noodle quest 2006

helllllllllllo! happy thanksgiving! it is thanksgiving in newe york today but yesterday was thanksgiving for us here so jessie and i made people show their thanks to us for killing all of our natives by buying us drinks all day. needless to say we were thankful for our hammocks by around 3pm. later we motivated for italian dinner at our italian staple, marco polo, where we had a delicious salad and some homeade gnocci. yum. jessie eats there almost every day- she loves her sauce. do you know that jess NEVER reads my blog? i could be writing horrible things about her and she would never know. haha! i am going to post an excerpt of an e-mail that she wrote to Joe, her dad and she can’t be mad because she will never know!
“A typical day here looks like this: Wake up around 9 or 10 in our free accomodation on the beach (in exchange for buying most of our meals at the restaurant and occasionally bussing/waiting on tables and recruiting customers). THe restaurant is one to five feet from the water (depending on the tide) on the sand. We roll out of bed and are instantly stimulated by a million different things: the music from the bar and the whole family bustling about, etc. Then we drink iced coffees, eat vegetbale noodle stirfrys and brace ourselves for the next move which is: rolling around,chasing, beating up, eating and loving very very very deeply all of our little kid friends who sell bracelets on the beach. This can last all day. Or one hour. Then we swim and follow mey ling around on various errands in town and stop at her home for lunch. Then we frolic and harrass more people on the beach, and then I meet my boyfriend in the evning for our formal dates. Life is really good. Once in a while our bliss is punctuated with some moments of heavy heavy sadness and acknowledgement of the constant hardship and aching that lies just below the surface of all of the smiles and love in our friends. But lately, we have just been having a lot of fun and love with them. I cant believe how involved we are with the people here. I didnt know could love so many people that much!!!!!!!!! We are now officially Mey Ling’s sister. She is so wacky and fun! Especially for someone who has so many hurdles in life. Definietely a super inspiring girl- she is so confident and lively.”
yes, jessie has a cambodian boyfriend of almost 3 weeks! his name is Te and i think he is very special and nice. the other day we went to a deserted spot on the beach and had such a sandy fun filled day with the guys who ran the boat that broke with the french guys on the way home from the islands. yesterday we spent the day drinking buckets at dolphin bar and having a crazy time. sleeping at ”IT bar” is so fun. me, jess and mey ling sleep in one big mnatress under a giant mosquito net with very nice fans going and we can hear the waves crash on the beach. nari and a few of her other sister’s sleep on the mattress next to us. unfortunately mey ling’s cousin is desperately in love with me in a way that is not that functional for me. all day he studied how to say the following questions:
1. i will learn english for you, okay?
2. you will learn khmer?
3. if i love you, we can be married?
4. can you be like khmer girl?
woah… it is frustrating because mey ling is kind of egging this on and i am not interested at all. oh well i guess i will have to kill her today. on the wedding front= the fat guy has kind of dropped out of sight. thsi country is an alternative universe. everything is questionable- nothing can be assumed. like uh… is she still freaking marrying this dude? where has he been? what is going on? speaking khmer would make things a little bit easier but i still think we would be at a loss for certainty. two nights ago we slept at mey ling’s aunts house which was really fun. in the morning we sat outside with her uncle, brother, and cousin and ate DELICIOUS soup with the most intensely unique and innovative fat little crazy noodle shapes. mmmmmmmmmm. i want to eat that rigth now.
we leave tomorrow. we go to angkor wat for a few days and then thaialnd for a while. i think i will come back and work at chiva shack and teach a free english class on the beach for the kids that can’t affor to go to english school. my favorite person in town after mey ling is a little vietnamese boy named Door (Doo=ah) who is my brotehr from another mother and at 11 years old makes my heart sing songs in volumes and tongues that are VERY HAPPY!
okay i eat noodles now. bye bye
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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 24th, 2005 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.