Work and Play... a lot of play

Last week I began teaching and I have to say that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  Although the kids have almost no clue what I am saying I know just enough to Khmer and we can meet in the middle most of the time.  The rest of the time ends up being a class laugh session.

I usually begin with some simple vocab that I can easily describe or draw pictures on the board.  Occasionally we come across a word like 'responsibility'.  Easy enough right?  Well it begins with me slowly (and I mean s-l-o-w-l-y) pronouncing the word a few times with the class repeating.  "Responsibility" I say "responserbity" is what I get back.  Okay so I need to break up the words into phonetics, so I write on the board 'ree-spons-eh-bill-it-tee' and am able to get them to pronounce it correctly after about 4 times.  Next I have to try and explain the word.

This is where things get difficult.  I am going through every possible explanation I can think of in Khmer without just giving them the word (because I have no idea how to translate responsibility) and even trying to explain it in basic English.  The kids just don't get it and about 5 minutes after trying to explain I think I am beginning to frighten them because I am over enthusiastic at even the most feeble try.  I finally go and ask my co-teacher who has taken a phone call and left the room.  He gives me the word and I go tell the kids.  By this time they are all laughing hysterically at my awful pronunciation of the Khmer word and I am laughing at their pronunciation of the English word.  All in all the teaching has been okay, and although its very slow moving every class I feel like my pronunciation is really helping them hear and speak clearly.

Onto my funny story of the week.  So everyday out back of my house there is a group of gentlemen who play soccer and on Wednesdays and Thursdays I go to join them.  There was a small carnival last week and it had a few rides and some small games kids could play, and it happened to be right next to the field where we play soccer.  The carnival usually plays American music (Beyonce, J-lo, Pit Bull, etc.), but no one can really understand anything being said and the lyrics are mostly harmless.

Except for one song.

Now picture me, 23 year old male with a sixth graders immature sense of humor and only fluent English speaker for miles, playing soccer with all these Khmer people who brought their kids to a fun day at the carnival when this song comes on http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/g/gillette/dont_want_no_short_dick_man.html.

No joke, I am in the middle of the field and gasping for air, laughing so hard my face is turning purple.  It had to be the funniest thing that has happened to me since I arrived and my only regret is not having anyone who understands what is going on.  Most of the town already thinks I'm nuts because I walk everywhere, and don't know how to hand wash my laundry, and now they are witnessing a first hand total mental breakdown of this new stupid American who just arrived last week.

Needless to say I was a bit embarrassed and my family kept asking what is so funny but I didn't have the heart to tell them and still don't, but I am now officially known as 'that crazy Barang' but its okay because it was well worth what I got out of it, even if it made me look nuts.

a few more pics

A baby named "David"

Yes, they have pugs in Cambodia

Swear In

My Language Group

These people don't mess around...

Let me say it was nice to be in Phnom Penh for a few days before swear in to unwind and buy some stuff that I need (instead of getting a stove I bought a guitar, sorry mom).  However the unwind session soon turned into everyone fitting their goodbyes into a few nights and some early mornings.  One thing they don't tell you about Peace Corps is that training is not walk in the park.  Even on your days off it seems there is an insurmountable amount of work to do to either wash your clothes or study the new language.  Now it is all over and I can finally settle into site and have some free time.

Today was my second day of observing classrooms and one of the girls at my school came running up to me very excitedly.  She told me that she was sad because the fortune teller told her she could not marry me but was excited to study English with me.  Never met the girl before in my life but she apparently saw me yesterday (who didn't? I'm the only white person around 6' in this country) and ran to her local fortune teller to ask about her future.  I told her I was making an English club and she was welcome to come anytime, and walked away nearly crying I was laughing so hard.

That was not the strangest thing that has happened to me this week though.  The most uncomfortable I have been since I arrived in Cambodia was not due to heat or bugs, but surprisingly with a close encounter with a man who got a little too friendly.

I was sitting on a bench in Phnom Penh outside a bar waiting for one of my newly minted PCVs when one friendly Cambodian man came and sat next to me.

Now the culture and friendship of men here is different and they like to touch each other and really get up in each others business.  I am not a fan.  That being said you can tell where this is going.  He moves closer to me speaking broken English and I am trying my best to speak Khmer to him and telling him he speaks good English.  Well after I complement him on his English his hand goes straight to my upper thigh and I wince a little because I don't allow other guys to touch me too often (even for hugs).  So I remind myself of where I am and the customs here and slowly lift his hand and put it back in his lap.

His hand goes right back to my crotch.  I take it off and put it back in his lap and stand up.  Now he slaps me in the butt and stands next to me hand remaining on my butt.  Just walk away Bret.  So I start away and he kind of lingers on my path for awhile and finally goes his separate way.

Other than some bugs, heat and gross misunderstandings everything has gone pretty smooth so far.  I moved to my site, finally am able to settle in.  Pretty much have my own tile floor apartment, and looks like I have a pretty supportive staff at my school.  I miss the other PCVs that I went through training with but seem to have no problem finding awkward situations to occupy myself.

My market is very big and I have met a lot of nice people who are always interested in the foreigner.  I walk through the market and time seems to stop for everyone.  Its actually kind of amusing but I'm sure it will get old when I have been here for six months and still get gawked at on every corner.

This weekend I have a trip to Kampot (the beach town, woot!) to get my bike, why Peace Corps could not send it to my site I will never know.  But any excuse to go relax for a day is okay with me.  Next week I have a little more observing to do and then I begin teaching.  Wish me luck and now that I have some free time I will be able to start blogging more often,

My Mother will be horrified

So I feel like two months into the Cambodian Peace Corps experience I have finally begun to adapt to the culture and the little bit of the language that I know and understand is beginning to serve me better every day.  However, this has come at a price (Mom if you’re reading this skip to paragraph 7).

I will apologize to those of you in advance for some of the things I will share but hey, it just might be the most entertaining thing you read today.

Fried spider legs and roasted crickets aren’t as bad as they seem, I will start out with a creampuff here.  I had them once in Phnom Penh and the texture was the thing that got me and not so much the taste.  I think it is just knowing that what you are eating is (was?) an insect and that really grosses a lot of people out, but it is such a different diet here and many people live to cook and others cook to live.

Dogs are the worst here.  I have had more flea bites than kernels of rice I have eaten, (oh and they are so satisfying to scratch) but it’s a part of the job and have found effective ways to cope.  The little fuckers (fleas) jump off of the dogs when they scratch and because of powerful hind legs are able to spring themselves onto shoes innocently sitting around.  About 2% of the dogs here are vaccinated and about all of them are mangy and have fleas.

I’m gonna leave the bathroom scene out of this because it can become pretty hair-raising for those of you not familiar with the living situation in rural Cambodia.  I will say that I have actually come to enjoy the bucket showers that end and begin each day (bucket showers consist of you taking a bucket full of water from a trough in your bathroom and dumping it on yourself).

Moto drivers are some of the craziest people I have met and are even worse when you put them behind the wheel of a moto.  Swerving in and out of traffic and the few near misses I have seen would make most people back home need quadruple bypass open heart surgery.

The amount of wildlife and nature enables me to become acquainted with many different types of insects.  It’s not the kind of fly you see at a family picnic but perhaps compare these to this size of a small rodent (ok maybe I’m exaggerating but I gotta keep you hooked).  Mosquitoes are the ones you really have to watch out for; most of the other ones just kind of creep you out for a second then you realize are harmless.  Khmer people think it is absolutely hysterical that the Americans are scared of spiders.  The neighbor girl throws spiders on one of the volunteers living with her on almost a daily basis and the family just laughs.

The weather, oh god it is hot.  Hot beyond words with no escape, and your only relief is the end of the day with the before mentioned bucket bath.

Now for the good stuff, I am finally adapting to sweating a couple liters every day, and even have begun to use a blanket at night because it seems to be getting cooler.  Albeit we are heading into the Khmer winter (usually lows around 75-80 Fahrenheit) I feel as though my body is adapting. 

The language seems to be coming to me easier and I am able to speak and listen to a fairly intermediate level of vocabulary, although I often have to ask them to speak slower.  This has been a huge hurdle for me because coming into the scenario I didn’t think I could ever master the language, but once you begin to break it down it can be simple and you begin to see that English is a lot more difficult to learn than people think.

Upcoming events for me are a much needed vacation to a remote island in the gulf of Thailand, and a few days in Phnom Penh before I move to permanent site.  I am excited because I get to see all the volunteers and how their sites are, and get to spend a few days in the presence of western food before I move to my site.

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.

Frustrating day

So when learning a language sometimes things are not always clear between your counterpart and you.  Thus begins my frustrating day with the host family.  I wake up in the morning and do the morning routine of breakfast and shower, then head to class.  When I return there are people everywhere at my house, I say hello to a few familiar faces and head to my room.  Out of the blue comes this feeling that this would be a great time to practice Khmer.

I go back downstairs and try to have some simple conversation with a few of the people and they are bombarding me with questions; Where are you from? Are you married? How many people in your family?  I answer the first couple easily enough and begin to feel pretty confident so I begin to ask them the same questions.  Blank stares.

After pronouncing the words in different ways I decide that its just not working and want to head back upstairs to do some work.  So I'm on my way to my room when I am stopped by my host mom and what I believe is her sister.  They ask if I have already eaten and I tell them yes and thank them but they proceed to feed me what I can only be describe as a banana tamale.

I begin to eat it and quickly realize I don't like it, but there is such hope in their faces I decide to take a few more bites and tell them I'm full.  While I'm trying to eat this thing my mom is asking me question using words and phrases that I am hopeless to translate.  She politely looks at me after every question and waits for my answer which is "ot yool" (I don't understand).

Most people would quickly figure out that I am not a native speaker and vocabulary is limited, but my well to do mother repeats the question using the same words and phrases. "ot yool".  Same question asked in the same way.  "ot yool".  Same question. "ot yool".  At this point I am laughing because I don't understand what she is trying to say and in my head I picture someone trying to describe the color red to a person who is colorblind.

Before she can ask a fifth time I manage to navigate through and get to my room to call my LCF.  My LCF comes over and translates what she was trying to ask into "do you know how to walk a cow?"

Just a little bit of frustration and a lot of communication problems but that is the life I come to know.

Practicum Week

Practicum is a week of supervised teaching, we are basically given the names and ages of the kids we will be teaching and make lesson plans based on what we believe their level will be.  My group was told we would have 11th graders so we thought that most of their English levels would be medium low to medium high.  We were surprised to walk into a class of ages from 12-16 and differing levels of English to boot.

So we revised our plans to fit the group and ended up having a very successful practicum (in my eyes) and I feel like the kids really enjoyed it also.  We taught for 3 hours each day from Monday to Saturday and showed the kids everything from hello and goodbye to where they want to travel.  The kids were great and by the end of the week I almost wish I could have this class for my two years of service.  The staff knew that we had been given kind of a raw deal also, but I think that we impressed them with our ability to adapt to the situation and make the best of things.

Onto this Sundays activities (things get kind of sad from here)

Our group decided that we would like to go and see a killing field, and these were places where Khmer Rouge would execute people and torture them until they confessed.

The first thing that I noticed was how long it took us to ride our bikes to the site.  Many times the Khmer Rouge would make people walk for days on end from sun up to sun down to get to where they would be living and working.  To give a general idea of about how far it was the ride took us about an hour to arrive and we are about a hour and a half drive south of Phnom Penh (Phnom Penh was evacuated when the Khmer Rouge took control) so in addition to 80 kilometers we probably rode our bikes 15k to get there.  Thats a total of 95k walking!

Anyway, when we arrive we saw the compound and a few buildings inside.  Immediately once you walk in there is a giant hole to your left.  From this hole they exhumed about 35,000 people.  To put it in perspective it was about the size of a three car garage.  They had some of the clothes that were unearthed during the excavation sitting next to the hole.  Next we walked over to where they had dug a 3x3x3 meter hole.  This hole was a prison cell.  The Khmer Rouge would put people in the hole at night and torture them during the day.

Next we walked up to a building that looked like a small obelisk with steps leading up to it (I know obelisks are Egyptian but its the closest thing I can relate it to).  Inside the structure were skulls and bones of the victims that were exhumed from the site.  The guide around the compound also told us about another pit that had not been exhumed yet because fund were no available but in total they estimated around 60- 80,000 people were murdered in this one location.

Underneath a large tree in the middle of the compound was a sign that said the Khmer Rouge would play loud  music or messages from speakers in the tree so the victims cries could not be heard.  The Khmer Rouge had a rule that no one could be killed until they confessed to their crimes, much like medieval torture you hear about on the history channel, however this occurred only 35 years ago.

This was a very somber experience and for me, the most humbling part of the trip was the willingness of the monks at the wat (temple) to show us around the site and describe the horrors that had taken place there.

So a lot of people ask me if I think I am doing the right thing, or if this is what I really want.  I can honestly say that at this point I am still looking but what better place to look than somewhere I can do some good, and learn as much as I can about a world that many people will never know.  Only problem so far is that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't have any idea whatsoever.

Deep huh?