Moments here can be suddenly so intimate. A 7th grade girl tells me about her crush, another boy from English club, a 10th grader and a less frequent member. She at first wants to sit next to him, his bag left on the table while he ventures off to buy a Sting, a near-deadly energy drink. Another student complains there's no room on that side and so together we encourage her to sit across from him. “Face to face!” I tell her as I see the nervousness consume her confidence; she tells me to be quiet and settles for a diagonal seat from her Romeo, who, presumably, will have no idea of our secret game: the dynamics of adolescent romances carefully calculated, gently performed and embarrassment avoided.
My host sister asking me if I could hear the television in my room last night. No, I thought, not really, I mean I heard a little sound drifting through the rafters but I fell asleep and soundly. A dinner guest corrects her. She wants to know if you heard some sounds last night. Oh! I thought, ohhhh…. Ahh… AHHH! I said no and they snickered, I'm still unsure of the subtle nuances that were present or the real details--not sure if I want to.
“Is it true women don't wear bras until they're married?” They ask later. I laugh and say “no women wear whatever, depends on what they like.” They got this idea from movies they say.
People often make a point to really stress to me that according to Khmer tradition you only have one ‘songsaa’ (a honey, a sweetheart, a bae). They stress this to me because of a prolific belief that in American culture everyone can have many songsaas. Hollywood! I tell them no most people in America follow pretty strictly a one-one policy, foregoing an attempt to explain other facets of American sexual diversity including polyamory or asexuality. Maybe next time.
Sometimes I think the universe is just trolling me. I'm placed in a country to teach English and the word ‘essay’ translates literally to ‘itch a clitorus’ (eh say). In what cruel world would this coincidence happen? Real life is often stranger than fiction.
Other terrible things is the distinction between ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ don't exist as suave as they do in English. Some asks me if I'm going to do something and I answer ‘prohail’ trying to squeeze out a little white lie, but it's also basically a promise. Maybe I'll go = probably I'll go. Really depends on your tone and the context. Really string it out ‘maaaaaybe I'll go’ sometimes keeps that tone of ‘please don't ask me to say no straight to your face.’
Explaining to students why ‘I am going to the the market’ is necessary even though ‘I go market’ is essentially the same thing. The superfluous and pretty much nonessential information we put in English to make it fluent is soooo hard to teach and, understandably, very difficult to understand.
Now I understand why my Portuguese teacher was so adamant about us not sounding like E.T.: yes, the grammar can be obnoxious but you want to sound fluent--especially in a world dominated by discrimination down to our inflection of vowels, our tone and our syntax policed more than our meaning and input in some sort of sick paradoxical human nature hell hole only the devil would birth. Not to sound bitter though, you know?
Nothing can really prepare you fully for every experience. After training, I send my love back to the village: “see you soon!” I say. One of my best friends here, my language and cultural tutor, says he's in the big city also. I pause. He never gets to leave the area, his family being extremely poor. I ask why and a whole saga unfolds involving a huge responsibility for a quaint soul. He must leave the village he says, to find work, work that pays more to support his sick father. He found a job, he says, and is doing the training now! Excellent I think, until I learn the training is unpaid and ultimately results in a job selling nutritional supplements, in some sort of pyramid scheme I have no choice but to wince at. He's 20. He has no money. And he's trying to become a man for his family. My heart breaks every time I think about him, especially the times I find myself free, remembering we would study together outside the pagoda, under the trees, the easy breeze, the monks gawking, the children curious, the birds howling, the rice fields waiting, the motos purring, us learning.
I hate roosters. They don’t specify only the rising sun as a sign to cry, but almost anything invokes the scream, at any hour of any day. I once had a dream a rooster explained to me the yell was an unstoppable sudden impulse, a reflex, an unwarranted eruption of the body. They betray themselves with each shriek, like a hiccup for a human, the action completed before the mind can resist. I still can't forgive the poor creatures, but I pity them. Evolution has brought them from the biggest and mightiest of the beasts that ruled the earth to mindless strutting feathered flyless drones constantly pecking at any and all things to eat. Their bodies curbed from a Darwinian route to a culinary existence. I throw things at them sometimes. Sorry!
Pangs of nostalgia awash my brain and even seep into my dreams, perhaps they are born from some sort of unconscious reflex triggered by a lack of familiarity and mild discomfort betwixt a clumsy confrontation with a professional occupation (clumsy in that its success is resting squarely on my shoulders, unfortunately invisible and shifty, manifested as a beast to which I may never bear witness, of which I may never call my creation, but it's embodiment greatly my responsibility and paradoxically my perception) and my everlasting personal coming-of-age story that doesn't seem to want to end, its conclusion as far flung as my imagination can throw it.
I don't want to be homesick and often I'm not. Time doesn't stand still anywhere and it's unwise to count on it. It's nice to see people's lives accelerate at home, new moments to be treasured and lauded generally excite me. Everyone deserves to have their life move forward according to the pace at which they want, something I've taken for granted surely living in the US, a privilege people have and do die for. However much I feel a part of my community back home, I can still see, everyday, more and more, my negative space, the space I would normally be filling, shrinking, obscuring into less a lack of and more a custom or a habit. Not to say this is a situation of outcry or rage or even sadness, but a sign of growth and the capacity to move on to other social interactions, creating new bridges while others rest, but nonetheless interesting to note as my worlds drift not necessarily apart but begin to have less interconnection and overlap. Growing up is hard to do and following opportunity or adventure involves being drastic at times, sometimes your roots become too overgrown for one pot and the world becomes your home, your fingers and roots and toes and ears stretching and squeezing the dirt, the nutrients of geographical diversity enriching your core, reminding you your health is how you grow, your growth is how you feel, your strength is how far you reach.
Normally, I think a lot of metaphors are kind of tacky and overused, but the idea of just sticking my hands in fresh soil and just squeezing earth is so appealing, the viscerality of it so primal and wild.
