Fashion: Grading on a Curve

Hello everyone,

Busy weeks have dominated my schedule, and I end each day exhausted. I will take a while to get used to the energy of my third graders. It has been a bit overwhelming to learn about all the routines, meetings and expectations. I am enjoying the challenge but some days are more difficult than others.

Last week, I got to pick up my first pair of custom handmade shoes. It is an amazing experience to order the shoes. You can look through dozens of styles and change the heels and whatever else you need, then you get dozens of colors of real leather to choose from. This is a dangerous thing for me, a self-proclaimed fashionista and shoe lover. They measure your foot and make the shoes to your own measurements. And the whole thing only cost me $30. I have not been able to buy a real leather shoe for this price in a long time.

Another thing I am throughly enjoying is the amount of different drinks and desserts made with passion fruit. I have a passion fruit drink or ice cream every week. It has been the best part of Cambodia so far, as far as food and drinks are concerned. In Malaysia I could find it once in a while but not as easy as it is here. It is a piece of home, I mean my childhood home, Brazil.

Finally, I have to tell you all about the Capybara on the picture. I decided to decorate my room with capybaras since they are from Brazil and extremely popular here in Southeast Asia. The kids love it and I decided to buy a very large capybara plushy, we had an “official” naming ceremony and the kids got to vote on their favorite name. Some days I have to take it away from the kids because they fight over it but it has been a fun addition to the classroom.

Cambodia continues to give us surprises, I have recently ordered a few dresses to be made by a local tailor. I have not received the clothes yet but once I do, I will share pictures here. We find it fun that we can have just about anything custom made.

We have officially started our countdown to our trip home in October. It will be only one week but it has been so long since we have been home. On the way there, we are hoping we will be able to visit Seoul, South Korea for a few hours. I hope it all works out and we can do that.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for my new clothes I am having made.

XOXO

I have done quite a bit this summer vacation. Not only we moved to a new country, we visited some places in Phnom Penh, I read a couple of books and finished writing a short novel from beginning to end in one month. I did my own book cover and had my friend Julie Owens edit for me. This was a long time dream I had had so this is a big accomplishment for me.

I am not sure that it will be a huge success or that it will sell that much but at least it is out there. I am currently working on another project that will be done after Christmas I hope, so stay tuned.

I started working this week and it has been a fun week getting to know my new colleagues and my new school. This year will be a new challenge for me since I will be teaching at the Elementary School after many years of being in the high school and college levels.

A wave of anxiety has washed over me this week but I am trying to manage it. I am hoping it is just nerves and that as the routine settles, the anxiety will also vanish.

Cambodia continues to be a very welcoming place and the Khmer people truly go out of their way to help us and to be welcoming. We are truly enjoying our stay here and getting to know this country better.

Thank you for reading,

The House of Iron and Silk is available on Amazon.

Hello everyone,

In the last few days, Ben and I went out exploring a little more. First, we visited the Temple Tonle Bati, which is a little ways out of town. We were able to reserve a driver with a car that included even massage seats. The temple actually has two temples, a modern contemporary one and the ruins of one that was built back in 1181. I love seeing the ruins but of course we went through the newer one too.

At the newer one, there were some kids playing around and three of them started following me and speaking Khmer. I could not catch everything they were saying but they were pointing at different things. They showed me how I should bow down in front of some of the statues, they counted 1, 2, 3 in English and I showed them how I could count in Khmer. They seemed a bit surprised. Later I was also able to ask if they were siblings in Khmer and they understood me. Of course they wanted some money at the end, and we gave them some of the local money we had in our wallets. It ended up being about $1 total. But they were happy.

After seeing the temples, we drove to a Pagoda (Monastery) where they also have their “cemeteries”, however, those are more for the looks since they usually cremate their dead. The buildings they build for their dead loved ones are called stupas and they are very colorful. It was pretty interesting to see it all.

Our second outing was a much more difficult one and we don’t have a lot of pictures from it. We went to the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. Cambodia has a tragic history from the late 1970s. This was a spill over from the Vietnam War and part of the Communist wave that was going through the world. Brazil was under and dictatorship at the exact same time. It is hard to read about this genocide because it happened during our lifetime and there are still survivors around. The way they killed children, men and women was horrific. We took the audio option during the visit and that was incredible.

The audio was done by a survivor so it was very powerful. The Killing Fields is actually fairly peaceful and quiet place. You can see a lot of the bones from the people that were killed there. This was just one of them, there are several throughout the country but many are not open to the public because they are surrounded by land mines. It is so sad that human beings can do this to other human beings.

The Genocide Museum is actually an old high school that had been used as a prison and place for torture during the regime. As a teacher, that was hard to see, classrooms that had been transformed into torture rooms. It was a hard thing to visit but necessary to learn more about the place we now call home.

I have a surprise to tell everyone on my next post, so stay tuned… It is something I have been working on during this ‘vacation’.

Thank you for reading,

Today we had a surreal experience. It was a very unexpected moment of bliss. We decided last night to visit EuroPark this morning. EuroPark is a quiet beautifully manicured park with small scale replicas of some of the most iconic European and Australian monuments.

We took a 20 minute tuktuk ride there at 9AM, we went early trying to avoid the scalding heat that late mornings and early afternoons bring. Well, it did not matter, it was still really hot. It was a beautiful and peaceful place to be. It was pretty funny to see all those monuments and get those pictures but all of a sudden I realized the music playing all around us was a Brazilian Bossa Nova (sung in Portuguese). As we continued walking around the park, I realized there was a Brazilian Churrascaria (Steak House) right there. Needless to say, that was going to be our lunch place for the day. I just chuckled to myself. Here I was walking around a park in Phnom Penh, with an Eiffel Tower, a small Sydney Opera House, a Big Ben and the Venice Canal, listening to Brazilian music. This was truly a surreal moment.

Eating at the Churrascaria also brought back so many childhood memories and made me realize how much “saudades” I have of my roots. Eating the “pão de queijo” and the “mousse de maracujá” made me so happy, I felt like I died and went to heaven. Ben looked at me at one point and smiled. I asked him what was going on and he said “You are just so happy”. That was a sweet moment for us.

We also visited the National Museum of Cambodia this week. It as an interesting experience, very different from most museums we have been to, I thought it was a bit expensive for what it was but I don’t regret visiting it. We took the audio option and it was nice to hear and see so many of the statues that build their long history. I also learned that Cambodia is a leading country in restitution of their artifacts. I was glad to learn that information, after all this is not a rich nation but they are trying their best to get their history back where it belongs. One of the hardest parts of the visit was that the museum is open so it is really hot inside.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more of our adventures,

Hello everyone,

As I am still on vacation, we are taking time to slowly explore the city. One of the days, we went to the Central Market. That was quite interesting. It has a lot of things for tourists but it also has a section for household goods, more like things locals would buy. We spent some time around the jewelry area, and that was fun, but after a couple of hours roaming through the market I had a really bad episode of low sugar and had to quickly find something to drink or eat. It is a good thing they have so many places to get fresh juices here, and the best part, lots of passion fruit. I got passion fruit frappe, another thing I have to love about Cambodia is their love for condensed milk. It worked and I felt much better very fast and we were able to venture to an arts and craft store.

Today we went to Wat Phnom later in the morning, we regretted it because it was really hot out there. It was a nice change of pace to go to a tourist attraction. With the heat, we found a building dedicated to arts and crafts and a lovely air conditioned cafe. We spent some time in there to cool off and then we continued to walk around the whole enclosed park area. It was a fun outing and when we got home we cooled ourselves in the pool. All and all, a lovely adventure.

Thanks for reading,

Design by julianasmith0810

Hello everyone,

We have officially been in Cambodia for one full week. We spent the first few days getting things we needed for the apartment that only had the strictly necessary furniture. We visited several different stores and local places to get the storage needed to put all our stuff away. We got creative and used some of our luggage as a table/shelf like thing. We ended up buying a few baskets in some local places in the city. I was able to negotiate some good prices.

Once we had all the bags unpacked and everything put away, we decided to take one day off. Ordering food is easy so that took care of us for a couple of days until we had enough energy to go out again and try some of their grocery stores. Admittedly, we had to scout a few different stores to find everything we wanted. There are still a few things we cannot find here but we will adapt just like we did in Malaysia.

On the weekend, we ventured to a mall a little farther away and we found a Dairy Queen, it tasted so good after a whole year without having it.

We are still getting used to using the Tuk tuks, they are not quite fit for Ben’s size but we manage to make it work. When we go a bit farther away we do get cars and so far it has always been an electric car that has shown up. It makes me miss my electric car I had before we moved from the US to SouthEast Asia.

We visited a wet market today and that was quite the experience. I don’t do well with a lot of smells and there were plenty of them there. The most difficult part was seeing the tails of what I assume were lizards hanging from the tables. That was a bit too much for me. There were other whole animals and I had to get out of there as fast as I could. I did find the produce area and then later the area with jewelry and clothing was much easier to enjoy. The meat area reminded me of a similar market back in Brazil and the one we visited in Morocco. The main difference was that in Morocco there were camel pieces everywhere. Again, too much for me to handle. On the other hand, here I saw several fruit and some vegetables I did not recognize but that was to be expected at this point.

I think our girls are adapting to their new routine of being on the 14th floor and having to take the elevator to go outside. We also go to the pool everyday, it is my new form of exercise, I try to actually swim for 20-30 minutes each day. Walking here is a bit more difficult so I have to be creative about my “exercise”.

I am still on vacation so stay tuned for our adventures in the next 3 weeks or so.

Thanks for reading,

Hello everyone,

We made it to Cambodia, below you can see our ‘girls’ ready for the adventure through the airports and even a little bit of them exploring the Singapore Airport. This was quite the adventure, we started it at 5:30 in the morning at our home in Malaysia and ended at 8PM in our new home in Cambodia. The airport in Malaysia was the most stressful because Lulu and Pepper had to be in the stroller the whole time and we had to be separated from them for a couple of hours which was very nerve wracking. When we arrived in Singapore, we got the notice that the stroller had been sent straight to Cambodia, for a moment we got very worried because we had been told we needed it in the Singapore AirPort also. It turns out, we did not need it and they were allowed to walk around just fine since they had diapers on, we had no problems.

They were a huge success at the airport, we had people asking to make videos, pictures and even selfies with them. It was like they were little celebrities walking around. The children would squeal as soon as they spotted them and adults would approach with lots of questions. I had never gotten so many smiles and hellos in an airport before. I am willing to bet, the two dogs in matching pink pajamas were the talk of many dinner tables that evening. I don’t think Singapore airport sees a lot of dogs walking around, especially ones in matching pink pajamas. I am sure glad I wore a dress for this trip because I am afraid I might have been in some instagram posts of strangers.

We made it to Cambodia early evening, got our SIM cards for the phones and made it to our apartment accompanied by the HR person from the school and another admin was already waiting for us at the apartment too. Some of the roads can be very small so the small bus they used to pick us up did not fit on the road that our apartment is located on so they told us to take the dogs and go on to the apartment and they would take care of the luggage. All I know is that about 20 minutes later, all of our luggage magically appeared in the elevator on our floor. It took two loads but they all came and all Ben had to do was wheel them all from the elevator to our apartment. As most of you know, i am a fashionista and obviously we have too much stuff we drag around. So it was very nice to have the help of the locals to get it all in the building for us.

It is a major cultural difference here, how much they are all willing to help and make you feel comfortable. In just the first 2 days in the country I have already had several people go out of their way to be helpful and make us feel welcome. At the bank, the girl who helped me even stood outside in the heat to make sure I could find the Tuk Tuk I had ordered.

Stay tuned for more updates of our new adventure in Cambodia. I am still on vacation so we will have plenty of time to explore the city and get settled before I have to start working. I am already studying and learning the local language because here less people speak English and I am determined to learn Khmer so that they don’t need to accommodate for me and I will try my best to fit in.

Cambodia by julianasmith0810

Thank you for reading,

Hello everyone,

We made it to our last week in Malaysia. I had a couple of meals with colleagues to say goodbye. I ended up very busy on these last few days, one last vet visit for the paperwork to travel with the dogs, getting together with a couple of colleagues, get a final haircut and get my nails done one more time.

We also celebrated a very special Anniversary on the 30th. We have been married for 25 years, our silver anniversary. We actually bought matching silver necklaces, mine has a B and his has a J. It was a small way we found to celebrate our 25 years of marriage. On the actual day, we went one last time to the pizza place that had the regular pork pepperoni pizza that Ben likes so much. I indulged a little, had a small glass of wine and an affogato at the end of the meal. We have lived a blessed life, for our 20th we bought our new house, for the 24th we moved across the world and for 25th moving again to a new country.

We decided to ship our quilts back to the US to open up some space in our luggage so had to do a run to the Mailbox Store. Dropped off some donations, including paper shipping bags, a lot of the malls here have stations to leave or take a bag. One more stop at the bank and I think we are ready to embark on our new adventure.

Cambodia, here we come!

Thank you for reading and stay tuned four our news from Cambodia.

Hello everyone,

So here we are, waiting for our flight to Cambodia. The last two weeks of our lives in Malaysia have been long and slow moving. I have been dealing with the last paperwork and doctor visits needed before moving on. The paperwork has been a bit stressful, between the numerous licenses and approvals related to our dogs and the tax paperwork required by the government of Malaysia, it has kept me busy and frustrated. I think now we have most things done and only waiting for the last vet appointment and finally the flight.

We did visit the Central Market to get a few local things as Christmas gifts for my family back home. It was a fun outing after so many days just at home. I had just finished some work for AP exams (online, working the same hours as the east coast of the US). I had traded mornings for nights for a week and was ready to get out of the house. We found the little things we needed so now all we have left to do is finish packing, pray that everything fits and start our new lives in a new country,

Thanks for reading,

Hello everyone,

So here I am, just closing another chapter in our lives. Done with my school in Malaysia. This was an interesting experience! I learned a lot, met some interesting people, met some not-so-nice people, and learned a lot about being an expat teacher at an international school. I met people from all over the world, and learned so much from each of them. What an experience!!!

Malaysia is a nice country to live in, I could do with a little cold weather, though. The beach we visited in Langkawi was beautiful, and a wonderful vacation. I wish I could get a job on an island and go to the beach every day after school. That would be a dream come true.

We visited a lot of different places within Kuala Lumpur, but we didn’t get to many other places because we have our babies, Lulu and Pepper. We don’t trust just anyone to stay with them, so for now, we are traveling a little less, but we are still discovering new things.

We still have a few more weeks in Malaysia, and we are getting ready to start our new adventure in a new country. The expectation is high, and the wait is difficult. As most of you know, we are adventurers, and we are starting to get used to this kind of wait.

As always, thank you for reading and keeping up with us,