A duffel bag full of garbage and a spider the size of my hand

This weekend I visited the Provincial town to pick up my mail, mail some letters, and go to the bank. It's amazing that these tasks require an overnight stay and about 4-5 hours of traveling all together.

In Cambodia there is trash EVERYWHERE! Without a formal collection system, the trash takes over my life. Sometimes people burn it (usually right as I'm sitting down to eat my dinner), sometimes it is dumped on the side of the road and just blows around in the wind, other times it is lunch for the cows. I honestly have no clue what to do with my trash. I can't bring myself to burn it, so I usually take it to the provincial town where there is a semi-regular trash collection program. I'm sure the trucks just collect the trash and dump it in the marshes outside of town, but this is the best I can manage.

My trash disposal plan involves throwing it into a duffel bag, riding the 35k to town, then sneaking around after dark trying to find an empty trash container to toss it in. This was my weekend....fascinating, right?

The night before I left, the neighbor kids were playing with a huge spider outside my house. They told me not to worry because they cut the fangs off and it couldn't bite. It creeped me out, but I had to take some pictures.

Plastic sacks and broken eggs

Now that I live at the school I cook for myself, which requires one or two trips to the market everyday. I don't actually go to the big market because it's kind of far away and I don't want to ride my bike in the afternoon heat, so I stop at a small food stall on the side of a dusty road near my usual lunch restaurant. I usually buy a sack full of vegetables for about 25 cents. I can not bring myself to buy meat from the market because it sits out in the heat all day long covered with flies, and is on top of the table that the chickens and dogs walk all over. So, the solution is to eat chicken eggs. Eggs and coconuts are my saving grace in Cambodia. I sure miss 24 hour Safeway with its endless dairy section, bakery, and ice cream isle!

This afternoon after class I bought a plastic sack full of eggs from the school and walked down to the food stand for some tomatoes. Long story short, I forgot about the eggs for a while as they were in my school bag. I got home and about half of the eggs were broken, but thankfully the plastic sack saved my books from getting warm egg goop all over my books.

I was REALLY angry at first because I wasted a whole 20 cents. But, it reminded me of this time when my sister and I were kids helping my mom carry groceries into the house from the car. I was in charge of taking in the toilet paper and Amy was supposed to get the bag full of 2 dozen eggs. Being Amy, she started hopping around like a maniac and flung the eggs over her shoulder and broke them all. My mom was so mad at her. We still won't let Amy live that one down. Kind of like the case of the missing Nike gloves (a decade long search and argument that ended last year when Amy came clean with the truth).

Anyway, I wanted to tell this story and post a picture of the egg incident and say "Hey mom, remember that time Amy broke the eggs and you got really mad at her because you had to drive back to the store and buy more?"

Also, the second picture is of my transportation to and from the market and some of the purchases from last week. I needed a new broom to chase the cockroaches out of my house at night. I hate them.