New Roommate

 Two days after arriving in Siem Reap I walked into the bathroom of the apartment that Isabelle and I share and immediately felt something crawl up my arm. A couple of seconds later I felt the same crawling sensation on my shoulder. Thinking (or maybe hoping) that it was just a fly, I shook my arm and took another step into the bathroom. Moments later I looked down on the floor and found this little guy….

Before I go any further I’d like to note that I’ve never been one to be too afraid of bugs. Growing up I spent summer after summer camping and hiking with my family. Last year I worked at a Girl Scout Camp teaching 13-year olds about the outdoors. My junior year at Union I spent 5 months studying abroad in East Africa where more often than not I was spending my time outside. Upon my return home I even found a bug the size of my fist in my suitcase!

You get the picture—I’ve seen my fair share of bugs. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this guy. So when I stumbled upon my new, unexpected roommate that afternoon I immediately started screaming for Isabelle. John and his daughter Julia, volunteers from Albany, immediately rushed into the bathroom to see what was wrong. They found me in the corner of the bathroom with wide eyes and shaking hands, pointing frantically at the spider. A couple of seconds later Isabelle ran into the bathroom, joining the huge-spider-in-your-bathroom-freakout party. 

After a few minutes of gawking at the spiders 8 legs and enormous body we were able to safely evict the new roomie from our apartment. I do, however, have a sneaking suspicion that he will return one day... or worse, he could have friends! 

Later that night Dara, the Principal of TGC and the owner of our apartment, invited us to dinner with his family. His wife served red ant soup. While I’m usually down to try new things, this was a little too soon to imagine eating a bug (the jury is out on whether vegetarians get a pass on eating insects).

Other than developing a fear of my own apartment bathroom, my first two and a half weeks in Siem Reap have been really great.

I purchased a dark blue bike with a neon yellow seat and I’m *almost not afraid anymore to brave the hectic Siem Reap streets (the traffic here is crazy!!!).

I know my way around the city and most importantly I know where to find a taco when three meals of rice a day becomes too much.

I’ve also found a nice running route, which often includes weaving through cows and pausing my watch to walk (sometimes fall) over wooden bridges.  

All in all, I’m adjusting well.

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Last Sunday afternoon Iz and I sat at a coffee shop by the river re-reading Dan and Sydney’s (Fellows10) blogs from last year. Reading their blogs here in Siem Reap felt drastically different from reading them in my dorm room at Union. I'm really inspired by all that they were able to do for TGC, how much they immersed themselves in the Siem Reap community and how they seemed to continually push themselves outside of their comfort zones to try new things and to meet new people.

Two and a half weeks in, I'm realizing that I have a lot of expectations for myself for the next 8 months. I want to do the best I possibly can with this opportunity and normally I have a tendency to be really hard on myself in terms of meeting my goals. However, I'm trying to not let all of my expectations overwhelm me too soon. I'm hoping that throughout my time here I can let go of my intensity a little bit and learn to just be. 

My time at TGC so far has already started to push me in the right direction. Here’s an example: My first few days here I was obsessed with learning all 32 kids names. This task was made harder by the fact that these are names I’ve never heard before and when they’re written down on paper they look nothing like how you actually pronounce them. I was really frustrated with myself because I felt like it was taking longer than it should. I would stay up night after night reading their names off of a piece of paper and trying to picture their faces. After a couple of days of mixing up Sreymom and SreyAm and consistently calling Leanghour, which is pronounced Leng-ho, Long-hore (brutal, I know) I decided to try to get to know the kids more as individuals rather than just names on a list. Once I took some pressure off of myself the names actually came really easily. Sreymom’s favorite color is purple and SreyAm’s is blue duhhhh!!!

More updates to come soon,

Emma

In case any of you bug fanatics want a closer look!