Farewell to Tbong Khmum!

The countdown to leaving Tbong Khmum has begun! We have 2 more full days left (including today) in this town before we all spread out to our new locations. You can almost reach out and grabthe energy that's floating amongst all of us as we are packing and preparing to leave. While most of us will be sad to say goodbye to our families, looking ahead only brings excitement and nervousness. Last night I spent a couple of hours (full of interruptions from neighborhood kids who wanted to pull out everything I put in my box) sorting through everything I now own....things I need to leave with my family, things i need to ship to Siem Reap, things I need for the next few days.....it was a long and grueling process. Peace Corps is coming today and loading up all of our bikes, lock boxes, and any luggage we won't need for the next 2 days and will take it to our permanent sites where it will be waiting for us on the 4th. My room is going to look so empty here....!

This past week has been busy but farily uneventful. I think the most exciting thing was a new monkey that was brought to one of the wats here in town....she's an old monkey that apparently got in a bad scuffel at another wat so they brought her here. She's so friendly and has interuppted our language class on more than one occassion. The other day she crawled up onto our benches at the table and decided to take a nap. Later, one of my friends held hands with her while they both ate bananas. Apparently her comfortableness with humans is rubbing off on the other monkeys as one of them climbed our whiteboard yesterday and almost smashed himself when it fell over. They are definitely entertaining.

Last night my little sisters were all hanging out in my room while I was packing...they kept telling me how much they would miss me and that they love me....well then they started saying that they wouldn't love me and if another American came, they would miss her more...This was a fun game as I definitely made the most obnocious pretend crying noises I could muster until they said they loved me. We went back and forth with this game for a long time....it's amazing what can entertain little kids! :) Needless to say, however, I know I am going to be missed here and it makes me feel good. :) Maybe they will just miss my fancy shoes and makeup that they enjoy wearing. I was pretty proud of those shoes (the gold...shiney ones)...I have a beautiful Khmer skirt I had made here but did not have shoes to go with it. The ladies at the market had a great time helping me find shoes....since I have such small feet, they had a lot of options. My friend, however, was told her feet were too big and they did not have shoes for her. In the states, it's just the opposite! :)

Well, it's time to close this as i have more things to do on the internet before i head home to load up my luggage. This will be my last blog entry for awhile as I will not have internet in my village in Siem Reap. I am planning on going to Siem Reap town once a month for internet but will likely not get there more than that. My next blog will probably be sometime late in April or mid-May. I am going to try and load the rest/most of my pictures to my photobucket today so you be able to see all of them.

So long for awhile!