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December 24, 2008
Holiday in Cambodia
WATCH THIS SPACE, friends and confidants, for a full account of Mr. Flynn's attempts to "save Christmas" in a country that does not technically celebrate said holiday.
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Ever since I was a little kid, I loved Christmas. I've never been particularly religious in my love of Christmas (I usually fell asleep during church services), but I am such a sucker for the spirit of the season, for gift giving and christmas caroling and funny beverages and various strange norse/germanic holdovers from paganism.
In fact, I decided that even though I had to work on christmas, I would still ring in the season as festively as possible. Christopher suggested the idea of getting Santa suits from friends in Hong Kong (where they have a yearly Santa pub crawl, and thus good supply of Santa suits.) I brought up the idea of going out to the shooting range in Santa outfits. We also floated various ideas like riding around in a cyclo on christmas, giving candy to random children and strangers. Though I didn't get to pull that off, I do have a long-lasting souvenir of this christmas season: a custom-made Cambodian Santa outfit. I decided to have one made after concluding that a) getting one made wouldn't cost any more than buying a Santa suit would, b) none of the Santa suits available here would fit me comfortably, and c) the idea of a custom-made Santa suit is just plain awesome.
[Photo to come: Mr Flynn in Santa attire, riding in a tuk-tuk]
So, as I do when I need anything, I went to the russian market to buy fabric and find a tailor. Luckily, I had Wanna (librarian extraordinare and friend of PIA) along to explain what precisely I wanted. The fabric is either thick silk or some sort of partly-synthetic material, but it looked like it would breathe decently well. The tailor hadn't done work like this before, but luckily there was a child-sized santa suit hanging in one of the nearby stalls. It was a 3-4 day turnaround and I ended up with something that will proabably make a good pair of pajamas when/if I move to a colder climate. (The Santa Hat I already bought: it says "Feliz Navidad" and lights up when you press a button. It, too, is awesome)
My love of secular 'xmas' is probably a good thing, since at the university we are officially not allowed to discuss religion or politics. So when I talked about Christmas, I tried to emphasize that most of the traditions we observe aren't particularly Christian either. I explained the influence of Yule and Saturnalia on current traditions, and I pointed out that Santa Claus is a great way to get children to behave. My students more or less have a decent understanding of who Santa Claus is (though one of my students confidently claimed that Santa was a "ship captain"), but I made sure they knew that Santa only gives presents to good children. Christmas is something that's really only caught on in the last ten years, mostly as a social or commercial kind of event here. But Santa outfits make people happy, so it's become fairly common to dress little kids up as Santa. Cambodian children are already unbearably adorable, so this just makes them even more so--especially when they wear fake beards. I didn't manage to ride around town, but I did visit my fellow teacher Boramy and her son, Alexander (named after Pushkin...a legacy of her 1980s study in russia.)
Here's Boramy's description of my visit:
"My son - Alex - likes Santacloud or Christmas man. He learns that he is welcomed by a Christamas man if he behaves well. This year, Adam visited my home with his red christmas suit and the chocolate of Christmas man and Christmas tree. They got along very well in English language. Adam is not a religious person.He just sings the variety of his christmas songs with the long deep memory of his childhood.That's great for me and Alex."
Posted by flynn at 8:41 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Turkey = "Mwan Tohm" = "Big Chicken"
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WATCH THIS SPACE, dear readers, for Mr. Flynn's curious account of a thanksgiving celebration both international and Cambodianin its character, and his reactions thereto.
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As I explained to my classes, Thanksgiving is a time for families to join together, eat a big meal, and feel thankful for what they have, rather than resentful for what they don't have. I also tried to explain that turkeys were different from both ducks and chickens, with mixed results. Perhaps it was because we were reading about lonliness in our "Issues for Today" textbook, but my students could definitely tell that I was missing my family. I was pretty sad this week, but little moments here and there lifted me up.
Quick highlights, to be expanded at leisure, after the jump
*My birthday is November 25th, so it almost always falls on the week of thanksgiving. Upon finding this out at the beginning of class, my essay writing students were able to pull together a birthday party within 20 minutes. They may be up and down in terms of doing homework or structuring an essay, but organizational skill is staggering when it comes to throwing parties.
*My 301 students wished me "Good Luck, Good Health, and more handsome in your life and work...especially your work."
*We had a sort of pot-luck thanksgiving at the apartment of my friend Sofia (whom I actually first met on the plane to Phnom Penh). The girls tended to make amazing things like pumpkin soup or hand-mashed potatoes. I brought about 6 ears of corn on the cob that I bought from a street vendor. In all, it was a pretty huge spread. I was asked to carve the turkey, and though it was my first time I did a remarkably adequate job of it. This was probably because I was able to draw on my experiences from brunch spreads of yesteryear. I sort of took on the ceremonial role of 'symbolic american' during the evening, explaining things or behaving in the traditional thanksgiving style. This mostly included getting into a pointless argument with another guest (one of the most important of thanksgiving traditions) about how America doesn't have to adopt the metric system if it doesn't want to.
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Legends of the Hidden Temple
WATCH THIS SPACE For Mr. Flynn's account of his adventures in the ancient and renowned ANGKOR WAT TEMPLE COMPLEX.
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