Cambodia: Day 29

Wednesday, June 7th, 2011

RACHA Child Health and Nutrition Unit

8:52 AM

[A shot from an Indian soap opera. Read on and you'll understand why it's on here. Trust me.]

I'm currently waiting for Dr. Ketsana to finish her little pow-wow with one of the guys that works in my unit. My survey is finished, I just need her to take a look at it to make sure it's all good to go.

Oh, wait! She just finished!

And there she goes … out the door.

Great.

In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and tell you about my day yesterday. Not only will I be able to get caught up on my journaling, but I will also look like I'm being a busy and productive intern in the process. Killing two birds with one stone, right?

Yesterday was productive. I was able to sit down with Dr. Juliette and go over the draft I had of my survey. She gave me a lot of great tips and I think we've worked out most of the kinks. We also talked about scheduling. Apparently Dr. Ketsana wants me to stay within the provinces where the program was offered and not go outside of that, so my plan to go to Koh Kong next week with Mike's team isn't going to happen.

Rule #1 of interning: Never assume that any of your plans are going to work out. Ever.

With no trip to Koh Kong, I'm going to be either going to Siem Reap, Pursat, or Prey Veng. I would like for someone from my program to go with me, but we'll see if that happens.

Our lunch break finally came and I headed home with Tuni. Lauren had left for Kampot province at about 11:30 with her team, so I was going to be eating alone for the next four or five days. I got home and promptly set my bag on the floor and grabbed my bowl. Sitting at a desk for hours makes you surprisingly ravenous.

Om Loon swung in her blue hammock in the middle of the living room, her brown belly sticking out of the bottom of her blouse. I sat down at the table and piled food on top of my bowl full of rice. I was surprised and a little disappointed that she wasn't watching her usual Indian soap opera.

Allow me to interject for a moment. What do you get when you combine terrible acting, horrible cinematography, and atrocious plot lines?

What is an "Indian soap opera", Alex.

Despite the fact that so many awful elements go into the production of such a program, I have to say that they're surprisingly entertaining. The show is in Hindi, but fortunately for me they have subtitles in English. The subtitles are a little rough, with grammar problems here and there, but if anything they enhance the program and make it seem that much more dramatic.

What is impressive, though, is that Om Loon understands what's going on! The first day I watched the show with her, she was explaining to me as best she could what was happening. I was reading the subtitles and still couldn't fully follow what was going on, but she had it down. Every so often she'd see a word pop up on the subtitles that she knew and she'd repeat it.

"… I will break you out of jail, Mr. Indian Man that is Actually the Rebellious Semi-Evil Twin of Me. You have my word. I know you're innocent!"

"Innocent! Innocent!"

It's quite the phenomenon, really.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about originally. I ate lunch and retired to my room, not quite sure what I was going to do with the ginormous bed that was now all mine for the next few days.

Yeah, right. I totally know what I'm going to do. Sleep!

I returned to work that afternoon and continued with my survey. Dr. Juliette spent a good chunk of time helping me figure out how to most efficiently conduct my research. I'm definitely going to need to make some nice baked goods for that woman before I leave.

I returned to my corner and continued with my work. Eventually the clock struck 5:30 and Tuni and I got our stuff together to leave. It was raining outside, and I was in no mood to have all of my goods soaked in my backpack, so I threw my waterproof cover on and headed out to the hall.

What we found wasn't just rain, though. It was a downpour. Cambodians huddled underneath the overhang outside, trying to decide if it was worth it to drown or wait it out. All I knew was that I wanted to get home, so Tuni and I decided to take on the challenge and grabbed our bikes.

I don't remember "Olympic swimmer" being in the list of qualifications for this internship position...

I was soaked within seconds. Water droplets poured down my face and made it difficult to see. I spit to the side multiple times, trying my hardest to keep the rainwater out of my mouth. We drove past a dump truck full of men, all of which were attempting to fit themselves underneath a clear plastic tarp. They laughed at us as we went by. I don't blame them, I'm sure we looked absolutely ridiculous.

Not to mention, they looked pretty ridiculous themselves.

We finally made it to Tuni's house where we stored our bikes and posed for some pictures. Khmuuii came out to greet us in his pajamas and it wasn't long before he was splashing out in the rain. I walked across the street to my house, only to find that it was empty. Dinner was set on the table, so I hurriedly ran upstairs and exchanged my sopping clothes for dry ones.

The crazy thing?

It's not even the rainy season yet.