Now that I have had my Thanksgiving feast with my Mom, Sister, and dear Kristine I am on my way to Phnom Penh Cambodia for the next stage of my exploration of Asia. I am going to attend a TEFL certification class and teach English in Vietnam. I am going to teach as a way to get by financially but I have no real passion for teaching. My experience of teaching Japanese in the Philippines was enjoyable but I don’t think I was a very effective teacher. But maybe this class will teach me some decent teaching styles. We’ll see. But my interest is really microfinance in Southeast Asia. Before I decided to teach English, I was sending my resume to Vietnamese microfinance institutions in hopes of getting an internship so I could work underneath some people in the field and get some real experience but that never panned out so I have decided to approach the problem from a less conventional way.
I am going to contact these various NGOs and state run microfinance institutions personally once I have a decent hold on the Vietnamese language. My Dad has also taken an interest and so we will work together. He’s interested in writing a paper about the effects of microfinance on relieving poverty and wants me to do some field research. I will do what I can and we will see what’s possible. This project is still in the ambiguous stages of contemplation and so we will have to have a wait and see attitude for the time being.
I’ve decided to start writing blogs again after not doing so for the whole summer. Some people complained about my lack of writing but I can’t really bring myself to write about my life in Pittsburgh since it is for the most part pretty mundane and I would have to dive deep into the abstract to make it interesting. That being said; this last summer was by far the most eventual for me in very fundamental ways.
I arrived in Pittsburgh in May and started working at a restaurant called Dinette the day after I landed. The restaurant is owned by the daughter of my Mom’s boss. I have known her for a long time and my family has been impressed with her restaurant since it opened. I wanted to have some experience working in a real restaurant and I am grateful that she hired me; considering my previous experience consisted of only Taco Bell. It’s a small restaurant but is regarded as one the top 25 restaurants of Pittsburgh and can be very busy on Friday and Saturday nights. I learned a lot about running a small business and also about how to run a successful restaurant. It’s no easy task and I have a lot of respect for Sonja for the success she’s had. I made some really good friends at working at Dinette and it was a really good experience. I give major respect to my man Andrew that washes the dishes. I hope yo music career takes off man! I’ll be following SheMovement over in Asia.
I used to work as a host at Dinette and so I would spend time everyday standing behind the host stand waiting for it to get busy. Across the parking lot is a building which is just on the other side of a small bridge. The building had a sign on it which read “Rubicon”. Every time I looked at over at the sign I thought of Julius Caesar and his famous hesitation before the river Rubicon on his fateful march to Rome. He knew that once he crossed the Rubicon there would be no turning back.
I went to a bar shortly after I arrived where I met my girlfriend Kristine. I don’t want to write too many specifics about the development of our relationship in this kind of blog but, suffice it to say my life has two stages: before I met Kristine and now. Kristine lived just near Dinette in a neighborhood known as Shadyside. Dinette is on the edge of East Liberty and just a stone’s throw away from Shadyside. The bridge that preceded the “Rubicon” building was also the border between these two neighborhoods. I use to go over the Kristine’s house every day after work and I crossed the “Rubicon” on almost a daily basis. As things progressed, I realized that there wasn’t going to be any turning back.
By August, things had become more serious between her and I and I was seriously questioning my plan to go to Vietnam. My one friend didn’t understand why I would feel forced to go and it wasn’t a big deal to cancel a trip like that. My other friend insisted that you shouldn’t change your whole plans for someone. I had been planning this trip since last January so it would have been major to change my plans. I decided to continue with my original plan; as painful as it is. I am confident that Kristine and I will get through this. However, I have been questioning the itinerant lifestyle that I had envisioned for myself. I saw myself as travelling around the world, one country at a time, but now I see that is not entirely feasible. I haven’t given up. I’ve realized that I was just running away or looking for something but either way my plan didn’t hold scrutiny intellectually.
My journey from New York to Phnom Penh was long and riddled with bad movies but I have finally arrived at my hotel in Phnom Penh. I chose a cheap place nearby the university that I will be taking the class. Luckily I reserved it online beforehand because the staff was literally waiting up for me when I arrived. The guy made sure to emphasize that he had waited a long time. I apologized and I’m sure he’ll get over it. I can hardly sleep because of the jet lag so I’m writing this at 5 AM and I am just waiting for sunrise when I’ll get out of bed and explore the area before I head to my 9 o’clock class. I really need to find some water and I’m pumped to try some Cambodian food.
