moderatelyExcessive

Like there’s any sufficient way of wrapping up the past month…

I’m busy working on the next phase of this website thing, but I’m doing it amidst a whirlwind of other things which require priority. Please stand by.

For anyone out of the loop, I’m now in Sihanoukville, Cambodia and will be for some significant time. As of Monday I’ll be teaching classes at both of Sihanoukville’s Universities (U of C. School of Management and Economics and Build Bright University) and a private grammar/high school called “The Home of English.”

Sihanoukville is what Cambodia has as far as beach resort towns go, and it is on the cusp of booming development-wise. It has incredible natural beauty – the muffin top islands you see in some photos are all easily and cheaply accessible by boat, and there are National Parks just to the North and South of here. It has tourist traps, for sure, but there are more than enough escapes, if necessary.

I went to one of those escapes today – Ch’naya Otres, which lies just a little too far to the south for most tourists to venture to when perfectly nice beaches are much closer. Anyway, shacks that double as homes and restaurants line the beachfront, and I stopped at one of the last ones I saw after a little girl screamed “Hello, Mister” from inside. After a swim and a coconut, I introduced Pic (the elder brother), Rok’hina (the cousin), Sara’ha (the middle of three daughters), Alin (the younger brother) and their aunt ______ to the Aerobie. Now, playing Aerobie along a dusty road along the beach in Cambodia was pretty damn special to begin with, and doing it with this family made it all the better. But here’s the thing, and forgive me for the schmaltz: Rok’hina is 8 years old, deaf, and has no ability to speak whatsoever. She has a few basic noises she makes – one kind of screech to get your attention, and a grunt to emphasize an instruction she is pantomiming you. She’s so bright, and she can even be a little bossy, as she often has to go to great lengths to get newcomers like me to understand her. When she first saw us playing with the aerobie, she would start to screech the moment it left someone’s hand, and wouldn’t stop until it was caught or hit the ground. Soon enough, she was making her own soundtrack when she finally got the nerve to join us, and freaking out in that way kids do when they’re having more fun than they can handle. She is now the owner of my spare aerobie.

She also grabbed my camera, assembled the tripod and shot the three portraits of her cousins in this photo batch.

My camera battery finally died just as she started posing, sitting on her mother’s lap with the aerobie around her neck, a puppy in her lap, and the sun setting over the Gulf of Thailand behind them.

As with any area experiencing a boom in tourist dollars, a lack of law enforcement, and some extreme poverty, there is trouble here as well – but that’s a story for another day.