Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Follow through, Challenge, love and Cambodia.

This has been a fairly transformative year or so for me. 

           
At my birthday last year I decided that this year would be my year of follow through. I removed the word should from my vocabulary and instead followed through with the things I thought were important. Instead of saying I should eat healthier I challenged myself to eat healthier. Instead of saying I should exercise more often, I did it.  Instead of thinking ‘ I wish I was one of those people who ran and did yoga everyday’  I became that person. This year I worked on transforming myself into the the person I have always aspired to be. Then after all that follow through I decided this next year (2015-2016) would be my year of challenge. 


before I left Morocco in front of my house
in Cambodia with chips I ate in Morocco 
picking up our boss
         



















 It’s been a long and a wonderful year and half or so. I didn’t do a response post to arriving in America after my Peace Corps service because it was hard. I didn’t really know what to write and on one hand I felt like my integration back to my home country was easy and fun but I had a rough and isolating winter last year. Luckily that ended and thawed into the best spring of my life. 
After a winter of buying way too many bra’s and working at a gas station I took a position at Nature’s Classroom in Connecticut. I have worked seasonally for all of my adult life ( barring my Peace Corps service) and this past spring was truly magical. I have never worked a season where so many people got along so well for so long. So much so that we still want to be around each other even a year later.
 You can call us Cultbrook but we prefer Soulbrook ;) I love my new Soulbrook family and they all made me a better person. I learned more about myself, I challenged myself, and I soaked in as much information as I could from their knowledge and expertise.
after a day of playing like children
Soulbrook on the stoop
         



     










As a community we challenged each other, supported each other and I know I’m better because of our time together. I didn’t know it but I had developed a  mistrust of men from my time Morocco- the nature of my co-workers helped me shake that off. I found my way back into my own country and learned what I valued, and what I loved about my home after being away for 2 years. I dove deep into the forest without shoes on , held wild snakes, did acrobatic tricks, sang everyday, slept in a hammock city, truly saw the wildflowers, stalked bobcats, played like a kid, learned the names of the trees and made America my home again. I  found my feet underneath me and I grew more confident. My new family helped me transform. 
the beginning of my headstand. 
          When the ground finally thawed my friends would kick off their shoes and scamper into the woods and as I watched them pick lines through the trees I decided that I wanted to be able to do that too. So I started running and eating better and exercising, I stopped making excuses and I made myself stronger. I spent months figuring out how to do a headstand. All in all in the past months I have found so much that’s important to me. I have a new love for myself , for nature and for my country. And then I left again. 

          
after months of effort- my headstand on top of mount lafayette in NH


Ha! Right now I am accepting a new challenge. Turns out I have never truly dated before and last fall while still at Nature’s Classroom I met this wonderful man Ox who wooed me but had already started planning this trip to Cambodia. When our time at Nature’s Classroom was over I still wanted to be with him so when he left at the beginning of this year I knew I would rather be with him in Cambodia then not be with him at all. It’s hard for me to leave the woods, and the mountains and the country I have fallen in love with again but I know it’s still there and I know this is where I belong right now. Cambodia and Ox are both incredibly wonderful. 
Moroccan Market
Cambodian Market
         Visually it reminds me a lot of Morocco- the store fronts, the traffic and the markets all echo Morocco’s aesthetic but that’s pretty much the end of the similarities.



Fruit in Morocco 

Fruit in Cambodia














 The food is so different and I love all of it- also I’ve started eating meat because even though it is a Buddhist country the majority of the food here relies on meat and I want to eat EVERYTHING. In my 2 weeks here I have not had a single meal that I haven’t liked if not loved- well besides the durian and the crickets I did not like the durian and I could take or leave the crickets- but everything else has been phenomenal. I feel much safer here then I ever felt in a Moroccan city, people smile a lot more at each other and I have had no street harassment besides a few kids asking for money at traffic lights and the tuk tuk (taxi) drivers asking me if I want a ride (because why would I want to walk anywhere ?!?! it’s hot out!). In the past two weeks I’m realizing I have some things still to resolve and process about my time in Morocco and how it made me feel. Being in Cambodia is helping me discover some of the things I learned during my time in Morocco because I obviously spent the last year learning to love my home and not exactly reflecting constantly on my Peace Corps service. Being in Cambodia makes me miss Morocco and I would be lying if I didn’t say I missed America a little- but mostly because I LOVE spring and I wish I could see the forest transform from a winters sleep into green and bloom. However I am so happy to be here and so grateful for all that I have experienced and everything leading up to this moment and all the new experiences to come. 
Ox and I in NYC before he left for Cambodia
Ox and I eating jellied coconut in Cambodia
          














Next week I’m going to be starting a TESOL course through a program called LC- Asia then get a teaching job here ( fingers crossed I will be getting a job teaching science). But in the meantime I am trying all sorts of new things, hanging out with some old Kingsley Pines friends- Kelsey and Brandon- and being with the lovely man that brought me to this country. I’m going to try and be more diligent then I was with my Peace Corps blogging, but we shall see what truly happens. I’ve been saying I was going to write this post for about 3 weeks now. This blog is a new challenge, and this is after all my year of challenge. 
Vietnamese Coffee with sweetened condensed milk

My first day in Cambodia
      
Trying Durian 


SE Asian Kingsley Pines Reunion! 
Crickets