I am eating a Sandwich Now... in Phnom Penh

Everything is at once different, yet familiar, but still not quite right. Like the stationary store that also sells sports equipment. Or the half stocked pharmacy with things like "super floss" and "spasmo" medicine. Or from the very specifically named Mini Banana Restaurant to the infinite possibilities of the Do It All Pub. There's a thousand things to see and note, and I couldn't possibly begin to put them all down here. In that sense, living somewhere exotic is so different than traveling somewhere exotic. When you're traveling, everything's supposed to be different, that's the experience. When you live there, everything's different and you have to try to make it make sense to you so you can find your way through it on a daily basis. Crazy.

The school I work at is very nice and caters to the international and wealthy families. The kids are, of course, cute, as kids are pretty universally cute. But this is the kind of school where you hear "I learned that song when I lived in Hanoi" ("Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me") or "Teacher, do you speak Korean?"

And speaking of languages, things are a bit strange. Obviously Khmer would be useful to know, but Mandarin is used around the school a lot too (mostly among staff), and French pops up in odd ways here and there. For example, the street the school is on is labeled "Street 51 (Rue Pasteur)" on signs. (At least I get to teach in English.)

Speaking of streets, the one the school is on is vey nice, and in a nice part of town. By "nice", I mean the buildings are fancy/important and the shops and restaurants nicer. There's a huge, fancy house next door to the school, but when we asked who lives there the most extensive answer we could get was "His Excellency". (I have no idea who this is, but it's not the king or prime minister as they have official residences.) We're near a lot if UN agencies, big NGOs (like UNICEF), and International schools. A nice part of town. However, as this is still Cambodia, "nice" part of town means that all the buildings are behind walls and iron gates topped with curly barbed wire. Nice, yes. Inviting, no.

Not to mention I'm still a huge target for every tuk tuk tout, taxi driver, and begging child or amputee. Sigh, not that I ever won't be, I suppose, being so incredibly white.

I feel like my life is so ridiculous, so strange, so drastically different and all of a sudden so, that it's not like my life has been turned upside down, but rather that I waltzed in and took over someone else's life.

Goodbye for awhile, USA

"We're going to miss you, but I feel like this is how life is always going to be with you -- airports." -my mom

On Monday I found out/decided I'm moving to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for at least two months to teach piano lessons. I don't really know what else to say, although I guess this sudden announcement does warrant a bit of an explanation. A close friend of mine (from rugby and college) has some family friends who own a music school in Cambodia, and they needed some music teachers very last minute (why is another story). I'm not doing anything, nor is there anything I absolutely cannot miss in the next two months so... why not?

I can apparently extend my stay longer if I want, which I might do depending on how things are going. After I'm done I may travel around for for a bit. We shall see. I have to say I'm very excited to be moving abroad again*, and although the location is decidedly more challenging, I'm excited about the relative freedom the opportunity affords me. (Stay an extra month? Ok. Done working? Go blow all my money SCUBA diving in Indonesia! Or go see India. Or something.)

Moral of the story: I'm REALLY glad my parents made me take piano lessons when I was a kid. And sometimes life changes very, very quickly.

*The first time was Scotland, for my Junior year abroad. Very different. (But still, how exciting is it that I get to say "moving abroad again"?)

Why I love having an ungainly music collection

As of this moment, my iTunes library has 10,410 songs from 1791 artists. It's a total of 48.78GB of music, which would take 28.2 days to listen to. That's pretty incredible. I could start my music on February 1st and it would keep playing into March (non-leap years only). From time to time I struggle with the fact that I could never really listen to and enjoy that much music, nor have I actually listened to all of it. I frequently download new music on spec, suggested by blogs or friends or band pages or music mags. I download more than I get a chance to listen to, and frankly, it's information overload.

However, this has had some rather positive unintended consequences. I now have, more or less, my own radio station packed with new music that I'm likely to find interesting. Of course it's already packed with music I love, which I can play whenever I like, but when I'm lazy and want to listen to good, new stuff without thinking about it, my best bet isn't going on a quest through the internet or turning on the radio, but just putting my existing music on shuffle. It's especially great because sometimes certain songs just have to catch you in the right mood for you to recognize how great they are.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying I found these tracks in the depths of my music collection and now I think they're brilliant:

Holy Fuck "Lovely Allen"
Holy Fuck - Lovely Allen by bakedfreshplaylist

The Electric Prunes "You Never Had it Better"



Josef K "Chance Meeting"

(Version with better sound quality after the break)