where cider meets condensed milk: Gone in Sixty (Seven) Hours

where cider meets condensed milk

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Gone in Sixty (Seven) Hours

Three years of teaching gets you as many farewells as one year would. The gifts and the form messages are the same, I imagine. I didn't get anything as cool as Bruttney-sensei's milk carton elephant, but since I've been living in this town since the days when real woolly elephants (some say "mammoths") roamed, I assumed that moving day would be slightly momentous. It wasn't. No one came. I called and only fueled the confusion in a circular conversation with a BOE man that didn't have a clue who I was and why I was telling him about my moving plans. A few hours later I managed to move out, I think. Hey, remember when I sold y'all my soul back in '04? I'm ready to trade it back now for my aparto keys and a Guppy. I only learned later that my supervisor was gone because she was stung by a bee, which no one thought to mention. So much depends on a stinging insect. (But no rain water. And no white chickens.)

After that came lounging in Sasayama, town of mosquitoes and black beans. Also no white chickens, but there are 10,000 signs of a hamster telling drivers to be careful. There must be an epidemic of hamster-squishing on the roads, because Hamu-chan is at every corner. Kids, let this be a lesson. My sisters' and my gender-confused male hamsters -- Marie, Lily, Louise-- never would've had a chance in this lethal town. When I had to leave, I (like the hamsters) was crushed.

And then to Tokyo, which took as long to reach as the subsequent flight to Bangkok. Yet another night in the new BKK airport, Artic Annex. It's very shiny and has more air-conditioning and more sleeping employees than anywhere on earth. Another quick flight, and 67 hours since Kibichuo later, and I'm typing from a sticky keyboard on a sticky Phnom Penh morning. Tomorrow will be my first visit to the ocean shores in Cambodia. It's good to be back.

posted by Raychaa @ 11:40 AM

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