Wait, I Paid For what?!

For the past two weeks there has been an extra volunteer in our midst. Kim is on summer holiday from Avondale and has stopped in Phnom Penh after a two week tour through Asia.

She has been in my classroom helping and doing some teaching. Which has been delightful, because I've had time to do things like, grade.

On Sunday Olga, Kim, and I decided to go get massages. Because Kim isn't here for too much longer and we wanted to do something out of the ordinary. They just opened a new massage place down the road that looks a little more classy than your average Cambodian massage place. This seems like a good idea! Olga and I were talking about going anyway since her birthday was recently.

When we walked in there was a little excitement about the three white girls, and the employees stood around and stared at us until we chose what we wanted. Olga and I chose head and shoulder massages while Kim opted for an oil massage.

They took us to a room with three mats, we changed into the massage clothes and waited.

The girls came into the massage room one by one, greeting us respectfully before taking their places.

It started out nice enough. The girls kept chattering while they massaged which is annoying, and I caught enough words to know they were talking about us. One of them said something about me and I corrected her. They stopped talking about us after that.

The girls massaging Olga and I started out on our legs, which was not what we asked for, but we didn't say anything. It started out a little rough. Alright, I thought, your just sensitive and prone to bruising. It'll be fine.

It wasn't fine.

As the massage continued I felt myself become tense. I have never been beat up before, but I'm pretty sure it feels something like this massage. As I became tense I was yelling at myself in my head, she's going to notice!!! Loosen up!!! AHH! I CAN'T! SHE IS HURTING ME!!!!!

I looked over at Olga once or twice and knew she was having the same issues.

We're polite folk, though. Each of us tried to tell the girls to soften up once. And when that didn't happen, we just prayed to survive.

The beating, sorry, massage, continued and I tried to not laugh out loud at how ridiculous this whole thing was. At once point I let out a giggle and the girl looked at me quizzically. I shrugged it off, Oh, sorry, it tickled.

TICKLED?! What is wrong with you?!

The crowning moment though came near the end. They had us sit up so they could massage our, I can't remember, I just remember pain. [One thing I should mention, these aren't trained professionals or anything, and some of the moves were not exactly what we would call... "safe"... anyway] My girl twisted my arms behind my back and swung me to one side, cracking my back, and then swung me to the other side getting everything she missed the first time. I was so impressed with the sound it made that I forgot to cry out in pain.

Then Olga came to the same move, the girl twisted her arms, but before she swung, Olga exclaimed, I'm scared!!!

The massage ended, we paid our five dollars said thank you and left feeling like we would probably need another massage to recover from this one.

This is Cambodia.