You Are a Very Rich Man

The staff at the café in the building that I live in have a good sense of humor. Here is the latte that they served me. When it arrived about three staff walked over to my table and hovered over me with big smiles.

 

After nearly 2 ½ months the things that I shipped from the US were delivered to my home today. There was not a single box that did not break open in transit. (Perhaps the Cambodian Football Club kicked them all the way from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and that is also why they took so long to get here.) Only the wooden boxes that I made to ship my art in made it undamaged. I was very surprised to see that everything was delivered and that nothing was confiscated by Customs. That being said, I now have way more things than I need and so I will be giving away a lot of things. (The lead mover helped me unpack some of the boxes and said numerous times, "You are a very rich man." I really feel badly for the over-abundance of things I have bought.) What took up the most room to ship was my mattress, my beloved Sleep Number mattress that I have had for 11 years. Come to find out that the bed frame in my room is larger than queen size! On top of that there were two casualties right off the bat. When I plugged in my DVD player it started smoking and the Sleep Number pump also suffered a Cambodian currency blow out. This is the difference between 200 volts versus the American 110 volts. So, now I am nervous about using my blender or coffee maker until I buy a Voltage Regulator. Interestingly, I have had no issues with my iPhone or computer chargers; I think because the charging cords of each of these may have a regulator built into it.

Homemade shipping crates

 

My Khmer lessons have been exceptional. Dany, my teacher (Locrew in Khmer) is patient and really works me hard. Today our lesson went over by nearly an hour and at the end she asked me if I was tired. Yeah I was tired. My mind was fried! Part of our lesson today was to go to the market (next door) and I had to buy three small items and could only speak in Khmer. Plus, I had to bargain on each of the item’s prices (Anee moiman? – how much is this?... Klymay! – too much!; Neohm teng bye – I will buy two). I unsuccessfully tried to reduce the price of a roll of Mentos from 1000 riel (25 cents) to 750 riel and was similarly unsuccessful in reducing the price on everything else – finally buying everything at full price and walking away from the market (Psahh in Khmer) with a $1 bag full of junk food (potato chips, Milo, and Mentos). Dany was happy with how I did though. I also learned how to tell time today; and we have just begun writing lessons too and that is very complicated.                                                                                                                                                                                

 

If you have seen my handwriting then you know that I have penmanship that resembles a drunk monkey’s. Add to that trying to write using Word’s Shapes function and a mouse pad and you really have a recipe for unrecognizable writing, but truly this is approximately how Khmer looks for the numbers 1 – 10. My homework yesterday was to do math problems using only these characters.