My site

Let me apologize for the lack of posts lately.  Sorry.  On to business.

So the last week and a half or so has been stressful because we did our teacher training sessions and our community activities which went awesome.  For the teacher training I taught about reflective teaching which is when... you guessed it, brainstorm ways to reflect on your teaching failures and successes.  The class was not very receptive because education in this part of the world is different from in America.  For example the structure and hierarchy of the class is very important and it is generally assumed that the teacher knows everything, it is also considered embarrassing for students to answer incorrectly so it can be a little difficult to stimulate participation.

But these guys are teachers, I mean they have been teaching for years and here I come in and try and tell them how to run their classes.  Although I tried not to be too preachy and tell them how to run their classes age is a big part of the respect system here and I was teaching some gentlemen and women who were upwards of ten to fifteen years older than me.  I went in and simply asked them some common problems in their classes and suggested some ways to remedy the problems.  One big problem that you don't think about too much is that the European population is a little more prominent than the American, so many times the children are taught English from people from England.  This not only becomes a problem with pronunciation, but vocabulary as well.

So I finished the teacher training workshop and began to work on my community project which my group had decided would be based on gender roles within their community.  There is a proverb in Cambodia that says "men are like gold, as when they are dropped they can be polished and cleaned again.  Women are like cloth because once they are stained the stains are there forever". We were by no means trying to reinvent the wheel here but we figured that we could start very small and maybe ask the kids at the school a few questions to get them thinking about why people are treated the way they are and so forth.

We divided the kids in boy and girls groups to get more participation and tried to get them to think of the common roles that men and women have in their society.  We pointed out housework, workplace differences, childcare, education, etc. and listed them on the board.  We told them some of the roles in the different categories in America and then asked them about how things were in Cambodia.  We were surprised to find that the class thought women should be payed more in the workplace and most of the boys had some progressive thinking towards their gender counterparts.

In conclusion I think that the gender workshop went very well and although there is still a lot of progress to be made, this can be one of my projects for my time here.

Onto site visit.  So I live now with my training family in a small village outside of the provincial capital in Takeo (I know that doesn't mean a lot to everyone but stay with me).  Last Saturday all of the trainees met in Takeo to get our site placements and new host families.  This was an exciting moment because until now we have been kept in the dark on what to expect for our site and the Peace Corps was very secretive about our placements.

I found that I will be placed in Kampot province about an hour drive from the beach and I will have my own apartment.  I was really excited when I heard I would be in Kampot because I will be within close vicinity of many other volunteers and the school I will teach at is rather large (2700 students).  So I had originally asked for a place far out in the sticks where I could be in a more rural site and really get to know my community.  Unfortunately I am placed in a site that is the second largest city in the province and has a national highway running right through the middle of it.

Although I did not get everything I asked for, my house is very nice and I can see myself being happy and effective in the site they placed me.  It will be more difficult to integrate simply because the town is so large and the population is fairly transient, but if I am able to get to know the community and they are able to know me I feel like that will be a large accomplishment.  Many other volunteers have exciting sites around me and I will be able to visit them often also.

I will apologize for the lack of pictures also, but when I run the internet here I have to pay by the amount of data I use so it can be expensive if I download or upload a lot of pictures and videos.

Thank you for reading and I hope to post again soon.