November 10

Orientation day 3. Today it was to wake again to a Khmer lesson and then a tuk tuk out to the Cheung-Euk killing fields. I remember telling people over the summer about my plans to go abroad to Cambodia and was asked several times if I'd planned on going to the Killing Fields. I'd said no a few times, since I didn't think I could stomach that kind of thing. It wasn't my decision--so off to Cheung Euk it was. It's located about an hour outside of Phnom Penh and you can hire a tuk tuk for the time you're there for a pretty low price. When we got there I was already pissed at the other people that had shown up to see this site, where tens of thousands of women, especially children had died such horrific deaths. A bus full of old people came in, some wearing short shorts and tanks, talking loudly and laughing out loud behind us. Its as if they didn't know what happened here?
We hired a tour guide who took us around the property. What was most sickening to me was the size of the Killing Fields. We hear about it in school and read it in books about this place the Khmer Rouge executed thousands, but it's not a big place. It's smaller than the podium back at campus. And tens of thousands of bodies were kept here? The whole tour was incredibly bizarre. The tour guide, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide himself, introduced us to the many graves around Cheung-Euk and in his broken English just kept shaking his head and saying 'Pol Pot, crazy man.....he kill so many people......bad man.....crazy man...why he do these things?' Someone thought this was funny, but I did not. This man has to work on the grounds where his parents were killed, and is still troubled by what he's seen. It was sickening. At the epicenter of Cheung-Euk is the tower of bones which was built in the early 1980's. The tower holds about 8,000 skulls which have been found and identified into age groups of male and female and laid out on shelves upon a huge glass tower, decorated with traditional Khmer/Buddhist architecture. It was pretty unusual to see Khmer people buying flowers to give as gifts to loved ones, while foreigners were standing at the gate of the tower taking photos of the skulls and bones from close. Walking around the property was making me nauseous, there were still bone fragments poking out from the ground. Every step I took I was increasingly disturbed and irritated something like this happened, and for so long. It's weird something like this affects only some people, there were other tourists who were walking all over the grounds laughing and smiling and photographing things. I had to photograph the trees which to me looked beautiful on the grounds of Cheung-Euk. However, we learned that many of those trees served as posts for execution of women, children, soldiers, respectively. Our guide told us that until several years ago, the stains from the blood and remains of the victims could still be seen on the bark. I might have fainted if I'd seen that. Our guide was great, he was very aware of what happened during this time, and is the first person I've met here in Cambodia that can give a first hand account of what life was like during the Khmer Rouge. But to visitors of Cheung-Euk, I will say its not for those with a light stomach.

Afterwards, it was scheduled to go to the National Museum back in Phnom Penh. Its located not too far from the riverfront and right across the street from the Royal Palace (yes, I didn't know either, Cambodia has a monarchy). It was a decent museum, mostly Angkorian and Buddhist artwork. They had a temporary exhibit about the Royal Ballet which looked amazing and I hoped I could be able to check out a show while I'm in Phnom Penh. That evening we were invited to teach an English class for the how-long-can-he-stand stand in in-country coordinator. He is Khmer and teaches an evening English as a Foreign Language course at two universities. It was great, the first class was excited to have some extra help on their pronunciations, but I felt their English was great and most were making a serious effort. However, for the American ethno-centric, hard of hearing types they are incomprehensible. So, 't-shirt' can't be understood when someone says it 't-shut' (because in Khmer they don't really use their 'r's), so if you'd like to be difficult and spend 45 minutes on how to say 't-shirt' then it was a productive lesson.

That night we ate dinner at a Khmer restaurant which was very nice, except for the cockroach walking along the table as I ate my noodles. But, I realized after flicking it off that my standards have surely dropped. The girl who has the Health Department Inspections App on her Blackberry home page has finally loosened up! But how much more of this other nonsense can I take?