Happy New Year everyone. It is crazy that it's 2010, which will be my first full calendar year without being in America at all.

Sorry for going so long without writing. I had a virus and my computer had a virus. So, it was hard for me to write blog posts at home. But now, I'm on the Peace Corps office computer in Phnom Penh. I'll talk about a few interesting things I've done lately and then I'll talk a little about culture.

I came into Phnom Penh for Christmas weekend and then I came again for New Year's. Normally, I try not to leave my village that much because I try to fit in and not come off as the "rich foreigner who leaves all the time." But, I made a special exception for the holidays.

Getting here is always an adventure. I catch a van on the side of the road and it costs $2.50 to get to Phnom Penh. Sometimes I have to bargain because the driver views foreigners as ATMs, but I always get it down to 2.50 which is what Khmer people pay.

Phnom Penh is not far from my village. It's only 150k, but nonetheless it takes a very long time to get there. It usually takes about 3-4 hours. The van stops constantly while they stuff as many people in there as they can. It's hard to describe the van, but an example of a car will illustrate how Khmer people like to travel. Sometimes we take a car which is a little more expensive, but is faster and has air conditioning. A 4-door sedan can have up to eight people in it, including two in the driver's seat!

The van also stops constantly along this journey and does not only carry people. I've seen them fill up with bags of rice, motos, wedding clothes and mail. Cambodia has no mail system; people just give packages or envelopes to drivers to take out to the provinces. The driver then calls the recipient and finds them. Peace Corps sends us mail this way. And, in typical Cambodia fashion, the driver calls you when he's five minutes away and expects you to be awaiting the package with no prior notice.

The trip to Phnom Penh also includes a ferry ride across the Mekong. There was supposed to be a bridge built there a few years ago, but between protest from the ferry company and the government just not getting around to it, it has not been built yet. Taking the ferry usually takes about an hour. While we wait, sellers try to sell us things ranging from bugs, to turtles to mangoes to fake sunglasses.

Phnom Penh has been a series of errands, relaxing, catching up with other volunteers and eating everything but Khmer food. Nothing that eventful happened, but the New Years countdown began at 12:02 at the place we were at. No surprise there.

Back in my village, I've been doing some interesting projects outside of my school. One is working with a savings group. It's led by an English teacher at my school and he was trained a bit by Oxfam. Basically, families get together and save money to finance other members in the group. The people who borrow pay interest, but not much. The people who are in the group don't have access to banks, so this is a way to encourage them to save and and earn interest on their savings.

Like other developing world microfinance programs, the repayment rate is extremely high. One reason for this is the communal dimension of the group. In addition to filling out paperwork (or being helped with paperwork if they cannot read), the group shares their experiences and the leader teaches them things. At the last meeting, he taught them about the differences in behavior between rich people and poor people. I'm going to help him so he can teach them about health and personal finance.

The savings group project really excites me and is something I was really hoping to do when I came here.

The teacher who leads the savings group also invited me to a conference about alcohol and health. Some university students from Singapore came to Cambodia to teach youth(mostly people age 18-25) about alcohol and health. It was a great grassroots project. It was three days, and they put us in a hotel and did a lot of lessons, skits and games. The Cambodians got to learn about the Singaporeans and it was exciting to see the Cambodians present their findings in a community fair we had at the end of the conference.

The conference is important because there is almost no awareness about alcohol in Cambodia. As I mentioned, there are pretty much no laws about alcohol here. Anyone can buy it and the drinking and driving rules are almost never enforced. Very few people realize the health concerns and people drink to get drunk. There is a saying in Cambodia that basically translates to: drink for drunk, if not drunk, why drink?

In addition to the social benefit of the conference, I made lots of friends who might want to work on alcohol projects in the future. I also now have friends in Singapore for when I visit there. It sounds like a cool place.

Some interesting cultural experiences: Khmer people do not yell when they are mad because that is seen as not being in control, which is losing face. But, they do yell when they speak to each other and many people seem to have no perception of volume. I think this is because they are traditionally farmers, so they needed to yell across large areas. Now, when they are in closed areas, they behave the same.

The other day a woman wearing two layers of pajamas even though it's hot(I will discuss style in the future accompanied by pictures, but wearing long sleeved pajamas around is normal for women), screamed at me for about 10 minutes that I should want a Khmer wife. She wasn't trying to be rude, that's just the way it is here. I'm probably asked if I want a Khmer wife about five times a day and then firmly told I should want one. It's usually the second or third thing someone I meet will say to me.

Usually, the question following whether I want a Khmer wife or not is what my salary is. Things are certaintly different here, but I'm enjoying it.