what i’ve learned in peace corps cambodia [pt. 14]

How to Say Goodbye.

I’m home now. I’ve actually been home for almost two months, but just haven’t gotten around to wrapping up this blog. So here it is, what will most likely be the last post before this blog gets retired. And yes, I actually learned a lot more than 14 things while I lived in Cambodia. I’d like to think that I learned a lifetime of valuable lessons from the time I spent there.

My last week in Cambodia was filled with goodbye parties, farewell dinners, and lots of afternoon coffee shop chats with local friends. There was nothing extravagant about it, but I couldn’t have asked for it to end any other way. It was a week of goodbyes filled with many kind gestures from coworkers, friends, and neighbors in a little town that had been my home for two years. It all culminated with me driving away in a taxi van with my 2 backpacks at my feet, my co-teacher and several students waving to me from the side of the road. It was difficult to say goodbye. It was difficult because I know where I am going, back to America. My co-teacher often made remarks about how he would love to live in America, or at least visit. He has an idea of the differences between the lives we lead here and there. But he doesn’t really know. Now I know, and I think that’s what made the goodbye so difficult. In a way, driving away was very much like cutting off contact. My friends in Cambodia still don’t have email addresses or facebook profiles. They have a vague idea of those things, but they don’t have the means to have them. So I only have several phone numbers written in a notebook that I use to keep in touch. Every friday evening I receive a message from my “Uncle Hang”, who owned the coffee shop I frequented. An incredibly wise man, fluent in English, Vietnamese, French, and Khmer, he entertained me for hours every day. He helped me more than he will ever know in those first 6 months, even in the first year at site, when all I wanted to do was have a conversation in English with somebody that isn’t about what I had for lunch or how much money I get every month.

As I drove away that morning, I received a final text message from Hang on my Cambodian phone -
“Hi, dear RT! How are you? I think you are not yet wake up when my sms sent to your handphone. This morning, you leave from your home to Phnom Penh and continue to your state. I’ll be the God to wish you and care your trip to get safety and will meet your relations with happyful. At the end of my speech, may I can say Goodbye with you!!”

I also received several more texts from my students who were unable to see me off, like this one, from one of my top students in my private class:
“I’m sorry I cannot accompany you because I’m busy, I’m terribly sorry about you going back home. So I bless you a nice trip and your beautiful life. May you be full of health and happiness and success in your life.”

Nearly four months has passed since I left my home in Cambodia, and it’s still hard to not miss something about it every day. And it turns out readjustment isn’t as rough as Peace Corps makes it out to be. (In a training session, an RPCV who had finished her service 10 years ago held up a photo that she took of her first time going grocery shopping in the US again. And she started crying, 10 years later.) Everybody handles it a little differently, I guess, but I think that in 10 years I’ll be more emotional about seeing pictures of the market I used to buy vegetables in in Neak Loeung than photos of the produce section at the local Pick n Save.

And I’m sure I mentioned somewhere along the way, more or less, that one of the other things I learned in Cambodia was to be frugal. So I practiced that in the two months after finishing the Peace Corps, from mid-July to mid-September, traveling in Asia on the smallest budget I possibly could. If you’d like to see photos of the trip, here they all are (there are a lot of them):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.798811923075.2257433.73404931&type=1&l=68afb3f080

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.798837267285.2257438.73404931&type=1&l=24291b60a1

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.802310362175.2258324.73404931&type=1&l=d454e1643b

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.802315661555.2258326.73404931&type=1&l=25c0ff3b4e

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.804479420365.2258889.73404931&type=1&l=411810fad4

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.804871519595.2258971.73404931&type=1&l=1e8eedb3e7

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.804943814715.2258984.73404931&type=1&l=ba4f56fb97

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.805288169625.2259070.73404931&type=1&l=066dd442d6

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.806197322675.2259317.73404931&type=1&l=03b443b720

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.806455465355.2259385.73404931&type=1&l=bf8d02c244

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.806900413675.2259483.73404931&type=1&l=77234054d0

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.813265827335.2261237.73404931&type=1&l=cf43f300bf

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.813896588285.2261344.73404931&type=1&l=26566ab231

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.814385638225.2261413.73404931&type=1&l=e950f84e80

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!