Today, a short post but something worth sharing! For the past week, my host family has been talking about taking me to the pagoda (wat) on Sunday. I was super excited to go because they have not taken me to the wat before. I got dressed this morning in my sampot. Kaylee, another volunteer, came over with some members of her family and we all piled into the van to go to the wat (it was my host family, her host brothers, and then my host grandmother, grandfather, and a few others). When we got there, it was a full on festival! There were people selling different foods and drinks, and tables all around with people sitting and eating a meal. We walked into the temple and lit some incense and then we took a family photo (to which I was handed something to take the photo with-see the picture).
My host sister and her cousins showed us around and we walked over to see a lot of fish in a pond! I had some sugar cane juice and some peanuts and turnips as a snack. We walked around some more and then we sat down as a family and ate a meal at the wat. We also saw some other volunteers sitting at another table and they were trying out how to use some musical instruments. We came home and then I went to the market to go get some shirts to teach in and then I also got some dragonfruit to eat.
This afternoon, I followed my host sister to Kaylee's house (forgot to mention her host parents and mine are related). We sat and ate fruit (and her host mom got us all thai kroc chma, which is a way to my heart). After that, we went on a bike ride through the rice fields with our host siblings. I live so close to them, but I have never actually biked through them, and it was something so beautiful, words cannot describe the beauty. After that, we came back to my house and played some soccer in front of the house. We also ate cooked jackfruit which was so good (I tried to help peel pieces of the jackfruit, but I was not very good at it). My
host mom also came home with a bag of meat and asked me if I could cook the meat and at first I said I could and then I realized I genuinely couldn;t because I don't know how to because I was a vegetarian for song long in the US. That was tough trying to explain in Khmer "in the US I only ate fruits and vegetables, I ate not meat, and so it is hard for me to cook it because I do not know how). After dinner (and the meat cooked by my host mom, not me) I reinacted my experience at the market today, how I tried so hard to bargain, but did not get the best deals. I think it gave my host sister and host mom a good laugh though so you could say I didn't pay a higher price for the laughter of the family. After another long Sunday family day, I am ready to teach this week! I will be teaching primary students for 4 days and then high school students for 5 days. Wish me luck!
P.S. Here are some pictures from Saturday: one is of me and some friends getting tea after lesson planning and the other are some of my drawings to teach students vocabulary on Monday. I tried to show the word "jam" and demonstrate that you spread jam with a knife, but it did not look good so I had to white out the knife.
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