Things have been busy here for me, and its not that I'm so busy, its just that some times it takes an entire day just to get one thing done. The heat takes it out of you as well. But hey I got a job, as an English teacher, at Beltei 4 teaching level eight. Tomorrow is my first day and needless to say, I'm nervous about getting up in front of a class for the first time. But I've never had a hard time finding things to say and as a native speaker I know much more about this language than any of my students could hope to learn by the grade I'll be teaching. Applying for the job, I was interviewed by the head of the school, a powerful man in Cambodia. He has the title of "His Excellency" and is also one of the advisers to the Council of Ministers. The types of people you meet in this city are very different from anything I'm used to. The locals don't really appear to befriend westerners too often and there are less expats in this city than there were kids I went to high school with. This still feels very exciting, and its just beginning to feel like I'm actually living in a new place. I find myself often thinking of when I lived in Santa Barbara and the comparison of starting there and here. Recently It's feeling more regular to me, I worry about more normal things. The craziness of traffic is becoming routine, and stepping outside my front gate to the cracked streets and constant flow of people is feeling familiar. The buildings with shades of decay and what look like burns, aren't as striking or as run down looking as they were a month ago.
Remember going to camp and it's an freakin awesome time, but you were always tired and everything gets dirty and never really gets clean until you go home? I think that describes a lot about how I feel in Cambodia.
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