Although New Year's Eve was a couple of days ago, I have just gotten around to this post because I started teaching this week so it has been a busy time (stay tuned for an update soon about all my teaching experiences). For New Year's Eve, my host mom wanted to take me to Poipet, but then she decided that we should stay home! Also some relatives went to Battambang, but my host parents and host brother stayed home with some of my student siblings and we had a party!
I got a new shirt that says "Let's Dance!" and I got to wear it for the holiday. We had a barbecue grill out with fish and chicken wings while we sat around and drank and sang karaoke! I was shocked we would all stay awake until midnight because my family is usually asleep by 9 because they all wake up at 4-5am. Our neighbor also came over and so it was all of us singing
and dancing and it was so fun! But for sure towards the last hour I was getting very tired. During the night too, we had a coconut jelly dessert that my host mom made for us and my neighbor thought it was so good but my host mom said that we would need more coconuts to make it. So we ended up going across the street and some of the students climbed a ladder to pick the coconuts from the tree (I was the coconut catcher).
While we were singing karaoke, we actually sang some songs in English. I do not know why, but See You Again by Charlie Puth really made me happy (sad song but the chorus is too good). This sounds weird, but especially listening to the song, it felt like time froze and I was so appreciative for my family and friends welcoming me into their home. Some of the students went to buy fireworks and so around midnight we launched some small fireworks and had some sparklers too. I stayed awake until 1:30, and when I got up to go to sleep, everyone was like "no
stay!" but I was about to pass out (they stayed up until 3 in the end). I slept well leading into the new year, but then woke up at 7:00am to my host brother banging on my window saying "Alex what are you doing!" with a sleepy response "I am sleeping"... so then I got to sleep until 8:30 instead.
On New Year's Day, we went to my host mom's sister's house and watched the rice fields and hung out!
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