Face Sucking and Sumbs.

Cow Sevin is a man about the same age as my Khmai parents, who works at a nearby NGO and sleeps at our house a few nights a week (he goes home to his family in a different town the other nights). Dinners with Sevin are always interesting. He speaks English, albeit brokenly, and is always curiously inquiring about things he’s heard about America, that he wants to clarify as being true, as well as voicing his personal opinions about America’s moral compass or lack thereof. “I heard that eleven year olds have babies in America. Is it true?” “I think that woman have more right in America than men.” It’s always a careful balance for me, trying to answer his questions or respond to his opinions in a tactful yet honest way. Last night at dinner, Sevin asked me, “Why you suck each other’s face in America?” Choking on my rice, I looked up at him. “What?!” I croaked as I pictured something vaguely reminiscent of a scene in Silence of the Lambs. “In America, you suck each other’s face. What is it?” Sevin replied. Using my hands as puppets to mime, I figured out he was talking about kissing.

Learning that “face sucking” (I explained the term “making out” to him) does indeed occur in America, he crossed his arms over his chest and said definitively, “It is not clean.” This coming from someone who uses his own spoon to serve himself soup from the communal soup bowl! Anyway, it was yet another encounter of many that are funny with Sevin.

Last week I was supposed to go observe Chun Saroon teach, the English teacher with whom I really don’t want to work. Chuon Nam Heng (the one I like) told me there would be no classes last week, since the school was still flooded and students were having trouble getting there, so I didn’t go. As it turns out, he was not teaching any classes- the other teachers still were. The following day, I was drinking a coffee with Chuon Nam Heng when Chun Saroon showed up. “Do you know that you are a liar?” he said to me. Great. I explained the misunderstanding, but he was not very empathetic. Needless to say, this encounter did not enhance my feeling for the guy. The following day, I faithfully showed up to observe his class. “Where is Chun Saroon?” I ask his classroom full of students. Nobody knew. “Ohhh, I am very busy! Very busy now!” he said to me when I called him. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Ohhhh umm… Today I not come to school because… I am busy! Sorry!” So just like that, Chun Saroon totally evaded his primary duty as a teacher because he was simply “too busy” and expected I would teach his class. I was furious. I talked to the school director, and we worked it out to where I now know all of the teachers’ schedules and will show up to observe at my convenience, so that they can’t just duck out knowing I will be able to take over their responsibilities. Unfortunately, I am not the first volunteer to have experienced this in Cambodia. Teachers are paid the same wage, by the government, regardless of how much they teach and when, so things are often “coming up” which prevent them from teaching and turn the responsibility over to volunteers, or, if no volunteer is present, the kids go home.

After school, twice a week, I’ve been teaching English to a group of ten and eleven year olds at S’rei Ohn’s house. One of the students is her daughter, the rest, her friends. It’s ended up being a lot of fun. The kids are extremely eager to learn English, and while more like parrots than people right now (they will attempt to babble anything that comes out of my mouth), I can see that their enthusiasm will translate to knowledge. So far, we’ve covered body parts, family, and animal vocabulary. What I like more than anything else, I think, and what frustrates me the most at the same time, is working on pronunciation. Those THs and Rs are nearly impossible for Cambodians, which is excruciating to listen to, but makes the occasional “breakthrough” that much more rewarding. “Thumb” for example, is pronounced by Cambodians, “Sumb.” No matter what I do, “Sumb” it remains. But during my language group, I had an idea to have them grab their tongues and try to say the word. It worked! And of course they were giggling uncontrollably over the whole thing. One boy is particularly enthusiastic: Dong Leeyung. We sit in a half circle on a table outside, me, next to the white board, and the kids surrounding. When we’re learning a new word, I’ll say it, and have them repeat after me, together at first, and then individually. The kids don’t really get the “individual” part, and continue to scream it at me in chorus as I’m trying to pay attention only to one. Dong Leeyung screams it in my ear, leaning closer and closer to me desperately vying for my attention until I turn to him and ask him to please scoot back and wait his turn. It gets mildly irritating, but I’m sure I wouldn’t be fooling anyone if I said I didn’t love it.

I should mention that Cambodians rarely smile in photographs. Even in their wedding pictures, they have a look as solemn as if someone just died. So the smiles that are beginning to show here are as good as gold. J

From this Saturday until the next, I’m going to a TEFL conference in Phnom Penh with Chuon Nam Heng. With twenty or so other volunteers, and their Khmer counterparts, we will learn about how to become better teachers. I’m really excited! I’ll report back after the conference. Thanks for tuning in!

At our first staff meeting at the beginning of last week, I was introduced to all six of the English teachers at my school. There are three with whom I can see myself working: Loak cru (Male teacher) Chuon Nam Heng has several gold teeth, mocking eyes, and almost perfect English; Chum Cheeung is very kind and has a nice laugh; and Nek Cru (Female teacher) Soweechia is clever and speaks English fairly well, having studied at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. There are two other English teachers, but I don’t see myself working with either of them: one is going crazy (literally), and the other is abrasively enthusiastic, which makes me want to run the other way whenever I see him. One day while I was running, he pulled up on his moto and ordered me to stop on the side of the road to have a chat: not what I want to do when I am sweating and intent on collecting endorphins. “I really want to improve my English. Okay?!? Mean that… I really really wants yous to teach to me!!!!” I know it’s not fair of me to turn away from someone who is this anxious to work with me and I’m trying to change my attitude about him, but it’s really hard… If you met the guy, you might understand.

            

Then there’s Loak Cru Ot Dam, who showed up to our first staff meeting wearing a grubby white t-shirt and dirty pants, muttering to himself audibly. “Oh don’t mind him, he has mental problems” the teacher to my left assured me. Having given my number out to all of the teachers at this meeting, Ot Dam has since called me every day and night an average of ten times (I don’t answer anymore). His mom even called me one evening to inquire about his teaching schedule. His mom!

       

Despite the water that is still in the school and the surrounding area, preventing many students from being able to come, we’ve still been meeting every day. The kids don’t have their books yet, so these “classes” have quickly turned in to what I like to call “American Culture Happy Hour,” by which I mean, me, standing in front of forty unblinking eyes, trying desperately to eat away at the time by yapping about what I know (or think I know) about America. Luckily, when I am on the edge of despair is just when the students start to participate. “Do you know how to eat Cambodian food?” “How many cities are there in America?” (Right.) “Can I have your number?” I am quickly forming my own philosophy about what it means to be a good teacher, and while I am sure it will develop from its now crudest of forms, I think that maybe a huge part of it is being willing to boldly venture forth from any sort of “comfort zone” to make a point- and to be willing to make a total jackass of myself repeatedly to (hopefully) foster some sort of connection.

Wading to class…

The market lady who sells me coffee in the morning has quickly become my best bud. She calls me every night after dinner to ask what I ate for dinner, what I am doing now, and to tell me she misses me. Our capacity for conversation is quickly exhausted and we just giggle at each other for a few moments before she says “Ok byebye!” and hangs up. She invites me over to her house to hang out and watch the workers fixing the siding on her house, eat fruit or an soam jay- banana with sticky rice- or just let me hang out while she tuts around going about her various business. It’s a nice place for me to go to get away from everything else for a little while. I feel safe there- I can be in a great mood, or a not so great mood, and I feel like she genuinely accepts whatever it is I am that day, and wants me around just the same. She’s brings me back bread when she goes to Phnom Penh, and buys me fruit and soy milk at the market. She bought me a delightfully tacky broach today that she insisted she help me put on the moment she gave it to me: a bedazzled spider with green rhinestones and painted silver finish. Let your imagination run wild. I’ve helped her bake nompia, a sort of biscuit-like pastry filled with a crushed peanuts and marzipan that she sells at the market in the mornings. By “help” I mean that I laze around in front of the fan basking in the attention of the yays (grandmothers) who pet my arm or pat my butt and feed me fruit. It’s great.

Peanut mixture inside of the Nompia

S’rei Ohn, my new friend, working the dough.

One of the yays, displaying the finished product

I could be a hand model, don’t you think?

One last story that’s kind of funny: I was drinking coffee with Chuon Nam Heng- my new Khmai teacher and hopefully, co-teacher- the other day when class was over, and suddenly he sighs, a propos of nothing and says, “Don’t mind me. I am not sad, I am just thinking about my son… And that… I wish he were married… Oh! Look! Here! I have his number! He lives in Phnom Penh and speaks English! You call to him.” Maybe it’s time to make up a fake boyfriend.

Swearing In and Moving to Site

It is official! I am a bonified, certified, qualified (?) Peace Corps Volunteer! Yesterday, the 59 Peace Corps Trainees who have made it through training swore in as official volunteers. The Minister of Health was there, as was the Chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy.  Along with one other trainee, I gave a speech in Khmai, and with four other trainees, sang the national anthems of Cambodia and the U.S.. I was honored to be involved in both accounts, and despite my nerves, was really happy to do it.

With my new site mates! Brandon and Diana. And Sam On, who took us on our site visits, and decided to jump in the picture.

TRAING! Training village friends for life. :)

It was sad to leave our families in Traing. I was handling the whole thing pretty well until the day before we left, at lunch. My sister and I were talking about how much we would miss each other and she said she would miss knowing that I am in the room next to hers when we’re sleeping. Here is where, as you may imagine, I lose it. Crying into my banana (not pretty), as Srayingin awkwardly tries to soothe me but is obviously uncomfortable with the whole thing… In hindsight it’s pretty funny.

My first Khmai family: pa-own baroh (younger brother), bong serai (older sister who I am the closest to), bong baroh muy (one of my older brothers- there are three), mai (mom), bong serai bee (second older sister), and boc (dad: he was really worried about his shorts being in the picture, so kindly disregard those), and finally, Ot Dam (the three year old terror that I bonded with approximately twice, usually over food).

After we’d packed our things and said goodbye to our families, we traveled to our provincial town by roma (the moto with the wagon attached to it), and then took buses to Phnom Penh.

So close!

Before swearing in, we had a few days to kill in the capital. One of the days, we did a scavenger hunt around Phnom Penh. We had two hours to run around, trying to find and take pictures of things like “the mangiest dog in Phnom Penh,” “someone eating a fertilized duck egg,” and “a giant pile of hair.”

                            "creepiest looking mannequin"                       Best Engrish shirt found in the wild

                                                                                                                                         “I like sky and you make me smile!”

Monkeys and an elephant roaming around Independence Park

Despite our best efforts, my team and I failed in returning to the Peace Corps office on time, and so were usurped by another group who apparently chose timeliness over funtimeliness. We had a great time though, and found our way around parts of Phnom Penh we’d not yet explored.

Friday afternoon, groups of us went out on field trips to visit NGOs in the area. I went to visit the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Chambres Extraordinaires au sein des Tribunaux Cambodgiens): where the leaders of the Khmer rouge are currently indicted, awaiting trial. The leaders are now in their seventies, which may prompt you to ask why it took so long to get a proper court set up to trial them. Basically, the Cambodian government wanted an all-Cambodian court, but didn’t have the funds to support it, and outside governments refused to help unless they could be involved in the trials. So after much back and forth, the court has now been set up, with outside input, and is now investigating the first leader. The necessity of these trials is a much debated topic in Cambodia, one that volunteers are advised to steer clear of as we are discouraged from talking about politics. But regardless of one’s stance on the issue, the situation is pretty interesting. If you want to read more about the trials, here’s a link: www.eccc.gov.kh

We had ample time to mix work with play, so a group of friends and I went and saw Harry Potter 7.5, most of us for the second time. In the U.S., if a movie is particularly good, we’ll clap at the end, but mostly we keep our comments to ourselves or at least limit them to our neighbors. Not the case in Cambodia. People freely narrate the majority of the movie, loudly, for all to hear. “He fell!” “Where are they going?!” “He’s dead.” At one point during the movie, there’s a scene in which Snape’s a young kid, laying in the grass with Lily Potter (some of you will remember this), and daisies start to bloom. At this point a Khmai man in the audience yells out “PONGTEA!” which translates, “EGG!” Of course, my friends and I lost it, yelled over to him “OUGHT PONGTEA TDE!” (“That’s not an egg!”) and continued to whisper “Pongtea” to each other at opportune moments throughout the rest of the movie. It was great.

Out and about in Phnom Penh.

What the true meaning of this is, I may never know.

So now I am at site, and I don’t really know what to do with myself. My school is currently flooded- there was four feet of water in all of the classrooms last week and still remains some, so we’re starting school late. Today, we had an all-staff meeting, during which my school director gave us a pep talk that included the advice “prepare lesson plans.” Then he asked us to go clean the classrooms. So I wandered over with the other teachers to peer into the classrooms at the inch of so of standing water mingling with various wrappers and tissues and sludge. I asked one of the English teachers what we were supposed to do and he chuckled and said, “I don’t know! On Monday, the students will clean.” This is the same teacher that, when I asked about how he handles cheating in the classroom (a notorious problem in Cambodia), he responded, “Oh, it is very difficult! Very difficult!” and left it at that. Luckily, there is one teacher with whom I already get along famously. His English is great, and he’s already taken it upon himself to be my Khmai teacher, and even wants to teach me to read and write. “You will take the small sticks, and then, you will build a nest” he told to me yesterday over coffee. I like his philosophy.

Beyond that, not too much has happened yet. My host mom makes a mean vegetable stir-fry, and still thinks everything I do is hilarious. I’ve finished one book and started another, and, despite how comfy my bed is, and how nice it is to lay in front of my fan for hours on end, am looking forward to more active days to come. Totally unrelated but I want to share anyway; here is a memorable quote from the latest book I read:

“If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free man in here’ –he tapped his forehead- ‘and you’re alright” –Bozo, in Down and Out in Paris and London

More soon!