Today. Jan 28th | Accustomed.

Oh! It’s Bev’s birthday today…. Happy Birthday Bev! (Will’s sister going to college back in Minnesota). 

So I think I know why I haven’t written a whole lot lately. I think it’s partially because we are becoming pretty accustomed to things here. The things that used seem so crazy, odd, out of place, wrong, weird, illogical maybe just don’t anymore since we’ve been here for six months already. Maybe not. –But that’s what occurred to me on my bike ride to school today.

I was on my way back after my three-day bout of sickness. I’m feeling much better today, maybe a little on the weak side as I haven’t eaten much in the last 3 days, but I’m sure I’ll regain my strength soon.

Anyhow, on the way to school, I saw a really large hog, lying on the side of the road in front of the house. I’m talkin’ really large. I don’t usually see that. At least, not in front of a house right in the middle of town. I don’t know what it was doing, if it was ill, or if they were getting ready to transport it somewhere, or maybe it was going to get slaughtered. Will seemed to think that maybe it was just taking a nap. I never bothered to ask anyone, so I guess we’ll never know.

Then farther down the road I got a call from my co-teacher. He was checking up on me to see if I was feeling better, which was nice. I told him I was on my way to school – and that I’d see him soon.

Then I went by the white house that’s redoing their fence, with the two small really cute children who always say hi. These aren’t the obnoxious ones… they’re usually pretty sweet. They are about maybe 2-3 years old (at least that’s how old they looked by American standards…there’s a possibility they are older). Anyhow the younger girl was holding an empty can of Black Panther…which is a dark beer.
And that moment is when it occurred to me that perhaps I am becoming much more accustomed to things here. My jaw doesn’t drop to random things that I see daily. For the most part, they now are just things you see daily and are a part of normal life. In the states, it might look kind of funny to see a baby child playing with an empty beer can. But here, nah- just another toy.

As soon as I got to the national road I noticed a pretty strong headwind going straight against me. I actually had to downshift on my bike. I admit my energy is a bit low, but it was a strong wind. Made me feel like I was back in SD. A few minutes had passed and I arrived at the school.

There I met my co-teacher and he asked how I was. I apologized for not being able to go to his Chinese New Year’s Party because I was sick. He said not to worry about it. Then he asked me if I could teach his classes today because he wanted to go to a wedding in Siem Reap.

Those were the exact words I really didn’t want to hear just at that moment. After all I’m just recovering from three days of some sort of intestinal bacterial infection that gave me an extremely high fever and kept me in bed all day. Thoughts to myself: “Me – managing 5 classes of 60 students each, on my own w/o a translator.” I’ve done it before, but today I’m still recovering, and frankly I was a teensy bit upset that he couldn’t have mentioned that to me around 7:30am—OR even when he called me when I was on my way to school.

Peace Corps has left it to our choice if we ever want to teach classes on our own. – Yea- its fine for clubs, extra classes or something like that. But the experience has been in the past that many teachers have abused the fact that a volunteer was around – and all of a sudden stopped showing up to classes and relied on the volunteer all too often to teach all of their classes for them. Or they think that because we’re there, they don’t need to be there; when in actuality we are trying to help integrate new teaching styles WITH our co-teacher. (Not while he’s absent partying at a wedding). Now, I’m not saying my co-teacher does that, but I do need to reiterate the rule. It’s even in a contract that we signed at the beginning of the school year.

Nonetheless, I kindly told him, that yes, you should most definitely go to your friend’s wedding, but in the future, could you tell me at least the day before? I also reiterated that typically Peace Corps doesn’t want us teaching classes alone. But I looked at the schedule and the first two classes were classes I’ve begun teaching a lesson on how to write formal letters. (The rest of the classes are behind)…and I figured that this lesson was taking much longer than I expected (I’ve already used 3 class hours to teach it, and we’re finally just writing a draft). I decided that I’d stay for the two hours and continue that lesson, but then leave for the rest of the day, because mostly, I think one more day of rest would do a lot for my health.

He was fine with that and then we parted.

The classes went okay. But it truly is important for the co-teacher to be there and play his/her part. First – it’s just important for them to learn and work with the volunteer; we work as a team. Secondly, while I can translate a fair amount of things, I cannot translate everything. At that point, I’m then relying on the students to translate concepts and words to other students, and during that time there is a small breakdown of who holds the respect in the room, and all of a sudden I’m not the one in control. Then they all talk Khmer, and I don’t understand – and it’s this whole waterfall of events and just not the best situation when you’re trying to be a teacher and hold discipline, when the students know you’re crumbling inside because you don’t know how to get your point across. Sigh. Those moments are the worst.

But I guess overall it went okay…I’ve got the students writing formal letters of interest to a fake company called “Job Finder Company” in Phnom Penh….with director Ms. Kari (kari I have no idea if you read this, but I thought I’d put you as director of the company). I got them to pick a job they want to be someday. I got them to brainstorm skills and reasons why they would be a good employee, and then I have them working on their first draft.

It’s interesting… I’ve offered to the students that I would correct anyone’s letters if they wanted me to (fyi: Teachers RARELY to NEVER assign homework, simply because there are too many students – can you imagine coming home w/ 200 papers to correct every night? sheesh)…..anyways – I read the class leader’s letter – which was done first. I expected him to be done first; he’s really pretty outgoing and speaks English pretty well. But still I found a few mistakes. Not that I blame him, because I know English is difficult [especially English grammar, heck I think it’d be difficult to learn if it were my 2nd language too, I’m just glad it was my first; has anyone realized how much jargon there is with the English language?.... Transitive Verb this, past perfect that, present participle this, demonstrative that and so on and so forth. It kinda makes your head spin. Ha. Well grammar wasn’t my favorite subject (no offense to any of my past English teachers), but just ask my father – even after graduating college and during my work days, I found myself emailing him grammar questions. Yes. That aside. I am teaching English here. Don’t mind my run-ons.] Anyway, I was pleased though with the general concept of the class leader’s letter. It is interesting and will be interesting to get to truly see what level of some of these students are at, what kind of sentences they can compose, what jobs they want to have someday and why they think they would be good at them. I just had no idea it was going to take this long to get through a lesson. It kind of makes you wish they met more than 3 times a week for a class. Oh well. That’s not how it is here. Too many students. Not enough teachers. Teachers don’t get paid well. Three days a week is max. SO you do what you can with what you’ve got.

Sigh, so that was this morning till about 10 o’clock. Will was finishing up his environmental class just about the same time and we decided to go to the market together to grab some food to make for lunch.

It was THERE that I had another little moment of, “I must be becoming accustomed.” Because I saw what looked to be a tour guide and another foreigner inside our market. OUR Market. Ummm heLLO! This is really quite unusual to see tourists in our town, but I guess I need to remember that we aren’t far away from the silk farm, and that golf course, so I spose there will be tourists here every once in a while. Nonetheless, the first thought came to my head was, “ooh. Barang.” And then the second thought was “oh my god, did I really just think that to myself? That’s what Khmer people say to us! Do I think I am Khmer or something? I guess sometimes I must feel like it.” Then I thought to myself, “wow. oh yea. That’s probably how I look to pretty much EVERYONE else in this town, and that’s why we get hassled all the time” (not hassled in a bad way, for the most part; but everyone looks at you, some people stare and a lot of people want to talk to you and sometimes it just gets tiresome and all you want to do is hide in your room and watch dvds on your computer.)

….. I don’t know… I guess sometimes you just forget that you look so different and that you ARE a foreigner to everyone. – Even if you speak the language, wear the teacher clothes, eat khmer food and do laundry by hand – you still can’t quite hide.

It’s kinda funny, when we volunteers get together its vent session time where we all get our frustrations out and share them with each other and realize we’re all going through the same thing and it makes us all feel better. But one thing most of us have said we’ve experienced is that there is this small sense of pride because we all know we’ve been living here for half a year, and anytime we see a foreigner or tourist, or backpacker we automatically think we’re better than them. It’s kind of silly really, and I even find myself thinking it from time to time – and it’s kind of cocky and totally unnecessary, because I’ve been a tourist many a time and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. But we do. We do get that feeling. We have been here 6 months. We can’t help but have the feeling of, “You don’t Even know!” towards the people who are in for 3 days. We studied the language (like 4hrs daily for two months straight). We can Speak the language. We eat khmer food. We know how to bargain. We do laundry by hand. We teach. We can talk to Khmer people in the tourist capital of Siem Reap – and blow their minds because we can speak khmer so well…..because they are SO used to tourists who don’t speak a word, and I think it’s refreshing for them to be talking to a foreigner in their native language. It surprises them, and pleases them so much.

So yes, maybe we do have the right to feel a little bit better than them in some way. BUT – at least they are travelling and seeing other places and experiencing new things and venturing out of their comfort zone to explore a bit and see what it’s like elsewhere. AND – I have to admit, this particular tourist was venturing out of the touristiest spots. She wanted to see what a true Khmer market was like. And to be honest, you just really can’t get the full idea of what the market is like. It’s hard to imagine the smells (fish still floppin’ around, the meat/butcher section, the gallon buckets full of prohok (fish paste), the vegetables, the fruit, the sweat), the heat, the crowdedness, the noise, the talking, the bargaining, the mud on the floor that occasionally gets on your toes, the busy-ness of the people all rushing to get the best food of the day…. of it all until you actually visit it. It’s a trip in itself.

Anyway. That was my day so far. I should get off this computer and do some lesson planning or something. Dinner with the family tonight – so that is nice; plus we don’t have to do dishes! All for now until next time.