Lunar Landing

By Jessica Wawrzyniak

11/5/2009

Moon Landing

Today Dave (the President of ClassACT and one of my traveling buddies) put it aptly when he said, "I feel like we are aliens here". Indeed we are. It's as if we're constantly parading through the streets as people stare, and smile, sometimes giggle amongst themselves, and very often come up to us in slightly overwhelming numbers in order to harass us into buying something for a "very chip pry foh yoo". Every once in a while we'll hear the word "barang" casually floating through the air as if we don't know that they're talking about the "foreigners". Yes, it's true, at times we are treated as if we have just emerged from a glittering golden spaceship, but the general feeling we get (and this may very well be a completely naive assumption) is that they like us. This might be due to the flocks of gleaming children that surround us with questions of "howahyoo?watisyournam?wheayoofrom?howmanybrothasistadohave?" anytime we arrive anywhere. Most common is a timid request to have their picture taken. Once one kid builds up the guts to ask you and you acquiesce, then prepare yourself to take a hundred additional photos as the children suddenly charge forward with more assertive demands for their picture taken.

What truly cements the E.T. Experience for us here is that this is a world unlike any we have seen. Our little stint in Siem Reap led us to explore mystical temples thousands of years old that we couldn't imagine in our dreams. This was the stuff of another kind of fairy tale (the kind without Snow White and Cinderella), I am talking about something otherworldly, ancient, and exotic. It was here that we shared a one-of-a-kind moment with the universe: Just before dawn, as we stepped carefully up to our first moonlit view of Ankhor Wat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat), we looked up into the sky and saw a rainbow. This was no ordinary rainbow. It spanned the entire sky and there was no sun in sight. It was 5am. This was a MOON rainbow. We stared on, stumped by this wondrous sight. Then, it began to rain. And it didn't stop. We spent the entire day outside splashing through puddles and navigating temples – I haven't felt so much like a kid in a long time. This was truly an epic adventure, but more details on our temple hopping will come soon. I'm not done talking about the moon.

It's always interesting to find those minute differences between cultures – I'm talking about how different cultures emulate the sound of a rooster, or what the word for "ouch" is in each language. Well, the other day I discovered that the whole Man-in-the-Moon thing, is a total lie. Now that my life has been turned over to Cambodian rules (and boy are things different here), I have come to accept that there is no longer a man, rather a RABBIT that resides in the moon. Try looking at the moon, squint hard enough, and you will see it.

Today is the first day that my traveling companions and I classified our stomachs as feeling "almost normal" – after about 3 weeks of constant surprises and inhibiting instability, things have finally settled down. Overcoming this great hurdle is always a momentous victory for travelers, but it is ironic that after all this trouble, and after coming so far digestively, that tomorrow my two great bodyguards, Niels and Dave, will be flying back home to the US of A. I am sad to see my friends go, and I would like to give a personal public thank you to them both for being such great companions. It's been a crazy ride. Still, I will forge on.

We could very well be the aliens landing in the very real world, or just some good ol' run o the mill Americans landing on the moon, but however you see it, we are someplace we have never been before. And that makes all the difference.

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