After returning to site from my glorious 10 day trip to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, I came back to site with about $80 in my pocket. The following two weekends I proceeded to go to my provincial town and then Phnom Penh. Needless to say, when I came back from PP, I was broke as a joke. I had enough to get back to site with $10 left over and two weeks until my next "pay day". Could I survive at site for two weeks on 75 cents a day?
It took some heavy budgeting and a severe case of diarrhea but I made it with a dollar to spare:) Not only did I spend all my money in Phnom Penh but also picked up a lovely intestinal bug which kept me at home (and near the toilet) for four days. You could light about 10 houses for a week on the power I unleashed in that 4 by 6 foot room. When and if you ever come to Cambodia, take this advice seriously - DO NOT eat fresh fruit and vegetable without peeling them or washing them in bleach first AND always pick places you know will take food prep seriously. The upside of not doing these things is that you may get very ill and not want to eat. And if you don't want to eat then you won't spend any money. And if you don't spend any money then you might be able to afford the $20 entry fee into Angkor Wat.
Enough about my cash strapped, volunteer life. The next two weeks the entire high school where I teach will be taking their semester finals. As a volunteer, I do not need to be present during their exams and so I will be sitting under a mango tree and doing what I do best, studying Khmer, reading and/or staring into space. Having learned my lesson about going to Phnom Penh too often, I am opting to stay at site and only go into my provincial town when absolutely necessary.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
A Cambodian Christmas
Well Christmas in Cambodia can both be a blessing and a curse. There are no Christmas displays, ads and commercials, or pressure to buy the perfect presents for my family and friends (if I had the funds that would be different). There is nothing even remotely Christmas-like in Cambodia; or at least in the provinces. With the exception of the other volunteers, the downside of it all is I have to bear through it relatively alone. Although it doesn’t feel like Christmas, I surely know its happening back home and it is hard not to think of eating delicious pies and cookies with good friends and family. The one place you can find Christmas in Cambodia is Phnom Penh. That was the surprise awaiting me and some of the other volunteers when we arrived on Christmas evening. The restaurants catering to foreign guests had all the lights and embellishments (TINSEL!) that we had been deprived of. We soaked it in. After our three long months of “lock down”, many (if not all) of the volunteers were ready to celebrate – not only Christmas but their freedom. We ate pizza and drank margaritas and danced like Americans. It was the most un-Christmas Christmas I have ever had.
Given the choice to return to site for two days and then come back to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (for New Years), I opted for annual leave so I could stay on and eat more cheese, and potentially lay by a pool (or two). It made my Christmas and New Years vacay a total of nearly ten days, and it was wonderful. I admit, after three months of limited (to almost no) electricity and no running water, I was ready to spoil myself. What is there to do in Phnom Penh? For me it was eat American food and go shopping. I ate to my hearts content, pizza, macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, bagel pizzas, bruschetta... the list goes on. The only thing I can truthfully say I did NOT eat was rice. It did not make sense for me to spend money on something I have to eat three times a day, seven days a week. Instead I focused on my favorite three food groups – cheese, bread, and pasta. Atkins has nothing on me.
On the 30th I packed my bags and headed to Siem Reap, a 5 or so hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. Siem Reap is famous for Angkor Wat and some other, beautiful and terribly old, temples. That was not my reason for going there though. Knowing that some friends and family will be coming to visit within the next year I opted to focus more on the city itself. I did not want to burn myself out on the temples before my loved ones had a chance to see them – it just wouldn’t be fair to them. So I stuck with what could never get old to me – shopping and eating. Five other volunteer girls and I bought new dresses for New Years Eve and that night had fun dressing up as though we weren’t in the Peace Corps but foreigners on vacation. It was a BLAST. As hundreds of other people on a crowded street in Siem Reap started counting down to 2010, we counted along with them. Six months in Cambodia down and with nineteen left to go, who knows what the New Year will bring to this small group of bleeding hearts halfway across the world from everyone else they know and love. For that night we were excited and happy and danced the night away; hopeful of a wonderful and successful year ahead. It was one of my best New Years so far.
I returned to site on the 3rd, happy but broke. Why does happiness (i.e. air conditioning and cheese) have to cost so much? My host family seemed happy to see me after my ten day disappearance. Unfortunately my bed was covered in dead bugs – a surprise because my mosquito net covered it entirely during my time away – and I quickly set about shaking them out and straightening up my room. Tomorrow I would teach again, and it would be much easier if I had my stuff together.
The students were better behaved than I remembered. Maybe it was like the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Or maybe it was the short week ahead which brought about their remarkable upbeatness in the face of English grammar. The 7th of January is the day when, in 1979, “Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh establishing the People's Republic of Kampuchea.” The official rule of Pol Pot’s regime was over, although they continued to hold onto parts of Northwestern Cambodia until the late 1990s. Although my town celebrates this holiday on the 5th, because that is the day when they were liberated from the Khmer Rouge, we also have the 7th off. Out of my four day workweek, I would be teaching two days. It is no wonder why many people say that Cambodia has the most official holidays out of any other country in the world. Teaching was a breeze that week.
Currently I am in Svay Reing catching up on any internet time I did not get in Phnom Penh while also compiling a list of English names for my students to choose from. How appropriate do you think the names of Apple, Coco, Pax, and the Hulk are? They reflect people's names for our generation in the English speaking world. My Cambodian students should be made aware of them and prepared to meet people with names like these. It is only fair.
Given the choice to return to site for two days and then come back to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (for New Years), I opted for annual leave so I could stay on and eat more cheese, and potentially lay by a pool (or two). It made my Christmas and New Years vacay a total of nearly ten days, and it was wonderful. I admit, after three months of limited (to almost no) electricity and no running water, I was ready to spoil myself. What is there to do in Phnom Penh? For me it was eat American food and go shopping. I ate to my hearts content, pizza, macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, bagel pizzas, bruschetta... the list goes on. The only thing I can truthfully say I did NOT eat was rice. It did not make sense for me to spend money on something I have to eat three times a day, seven days a week. Instead I focused on my favorite three food groups – cheese, bread, and pasta. Atkins has nothing on me.
On the 30th I packed my bags and headed to Siem Reap, a 5 or so hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. Siem Reap is famous for Angkor Wat and some other, beautiful and terribly old, temples. That was not my reason for going there though. Knowing that some friends and family will be coming to visit within the next year I opted to focus more on the city itself. I did not want to burn myself out on the temples before my loved ones had a chance to see them – it just wouldn’t be fair to them. So I stuck with what could never get old to me – shopping and eating. Five other volunteer girls and I bought new dresses for New Years Eve and that night had fun dressing up as though we weren’t in the Peace Corps but foreigners on vacation. It was a BLAST. As hundreds of other people on a crowded street in Siem Reap started counting down to 2010, we counted along with them. Six months in Cambodia down and with nineteen left to go, who knows what the New Year will bring to this small group of bleeding hearts halfway across the world from everyone else they know and love. For that night we were excited and happy and danced the night away; hopeful of a wonderful and successful year ahead. It was one of my best New Years so far.
I returned to site on the 3rd, happy but broke. Why does happiness (i.e. air conditioning and cheese) have to cost so much? My host family seemed happy to see me after my ten day disappearance. Unfortunately my bed was covered in dead bugs – a surprise because my mosquito net covered it entirely during my time away – and I quickly set about shaking them out and straightening up my room. Tomorrow I would teach again, and it would be much easier if I had my stuff together.
The students were better behaved than I remembered. Maybe it was like the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Or maybe it was the short week ahead which brought about their remarkable upbeatness in the face of English grammar. The 7th of January is the day when, in 1979, “Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh establishing the People's Republic of Kampuchea.” The official rule of Pol Pot’s regime was over, although they continued to hold onto parts of Northwestern Cambodia until the late 1990s. Although my town celebrates this holiday on the 5th, because that is the day when they were liberated from the Khmer Rouge, we also have the 7th off. Out of my four day workweek, I would be teaching two days. It is no wonder why many people say that Cambodia has the most official holidays out of any other country in the world. Teaching was a breeze that week.
Currently I am in Svay Reing catching up on any internet time I did not get in Phnom Penh while also compiling a list of English names for my students to choose from. How appropriate do you think the names of Apple, Coco, Pax, and the Hulk are? They reflect people's names for our generation in the English speaking world. My Cambodian students should be made aware of them and prepared to meet people with names like these. It is only fair.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
What kind of brains are they?
"Hope Bai , Kellee!", Nary yelled to me as I sat in a plastic chair in the front of her famiy's shop, watching people go in and out of the market.
Every week I come to Nary and Narin's house to have lunch and chat. Nary is my age and Narin is 22 years old, both unmarried, and so they make for good company. Narin moved to Phnom Penh, however, in October to go to school. For $500/year he studies Korean 5 days a week. When he comes home he gives his notes and books to his older sister so she can study off them too. As with most Cambodian, as we as Vietnamese (as Nary and Narin are), families in rural Cambodia they support their male children to go to school while their daughters stay at home until they get married (usuay around age 18). One of my male students said that his sister wanted to go to study at a university but their parents refused to support her. In order to get money to fund her ambitions, she moved to Phnom Penh to work in a clothing factory. Her brother says she is still working there two and a half years later.
Both Nary and Narin are studying Korean so they can move to South Korea next year. Narin wants to get a job assembling cars and Nary is just looking for a "sales" position. I wonder what their family will do once they both move to Korea. With the absence of Nary especially, I think it will be much harder to run their shop which sells everything from fruit to pots and pans to children's toys.
I sit down to their table in the center of their one story home. In front of me are some fried duck eggs, rice, and some very questionable meat (brains?).
I ask Nary "What is this?" in Khmer, pointing to the bowl of brains. I forget the word for brains and ask, "is it from a head?"
She nods yes.
"Pig's head?"
She looks at me, disgusted. "Pig's brains are not good! Not delicious!"she says, matter-of-factly. Then goes to bite into a few more river clams that have suddeny appeared on the table in a bowl next to the bowl of "questionably-not-pigs" brains.
"Cows head?"
She looks at me and then her 3 year old little brother who is doing laps around the table with a tricycle. When she looks back she nods a few times and smiles.
"Yes. They are very delicious - my little brother's favorite!" She then proceeds to take a spoon to the brains.
I take one more helping of fried egg.
Every week I come to Nary and Narin's house to have lunch and chat. Nary is my age and Narin is 22 years old, both unmarried, and so they make for good company. Narin moved to Phnom Penh, however, in October to go to school. For $500/year he studies Korean 5 days a week. When he comes home he gives his notes and books to his older sister so she can study off them too. As with most Cambodian, as we as Vietnamese (as Nary and Narin are), families in rural Cambodia they support their male children to go to school while their daughters stay at home until they get married (usuay around age 18). One of my male students said that his sister wanted to go to study at a university but their parents refused to support her. In order to get money to fund her ambitions, she moved to Phnom Penh to work in a clothing factory. Her brother says she is still working there two and a half years later.
Both Nary and Narin are studying Korean so they can move to South Korea next year. Narin wants to get a job assembling cars and Nary is just looking for a "sales" position. I wonder what their family will do once they both move to Korea. With the absence of Nary especially, I think it will be much harder to run their shop which sells everything from fruit to pots and pans to children's toys.
I sit down to their table in the center of their one story home. In front of me are some fried duck eggs, rice, and some very questionable meat (brains?).
I ask Nary "What is this?" in Khmer, pointing to the bowl of brains. I forget the word for brains and ask, "is it from a head?"
She nods yes.
"Pig's head?"
She looks at me, disgusted. "Pig's brains are not good! Not delicious!"she says, matter-of-factly. Then goes to bite into a few more river clams that have suddeny appeared on the table in a bowl next to the bowl of "questionably-not-pigs" brains.
"Cows head?"
She looks at me and then her 3 year old little brother who is doing laps around the table with a tricycle. When she looks back she nods a few times and smiles.
"Yes. They are very delicious - my little brother's favorite!" She then proceeds to take a spoon to the brains.
I take one more helping of fried egg.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Cambodian Dreams
I have been in Cambodia for about four months so far, two of those at site. Living in Southeast Asia is no longer a novelty but a fact of life. Starting at about 4:30 am every morning I expect to hear a dozen or more roosters cawing, dogs barking, babies crying, and women and children sweeping their homes. Within the last few weeks I have even begun to dream about Cambodia and me in it which means that I have both consciously, and unconsciously, accepted that I now live in Cambodia.
My days are really laid back, sometimes so much so that I end up feeling guilty about it; such as on November 9th. This day is a national Cambodian holiday and commemorates Cambodia’s independence from France. I had no idea that I would not have to work that day until a student came to my house the Saturday before and told me (if it wasn’t for him I would have showed up at my school, books in hand, waiting in an empty classroom for tardy students that would have never showed up). Anyways, I had not planned anything to do that day and so it took me by surprise. My town is only so big. And by so big, I mean very small. There aren’t many options for things to do in your free time unless you count housework or planting or replanting rice as options. On holidays I usually see groups of men sitting in a circle drinking shots of palm wine, playing cards, and eating. The children run around and lately (I assume because now we are out of the wet season) have been flying kites. They make these kites themselves and I have been impressed at how well, and how high, they fly.
We do have a thriving market that is very busy in the morning which becomes a ghost town after noon except for a few tailors and seamstresses. Don’t even think about going at 4 pm, you will be the only one there. So I went to the market, ate breakfast (Ramen – no meat- and iced coffee), and wandered around. I bought some clementines (which are in season here and are awesome) and some nome tian (a gelatinous ball made of rice flour and filled with coconut, cashews, and sugar). After which I sat and gossiped with a friend of my host family who has a shop at the market until about 9:30 am. After which I decided to go home, where I stayed for the rest of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be social but it gets so hot during midday and with having nothing to do I saw nothing better than resigning myself to a lazy day at home. I ate some clementines with my host sisters while chatting with them and then sat down with a book until lunchtime (lunch was stir fried pork and pineapple with rice). After which I took a three hour long nap and, after waking, proceeded to read again. I read until dusk (when the electricity turns on) and went about finding a way to assess my students’ knowledge of English on my laptop. And at 8pm I went to bed.
Instead of just sitting down and to read one book I have decided to read many books at once. This often helps me when I have an exceptionally long day with many hours to kill. Currently I am reading “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson, “Tellers of Tales” an anthology of short stories from 1947, and “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving. They have kept me very well distracted from otherwise itching my mosquito/unidentified insect bites or getting upset over the fact that the ants had got into my peanut butter AGAIN.
I promise you most days I am not that lazy. So if you are looking at become a Peace Corps volunteer or have recently been accepted to go to Cambodia, let me tell you it is no 'walk in the park'. During the normal school week the days go by very quickly and I do not have that much time to read or sleep the day away. My days go somewhat like this:
5:15 am: Get up and go running.
6:00 am return home, take bucket shower etc.
6:30am eat breakfast at a local food stand (usually I eat a sandwich or noodle soup accompanied with a few shots of delicious Vietnamese coffee).
7:00 am arrive at school and start teaching
7:05 am the class monitor tells me that the coteacher has a meeting in the provincial town and that I will be teaching the class myself. As my Khmer language skills are elementary (at best) I resort to doing lots of miming and drawing of the English words on the chalkboard in order help the students translate the words into Khmer (how do you draw the word "cause"? Oh let me show you...). I do this until I realize that there is a dictionary in the back of the teacher’s book which translates the words from English into Khmer.
9:00 am move to the second class of the day. The coteacher shows up on time and everything goes smoothly until I am broadsided by a question about an obscure grammar rule from my coteacher in front of the class. I try my best to bs through it until I must give up and say I will come back with a better explanation at the next English class.
11:00 am I go home to read and prepare for class in the afternoon
12:00 pm I eat lunch with my host family (Yum, fish soup and fried frogs).
1:00 pm take a nap
2:00 pm I grab some coffee by the market and, literally, jump on my bike so as I am not late for class. When I arrive the coteacher has just arrived as well. It is his turn to teach and so I sit to the side of the classroom and assist with pronunciation and reading dialogue.
4:00 pm take a short bike ride with my friends Nary and Narin.
5:00 pm stop by the Metphone business. I have made friends with the manager and a few days a week I can go there and use their internet. This can only happen when the town has electricity between 5:30 pm and 10 pm every day.Recently I have discovered that Metphone blocks facebook. FACEBOOK?!? My only real reason to go on the internet now a days... urgh.
6:00 pm after using the internet I go home. I visit my sister who is cooking the dinner for that night in the back of the house. As we don’t have electricity everything is either fried, barbequed, or boiled over an open flame. We have lots of sour fish soup and boiled frog (I made the mistake of saying that I like frog to my family and now I have it about four times a week. I appreciate them trying to accommodate me but I can only eat so many frogs. )
7:00 pm I sit down to dinner with my entire host family and their friends. They seem to be constantly hosting guests at our house. Currently there are 8 people living in the house and with the additional guests it brings the party to 12. I spend the dinner time answering questions about why I ride my bike everywhere, if I miss my family, why I choose to wear short sleeves, and why I am so fat.
8:00 pm I take a bucket shower and settle down in my bed to listen to BBC radio on my shortwave and read a little.
Around 8:30pm or 9:00pm I go to sleep
Of course that is just an example of my schedule. Lately I have come to find that an entire class of students may be excused from class to harvest rice, or if it's raining, may just decide not to show up at all. On those days I just sigh, get my books together, and head to a coffee stand to sit and practice Khmer with some local people. For the most part the students themselves seem to be motivated to learn English. There is one class though that I feel like I am pulling teeth to get any student cooperation. I have started to incorporate more games into my lessons. It gets them more involved in class, but I fear it isn't doing much for their language ability. My bachelor's degree in History really did not prepare me to teach English to Cambodian students. I work hard every day though to take notes and work on my lesson plans in order to more effectively teach them. Some days seem awfully futile.
My days are really laid back, sometimes so much so that I end up feeling guilty about it; such as on November 9th. This day is a national Cambodian holiday and commemorates Cambodia’s independence from France. I had no idea that I would not have to work that day until a student came to my house the Saturday before and told me (if it wasn’t for him I would have showed up at my school, books in hand, waiting in an empty classroom for tardy students that would have never showed up). Anyways, I had not planned anything to do that day and so it took me by surprise. My town is only so big. And by so big, I mean very small. There aren’t many options for things to do in your free time unless you count housework or planting or replanting rice as options. On holidays I usually see groups of men sitting in a circle drinking shots of palm wine, playing cards, and eating. The children run around and lately (I assume because now we are out of the wet season) have been flying kites. They make these kites themselves and I have been impressed at how well, and how high, they fly.
We do have a thriving market that is very busy in the morning which becomes a ghost town after noon except for a few tailors and seamstresses. Don’t even think about going at 4 pm, you will be the only one there. So I went to the market, ate breakfast (Ramen – no meat- and iced coffee), and wandered around. I bought some clementines (which are in season here and are awesome) and some nome tian (a gelatinous ball made of rice flour and filled with coconut, cashews, and sugar). After which I sat and gossiped with a friend of my host family who has a shop at the market until about 9:30 am. After which I decided to go home, where I stayed for the rest of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be social but it gets so hot during midday and with having nothing to do I saw nothing better than resigning myself to a lazy day at home. I ate some clementines with my host sisters while chatting with them and then sat down with a book until lunchtime (lunch was stir fried pork and pineapple with rice). After which I took a three hour long nap and, after waking, proceeded to read again. I read until dusk (when the electricity turns on) and went about finding a way to assess my students’ knowledge of English on my laptop. And at 8pm I went to bed.
Instead of just sitting down and to read one book I have decided to read many books at once. This often helps me when I have an exceptionally long day with many hours to kill. Currently I am reading “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson, “Tellers of Tales” an anthology of short stories from 1947, and “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving. They have kept me very well distracted from otherwise itching my mosquito/unidentified insect bites or getting upset over the fact that the ants had got into my peanut butter AGAIN.
I promise you most days I am not that lazy. So if you are looking at become a Peace Corps volunteer or have recently been accepted to go to Cambodia, let me tell you it is no 'walk in the park'. During the normal school week the days go by very quickly and I do not have that much time to read or sleep the day away. My days go somewhat like this:
5:15 am: Get up and go running.
6:00 am return home, take bucket shower etc.
6:30am eat breakfast at a local food stand (usually I eat a sandwich or noodle soup accompanied with a few shots of delicious Vietnamese coffee).
7:00 am arrive at school and start teaching
7:05 am the class monitor tells me that the coteacher has a meeting in the provincial town and that I will be teaching the class myself. As my Khmer language skills are elementary (at best) I resort to doing lots of miming and drawing of the English words on the chalkboard in order help the students translate the words into Khmer (how do you draw the word "cause"? Oh let me show you...). I do this until I realize that there is a dictionary in the back of the teacher’s book which translates the words from English into Khmer.
9:00 am move to the second class of the day. The coteacher shows up on time and everything goes smoothly until I am broadsided by a question about an obscure grammar rule from my coteacher in front of the class. I try my best to bs through it until I must give up and say I will come back with a better explanation at the next English class.
11:00 am I go home to read and prepare for class in the afternoon
12:00 pm I eat lunch with my host family (Yum, fish soup and fried frogs).
1:00 pm take a nap
2:00 pm I grab some coffee by the market and, literally, jump on my bike so as I am not late for class. When I arrive the coteacher has just arrived as well. It is his turn to teach and so I sit to the side of the classroom and assist with pronunciation and reading dialogue.
4:00 pm take a short bike ride with my friends Nary and Narin.
5:00 pm stop by the Metphone business. I have made friends with the manager and a few days a week I can go there and use their internet. This can only happen when the town has electricity between 5:30 pm and 10 pm every day.Recently I have discovered that Metphone blocks facebook. FACEBOOK?!? My only real reason to go on the internet now a days... urgh.
6:00 pm after using the internet I go home. I visit my sister who is cooking the dinner for that night in the back of the house. As we don’t have electricity everything is either fried, barbequed, or boiled over an open flame. We have lots of sour fish soup and boiled frog (I made the mistake of saying that I like frog to my family and now I have it about four times a week. I appreciate them trying to accommodate me but I can only eat so many frogs. )
7:00 pm I sit down to dinner with my entire host family and their friends. They seem to be constantly hosting guests at our house. Currently there are 8 people living in the house and with the additional guests it brings the party to 12. I spend the dinner time answering questions about why I ride my bike everywhere, if I miss my family, why I choose to wear short sleeves, and why I am so fat.
8:00 pm I take a bucket shower and settle down in my bed to listen to BBC radio on my shortwave and read a little.
Around 8:30pm or 9:00pm I go to sleep
Of course that is just an example of my schedule. Lately I have come to find that an entire class of students may be excused from class to harvest rice, or if it's raining, may just decide not to show up at all. On those days I just sigh, get my books together, and head to a coffee stand to sit and practice Khmer with some local people. For the most part the students themselves seem to be motivated to learn English. There is one class though that I feel like I am pulling teeth to get any student cooperation. I have started to incorporate more games into my lessons. It gets them more involved in class, but I fear it isn't doing much for their language ability. My bachelor's degree in History really did not prepare me to teach English to Cambodian students. I work hard every day though to take notes and work on my lesson plans in order to more effectively teach them. Some days seem awfully futile.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A long road
Before I came to Cambodia there were many things I never imagined doing. These things include eating ants and crickets, pooping in holes, being hit by moto scooters, wiping my butt with my hand, and doing my laundry with a bucket and brush. Recently this has come to include extracting bats from my mosquito net in the middle of the night. Imagine yourself in my position, sleeping after a long day of teaching and suddenly waking up to a bat flying around your face. I almost screamed. Quickly I grabbed my headlamp and jumped out of my bat cell. After about five minutes I had calmed down a bit and lifted one edge of the mosquito net, carefully so as I would not be hit by the aggravated bat on his way out. I tried my hardest to make a large enough opening that the bat would take notice and fly out to freedom. After five minutes the bat did just that.
How did this bat become trapped in my mosquito net? As previously mentioned, my mattress is WAY too big for my bed frame making it very difficult to tuck all the edges of my net under my mattress at night. After a few weeks I had given up on one side of the net for convenience sake allowing those mosquitoes smart enough to get in to bite me to their hearts content. Little did I realize that this also gave clearance for other creatures; namely, bats. Since this episode I have been sure to tuck ALL my net’s edges under my mattress at night AND weigh them down with books. It not only saves me from bat invaders but gives me a little library to choose from at nighttime without having to leave my bed :)
Before I came to Cambodia I never really rode a bicycle. I knew how to ride but as my mother was always very (almost overly) nervous about us riding our bicycles anywhere but the driveway, I never became very confident with the bicycle. And as I grew up I never really considered it a transportation option. However, now that I am in Cambodia and a Peace Corps Volunteer, my bicycle has now become my only transportation option as taxis are too expensive (for me) and I am not allowed to ride a moto. Just recently I made the 40 km (26 miles – a marathon!) commitment to ride to my provincial town. It went by surprisingly quickly. It was fun to see the other parts of the province next to where I live. To make it even better, when I stopped for a cold beverage at a sugar juice stand a policeman bought me my drink.
I try not to go into the provincial town too often, because I do not want to make it seem like I do not like my site. I love my site. The people are incredibly friendly and nearly everyone in the town knows by name now. When I go into the market to buy fruit I almost never have to spend any money, the sellers give me the fruit for free. They get offended when I insist on giving them money and so now I have stopped trying and instead make sure to stop by their stand every so often to chat.
School has been great. I have recently started to teach. This year I will teach three 10th grade classes and one 11th grade class for a total of 16 hours a week. I haven’t done anything too crazy or new (yet) but have been taking good notes on what students need help on. My teaching has been pretty much by the book. And by “by the book” I mean by the English For Cambodia” book 4 and 5. There are some INTERESTING stories in there, let me tell you. If I have time one of these days I will definitely copy a story into my blog for your reading pleasure. You may laugh, you may cry, I think you may just be confused by the story/stories. In any case, I am sure you will find them interesting.
On Sunday I will take the road back to my site making my total miles traveled by bike this weekend to 52+. After two years of traveling that distance every other weekend I am sure to log a total of 2704 miles just going to my provincial town and back. Whew – it’s a long road.
How did this bat become trapped in my mosquito net? As previously mentioned, my mattress is WAY too big for my bed frame making it very difficult to tuck all the edges of my net under my mattress at night. After a few weeks I had given up on one side of the net for convenience sake allowing those mosquitoes smart enough to get in to bite me to their hearts content. Little did I realize that this also gave clearance for other creatures; namely, bats. Since this episode I have been sure to tuck ALL my net’s edges under my mattress at night AND weigh them down with books. It not only saves me from bat invaders but gives me a little library to choose from at nighttime without having to leave my bed :)
Before I came to Cambodia I never really rode a bicycle. I knew how to ride but as my mother was always very (almost overly) nervous about us riding our bicycles anywhere but the driveway, I never became very confident with the bicycle. And as I grew up I never really considered it a transportation option. However, now that I am in Cambodia and a Peace Corps Volunteer, my bicycle has now become my only transportation option as taxis are too expensive (for me) and I am not allowed to ride a moto. Just recently I made the 40 km (26 miles – a marathon!) commitment to ride to my provincial town. It went by surprisingly quickly. It was fun to see the other parts of the province next to where I live. To make it even better, when I stopped for a cold beverage at a sugar juice stand a policeman bought me my drink.
I try not to go into the provincial town too often, because I do not want to make it seem like I do not like my site. I love my site. The people are incredibly friendly and nearly everyone in the town knows by name now. When I go into the market to buy fruit I almost never have to spend any money, the sellers give me the fruit for free. They get offended when I insist on giving them money and so now I have stopped trying and instead make sure to stop by their stand every so often to chat.
School has been great. I have recently started to teach. This year I will teach three 10th grade classes and one 11th grade class for a total of 16 hours a week. I haven’t done anything too crazy or new (yet) but have been taking good notes on what students need help on. My teaching has been pretty much by the book. And by “by the book” I mean by the English For Cambodia” book 4 and 5. There are some INTERESTING stories in there, let me tell you. If I have time one of these days I will definitely copy a story into my blog for your reading pleasure. You may laugh, you may cry, I think you may just be confused by the story/stories. In any case, I am sure you will find them interesting.
On Sunday I will take the road back to my site making my total miles traveled by bike this weekend to 52+. After two years of traveling that distance every other weekend I am sure to log a total of 2704 miles just going to my provincial town and back. Whew – it’s a long road.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Pig scales and eating packing material: My first few weeks at site.
I arrived at site on September 27th, fairly confident that I would get along fine the first few weeks. I was right in some respects; there were no incidents which deterred me from liking the place or for people here to consider me an “ugly American” (or if there were they were quiet about it). Mostly it was just awkward. Three weeks later it is still awkward only now my family and most people in my village recognize that I cannot speak fluent Khmer. Patiently they have taken time to teach me some Khmer words that I failed to learn in the first two months (surprisingly I did not know the Khmer words for “to clean” or “schedule”.. I wonder if this was some kind of Freudian slip?).
My first step to become a resident of Rumeus Hek was to buy a mattress. I have a very small bed frame at my host family’s house and was looking for something equally as small. There were none to find. I had to go ahead and buy one that was equal in length but twice the width for a whopping $30 (for a volunteer who makes less than $4 a day…it is a lot). Every night I have to be careful not to move around to much as to fall off and take all the bedding with me – a big pain in the butt considering my mosquito net takes up almost the entirety of my room and gets caught in my hair when I try to move around the out skirts of it. My family has been helpful with getting me settled in. For the first week I had no money and had to rely on their generosity. I was especially thankful to them when I heard from a volunteer in another province that her family had withheld food from her because as she had not been able to pay them yet. Equally frustrating for her was that her town had been affected by a hurricane and did not have any electricity, so even if she could withdraw money from the bank she would not be able to (we all had to wait until the 1st of the month for money to arrive in our accounts).
It has been surprisingly easy to make friends here. For the first few days my host sister and I went to a seller near the market to eat some Cambodian sandwiches for breakfast. The seller is a very friendly woman who unfortunately likes to give her three year old large doses of coffee to the detriment of her customers. Mostly this child just cries bloody murder until it gets the coffee and then after the coffee is consumed screams for more. This is depending on the time of day; often if I go in the evening (and many doses of coffee later) the child is screaming that it doesn’t feel well. I have yet to find out whether or not it is acceptable to tell this woman that giving coffee to a three year old is not a good idea. It was only last week that we swapped phone numbers and on Sunday she called me to see if I had done my laundry. I think we are getting closer to that level in our relationship… but maybe I’ll wait a month or two…or maybe I’ll never tell her. She makes the best Cambodian sandwiches in town and to jeopardize that relationship early on in my service would be fatal to my Peace Corps career. What is a Cambodian Sandwich? I assume it is like the Vietnamese sandwich on the crusty roll but as I’ve never had it I can only guess that it is similar. It is a toasted baguette with pork, what I call “rooster sauce” or spicy ketchup, cucumber, and other delicious sauces and spices. It is 25 cents a sandwich (or 1000 riel). Usually I accompany this with a shot of coffee with a bit of sweetened condensed milk which costs me 700 riel/20 cents. All together a great breakfast for less than 50 cents : )
Not surprisingly I acquired other friends while looking for food. Peace Corps has encouraged us to go out and meet people and really get to know the community during our first few months here. I always seem to need a destination or reason for going anywhere and thus interpreted it as “go and buy food and other things and make some conversation along the way”.
As I was passing the entrance of my market I made eye contact with a woman selling fruit. She recognized that I was wandering and invited me to sit down. I ended up sitting there for two hours. She kept giving me delicious fruit for free (Mangos, bananas, Lychee fruit, and oranges) and, because nearly everyone going to the market passes by that particular spot, after about 10 minutes of me sitting down we had a pretty decent crowd around the fruit stand. She has three children that live at home; a daughter (24), a son (22), and a 3 year old. I have become quite good friends with the 24 and 22 year old and we have gone on a few bike rides together. They have made it their mission to teach me Khmer and said that within 5 months I will know Khmer fluently– I hope they’re right. Before I left the stand that day the family, unsatisfied by the 2 kilos of fruit I ate, came out with some kind of packing material that looked somewhat like wax paper. The 24 year old woman, Nary, put it in her mouth and offered me a sheet of packing material as well. I thought it looked interesting and – carefully (it had sharp edges and treads) - put it in my mouth. At first I was certain that it was some kind of joke; “Look at the foreigner, she doesn’t know anything – she can’t even recognize that she is chewing on a large piece of plastic!” Luckily they sincerely eat the stuff and had given me some waxy paper material made out of rice.
My weekly schedule consists of working at the public high school with a coteacher, the health center, and having lots of free time. I work at the school 16 hours a week and at the health center 4 hours a week. There are practically no women teachers in my school and as I feel uncomfortable here around large groups of men (maybe this will change once I become proficient in the language?) I usually navigate towards the students. This not only helps my relations with them but helps me gage their language ability. On my first day there a group of 11th graders approached me and wanted to practice their English. They had the usual questions how many brothers and sisters do you have? What do your parents do? How old are you? How much do you weigh?
Nearly every person I have met has asked me how much I weigh. My family owns a pig scale and brought it out the other night to see if “maybe I would like to weigh myself in front of everyone?” I said “no thank you” and that “I do not want to know how much I weigh”. This last statement delivered some very quizzical looks but the fact is I can almost guarantee I am the heaviest woman in Rumeus Hek. This has recently been confirmed by working at the local health center. About once a week I go and observe the nurses in action (once my language gets good enough I will be hope to do more – just last year a volunteer became a midwife!). My time there is mostly spent watching the pregnant women come in, get a brief check-up…and get weighed. The average weight has been about 45 kilos or 100 lbs. I try to boost myself up with thinking that if anything they are jealous of my weight because after saying “you’re fat” they usually follow it up with “you’re beautiful”. But, me being an American woman, I am VERY self-conscious about my weight and would rather not weigh myself in front of everyone or tell all the people in my village how many kilos I am. Maybe that will change over time…
…especially if I try to keep up with my running schedule. We are currently in the midst of the rainy season and as there are no paved roads in my village, running is a very messy ordeal. I have limited my running to mornings following dry nights. It has been over a week since I have been able to go on a run : (
My experience thus far has led me to conclude that the people in my village are very generous and thoughtful. Here are a few examples….
Example 1) The other day I rode my bicycle to the market (as always) and forgot it in the hot afternoon sun. When I came back to where I left my bike it had been moved, thoughtfully, under the awning of the market and in the shade. I was so thankful, the seat of my bicycle is black and when left in the sun it becomes unbearably hot. I looked around to see who the Good Samaritan was, but they could not be found.
Example 2) I was invited to my student’s house to drink a Coke and talk with them in English. As we were conversing, they asked me how many teaching skirts (sampots) and shirts I had. I said two but that I was planning on buying one more. My student’s mother overheard that and asked me to follow her into her house. She had me try on a few of her sampots and shirts. At her insistence she tailored her own skirt to fit me right then. That day she gave me, a perfect stranger, a shirt and a sampot.
When I am not co-teaching, at the health center, or wandering the streets of Rumeus Hek, you can find me reading. And reading A LOT, like hours at a time. I have already devoured three books (Pillars of the Earth by Follett, Me Talk Pretty One Day by Sedaris, and Undaunted Courage by Ambrose) and am unfortunately left with two books to last me two and a half more months. That is when I am officially off what we Peace Corps Cambodia Volunteers like to call “Lock Down”; the mandatory three months we must stay at site without going into another province or Phnom Penh. Unfortunately for us in Svay Reng, Phnom Penh is the only city nearby (without crossing a border) where we can find decent English books or American food (Burgers!!Pizza!!!Cheese!!!!). This is not the case for those lucky enough to be placed in Kampot, Battambang or Siem Reap (think Angkor Wat) Provinces. I have tried to take my reading in small doses but cannot stop. I feel there may be dark days ahead.
The time spent here thus far has been fairly great. Of course I miss home and, especially, speaking English. I can already tell that I am becoming bit more Khmer and a little less American to my detriment or not. Evidence is everywhere. Such as the other day when I decided to use the toothpaste that the mouse chewed up and when I ate an entire frog head and everything. In the Unites States I would have thrown the toothpaste away thinking that I could get the Hanta-virus from it.And I would have never eaten a frog… ever. My coworkers at my school joke that they will get me too eat dog one day. I hope that day will never come. No matter how successful of a volunteer I am - the experience will be worth it.
My first step to become a resident of Rumeus Hek was to buy a mattress. I have a very small bed frame at my host family’s house and was looking for something equally as small. There were none to find. I had to go ahead and buy one that was equal in length but twice the width for a whopping $30 (for a volunteer who makes less than $4 a day…it is a lot). Every night I have to be careful not to move around to much as to fall off and take all the bedding with me – a big pain in the butt considering my mosquito net takes up almost the entirety of my room and gets caught in my hair when I try to move around the out skirts of it. My family has been helpful with getting me settled in. For the first week I had no money and had to rely on their generosity. I was especially thankful to them when I heard from a volunteer in another province that her family had withheld food from her because as she had not been able to pay them yet. Equally frustrating for her was that her town had been affected by a hurricane and did not have any electricity, so even if she could withdraw money from the bank she would not be able to (we all had to wait until the 1st of the month for money to arrive in our accounts).
It has been surprisingly easy to make friends here. For the first few days my host sister and I went to a seller near the market to eat some Cambodian sandwiches for breakfast. The seller is a very friendly woman who unfortunately likes to give her three year old large doses of coffee to the detriment of her customers. Mostly this child just cries bloody murder until it gets the coffee and then after the coffee is consumed screams for more. This is depending on the time of day; often if I go in the evening (and many doses of coffee later) the child is screaming that it doesn’t feel well. I have yet to find out whether or not it is acceptable to tell this woman that giving coffee to a three year old is not a good idea. It was only last week that we swapped phone numbers and on Sunday she called me to see if I had done my laundry. I think we are getting closer to that level in our relationship… but maybe I’ll wait a month or two…or maybe I’ll never tell her. She makes the best Cambodian sandwiches in town and to jeopardize that relationship early on in my service would be fatal to my Peace Corps career. What is a Cambodian Sandwich? I assume it is like the Vietnamese sandwich on the crusty roll but as I’ve never had it I can only guess that it is similar. It is a toasted baguette with pork, what I call “rooster sauce” or spicy ketchup, cucumber, and other delicious sauces and spices. It is 25 cents a sandwich (or 1000 riel). Usually I accompany this with a shot of coffee with a bit of sweetened condensed milk which costs me 700 riel/20 cents. All together a great breakfast for less than 50 cents : )
Not surprisingly I acquired other friends while looking for food. Peace Corps has encouraged us to go out and meet people and really get to know the community during our first few months here. I always seem to need a destination or reason for going anywhere and thus interpreted it as “go and buy food and other things and make some conversation along the way”.
As I was passing the entrance of my market I made eye contact with a woman selling fruit. She recognized that I was wandering and invited me to sit down. I ended up sitting there for two hours. She kept giving me delicious fruit for free (Mangos, bananas, Lychee fruit, and oranges) and, because nearly everyone going to the market passes by that particular spot, after about 10 minutes of me sitting down we had a pretty decent crowd around the fruit stand. She has three children that live at home; a daughter (24), a son (22), and a 3 year old. I have become quite good friends with the 24 and 22 year old and we have gone on a few bike rides together. They have made it their mission to teach me Khmer and said that within 5 months I will know Khmer fluently– I hope they’re right. Before I left the stand that day the family, unsatisfied by the 2 kilos of fruit I ate, came out with some kind of packing material that looked somewhat like wax paper. The 24 year old woman, Nary, put it in her mouth and offered me a sheet of packing material as well. I thought it looked interesting and – carefully (it had sharp edges and treads) - put it in my mouth. At first I was certain that it was some kind of joke; “Look at the foreigner, she doesn’t know anything – she can’t even recognize that she is chewing on a large piece of plastic!” Luckily they sincerely eat the stuff and had given me some waxy paper material made out of rice.
My weekly schedule consists of working at the public high school with a coteacher, the health center, and having lots of free time. I work at the school 16 hours a week and at the health center 4 hours a week. There are practically no women teachers in my school and as I feel uncomfortable here around large groups of men (maybe this will change once I become proficient in the language?) I usually navigate towards the students. This not only helps my relations with them but helps me gage their language ability. On my first day there a group of 11th graders approached me and wanted to practice their English. They had the usual questions how many brothers and sisters do you have? What do your parents do? How old are you? How much do you weigh?
Nearly every person I have met has asked me how much I weigh. My family owns a pig scale and brought it out the other night to see if “maybe I would like to weigh myself in front of everyone?” I said “no thank you” and that “I do not want to know how much I weigh”. This last statement delivered some very quizzical looks but the fact is I can almost guarantee I am the heaviest woman in Rumeus Hek. This has recently been confirmed by working at the local health center. About once a week I go and observe the nurses in action (once my language gets good enough I will be hope to do more – just last year a volunteer became a midwife!). My time there is mostly spent watching the pregnant women come in, get a brief check-up…and get weighed. The average weight has been about 45 kilos or 100 lbs. I try to boost myself up with thinking that if anything they are jealous of my weight because after saying “you’re fat” they usually follow it up with “you’re beautiful”. But, me being an American woman, I am VERY self-conscious about my weight and would rather not weigh myself in front of everyone or tell all the people in my village how many kilos I am. Maybe that will change over time…
…especially if I try to keep up with my running schedule. We are currently in the midst of the rainy season and as there are no paved roads in my village, running is a very messy ordeal. I have limited my running to mornings following dry nights. It has been over a week since I have been able to go on a run : (
My experience thus far has led me to conclude that the people in my village are very generous and thoughtful. Here are a few examples….
Example 1) The other day I rode my bicycle to the market (as always) and forgot it in the hot afternoon sun. When I came back to where I left my bike it had been moved, thoughtfully, under the awning of the market and in the shade. I was so thankful, the seat of my bicycle is black and when left in the sun it becomes unbearably hot. I looked around to see who the Good Samaritan was, but they could not be found.
Example 2) I was invited to my student’s house to drink a Coke and talk with them in English. As we were conversing, they asked me how many teaching skirts (sampots) and shirts I had. I said two but that I was planning on buying one more. My student’s mother overheard that and asked me to follow her into her house. She had me try on a few of her sampots and shirts. At her insistence she tailored her own skirt to fit me right then. That day she gave me, a perfect stranger, a shirt and a sampot.
When I am not co-teaching, at the health center, or wandering the streets of Rumeus Hek, you can find me reading. And reading A LOT, like hours at a time. I have already devoured three books (Pillars of the Earth by Follett, Me Talk Pretty One Day by Sedaris, and Undaunted Courage by Ambrose) and am unfortunately left with two books to last me two and a half more months. That is when I am officially off what we Peace Corps Cambodia Volunteers like to call “Lock Down”; the mandatory three months we must stay at site without going into another province or Phnom Penh. Unfortunately for us in Svay Reng, Phnom Penh is the only city nearby (without crossing a border) where we can find decent English books or American food (Burgers!!Pizza!!!Cheese!!!!). This is not the case for those lucky enough to be placed in Kampot, Battambang or Siem Reap (think Angkor Wat) Provinces. I have tried to take my reading in small doses but cannot stop. I feel there may be dark days ahead.
The time spent here thus far has been fairly great. Of course I miss home and, especially, speaking English. I can already tell that I am becoming bit more Khmer and a little less American to my detriment or not. Evidence is everywhere. Such as the other day when I decided to use the toothpaste that the mouse chewed up and when I ate an entire frog head and everything. In the Unites States I would have thrown the toothpaste away thinking that I could get the Hanta-virus from it.And I would have never eaten a frog… ever. My coworkers at my school joke that they will get me too eat dog one day. I hope that day will never come. No matter how successful of a volunteer I am - the experience will be worth it.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
A funny thing happened on the way to becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer…
The journey has no doubt been long. To us, the two months of training have gone by exceedingly fast while at the same time being incredibly slow; especially those first two weeks with our host families. Without being able to speak the language the days felt like years (at least now we have a bit of a foundation for moving to permanent site).Tonight was our, K3’s, last night together until our mid service training in February. No tears were shed but by looking at everyone’s face you could tell that we all will be missing each other when depart for our permanent sites tomorrow. It’s daunting to know that we will be without a “support system” within our towns and cities, at least until we build those relationships ourselves. For some of us it will be the first time away, on our own, trying to navigate that kind of relationship building in another country. Although we were and are all fully aware that we would be living with a Khmer family, surrounded by Khmer people, and not having another volunteer or American close to us… now that it is upon us we are all a bit apprehensive. Over and over we kept talking about how it was for Peace Corps volunteers nearly 50 years ago when the first volunteers went to Africa. They did not have cell phones or the internet. And getting to their sites sometimes took days. It all made our “grievances” look very trivial in comparison.
This last week has been one of the longest during my training. Last weekend was Pchum Ben, a holiday only celebrated in Cambodia (that I know of). It is hard to explain but I guess you could say it is similar to that of Day of the Dead in Mexico because it is dedicated to the departed and lifeless. The holiday itself is 15 days long. The very last weekend of the holiday the families travel to their ancestral home and meet with other family members. And on the last Saturday they go to the Wat (Buddhist Temple)and pray with the monks in front of the stupa, where their dead family members’ ashes are entombed. They give gifts for their ancestors and to the monks. And throughout the day they eat A LOT of food. It was not until Pchum Ben that I had my first bout of diarrhea. I blame it on the sheer quantity and variety of food they made me eat. It really bummed me out because I was trying to win the prize for the only volunteer to never get it in Cambodia. I failed, miserably.
The rest of the week was filled with getting our stuff ready to travel to permanent site, taking our language proficiency interviews, saying goodbye to our training families, and getting sworn in as volunteers. All of us passed our language proficiency interviews (go K3s!). I think I have a bit of test anxiety because just the idea of taking the test made me nervous, and so during nearly the whole thing I was a bit of a wreck. Luckily the only question that I feel I really “messed up” on was when the tester asked me to compare Khmer culture and American culture. Only hours before had I even heard the word “culture” in Khmer and knew no other substantial words in Khmer to make an intelligent answer. What I came up with was this: “Cambodia has Pchum Ben. For Pchum Ben they go to the Wat and sit in front of their dead family and eat a lot of food.” I didn’t even mention anything about American culture. Luckily I passed with an Intermediate Low which is what the majority of the other trainees received.
On Friday, September 25th we were sworn in by the American Ambassador to Cambodia, Carol Rodley, in Phnom Penh. It was a fun day. Our school directors came from each of sites for support and to have a brief conference before the swear-in. After the ceremony we were able to mingle with some RPCVs (returned Peace Corps volunteers) that live in Phnom Penh. Many of them have prestigious jobs with organizations such as USAID and Helen Keller International. It is safe to say that many of us are looking forward to the possible opportunity to work with an organization such as those in the future. Also in attendance was the Cambodia’s Minister of Education, Im Sethy. Thirty years ago he was one of a handful of teachers who came to Phnom Penh to build Cambodia’s Education system from the ground up. The following are links to articles about our swearing in ceremony:
http://khmernz.blogspot.com/2009/09/us-peace-corps-volunteers-sworn-in.html
(more websites to come.. .hopefully)
What was the funny thing that happened to my on the way to becoming a volunteer? It was how much I enjoyed it. When I first arrived here I was set on to prepare myself to serve Cambodia as much as possible. In the process of doing so I not only learned a great deal of technical information but also how to have fun here. The kind of things that will help me be mentally stable while being away from so many people I love back home. Silly Khmer card games? Check. Good places to get ice cream in Phnom Penh? Double check. How to order the best coffee and sweetened milk combination? You bet :)
Tomorrow I leave for Rumeus Hek. Who knows how frequently I will have internet but I will try to post as often as possible :) Thank you for reading!
This last week has been one of the longest during my training. Last weekend was Pchum Ben, a holiday only celebrated in Cambodia (that I know of). It is hard to explain but I guess you could say it is similar to that of Day of the Dead in Mexico because it is dedicated to the departed and lifeless. The holiday itself is 15 days long. The very last weekend of the holiday the families travel to their ancestral home and meet with other family members. And on the last Saturday they go to the Wat (Buddhist Temple)and pray with the monks in front of the stupa, where their dead family members’ ashes are entombed. They give gifts for their ancestors and to the monks. And throughout the day they eat A LOT of food. It was not until Pchum Ben that I had my first bout of diarrhea. I blame it on the sheer quantity and variety of food they made me eat. It really bummed me out because I was trying to win the prize for the only volunteer to never get it in Cambodia. I failed, miserably.
The rest of the week was filled with getting our stuff ready to travel to permanent site, taking our language proficiency interviews, saying goodbye to our training families, and getting sworn in as volunteers. All of us passed our language proficiency interviews (go K3s!). I think I have a bit of test anxiety because just the idea of taking the test made me nervous, and so during nearly the whole thing I was a bit of a wreck. Luckily the only question that I feel I really “messed up” on was when the tester asked me to compare Khmer culture and American culture. Only hours before had I even heard the word “culture” in Khmer and knew no other substantial words in Khmer to make an intelligent answer. What I came up with was this: “Cambodia has Pchum Ben. For Pchum Ben they go to the Wat and sit in front of their dead family and eat a lot of food.” I didn’t even mention anything about American culture. Luckily I passed with an Intermediate Low which is what the majority of the other trainees received.
On Friday, September 25th we were sworn in by the American Ambassador to Cambodia, Carol Rodley, in Phnom Penh. It was a fun day. Our school directors came from each of sites for support and to have a brief conference before the swear-in. After the ceremony we were able to mingle with some RPCVs (returned Peace Corps volunteers) that live in Phnom Penh. Many of them have prestigious jobs with organizations such as USAID and Helen Keller International. It is safe to say that many of us are looking forward to the possible opportunity to work with an organization such as those in the future. Also in attendance was the Cambodia’s Minister of Education, Im Sethy. Thirty years ago he was one of a handful of teachers who came to Phnom Penh to build Cambodia’s Education system from the ground up. The following are links to articles about our swearing in ceremony:
http://khmernz.blogspot.com/2009/09/us-peace-corps-volunteers-sworn-in.html
(more websites to come.. .hopefully)
What was the funny thing that happened to my on the way to becoming a volunteer? It was how much I enjoyed it. When I first arrived here I was set on to prepare myself to serve Cambodia as much as possible. In the process of doing so I not only learned a great deal of technical information but also how to have fun here. The kind of things that will help me be mentally stable while being away from so many people I love back home. Silly Khmer card games? Check. Good places to get ice cream in Phnom Penh? Double check. How to order the best coffee and sweetened milk combination? You bet :)
Tomorrow I leave for Rumeus Hek. Who knows how frequently I will have internet but I will try to post as often as possible :) Thank you for reading!
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