what. Even with seeing everyone over Christmas, we were still feeling a little antsy to get out of Dodge. Especially with all the Cambodian holidays that have been popping up lately. To give you an idea of what I mean: I had two days off last week, I have a day off this week, and I’ll have half of next week off for an array of reasons I won’t even pretend to understand. That’s a lot of time to sit and daydream about an impending vacation. Trust me. The “Champs” - as we call ourselves - had been planning our first free weekend for well … months. The five of us would be back in action in Phnom Penh for the first time and we were absolutely thrilled.

Deidre bussed down to my site on Thursday and we headed out early Friday morning. As it turned out, the rest of our crew wouldn’t be coming in until Saturday. When we got to Phnom Penh, we didn’t waste any time though. We hit up our favorite pizza place for pizza and beer and then headed to Sorya market for some shopping and ice cream. After we had successfully made gluttons of ourselves, we headed back to the hotel to nap and relax before we went out. We discovered that Tyler, Chris and Colin were all in town too, so it looked like the night was shaping up to be a huge success. Unfortunately, Tyler ended up getting violently ill within hours of his arrival and had to bail for the night. D, Chris, Colin and I all went out for happy hour and Indonesian food before the boys announced that they needed to head back to the hotel. They were in town to take the GREs, and their more responsible side ended up winning out over Deidre and my party plans. Their loss, of course ;)

First on the list, we headed to an outdoor bar called Elsewhere. It was exactly what we needed - the minute you walk through the door, you feel like you could be anywhere….but probably not Cambodia. After an hour or so of people watching, we headed to Riverhouse for some dancing. The DJ was incredible and I realized how much I had been missing night life. I mean, Pursat is great, but everything closes by 9:30-10:00, and playing Kings at a guest house really just isn’t the same.

While dancing, we were scouting for potential “targets” … I mean, what girls’ night would be complete without at least one free drink from an unsuspecting backpacker or diplomat’s son? Naturally, there were no suitable guys, so we had to settle for a couple of cute Cambodian girls instead. Typical. The four of us danced and laughed until the night blurred into a haze of flashing lights and good music (for a change).

Saturday morning we got up early and headed to Corner 33 to get some work done. In fairness, we didn’t get a lot of work done though. We spent the morning swapping music and catching up on e-mails. Katie was the first of the remaining Champs to arrive. She got in around noon, so the three of us headed to a Mexican restaurant off the riverfront to kick the rest of the weekend off right. Deidre and I did pull it together and get some work done in the afternoon. We hammered out a rough outline for our funding proposal for Camp G.L.O.W. and then called it a day. We were just finishing up when Tiffany and Tara arrived, so we scooted back to the hotel, did a quick review of the last three months and then headed to our rooms to get pretty. We ended up eating Mexican again … I mean, who can resist? … and then hit a few clubs for more dancing. Like I said … who can resist? We actually ran into one of the Peace Corps staff during our escapades, but tried to be as discreet as possible … after all, we were trying to pretend we were tourists.

Sunday morning was bittersweet as we said our goodbyes, ate our last Western meal together and hit up some last minute shopping … but I guess wasn’t really goodbye now that we’re free!!