Koh Rong and Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat, will visit again but this is when I did the marathon and didn't get to go during the daytime.

Koh Rong, the island where everyone got sick.

Koh Rong, me on my bungalow

Hitting my stride

So I'll come out and say it, December sucked.

Capped by a bacteria in my intestines that had me in the bathroom for a few days, I was also missing Christmas, New Years, and my birthday with all my friends and family.  All this buildup didn't make it any easier that EVERYONE stares at me no matter what I am doing.  Could be reading a book for example and suddenly I've got an audience.

January has been a better month and I feel like I'm beginning to hit my stride.  I already have 2 clubs up and running and am looking to expand into a third next week.  The kids seem to be enjoying the classes more as I am in a better mood and able to communicate directions and act out things in front of the classes.  I still get laughed at for my accent on frequent occasions but people seem to enjoy me and routine is becoming more natural.

I am also looking to start a garden my school director has been asking about for the better part of two months.  What do I know about gardening in a tropical monsoon like environment? Nada.  Should be interesting though as I'm sure she has a mental image of flowers and shrubbery, and mine will be vegetables and overgrown weeds.

Christmas and New Years were a lot of fun and I got to spend Christmas on a tropical beach with beautiful women, and spend New Years in Phnom Penh on a boat.  The island was very nice but I'm certain that the improper disposal on garbage and other less pleasant human leavings were a major contributing factor to my illness.

(Maybe leave that last part out when you tell the Grandmas)

Last week I was in Phnom Penh for some friends' Birthdays and we all had a blast.  I think about 5 volunteers had birthdays within a week of each other so we all came into Phnom Penh and went out how you're supposed to on your birthday.

Next up I've got a few weddings I've been asked to attend and then an all 80's party at the roller disco in the provincial capital city of Pousat.

I would also like to wish my Dad a happy birthday, 57's a good number (at least H.J. Hienz thought so).  Love ya and miss ya pops.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years 2012 here we come!

A long December

So far December has been a pretty dull month in terms of traveling about and visiting places in Cambodia.  At the beginning of the month I did get to go to Angkor Wat (some of you may have heard of them) for the annual half marathon, but other than that most of my days have been spent lulling around my site and getting to know my community better.

I have met some interesting folks though.  One of the teachers at my school has a beautiful farm in the countryside where she grows (what else?) rice.  I planned to visit her farm for a short afternoon and ended up spending the whole day there. 

I have discovered that in Cambodia it is often very rewarding to go off the beaten path and see how the rural people live because Chhouk is by no means a large town, but it varies vastly from the rural countryside of Cambodia.

On a different note I started my club and am now teaching a writing class at the school.  It’s going well and the students seem to enjoy it but I am having problems getting them to stretch their imaginations.  One exercise I have found works well is to write a list of adjectives on the board and have students write a question using an adjective from the list.  Then I redistribute the questions and have different students answer the questions.  It usually turns into a pretty lively activity.

I have also started planning for my garden at school.  This has been a big project that my school director wants me to get underway so naturally, I have been putting it off.  However I now have a list of supplies that I need and will begin fundraising next week.  Wish me luck.

Thanksgiving was a success and our lovely K4s in Kampot cooked us a killer Thanksgiving feast, but it was bittersweet because one of the volunteers I have gotten close to was sent to Bangkok for an angiogram (heart) and missed the holiday.

Up next is a vacation to Monkey Island off the coast of Sihanoukville for Christmas and for my Birthday I do not believe I will be doing anything special which is fine by me.

One disclaimer I would like to make about my blog is that now I have been in Cambodia for almost 5 months I am beginning to see a lot of things here that no longer surprise me.  I realize that to the outside viewer many of the things I walk by on a daily basis and used everyday would require a detailed explanation of why? and how? but as I progress towards integration (I use the word ‘progress’ because no matter what I do I will never look like a Cambodian) I begin to see things as normal or tradition when I know they are not (at least to some of the target audience of this blog). 

So please if there are any questions about what I post do not hesitate to prod deeper as I’m sure I have overlooked many chances to explain various concepts or events

More Pics

My house

My kitchen

Jelly (she got ran over)

This is an interesting picture because the apparatus you see before you is a dud B52 bomb that was dropped on Cambodia during the Vietnam war to try and stem the supply route of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Today it is used as a bell to signal the beginning and end of class.

My school and students preparing to clean the school.

different angle of my students

Avg. Cambodian classroom.

Principals office, library and a few more classrooms.  Taken facing the opposite direction of the picture with the students seen earlier.

You can't make this stuff up

I know, 2 blog posts in 2 days lucky your right?  Well this one is worth a mention in and of itself.

I observed my co-teacher give the first real test today in the Cambodian classroom and I should have seen what was coming.  There is a certain sense of community here that you don’t get anywhere else in the world and it is interesting how accepted a thing like cheating on an exam can be.

As soon as he had handed out the tests the students went to work completing the few test items they knew before looking to the stronger kids in class.  That’s when the fun started.

Everyone was up out of their seats watching the stronger students in class and copying their answers, one kid literally hand his test out the window and it was handed back five minutes later with all answers completed.

 Now I will give them credit because although the way in which they cheated was blatantly obvious and the subtly of their answers actually made me laugh out loud in front of the class.

Here is one of the sample questions:

Q: Tell one thing you will do tomorrow.

Kid 1 A: I will go to Chhuk market and buy food.

Kid 2 A: I will go to Chhuk market and buy clothes.

After I had seen that I had what could only be called a cheating riot I felt really small, not literally but in a figurative sense because it was obvious to me that this was just what the kids were accustomed to and to try and change something like this would be confusing to the kids.

But damnit I’m going to give it one hell of a try.

skinny me

Hello again!  Missed me did you?  Well I have been quite the busy little volunteer over here and finally have some down time to blog again and catch everyone up.

Some things about me and my current state; my weight, my Khmer has improved exponentially, miss my family and friends more than ever, and my school seems to have a lot of days off.

First thing, my weight.  I have lost about 20 pounds and am down to around 160lbs.  I arrived at a jolly ole weight of 180 in Cambodia and since eating rice and vegetables everyday have significantly altered my diet, and I had a horrible case of food poisoning during a TELF workshop in Phnom Penh, the weight has simply melted away.

Actually, that brings me to a funny little anecdote about how sick I was.

So I arrived in Phnom Penh on a Friday and spent most of the next few days glued to my bed and toilet, missing a large portion of the workshop, but around Tuesday I began to feel better and thought I might venture out and try to eat something (I hadn’t eaten a real meal in about 3 days).  So I hopped in a tuk tuk and went to a glorious burger hole named “Mikes”.  I walked in and was immediately taken by the aroma of beef and french fries.  I was so excited and all smiles when walking up to the counter and proceeded to order a burger called ‘The Explosion’ a mix of hot chili pepper sauce on a double decker burger with four slices of cheese, and I got some fries.

Now what I have failed to mention up until this point is the fact that earlier that same day I had requested an audience with my medical officer to make sure this was not anything more serious than food poisoning because I had never had an episode of food poisoning that lasted four days before and was becoming concerned.  Joanne (medical officer) told me to stay away from fried foods and spicy food and described how my intestines were still probably recovering from the food poisoning.

Well as you read above this is exactly the advice I did not heed.  And paid a price.  Would I do it again?  They say everyone makes mistakes and a fool is one who is doomed to repeat his mistakes, call me a fool.

Aside from this one episode of unpleasant sickness I have been a fortress against all comers, and diseases are repelled like they are drops of rain hitting stone.

Second, my Khmer language skills have improved tenfold and I am beginning to be able to express more abstract ideas and understand much better.

You see it is a common teaching practice when schooling in a new language to begin with very formal speech and work towards some of the more informal circumstances and slang terms.  So when I first arrived at site a lot of slang and synonyms I had not learned yet escaped me.  Now I am becoming better at assembling context and extrapolating terms’ meanings.

Next, as the holidays roll around I am beginning to miss my family and friends (and cold weather) more and more.  It is becoming difficult because I wish I was there to see everyone and not to mention spend my birthday with my family.

But I have a job to do here and I won’t go completely without.  Most of the volunteers have holiday plans as well and there is a good chance I will spend Thanksgiving eating turkey, and Christmas and my birthday on a beach somewhere.  The K4s (volunteers who arrived a year earlier) tell me that around the holidays it does get especially tough because you think about the time you are missing away from the ones you love.

All in all I am being treated very well and the people here insist on feeding me every chance they get because since I lost some weight (see above) they have been practically shoving food in my mouth.

Now onto the frustrating Cambodian school system.

The classrooms are very multi level meaning that some students are very advanced and some don’t know the alphabet so it can get especially difficult when making lesson plans and most of the time you must repeat many pronunciations and rules (which I understand is a part of learning any language).

 

However, there are kids in my class who come to class simply to goof and have no interest in what I am teaching.  I make them leave and do not allow them back into the class around (I would ballpark estimate I have kicked 15 kids total out of my class).  This works for the time being but I know that the next time I have the same kids it will be the same old story and that is what bothers me.

Another frustration comes from one of the teachers who simply want me to teach about every English class in the school and always conflicts with what he wanted before.  And of course, he is my technical team coordinator meaning he sets the schedule.  On the bright side I do have the choice to start my own club and not adhere to his schedule but in the past with volunteers he has created some problems so I am trying to stay on his good side for now. 

Onto a recent vacation I took.

So a few volunteers went to Koh Kong for the weekend and I figured; what the hell?  It’s only a 5 hour lan touris ride (basically the equivalent of an astro van packed with thirty people).  Although I consider myself a fairly large person (not fat… anymore but large considering the circumstances) I am allotted almost no extra room and children and stuff consistently come flying into my lap as people readjust.  I arrived with almost every extremity aching and fast asleep and proceed to almost fall flat onto the ground as I step out.  This is very funny in Khmer culture especially when it is a big foreigner.

But I manage to arrive safely and ended up having a very good couple of days seeing the beach and hiking a small waterfall.  And wow the food was amazing.  A volunteer actually lives in the district town which surprised me because if I lived there I would be blowing so much money on western style food I would constantly be broke.

Lucky for me I have few temptations at my site. Yay! (Sarcasm)

Well that is about it for now, hope you have enjoyed this entry, and to those of you back home; never complain about cold weather.

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.