You wake up. It’s 5am.
You unstick yourself from your sleeping pad that is inches off the ground.
What’s sticky you ask? Your sweat of course.
You very carefully step over mattresses and fans and power strips and bodies sprawled out over the floor.
You slide a bent rod off where there should be a lock, and push the door open to the balcony.
Outside the sky is dark and there’s a slight breeze.
Your only alone time ends at 6:30 and it starts NOW.
You journal about the day before, you read another chapter in Mark, and you hang out with God for a little and update him on your life.
You play music as loud as you can handle in your headphones to drown out the Khmer monk calls (Khmer is the Cambodian language).
Around 6 the sun pops up and the heat begins its ascent.
By 6:30, its breakfast time and your wiping the first morning sweat off your forehead.
At the breakfast table everyone appears half dead, but slightly more alive than when you climbed over them this morning.
You chow down on eggs and fruit. Sometimes its fruit and eggs but mostly its eggs and fruit. Occasionally bread.
You have a small amount of time before Sam the Tuk Tuk Man arrives. Some say he drives a tuk tuk, some say it’s a chariot, either way she’s beautiful and she holds all of Abundance and occasionally Aly with only the engine of a motor scooter.
For the first 15 minutes of the drive you observe the ongoings of the city around you- the burning of the street trash, the cutting of the coconut, the sipping of the iced beverages.
After 15 minutes you turn a corner and in the blink of an eye you are in the jungles of the Bodes (Cambodia for those behind on the slang).
5 minutes into the “wilderness” you pull up to the Handa Academy, where Sam drops you off.
You each dismount the beautiful chariot and wave goodbye to Sam.
Through the gates of the Handa Academy is not just a school, but a full-scale farm. Complete with talking birds (of course they speak Khmer) and hanging mangos everywhere.
Erin repeatedly says “Hi. Hi. hi. hi. HI. HI.” hoping at least one time the bird will echo her. *Spoiler alert* it never does.
It takes a solid 5 minutes to walk through the farm and at this point you are absolutely drenched. Anti-perspirant is irrelevant, sweat is inevitable.
Despite your deep desire to avoid all skin to skin contact with other humans, 40 little smiling faces pour out of the school repeating “GOod MOrNING teeCHAAA!”. 40 little bows and 40 big hugs every. single. morning. The best and sweatiest part of your day.
You finally make it to the front door, slide off your shoes and step into the first air conditioning you’ve felt today.
For the next 6 hours you’re helping teach English and computer classes.
You ponder what you were like as a 10 year old, and you remember being much more entitled, much less behaved, and an overall lack of respect as a collective class. These kids, however, participate 100% of the time, they’re engaged, they do everything that’s asked of them, and they do it all with the cutest little smiles on their faces.
In between classes are short recesses including all the classics- jump rope, Jenga, Connect 4, and a very competitive version of steal the bacon.
As nice as is it to be in air conditioning, and as easy as it is handle these kids, teaching and playing and trying to speak a language you don’t know a lick of is DRAINING. Your body, weary from the heat and probable dehydration and excessive amounts of human interaction, takes a break around lunch.
Lunch is always traditional Khmer food. Unfailing white rice and a soup of varying meats and veggies. Sometimes surprise nuts that trigger allergic reactions. Only sometimes though.
After lunch the kids from the morning begin to leave and the afternoon set start arriving.
In this transition time you give your body a break, you lay in the a/c of the English class, you play games on your phone, and on a good day you squeeze in a power nap on the floor. The trick is to fold up a chair and use the seat as a pillow.
At 12:45 you are brutally awoken from your nap by a new set of “GOod afterNOON teeCHAA”s shuffling into the classroom.
Once you’ve remembered your name and where you are, thrown off by depth of your short sleep, you begin teaching English or computer again.
More jump rope, more Jenga, more Catch the Super Long String of Rubber Bands with Your Foot in order to Get Over It.
More speculations of who could beat who in Mario Teaches Typing.
Sooner than you expect, 3:00pm hits and Sam is waiting for you outside the gate.
You slide your shoes back on- remember you’ve been barefoot all day and it’s beautiful.
The whole team intentionally leaves 5 minutes early, partially for the walk through the farm, but mostly for all the “goODbye teeCHA”s and hugs that must occur before exiting the premises.
You make your way back through the jungle in the chariot, and through the town until you pull up to the house yet again.
You unstick your thighs from the seat and the person next to you. What’s sticky you ask? Your sweat, OF COURSE.
The next hours are free- sometimes you walk to a coffee shop, sometimes you bike to the laundromat ($0.75 to clean all your clothes!!), and sometimes you tuk tuk to the movie theater.
At 6:30 everyone gathers around the table yet again, and in family style you consume a home cooked meal. Will you get handcrafted spring rolls? Cajun pasta? Maybe an assortment of meats and potatoes? A bowl of homemade pho? Who knows! Dinner never disappoints, not in this household.
After dinner plans change frequently. Team times are becoming fewer and farther in between (#highfreedom) but quality time and authentic conversations are slowly become more common. After dinner is the time when you get to choose into your team and your squad or choose out.
If you want to check out and watch Netflix in bed, you can do that. If you need to journal and spend time with Jesus, you can do that. If you need to go get coffee and walk around town with a couple of squadmates, by all means you can DO THAT. ’Tis a new and beautiful concept. Complete with challenges and rewards of course, but beautiful anyway.
Showers are possibly the most refreshing part of your day. For a few moments you are covered in a liquid that is not sweat. Seconds after, the room that was once a bathroom has transformed into a sauna, and yet again you are covered in sweat.
If you can get dressed quickly enough, you can open the door, run out in front of a fan, dry the water that is on your body and have about a half hour of skin that is dry and clothes that do not stink.
Around 9 you hit the sack. No you literally flop onto the small sack of air you call ‘bed’ and aim a fan directly at your face.
If you’re lucky, your best friend will sleep right next to you so you don’t have to oscillate the fan and you get a solid stream of lukewarm air all night long.
You fall asleep to the white noise that is a chorus of swinging fan blades.
5 am. Your alarm goes off and you do it all again.
(In case you were wondering, Aly beats me in speed typing, but I always win in accuracy. Yes, there’s an online version of Mario Teaches Typing, and yes we spent an afternoon playing it.)
