I went back to the US Embassy and this time it was a much more pleasant experience. On Sunday the 6th of July they opened up the Embassy to all for a 4th of July celebration. Well open to all who paid $5 dollars for a ticket at least 2 weeks before the event. I had no idea what to expect, but I thought I pretty much had to go as American living in Cambodia. I couldn’t let the terrorist win by not going right? I probably never would have gone to a 4th of July party like this back in the states, but things change when you are overseas. You become more aware of your National identity or something like that.
Joe, the only other American Volunteer at CWF was the one who told me about the party. He was kind of the ring leader for the party he bought everyone tickets. All of the volunteers went except for Giada (commie), and 5 of the Cambodian staff came along as well.
They had a Navy rock cover band that came out from Japan and they were actually pretty good. They played a lot of typical cover songs Lynard Skynard, Jimi Hendrix, Stepenwolf, The Black Crows, etc. The musicians were really talented and the singer was a full blown rock star (at least as close as you can get to a rock star with a crew cut and a navy uniform). I talked to one of the guys from the horn section for a bit and he told me that this is all they do, as Navy Entertainers. Travel and play music, pretty sweet gig.
A bunch of the Hashers were there and it was cool to talk to them for a bit. There was a group of Marines that were there, pretty much just so people could take pictures with them. We found out one was a Hasher and took a pic with him. I don’t know why but they must have picked the 3 shortest and the 2 tallest men in the entire Marine Corps it looked kind weird.
There were some clowns juggling and doing acrobats. They had a dunk tank some where but I never even checked it out. There was a hotdog eating contest and 3 of the hashers entered, Benny was a champ he downed 5 dogs.
The food was good. The had burgers, dogs, fried chicken all the traditional American healthy cuisine. They also had beer, I decided in honor of America’s 232nd B-day to drink nothing but the King of Brew all night. The food and beer was kind of expensive but what the hell it was a special occasion.
Another plus about the event was I registered to receive my overseas absentee ballot for the upcoming election.
The band played 3 sets and on their last one they really jammed. The CWF crew owned the dance floor. Nev was in typical form. There was 2 Cambodian dudes who joined our dance crew and they ruled it.
The only disappointment was there were no fireworks, and we had been lead to believe there would be some. What really pissed me off was that I found out they had a celebration on the actual 4th for ambassadors and important people and they had a firework show for them.
All in all in was a good day, and I think all the CWF crew had a really good time celebrating the 4th of July for their first time.
