This Earth is my BITCH!

As many of you know, I turned down another year teaching in Cambodia to pursue my business career back in San Diego.  It was a tough decision, as I loved my life, job and friends in Phnom Penh.

Upon my arrival back in the States, it became time to do some things that people despise more than jury duty summons and drivers who won't turn right at a red light.  Job applications and interviews.

First there is the actual job search.  The endless time spent looking online; the company websites where it takes you forever just to locate their career page and the weeding out of job posts that advertise as "entry level" but then require seventeen years of experience and a PhD in astrophysics.  Then there is the waiting time period as your resume is now lost somewhere in cyber space... (Insert X-Files theme song here.)

As I have been back, people are naturally curious about my time spent living in a third world country.  The general response is; "Teaching in Cambodia? That must have been quite the (awkward pause) experience," or sometimes "So what made you decide to live in Africa?"  But I will occasionally run into the skeptic whose right eyebrow will rise so high that it disappears completely into their hairline.

Actual conversation from one of the many interviews I've been on:

"So I see you graduated from the business school at SDSU in 2010, but your last work experience was teaching in Cambodia.. Hmm."  Here is where the skepticism began.  "Why did you decide to leave America and not pursue a job in your business career path?"

I was at least prepared for this one and I explained that "Teaching abroad was something that I had always wanted to do and being a recent graduate I came to realize that this was the perfect time to do it.... It was one of the best experiences of my life and I learned a lot of valuable lessons which will cross over to a job in my career path."  Short, sweet and kind of vague.  In my interview experience I have learned that it is best to give answers which will lead naturally into other questions as to steer the interview away from an interrogation and into a conversation.  Unfortunately for me, this led to more questions such as:

"Okaayyyyyy....... Were you actually paid for this job?"
"Were you running away from real life and now you're coming back to reality?"
and my personal favorite:
"Tell me about your biggest achievement, excluding Cambodia, because that is a little irrelevant."    

So after I apologized for punching my interviewer in the face, I diplomatically and calmly answered each and every one of their stupid judgmental questions.  During that part of my interview I felt like I was defending my decision instead of highlighting the amazing experience that it actually was.  Needless to say, I got a generic Email from that employer; "After careful consideration, we regret to inform you..."

Now I'm not trying to somehow make it seem that living in a developing country, where you can't flush toilet paper or where you have to wonder if that bug in your soup was an accident or an ingredient,  somehow makes me superior, nor do I expect people to react in the same way.  But, I do expect at least some level of respect instead of assuming I was involved in the drug trafficking circle in south east asia.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't always have to do what is expected of you just because society is is telling you it's the right and only thing to do.  To all the world travelers, jetsetters, my fellow English teachers abroad who work hard to make a difference, to those looking for a job, seeking a new job, hating the job you're in;  Now is your time to spell your mothafucking name in flaming gasoline in giant letters that can be seen from outer space while you shout from a very tall place "This Earth is my BITCH!" This is your life, your world, you are in control. Do something you love, or at least something you know you'll be good at.

The tallest place I could find.

To all the judgers, eye brow raisers, and haters.  Go back to your fucking desk in a windowless corner somewhere and leave the cool jobs for someone else.  

Don't worry I eventually found a job.

How To Spot a Ladyboy

If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

If you have ever spent any amount of time in Thailand then odds are that at one point or another you have come across a ladyboy.  The name is explanatory in itself, but for those of you who still live in your Westernized bubble, a ladyboy is a male to female transgender person or an effeminate gay male.  The ladyboys in Thailand look so perfectly feminine that it is often hard to tell the difference between a Thai lady and a ladyboy.  Playing the at-first-glance game "Is She a Lady or Ladyboy" is much like at-first-glance game "Is He Gay or European," where the differences are slight and the guesser is usually wrong.

Before coming to Southeast Asia I had heard funny stories of straight men being fooled into going home with ladyboys; typical men overlooking subtle hints such as big feet, broad shoulders and unusually deep voices and instead diverting their eyes straight to attractive facial features, perfect make-up, teeny waists and surgically enhanced breasts.  It was only when I sat down at my first Thai Bar in Koh Chang back in December that I really began to understand how hard it is to tell the difference.

Lucky for me I got into a conversation with a man at that same bar who offered me his knowledge and expertise on the subject.  He was your typical fifty-something chain-smoking divorced man with an ordinary name who came to Thailand looking to start a new life.  He had been living in Thailand for the last five years or so and was on vacation in Koh Chang with his (much?) younger Thai girlfriend.

(Side note: If I were to tell you this story in person he would have an English-ey slash Borat-ish sounding accent because that is how all my accents end up sounding, even though I'm pretty sure he was Swedish...Dutch?)

"There are a few key things that give a ladyboy away."  As he spoke, his Marlboro Light dangled expertly on his bottom lip in such a way that would give only the veteran smokers away.  I remember this detail only because I can't remember what he looked like due to the cloud of smoke that permanently enveloped his face.

He then proceeded to point out a tall beautiful woman dancing on the bar next to us.  She was one of those girls who make the rest of us look bad and whom I secretly hated.

"She is ladyboy, I know. First she has perfect hair and way too much make-up." Which is a wonder because in the heat I had managed to sweat off any trace of make-up I had on and my hair had that wet dog look.  Did she have her sweat glands removed when she got those DD implants? Witchcraft.

"Second, she is wearing a chunky necklace to hide her adams apple." 
"Third, she still has the male gene floating around there somewhere so she can't dance."

So in my journal I wrote, Ladyboy: a lot of make up, big necklace, bad dancer.  Right... These tips turned out to be no help at all to me because I have been back to Thailand four times since then and I still can't tell the difference.  Not that it matters because I think that is the point, and bottom line, lady or ladyboy she is still beautiful.

On my last trip to Thailand, my best friend Chris and I traveled to Phuket, where ladyboy's rule the night.  On one of our many epic nights out, we began our evening at a 5-star restaurant on the beach and then all of a sudden we were sitting in the VIP seats at Simon Cabaret, a famous drag-queen show in Thailand.  We were seated in between a loud Russian gay couple and a couple of Japanese business men. Perfect.  Needless to say it was one of the strangest experiences of our lives because in a normal drag show you can actually tell that they are queens but in this show... hard to tell.

Chris with Ms. Showgirl and Ms. GaGa (both ladyboys.)

Happy New Year!

Many countries in Southeast Asia celebrate their traditional New Year around the same time, April 13 through the 15th.   For this reason, we were excused from school for that entire week.  My good friend Adrienne and I decided to take full advantage of this long break and head to Thailand to participate in Songkran, a Thai festival celebrated to kick off the New Year.  The main tradition associated with Songkran is throwing water to symbolize purification and a clean start to a new year...so basically the worlds largest and longest water fight.  Your choice of weapon: a bucket or a super soaker.  Your target: Anyone and everyone. Bonus Points: Drenching someone who is dry or someone wearing a poncho. 

For the water fights we were in Bangkok, but at the beginning of the week we were in Koh Samet, the rebellious "don't-bring-up-its-name-or-you'll-upset-mother" child of Thailand's Islands.  Samet sips its Red Bull-vodka from a bucket, stays out until the sun comes up, and lives in the shadow of its older more respectable siblings, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Chang and Koh Lanta, all of whom have grown into the ritzy, mature and glamorous holiday getaway destinations.  Not that Koh Samet doesn't have its perks; with its white sand beaches, turquoise waters, and quiet tucked away alcoves, the island is charming and cleans up well when it wants to and was the exact holiday I needed.    

Hai Sae Kaew Beach.

Samet does offer a wide array of accommodations.  We experienced this first hand due to our incessant quest to find lodging on the island which would be more suitable for the wages of a Peace Corps volunteer and a 5th grade English teacher.  We literally stayed in a different room every night.  We began our stay in the VIP room of Jeps Bungalows, with its own bar and wrap around veranda and ended in the Shitbox room at Seahorse 2 with a broken fan and an invasion of questionably poisonous centipedes.  On the downgrade slope we were on, I am certain that if we had stayed one more night on Koh Samet, we would have ended up just crashing on the beach.  I would have been completely fine with that to be honest. 

My stay on Koh Samet was a perfect holiday away from the hustle and bustle and straight up chaos of Phnom Penh.  It was refreshing to hear the sound of waves crashing onto shore instead of motos crashing into cars, and it was nice to feel clean sand between my toes instead of whatever indeterminable gunk I normally trudge through.  I ran into some friends of mine who were also drawn to the appeal of Thailand's clean air and picturesque scenery.  We were a very interesting lot for numerous reasons and we shared more than a few laughs and a few more drinks! 

Trouble. 

That was the best part of the trip, being with good company that is.  And can I say cheers to my travel mate.  Despite her being ill and incapacitated for nearly four days due to a mysterious yet not-so-uncommon Cambodian bug, she was a trooper and still managed to have a bit of fun as I dragged her out to share a bucket-o-booze with me on the last night of our stay on Koh Samet.  A sign of a true friend.   

Me and Adrienne! 

     

Question of the Day!

Is there enough carbon dioxide gas within a bottle of Coke to fill and pop a balloon?

In science class, we are in the middle of  the unit on the 3 Phases of Matter: Solids, liquids and gases.  Teaching science without the proper science lab and tools has been a challenge at CIA so I needed to find an interactive and fun way to teach my class using the limited resources I have in Phnom Penh...

This led to my lesson on gas and carbonation!  Soda pop! This experiment allowed me to physically demonstrate what the atoms and molecules are doing within a gas and then send them off to their Khmer teachers, thirsts quenched from soda filled with about 1,000% of their daily caffeine and sugar intake!  Hyper active children=no longer my problem.  I am evil.

The warmer of my science lesson is usually a "Did you know??" segment related to whatever we are learning. And sometimes not. So...

Did you know...The pull ring tab was introduced in 1962 and the re-sealable top in 1965?

Coca-cola was the first soft drink to be consumed in outer space?

All porcupines float in water?  

To begin my lesson I taught my students why soda is fizzy. The carbonation found in soda is a phenomenon in which carbon dioxide gas is dissolved in water using high pressure.  The pressure is lowered when the soda bottle is opened, releasing the CO₂ in the form of little tiny bubbles.  To make it easier on the minds of my little fifth graders, I had them imagine a Giant Soda Monster squishing a gagillion of his little CO₂ prisoners into a plastic bottle jail cell and the prisoners are very angry and want to escape.  This was accompanied by lots of flailing hand gestures and my best evil monster voice, but I am pretty sure that from now on, whenever they open a soda, they will imagine they are helping with the release and escape of millions of tiny oppressed carbon dioxide prisoners. (Pun intended: oppression is derived from the idea of being physically weighted down!)

So how much CO₂  is actually inside a bottle of soda? Well the cola in a bottle of cola is pressurized to about two atmospheres of pressure and if one could get ALL the CO₂ out of the cola, it would fill a volume of about four times the volume of the cola itself.  To demonstrate this, I had my students do a simple experiment using a bottle of Coke and balloons! We started by opening the bottle of Coke at room temperature, (soft drinks hold more CO₂ at warmer temperatures than at colder temperatures, so if we did this experiment with cold Coke, less gas would be released.) Then we immediately fitted a balloon over the mouth of the bottle to trap all the CO₂ that was released from the Coke.  My students then watched in complete fascination as the gas released began to fill up the balloon.  We recorded our observations and I had them predict and guess what would happen next.  And of course, all good science experiments end with a bang so I had them shake the bottles as hard as they could.  They discovered that there is in fact enough CO₂ within a bottle of  Coke to fill and pop a balloon! Science is awesome. 

PS: Did you also know... Cambodia is the only place on Earth where the laws of physics and gravity do not apply? How is it possible to fit four people plus luggage on the back of a two person moto? Case and point below.  

I am also working on a coffee table picture book titled "Bizarre things found on the back of a moto in Cambodia." So look forward to that.

Murphy's Law applied to Cambodia.

"When one is in need of a tuk-tuk or moto driver, he is either not available because he is busy pestering someone else, he is drunk or he is asleep.  When one doesn't need him, he is asking to give one a ride even though one has already told him no literally two seconds ago."

In Phnom Penh, you will find the streets lined with tuk-tuk and moto drivers ready to give you a ride to virtually anywhere you want.  At first it was rather endearing.  Someone is always extremely  enthusiastic about getting you to where you need to be.  But after living in Phnom Penh for just about two months, I've really lost my sense of humor with tul-tuk drivers.  Let me try to being to explain....

The phrase "You need tuk tuk lady?" will forever haunt my dreams, as I hear it all day every day.

The drivers that sit at the end of my street have only just begun to figure out that I live on the same street and when I am walking home with keys in hand, heading in the general direction of my front gate, I do NOT in fact need a ride somewhere.  "You need tuk-tuk lady?" Um...no. I am already home. 

When I am stepping out of a tuk-tuk, because obviously I have reached my intended destination, I do NOT need a tuk-tuk. "You need tuk-tuk lady?" Seriously? I haven't even paid this one yet. 

What really kills me is I will be running to Independence Monument, about a mile from where I live, and I am clearly exercising based solely on the fact that I am in my work out clothes, sweating and oh yeah...jogging? And yet somehow from somewhere I still hear "you need tuk-tuk lady?"  Exercising of any sort is a foreign concept here so a person running is someone who needs to get somewhere quickly and time could be saved by driving.  

Whether you politely or rudely decline a tuk-tuk ride, you will be asked again not five seconds later, just in case you have changed your mind within the two and a half steps you've taken.  Then be prepared to be asked yet again by a different tuk-tuk driver driving next to the first one, even though he clearly heard you say no the first time you were asked.  It's a vicious battle.  

Also ignoring tuk-tuk drivers is not really an option as they take your no answer as contemplating whether or not you need a ride.  The best way to answer is with a simple "Maybe later," as this implies that at some point or another you will in fact need their services, just not at this very moment. Either that or "eff off." That usually gets the point across. 

 "You need tuk-tuk lady?" ...to anyone living in Phnom Penh, or has visited here, you understand my pain. 

Note: And of course when Murphy's law is applied to this situation, when one is caught on a sketchy back alley street in desperate need of a ride, there is not a tuk-tuk in sight. It's as if the universe is working against you.

I'm a grown up now with a big person's job.

My first couple of days back in Phnom Penh were very busy for me as I had to scramble around to what seemed like every single school in all of Cambodia to drop off my resume.  I was told that it was much better to show your face at a school and hand your in resume in person than to simply shoot them an email and wait for a reply.  After two days of traveling in tuk-tuk's all over the city with a new layer of dirt covering my freshly ironed interview outfit after every school I visited, I really couldn't be bothered going out to the last school on my list, Cambodia International Academy.  So I sent the academic supervisor my resume via email instead.  Funny that they were first school that called me back.   I had an interview, a demonstration teaching class and a full time job offer within the first weekend. 

I am now into my second week at Cambodia International Academy, a private international school for students K-12.    I am teaching 5th grade english, math, social studies and science.  Meet my morning students!  They are the sweetest. 

My favorite quotes from my students thus far: 

Note: In Cambodia, students will more often than not call their teachers "Chur." As in the last half of "teacher." 

"Teacher Rachael, you are from California?! You're like that Katy Perry Song." 

"Chur, I love your clothes. You are a fashion icon." (I am 100% sure she didn't understand the real meaning of fashion icon, but she was my favorite student of the day none the less.) 

"Chur are you Skype friends with Justin Bieber? Please say YES."

"Can you cook a chicken on the surface of the sun?" (I had just told my class that the surface of the sun was 6,000 degrees Celsius.) 

"That woman must be pregnant.  She has short legs." (I really couldn't tell you the context of that conversation...)

"2-4 is 2 Chur." (He sounded so confident when I asked him, like duhhh chur I'm not an idiot.)

"My girlfriend kick me so I kick her back." (I asked my student Barmey if he did anything fun over the weekend.  I don't know if that counts...)

It's quotes like these from my students that get me through the day just when I think I might go crazy!

It's My Life.

I have a long history of making quick decisions before I really sit down and think about the consequences, whether they be good or bad.  From going sky diving for the first time to packing my things and moving to Southeast Asia, I am not one to sit around and try to talk myself out of doing something I've put my mind to.

There are many aspects of my life of which I have absolutely no control over.  I've certainly learned the hard way that all of a sudden life can push you off the boat and leave you flailing in the middle of the ocean and all you can do is inflate your BCD and hope to keep your head above water.  And just when you're about to give up you look up and see there are two hands that are ready to pull you out of the water.  One is God's, and one is your own.  I've been there, gasping for breath, but what I've learned is that it's up to me to move on and make the best of what life has given me.  

For this reason, I take advantage of the comfort of knowing which parts of my life I can control.  I decide what I do with my spare time, whom I spend my time with, where I travel, where I live, what jobs I apply for.  I chose my own emotions and how I react to instances in my life and figure out whether or not to take them with a grain of salt.  I take responsibility for my actions.  I chose to be happy.  Granted, I've worked hard to get where I am, as happiness is not something that is served upon a silver platter.  Being happy is an reward you have to look to yourself for.  Too many times I've seen people living their lives clouded by the judgement of what they think is happiness, when really their lives are a reflection of someone else's.

"Tis' better to live your life imperfectly than live someone else's perfectly."

You need to do what makes you happy.  For me that was moving halfway across the world to live in a dirty third world country. :) Even though I miss my family and friends everyday, I needed to do this for me.

Point of this post being, I've again made a big decision in my time here in Southeast Asia.  I've once again packed up my suitcase, hopped on a plane, and moved back to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  There were many reasons that factored into my decision to move out of Pattaya, but the main reason (or at least the one I'm telling myself) was because I wanted to be back with the friends I made here.  It had nothing to do with Thailand or the "sinful" culture in Pattaya, and I could see myself moving back there eventually, but to surround myself with good friends seemed like the right choice for the time being.  Jobs are also easier to come by here.


I only have one life, and I plan to make the best of it!

Sa waa dee kah!

I have always thought I was pretty good at picking up foreign languages.  When I lived in Italy I could get around without speaking any English and I could carry on a full conversation in Italian.  During my travels through Germany I could get by on the basics despite not having spoken a word of German since high school.  My confidence was pretty high.  Until I came to Thailand.  It was like a high kick straight to my foreign language ego.   The language of Thailand is perhaps one of the hardest things I've ever had to learn.  The only things I can think of that might be harder would be learning brain surgery or how to fly a space ship or something.

Reason being: Thai has five different tones. High, low, rising, falling, and flat.  Literally you can make a complete sentence using only one word depending on which tone you use.  What the heck? But to a native Thai speaker they are completely different words with different spellings and meanings.

ไม้ ใหม่ ไม่ ไหม้ ไหม

mai - mai - mai - mai - mai

high - low - falling - falling - high

"New wood doesn't burn does it?"

Example of my first Thai language FAIL:

Me: "Chan yak pai Pattaya Neah kah."  Meaning "I want to go North Pattaya please." Or so I thought.
Motor Bike Taxi Man I: something in Thai that I didn't understand and then a look of confusion. "I no understand." 
Me: "Pattaya Neah....Pattaya NEAH." 

...more confusion and then a second motor bike taxi man got involved and they are rapidly speaking Thai as I am frantically repeating "Pattaya neah." 


Motor Bike Taxi Man II: "Pattaya neah!"
Motor Bike Taxi Man I: "Ahhhhhhh Pattaya neah!" 
Me: "I flipping just said that." 


What I learned later was neah with a rising tone means North, but neah with a flat tone means beef.  So apparently I was telling this poor guy I wanted to go to Pattaya beef.  Oopsies.    

All beef aside, Thai is a fun language despite its obvious challenges.  It will make me more sympathetic towards my students as I know what it feels like to be the student learning a foreign language.