Laika

For those of you back home, you should know that I'm not just there with you in spirit, apparently my body clock is with you as well. I managed to fall asleep and wake up at a normal time my first night, but after being up for a few hours I passed out for most of the day. I've been up all night watching TV (which is surpisingly good and American) and reading. I got maybe an hour of sleep; I feel fine now (9AM my time) but expect I will pass out unexpectadly at any moment.

Things here are going well. Yesterday took a walk around town, but not too far since I don't yet know the town well and it would be easy to get lost. I walked up the street to Lucky Supermarket, a Western style grocery store that has just about anything I would need or could get back home. I then took my first moto ride up the street to my hotel, filled up on plantains and peanut butter from Lucky, and promptly went unconcious.

Later on I met up with Chris; a fellow IDE intern and all around awesome guy, and Pete who is the boyfriend of my classmate Emily (and, oddly enough, at a hotel right across the street from me). We grabbed some Khmer food and Cambodian beer which, as I've been told, was tasty and cheap.

So far everything is fine. I start the internship on Tuesday, and my two biggest concerns are finding a place to live and a power converter so I can use my laptop without fear of frying it (if any of you techies out there can assure me a HP laptop can take 240 volts the way Apple laptops can, let me know). I'm headed with Pete out to a couple markets in a little while, hopefully to see more of the city and solve at least one of those "problems".

It's weird to be in a place so foreign, so clearly developing, but at the same time with so many amenities. I have trouble knowing how to react, and I'm curious to see how I continue to take things as I get more comfortable here. I guess we'll see...