Back to the Beginning

Like I said in my first post, I've got a lot of catching up to do since I've already been here for THREE months.  So... back to the beginning.
My trip started out with me almost missing my flight in Chicago due to a slight delay out of Green Bay and too long of lines as I made my way through customs.  My next flight took me straight north passing right by good ole GB, up through Canada and back down through China only to land in Seoul, South Korea over 14 hours later.  I had about 4 hours to kill before my next plane landed so I found a great (and free) lounge where I could recline in a comfy chair and sleep some more.  I got back on a plane and made my way to Bangkok.  By this time is was just past midnight and all I wanted was to collect my bags, find a cozy bench and sleep away my next 7 hour layover before continuing on to Phnom Penh.

View from my bench in Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok

For some reason or another I suspected the worst from baggage claim and my gut instinct didn't let me down.  I spent the next half hour scanning the belt and watching both the number of remaining bags and travellers dwindle down until I had to accept that mine wasn't coming.  I found the right office and put in a lost baggage claim where I was told that, unlike me, my suitcase never made it out of Chicago but that it would be sent to me the following day in Phnom Penh.  As happy as I was to know that it was indeed coming, the idea of wearing the same outfit-one that I had already been wearing for almost 2 days-for another day was upsetting.  Anyway, I fought back a tear and claimed a bench to wait out the next 6 hours.


After one more hour-long flight I found myself in the surprisingly small and empty airport of Phnom Penh.  I walked outside and began to look for any white guys as I was told to do in a recent email from LanguageCorp.  Not surprisingly, there were none to be found at the Dairy Queen where I was told to look, let alone in the rest of the airport.  Another half an hour of freaking out some of the taxi drivers that had been harassing me pointed out a Tuk-Tuk driver looking for a white girl, me.  Mr. Smith, walked me across the street to his tuk-tuk and then told me he had to do one more thing before we left for the Marady Hotel.  It was here, a lone white girl in a VERY foreign city, that I began to seriously doubt my decision to do this.

Sweet, sweet reunion!

From there, I couldn't get that idea out of the head as we made our way across the whole of Phnom Penh.  Once at the hotel I was shown my room in near silence and without any more instruction, besides to meet in the lobby at noon in two day's time for a tour of the city, I was left to settle in my non-existent luggage.  I didn't know how to work the water heater so I was forced to take a cold shower and to put on the same clothes as before.  When I went to use my computer to write home, I realized my plug didn't fit and neither did any of my other adapters since my charger has three prongs and not just two.  So, with my battery running low, I called my family, caused my mother to worry even more than necessary, cried way too much and looked for a return ticket home.  When my computer died, I turned into an agoraphobe too afraid to step out of my room.  The city outside intimidated me too much and the fact that you could tell I had been crying deterred me from wandering the hotel looking for food and friends.  Over the next 48 hours I left only to cross back over to the airport and get my suitcase.  I then locked myself up and subsisted on my 7 remaining granola bars and what weak internet signals I could pick up on my ipod.

However, noon on Sunday I finally met the others from my group, went of a tour of the Grand Palace and Wat Phnom (the main temple of the city).  We returned to shower (a hot one since I had accidentally figured out the water heater!) and change for a group dinner with our future instructors.  It was at this point I was happy to have not gone straight home, no matter how embarrassed I was of the two-day pity party I had thrown upon arrival.  One of the benefits of writing this three months out is that I can now reflect on how my relationships with the other trainees and program have panned out.  It still amazes me to look back of pictures from that first dinner and see how close I am to some of them now when they were complete strangers then.

Royal family's got some nice digs