First Thanksgiving in Cambodia

Hello! First of all, I want to say THANK YOU for all of your kind words and inspiration. I am fast learning that each day of teaching is a new one: with a whole new set of challenges and inspirations to work with. Some days I will be up to this challenge, and respond effectively to the different situations that present themselves, and some days, not so much. I’m trying to remember this, and be patient with myself when I fall short.

Last week I was able to push pause on the sometimes-taxing realities of teaching, to go to Kampong Cham for an IST (in service training) with my fellow volunteers. This is the province just north of me. Half of the volunteers (those who live in the south) met in K. Cham for IST, and half of them (those who live in the north) met the week before in Battambong. My counterpart, So Wichea, and my vice school director, Ongkean, came with me to the training, where we brainstormed secondary projects that could help my school and community and talked about what our roles will be to each other throughout my service.

At first I was a little discouraged when we started talking about secondary projects, because my school director seemed only to be interested in the installation of a basketball court and a computer lab, two extremely resource heavy projects that will not be possible without the input of grants. I explained the limited resources I'm currently working with, though, and we agreed that improving the library is a much more feasible project for the present. The library is very musty/dusty/moldy and virtually unusable for students due to its lack of organization. It has no real check out/return system so that books often go missing, and there's virtually no selection of books in English. I hope to improve this in the future if and when I’m able to somehow get ahold of the necessary finances. 

My counterparts and I also talked about planting a garden, which I really hope can happen! I haven’t yet run the idea by my actual school director (who didn’t come to K. Cham: “too busy”), but there is definitely space for it, and technically he has extra money that is meant for “beautification of the school” in the words of my co-teacher, so maybe he will be generous and help me fund the initial start up costs.

Thanksgiving dinner with the other volunteers was amazing! Not only did we have a REAL turkey (which doesn’t even have a name in Khmer, by the way, it’s just referred to as a “foreign chicken”), but also mashed ‘taters, carrots, green beans, stuffing, corn bread, salad, and many, many delectable deserts to choose from. (This proved too difficult for me so I just tasted them all). The meal was amazing, the company was great, and it was just comforting to feel so much a part of a familiar community, amongst so much unfamiliarity. Peace Corps went above and beyond its duties to create a memorable first Thanskgiving away from home for all of us new volunteers. 

This is the bridge that’s on the back of every 500 riel note!

This is the most imbalanced snack I could find in K. Cham

Outside of the Provincial Teaching Training Center (PTTC)

Thanksgiving Feast!!

That's about all from here for now! Thanks again for all of your words of encouragement. Keep me posted on what's going on with all of you, too! I love to hear news of what you're up to, and anything related to current events in the states. I learned recently that pizza is now being considered a vegetable in elementary schools (tomato paste, duh), so that's great news... :-/

So this week I started teaching again after having five days off from school for Water Festival, which came at a timely moment as I was afraid I was beginning to sink into the depths of my bed with no hopes to ever again return to the outside world and be a productive member of society. On Mondays, I only teach two hours in the morning, which may be a good thing because it allows me to sort of ease back into a normal work week, or could be a bad thing because it lets me be lazy a little longer… I haven’t really decided yet. Monday I had a really bad class. Like, so bad that I almost walked out on them and started crying… I choked my way through the dialogue in the book anyway, my internal dialogue screaming at me to not let them see me upset, but they’re not stupid. They knew. And I didn’t recover… I was so upset that no one was participating; the majority of them don’t know how to read in English (after having studied English for several years already- being in grade ten- many of them still don’t know how to read in English). I felt incredibly frustrated with the whole Cambodian school system in general- the corruption, the favoritism, the unequal opportunity. It all hit me at once and I found myself wanting to run away, maybe even back to America.

Fortunately, I have made some really good friends here, and my friend Amie offered me words of wisdom and hope that helped me get through the morning, and eventually the rest of the day, with a smidgen more optimistic of an outlook. There are going to be really bad days here. I came here knowing that, yet it doesn’t make the reality of one any less real, scary, or disillusioning.

On Fridays, I teach another two hours. Tuesday through Thursday, I teach four hours straight through just FYI (I’m not totally lazy), with Khmer lessons and English club in the afternoon to boot. So this morning before class, my co-teacher Chun Saroon called me. (You might remember him from a previous entry). “Hello. Yes. Today, I am very busy.” So I taught the class, to a classroom full of tenth graders whose grasp of the English language is less than tenuous at best. There were times during the lesson when I had that same feeling of Holy shit I want to be anywhere but here- when forty pairs of glazed over eyes were staring at me, bored out of their skulls- but other times when I felt like Ok, I think I can do this. And this is pretty much how every class goes for me. There are moments when I feel ok about it all- when I made them laugh at something, or someone voluntarily raises their hand to answer a question- and moments I feel hopeless.

So ok, maybe there will be days when I hate this, resent my co-teachers, resent my students, resent myself for resenting them… But then, hopefully, there will be days when I think, Ok, I can do this.

My First Khmer Wedding!

Well, I have survived my first Khmer wedding! Yesterday, about eleven in the morning, my co-teacher called me and invited me to the wedding of (I think?) my vice school director’s daughter. Since we have five days off of school for Water Festival, I needed something to drag me out of my room, away from my books and laziness to something back in the social realm. I accepted and we agreed to meet the following morning.

So seven o clock the next morning, my co-teacher arrived at my house. He and my family laughed at me as I ran inside to retrieve my bike, refusing the offer to hop on the back of his moto. First of all I have no idea how I would even attempt that in my sampot, the long traditional Khmer skirt that’s reminiscent of drapes and allows your legs about a ten-inch radius of wiggle room...

We arrived at the groom’s house a little after seven, and were soon handed trays of bananas to carry in the procession. Khmer weddings consist of two parts: the procession in the morning in which fruit is carried from the groom’s house to the bride’s as an offering, and the party which follows in the evening. So my co-teacher and I each held a tray of bananas and hopped into line as it was starting. Somebody told us we were in the wrong spot, so we jumped back in line with the other banana holders (apparently, there is a strict order to these things). And we were off! A dtroh player in the front led the way with help from the beat of a drum. Once at the bride’s house, she came downstairs with her bridesmaids. Everyone looked beautiful, but not quite as beautiful as the bride!

The bride and groom met… I have to admit, I got a little knot in my throat. They are so in love! Afterwards we all sat down to have breakfast together: rice soup, fruit, and pastries of sticky rice wrapped around banana, coconut, and honey. While we were eating, my co-teacher taught me the Khmer names of a couple of fruits I hadn’t learned yet and I attempted to teach him a few in English. “Clementine” I said pointing. “Lemontime” he said, nodding his head in agreement. “No, Clementine” “Yes yes, I know: Lemontime” I guess I couldn’t expect him to pay much attention with all the surrounding excitement.

While we were eating, the bride and groom went upstairs to pray to the family shrine and thank the ancestors for bringing them together. Later in the day, my co-teacher told me, they would cut each other’s hair, as a symbol of them starting their lives anew together.

After breakfast, we all went home to rest a bit for the coming festivities in the evening. I once again delved into my book, but with less guilt, as I knew I’d be partying it up later!

Four o clock rolled around and I rode my bike back to the party. I met one of my neighbors outside and she sort of adopted me for the evening as another one of her kids. She held my hand and led me into the party, sat me down at a table, poured my beer, and even peeled a shrimp for me at one point.

There was a feast: we ate rice (of course) with fish, beef and greens, roasted duck, chicken and peanuts, pâté, and shrimp soup. I sort of picked around the meat the best I could, but it was all delicious! Nobody really talks much while eating in Cambodia, but it didn’t matter because there was a band on a stage, serenading us loudly with boppy Khmer music the whole time. After we ate, and it was getting a bit later, people started moving around more, talking and laughing, some starting to dance. My neighbor grabbed me by the hand again and led me near the stage, where we watched the band and she offered the singers a flower when they would come off of the stage.

One of the singers came over to me at one point and told me to let him know if I wanted to get up and sing… It could be in English, he said, just let him know if I wanted to. I said maybe next time. J

I called it a night fairly early, heading home to my family and back to my books. It was a fun evening though, and I’m really happy I went! First Khmer wedding= success.

the fruit at the groom’s house

standing in line before the procession started

my co-teacher! with his tray of bananas

I couldn’t resist jumping out of line to get a pic of everybody from the front

the dtroh player!

walking to the bride’s house

groom waiting for the bride to accept her gifts

bride coming down to greet him

bride and groom meeting. ahhh, so happy!

bride and groom being serenaded. check out those socks!

eating rice porridge

the alter upstairs with all the fruit we’d brought

TEFL Conference, Site Visit, and Sammies.

I am back from my week in Phnom Penh! It was a good week, but I am glad to be back at my site. The TEFL conference was interesting and I definitely took away some new ideas from it, but it was very long: Seven and a half hours in the same room, every day for six days, gets a little torturous at times. Three days might have been more manageable. When we were focused and engaged, the sessions were productive and our Khmer counterparts got a lot out of it. But when we were exhausted, particularly towards the end of the week, it was harder to focus enough to absorb much of anything. Overall, though, I think the conference was pretty helpful and I’m glad I went. There was one session in particular that Mr. Chuon Nam Heng (my counterpart) and I loved. We were doing exercises to show how differently stressed syllables within a sentence can change its meaning (“You like teaching, don’t you?”- if the tone goes down at the end, you’re sure, whereas if it goes up, you’re unsure). Everyone in the room seemed to think the exercise futile for the Cambodian classroom, but my counterpart and I appreciated the nuances and eagerly analyzed the sentences together like the couple of nerds we apparently are. This confirmed in my mind that we were meant to be (counterparts).

The King’s 90^th birthday was on Monday so there was a parade that started from Independence Monument in the morning.

At the end of the conference, we took a boat ride out on the Tonle Sap River with our Khmer counterparts, the director of the conference, and the country director of Peace Corps Cambodia.

I got home from Phnom Penh on Monday, and spent two days in my village before leaving again for a meeting in my provincial town with my program manager and P.C. Cambodia’s director of training. The drives in Cambodia are always a blast. And by that I mean, I am almost always scared for my life. “Chicken” is a regular past time between drivers on the highway, horns being the only means of division on the road, drivers swerving in and out of “lanes.” When I was in Italy, driving on the highway for the first time with my host family and sputtering in disbelief about the seeming chaos of it all, I remember by host dad turning to me, waving his hand nonchalantly and saying, “the lines are just a suggestion.” The same applies to traffic in Cambodia.

Once safely in Prey Veng, I dropped my stuff off at the guesthouse and went on my way to meet up with two other volunteers who live in the provincial town, and another who lives in a nearby village. We all had to come to town for this meeting, so we took advantage of our time together by running around our tiny, dusty provincial town, taking refuge in the Tela (an air conditioned gas station) whenever needed, eating mi chaa (fried noodles), playing with the kitties at a nearby Wat, and stopping to gawk at the giant pot-bellied pig who also inhabits the place (what it is with Wats and giant pigs, I really don’t know. The contrast of gluttony and asceticism seems unfortunately ironic to me).

Frighteningly large pig at the Wat in Prey Veng

After dinner and drinks on the river, it was time to head back to the guesthouse. My friend Diana had received a package from Phnom Penh, and we were anxious to see what marvels it held... We walked hurriedly, cursing the dogs that barked at us as we passed and trying to convince ourselves we were bigger and stronger than they are (for their size and general manginess, the dogs here can still be intimidating, especially at night).

Receiving a package is like Christmas. Actually, truth be told, it’s better than Christmas. Christmas, you probably know what you’re getting, and after opening your presents, the excitement quickly fades. Maybe I should have asked for this instead… You think to yourself, dully. The whole thing can be pretty anticlimactic. Not the case with packages in Cambodia. Opening a package merits the special attention of a ritual. It is a treasure that will be savored… A package of Oreos! A bag of Candy Corn! Even if ants find their way into these delights, Peace Corps volunteers will honor them all the same, brushing away the occasional bug or justifying it as extra protein, which we all surely need.

So naturally, Diana was very excited to open her package. She carefully cut the tape, using the tiny pocketknife I keep on my keychain, to do so, as I looked on, mesmerized. She folded back the cardboard flaps expectantly! … Only to find that a container of Marshmallow Fluff had exploded its contents on the entirety of the package…

Fluff on the books, fluff on two recorders (Diana was a music major), fluff on the Post-Its, fluff on the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch… You name it, it was covered in Marshmallow Fluff. Our hearts dropped. Being the thrifty Peace Corps volunteers we are, however, we quickly recovered and began to take stock of our resources, assessing the needs of the situation. Since we were in a hotel room, the disaster was not quite as catastrophic as it potentially could have been had Diana been at site where there is no running water, where the ants would surely have congregated in masses towards the fluff the moment the package was opened.

With baby wipes and water, we were able to scrape off the fluff, leaving the contents of the package as good as if they’d never been assaulted in the first place, establishing Diana’s package once again as a blessing and a joy.

Adding to my less than clean record with hotel rooms: I came out of the bathroom and saw this. It may be hard to see here, but those fingerprints are a deep red color…

So now, finally, I am home once again, this time for a while. This week has been The Week Of Sandwiches. While in Phnom Penh, I bought sliced bread and cheese to make my family a good old-fashioned sandwich when I got home. The second my Bong S’rei Ohn heard about this, she insisted I come over the following day to make her sandwiches too. The sandwiches I made for my family had cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce, and today I added a fried egg. S’rei Ohn was beyond thrilled about the whole thing, but took a bite of hers and immediately made a face, saying “Ought jeh niam.” (I don’t know how to eat it). My Ma Ma, however, loved them, and wants me to come over tomorrow to make them again.

Sandwiches: round one, with my family. My nephews didn’t like them, but they were huge supporters of the Oreos.

Sandwiches: round two! Ma Ma frying the eggs. “Ma Ma jeh niam” (I know how to eat them) she proudly remarked after S’rei Ohn proved incapable.

More soon!