Trees in Angkor Thom

 

Vinegar Festival

 In my first year in Cambodia, I don't think I noticed the seasons, it was just hot all the time. And I rarely saw a sunset or sunrise. Things are really different now.

In November the rainy season ends and boat races are usually held. For me it's often a time to clean up any mold that has grown in the house during rainy season. The last 3 November I was sick (2018-2020) but this November just gone I was NOT sick! In the lead-up to Water Festival, I sorted out things and gave away a lot of preschool materials that we had grown out of. 

Even though we have lived in this house for 4 years, we haven't got around to getting furniture and decorating the walls yet. But November 2021 I had some days to myself, with good health, and I got to clean out the playroom and buy a sofa and cupboard. So putting up the Christmas tree this year was really different to the last few years. We had a place to put it!

Water Festival worked out as the end of rainy season and the start of cool, dry season and Advent. 

Books!

Yesterday I was in Hong Kong in 1995 by way of reading The Space Between Memories, by David Joannes, then hopped over  to America in the 1800s as I'm reading Benny and the Bank Robber books (Mary C. Findley) to our children. 

I'm also many hundreds of years back in time, but set right where we live as I'm reading Temple of a Thousand Faces, John Shors (also A Women of Angkor, John Burgess). 

I'm enjoying reading other people's descriptions of what I see each week as I ride my bike through the temple park. Some examples: 

"Monkeys leapt from branch to branch, chasing one another, causing leaves and twigs to tumble from great heights. Though sometimes a monkey would drop a few feet, strike a thin branch, and appear destined to fall to its death, no brown blurs plummeted from the canopy."

Shors, John. Temple of a Thousand Faces (p. 112). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

"The sun was hiding for a bit now. The sky had reached that pregnant stage of late day in the monsoon season, clouds gathering purposefully, about to bless the earth with another shower. I looked up. I remember thinking how lovely the first drops would feel on my skin."

Burgess, John (2013-03-27T22:58:59). A Woman of Angkor . River Books. Kindle Edition. 

Christmas days 2021

Soeun noticed it from Facebook. 

I noticed it from a ride in the temple park.

Cambodians celebrating Christmas.

Since before I arrived in Cambodia, Christmas has been a big deal for local believers. But this year it seems like the general population is taking their family to the park and posting Christmas greetings online.

We had our family Christmas on 24th this year instead of 25th, as Soeun and Kanya have been busy getting ready for Sunday 26th Christmas program.

I like it better when Dec 25th falls on a weekday, away from the busy time of church. But it actually worked out ok. It meant that December 25th felt like a bonus holiday. Like having a meeting cancelled in the middle of a hectic day.

We had already done presents and Christmas, so we didnt have any big things to do. But it wasn't a school day so it felt like an extra holiday with Christmas leftovers and no agenda.

Soeun and the others spent the day making decorations and killing ducks, but the kids and I just enjoyed Christmas day 2.

And today the prep for Christmas continues, as the program is the afternoon.

 

First international flight into Siem Reap since March 2020

 

Angkor Thom

 

So Confusing It Makes Sense

 “Alice's Adventures is Wonderland ” I recently read out loud to my children. It is such a great description of what is it like to move back to your passport country or move to a new country in the first place. Her confusion makes things so clear. Like this quote:

“Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. “I don’t quite understand you,” she said, as politely as she could.”

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (AmazonClassics Edition) (p. 36). AmazonClassics. Kindle Edition.

Opening up

 Soeun had soccer for the first time in months. 

I've been to the dentist (had to do a self-test at the door). 

I also recently got new glasses. (The eye test was confusing at first until we realised the test lens was fogged due to my mask.)

The PM said things are all open now. 

Schools are meant to be open. Although in some cases it will take some time to get them ready if they have been used for treatment.

Children's vaccinations, cold weather...

The road continues. Footpaths!

 

Markets, children's jabs

Children are getting jabbed now! Adults and teens are already fully vaccinated and for these 2 weeks children down to age 6 are getting their first shot. 

Our friends tried 3 times, and finally on the 3rd day they went at 5.30am and got number 300 and something. Crazy! Hope it will be less crowded this week.

I love the clouds at this time of year.

New outdoor market. Thanks to the government for setting up a safe place to buy fresh produce.

Lenses 6 years old, frames even older. Scratched and falling apart! I had an eye test the other day. We laughed part way through when I realised the reason why the numbers were all blurry was not because my eyesight had got worse, but because of mask wearing fog on the tester thingy.

 

Dear Re-entry

 

Dear Reverse Culture Shock,

I have not enjoyed spending time with you. You are a sneaky thief. Beyond that, your identity is ambiguous. You have made moving back to my passport country horrible.

I’m never sure whether I should call you Reverse Culture Shock or Re-entry. And if Re-entry, how do I spell it? People can’t agree if it’s Re-entry or Reentry.

Even though I have had many dealings with you, I still don’t know what to call you. That says something about your nature. You’re elusive, invisible. 

I wish you were more like your brother Culture Shock. Although also unpleasant, I appreciate that he is obnoxious. Like you, he steals, but in a more obvious way.

Or why can’t you be like your namesake Spacecraft Re-entry? He is loud. Everyone knows he is the most dangerous part of a space journey. Getting back into Earth’s atmosphere is a vulnerable time, and it can be disastrous if is not done carefully.

You are not obvious or loud; you hide away like an afterthought, silently stealing from me.

You stole my house, my job, my friends — lots of tangible things like that but also my skills and identity. You turned me into an incompetent invisible immigrant. On the outside, I look like a normal Australian, but I don’t know how to do anything. At least in Asia, my white skin announces that I will need help talking or eating.

You stole my ability to do things people expect me to be capable of doing. I look like everyone else, so drivers assume I will know how to cross the road. People in the supermarket expect me to be able to buy a box of breakfast cereal.

Read the rest over here: A Life Overseas

Sept/Oct photos

The whole town has looked like a construction site for about a year now. 38 roads being re done!

I just finished reading this to our children. We inherited it from an American homeschool family. Its a collection of short stories, including some chapters out of other books such as Dr Dolittle. Such a fun variety of stories it kept us all interested. It is actually part of a reading program for older kids, but we used it for bedtime reading.

Fruit from Grandma s house

The chickens were eating the bananas so instead of keeping them on the ground outside they are hanging on the window. Pretty handy, right next to the kitchen table.

This time of year is storms, floods and migraine triggers.

 ...and Pchum Ben.

When getting sick feels like you’ve landed in a foreign culture (1 of 2)

How I Make Sense of Chronic Dizziness

Part 1- How it started

 “Sorry I can’t come, my husband is dizzy.”

It sounds ridiculous.

Why would I need to cancel something because my husband is a bit dizzy?

And people’s natural responses sounded ridiculous to me.

“Ok, make sure he drinks enough water.”

Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

When we arrived in Australia we expected reentry/culture shock. We knew we were going to be in a different world and that that would mean stress and disorientation.

It’s an inherent part of your life when you’re an Aussie married to a Cambodian. I’d read books and blogs, talked to people, made my own lists of my own experiences so far. I was expecting the first few months back in Australia to be extra hard.

Being uprooted from the familiar and landing in a new place is exhausting. It helped that we expected it and we could understand where the stress was coming from.

Even though we anticipated this, it was still stressful and painful. Some things might not have been obvious at the time. But later we could look back on it and notice the role culture shock played.

So we entered a new country, Australia. At the same time we also entered the world of undiagnosed debilitating sickness.

We didn’t know we were going into it, and so there was no preparation or expectation of what it would be like. I don’t think I even knew such a world existed.

Unlike culture shock, we had no way to prepare and often no way to even know where the stress was coming from.

Why is a world of undiagnosed debilitating sickness stressful?

Stress #1

Seeing my spouse in pain was bad enough. But not knowing what it was, not having a name for it, not being able to do anything about it — made it worse. There were a few times of acute pain when I actually thought Soeun was going to die. And many months of feeling like he had disappeared under a heavy pile of symptoms. It was hard to imagine that he would come back, as despite all the things we tried he was not improving.

I could see how The Dizzy Monster had transformed him. Since it began its attack the 24/7 fight with it exhausted him. But doctors could only see negative test results, and to others, he looked normal. On one hand, it was a relief when we got the brain CT scan results back and it was all clear. But also frustrating as it meant the enemy was still invisible.

Stress #2

Unsolicited medical advice is a normal part of life for a chronically ill person. The internet is full of articles on how to handle it, and mocking memes. When I learnt this 4 years after the fact it was a big relief!

It’s usually with good intentions. Your friend (or a random guy on the street) tells you that his neighbour tried cutting a certain thing out of his diet. It worked for them so you should try it too and you’ll be better in no time.

When advice is coming at you from many people, and you’ve already tried lots of things it is a source of stress. But because you can see the giver is trying to help you feel you should be polite and say thank you.

Stress #3

Social isolation is another part of chronic illness life. Before entering dizzy world receiving a dinner invitation would have been fun. But it became frustrating and disappointing. We would say “yes” to an invitation but on the day Soeun would be sick so I would end up going by myself, or not going at all.

As a few one-offs, that’s kind of ok. But when it becomes a general pattern it makes life hard. Not being able to keep commitments. Not being able to show people they are important to us by spending time with them. So it’s easier not to make plans, then we don’t have the disappointment of breaking them.

We had a community of people around us who were trying to care for us. We found that even when friends asked how they could help we didn’t know how to reply. The double whamming of entering the two new worlds at once was overwhelming.

Fast forward to now

Almost a decade, two kids, and many house moves later, we are still struggling to live with The Dizzy Monster. But here in Cambodia Soeun’s symptoms aren’t debilitating. Sadly our old normal is gone but the real Soeun is back and we have a new normal.

The stresses didn’t go away when a doctor described his symptoms as Vestibular Migraine. It’s a little-known, little-understood condition so in some ways receiving a diagnosis didn’t make it easier.

Telling people he has Vestibular Migraines seems to make them think he has a headache or a sore ear. These commonplace illnesses don’t describe our experience at all. A huge transformation took place when The Dizzy Monster joined the family.

I could never have guessed what a big impact this would have on us. I thought it was like any other stress we’d had before, that the memory would fade with time. But all these years later making sure he drank enough water feels like putting a band-aid on an amputated leg.

Coloured zones suddenly gone...

 ...and now everyone is travelling and gathering.

Out of Red Zone, faded back to Orange, maybe over 11k all up in SR now, since 9th March

 So at the end of last week our village finished in Red and went back to being Orange. We are allowed to leave the house now, and technically it means we can go food shopping a few times a week. However, we can't actually access any food shops as the surrounding villages are still in Red. And the market isn't closed, but it isn't open either.

Internet is still unstable. Can't do much at day, no school, streaming, calls etc. We can download and upload at night. And using message apps seems ok as the message just sits there until it can send.