So today, a Saturday, I woke up early (I think it might be the first Saturday morning I've seen since I landed in Cambodia) and hit the Russian Market. I'd never been there early on a Saturday morning, and it was amazing! This city is so full of life so early!
Anyway, I had a list of things I needed to buy, and quickly, as I had somewhere to be at noon. It always takes sooo long to find things and buy things in the Russian Market so I was hoping to be able to purchase everything on my list in an hour or two. The Russian Market seems impossibly crowded, impossibly confusing, impossibly hot. Every shop looks the same, you can literally get lost inside of it, and the smell itself is enough to make the strongest shopper turn around and head for the relative comfort of Central Market. So no matter where I am dropped off at the Russian Market, I always try and find my way to my DVD shop. It is my home base and frame of reference. If I can find this one particular shop, I feel okay. I feel comforted in a way, every time I see this shop. Maybe it's because my first week here, waaaaay back in August--which feels like years ago--this DVD shop became the first place in Phnom Penh that I felt sane, helped, and even happy.
I was completely lost in the Russian Market that Saturday in August so long passed, and I stumbled upon this DVD shop. The girl working was about my age, and I had just had a near mental and emotional breakdown, trapped inside the sweltering heat and confusing aisles of the market. I saw this girl who looked so friendly and just told her everything. I told her I didn't know where I was, had just got here, and I didn't have any money on me. She helped me find an ATM, sold me the complete series of Mad Men, and just listened to me. She was one of the first people here I felt was my friend. Now, I will never buy a DVD anywhere else. I just look for that shop and feel like things will be okay.
Today I needed Christmas music for my students. (We're having a Christmas recital and they are going to sing and dance to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.") I went to my DVD shop, which also sells CDs. I told the girl working, my friend, that Mom will be here to visit me in a few days, and she was so happy for me. She asked me how long I had been here now and could not believe it was almost 5 months! She said she remembered that first time I walked into her shop, anxious, scared and terribly confused. I said I remembered that day, too. She pulled up the various new releases I had requested last time I visited the shop and put them in a bag for me. She remembered every DVD I asked for, (movies still in the theaters in the US), and has even started to suggest titles she thinks I would like! Even though in all reality I am just a customer, she and I are friends. She could not possibly know what she did for me that day in August. The good luck and blessings I feel at that shop put me in a great place, and I went on to make a new friend at a shop around the corner. The woman working there ran around collecting things for me, and even added that she was so happy to help me because she'd seen me before and I was always so friendly. I actually don't think anyone has every called me "friendly" before (probably because in the US, I'm NOT). Another girl at a different shop gave me the price I asked for on a small bracelet without contesting or bargaining simply because, as she put it, I was her first customer and we will give each other good luck today. I left the Russian Market in under thirty minutes, having purchased everything on my shopping list, having seen an old friend and having made two new ones.
I need that good luck. We've got two more performances tonight of the Christmas pantomime (I am co-director) with the Phnom Penh Players. Have I conquered Phnom Penh? Not entirely. But I will happily give myself the small victories of successful market shopping, making friends, doing theater here, and being open to new people.
