Weekend to remember

November 24-27

On top of my realization of my youth going down the drain, I had a run in with Rithy. I want to give you a little back round. Some Asian cultures don’t believe in losing face. Losing face is when you confront someone about a conflict. You rarely ever hear of a conflict between two people. What ends up happening is the problem festers inside of the hurt one and is never truly solved. The hurt/annoyed one talks to everyone else, but the one whom caused the problem. I was talking to Fay about this and she made it sound like time will heal the wound or the people (ones in conflict) never talk to each other. This maybe the way it’s solved here in Asia, but its not going to happen with me! Just because I’m here in Asia doesn’t mean I have to change the way I deal with my problems. Yes! I have to be respectful of their culture, but you have to give me some slack because I have never been exposed to this kind of culture. In my culture (Native American) we fight out loud. Walking around like everything is ok is not fair to you or the one you’re secretly mad at. Why should you keep everything inside and never solve the problem? I know that some may appose what I say, however that is how I feel. No one can tell me what I feel is wrong. Everyone is entitled to their own feeling. I am so tired of explaining myself to others. I am having the hardest time with Katrina. She makes me feel like my problems are not legitimate reasons to be mad. I think our (Katrina and I) problem is difference in personalities. She is a peace-maker; me, when I’m mad I’m going to let the person know. Yes! I will talk to the person eventually. Don’t worry I’m not one to hold grudges for years on end, but I do hold grudges for sometime. Tops 1 week, it really depends on the situation. Any who, I have talk to Katrina about the way I feel and we just seem to still be bumping heads. It really hurts me when someone makes me feel like my problems are not legitimate enough. Right now I just don’t want to talk to her at all because I’m walking on egg shells with my feeling. I can’t tell her how I truly feel anymore. Katrina and I can still be good friends, but I’m no longer comfortable telling her about how I feel.
Wow! I didn’t realize I went off track like that. I started talking about Rithy, then to Katrina. Umm…. Ok, Rithy situation, on Saturday night I was informed that Rithy was irritated at me because I let, “Oh my God,” slip around Ly Chard (Rithy’s nephew). I’m not going to lie that has slipped around Ly Chard before, but I have always caught myself and informed Ly Chard not to say that. Rithy also had a problem with me hanging out the Laos boys to much and staying over there to late. I admit I have fallen asleep during the movies on Saturday night, but it was never intentional. The Laos boys always wake me up; not like I stay the night. So I confronted Rithy about the problem (losing face) and lost my temper. I first of should not have confronted Rithy that moment. What I should have done is thought about it while gathering my thought then discussed the situation with him. But, I didn’t and it turned out to be a disaster. It ended with me pissed off and not ever wanting to go over to Rithy’s again.
Oh, and on top of that Kim was really mad at me because I wanted to quote here on what Rithy said to her (that was wrong). Going up the stairs to ask, Kim looked at me in disgust saying, “I’m through with you guys (Katrina was there)!” I was totally confused, but didn’t want to chase her down and figure out the problem. After that I just went home and text Kim and Ben saying I’m sorry. They replied saying they didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. I was feeling really bad at this point. YOU Know what! I never did tell you that Kim told Katrina what Rithy had said about me then Katrina told me. So, that is why I wanted to get information out of Kim, but ended in a casualty. All in all the weekend didn’t end well. I was so frustrated about everything that I literally couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up thinking about it.
The next morning Kim came to the house with vegetable noodles. It tuned out that Kim was totally playing with us. She was never mad at us. She was actually frustrated with Rithy because he snapped at her right after I talked to him. When I text her saying I’m sorry she wanted to joke around. I really didn’t think that was to funny at first, but after some time I just laughed about the whole thing. This really helped ease the frustrating.
During the day I found sometime to talk to Fay about Asian culture. I asked her if it would be ok to talk to Rithy and say I’m sorry, she strongly advised it. In fact she said it would be better if I totally took blame for everything. That way Rithy wouldn’t have hard feeling towards me. I really didn’t want to take blame for everything, but did because I didn’t want tension. I guess you have to choose your battles. I did however tell Rithy that I wanted him to tell me if he ever didn’t “understand” something I did. He assured me he would, but kept implying that I’m a teacher and shouldn’t be told what is right or wrong. I assured him that it won’t hurt me a bit to be told if I’m wrong. Actually I said it would build my character. Not sure if he totally understood that. Any who, Rithy and I are not in a fight anymore, and my weekend finally ended with all of us (Rithy’s household (Lao boys, Ben, Kim and Ly Chard) and Katrina) going to the water festival.
It was a blast. We walked around for about seven hours. I have never seen so many people in my life. I was literally touched everywhere when the festival was finally over. Seriously you had to squeeze your way through the crowd. Sopheck’s youngest sister was holding my hand the whole time. I’m use to people hanging on to me, but here same sex hold hands or link arms. I personally don’t want someone crapping my style. LOL! Just to give you an example of how touchy they are; upon arriving I thought Rithy was gay. He will hold hands with other guys and play with their hair when sitting next to him. When Phil visited Rithy wouldn’t stop touching him. Phil didn’t really know what to think. So yeah… Going back to the states I probably won’t think too much about it when I see men holding hands. Back on track, Dream (from Laos) threw darts and won me a stuffed puppy. The puppy its self is not all that cute, but it has sentimental value.
So, I guess my weekend didn’t end all that badly. I overcame some problems and lost a battle, but just think if you win every battle how many friends are you going to have.