Life since the big move… literally across the country. I have relocated to the northern west part of the country, in respects to Phnom Penh. I will be teaching at a school of 800 students appx. 1.5km from my house (about a mile). Currently my director has me teaching 20 hours and in one of each of the English classes. Meaning students have English class about 3 times a week, so I’ll be in their classroom one of the times. I’m going to try and change that so I can actually get to know most of the students I teach. Because, let’s be real, learning 800 Khmer names would be impossible. This week was the first real week of teaching, aka I went to class on Monday to teach 11D, for the first hour my co-teacher lectured in Khmer about the importance of education (I hadn’t a clue what was going on) and then he bounced and I gave a proficiency exam to see where the students were at. About 95% had no idea what to do and 2 sort of tried but all were very low. This class has been taught English for 4 years already, but the lack of quality of education and determination of the students was apparent. Then I tried a similar exam the next day in a 10th grade class, and it was like watching a train wreck, with my co-teacher failing to help anything along. This is going to make for an interesting 2 years. And because it was raining during my afternoon class only one of the 65 registered students for my class showed up. Another big factor on the lack of English knowledge at the school is so low. And that sums up my first ‘week’ of teaching. This week is a holiday called Pchum Ben, so class was canceled Wednesday through Saturday (school is 6 days a week, I teach 5).
Pchum Ben: is a holiday to honor ancestors, it lasts 15 days. The gist is that you wake up at 3 am before the sun is up and bring rice balls to the pagodas then throw them at the ground for your damned ancestors inside the Pagoda. Then you listen to the monks pray, sing, talk for at least 2 hrs. Leave to make some sort of large quantity of food, ie rice porridge or stew-like dish and prahoc, wait for the monks to eat and pray some more, then consume the food. Then clean the compound of the pagoda. Whole process taking more than 3 hrs. I have been 3 times already, did absolutely nothing and became more confused each time. Well actually the first time was the worst, I sat on a bench for literally 3 hrs with no one talking to me or walking away when I tried to talk to them to understand what the heck was going on. Then the second time I hung out with my 17 year old sister and we walked around the compound with her friends while our mom and other older people was praying or listening to the monks. And today I went with all my teachers from my school and surrounding schools, so I had a little more explained in English… it seems to be more culture than religion but that is just my initial observation. Regardless its countless hours spent attempting to understand.
House: As explained in previous notes about my site visit is the house I live in. Let me catch you up with how this week has treated me here. First day: brown water in the bathroom, aka didn’t shower for the first 2 days because pouring brown water on my head just didn’t seem the most sanitary thing to do. Second day: fall asleep to scratching on the walls, rats move in on my mosquito net and wake up to piles of poop on top of my net (TERRIFING). Third day: acquired an ungodly amount of mosquito bites, due to the lack of water treatment in the cisterns of cooking and cleaning water. Fourth day: Attempt to do something in the market, so I thought making black pants would be appropriate because everyone wears them and I don’t own any. Led to all 7 tailors in my market calling me fat and saying they didn’t have enough fabric. Weekend hits and I get the f out to Battambang to recoup with friends and compare notes, and eat some delicious food and PROTEIN. At this point I had not eaten any protein and had more oiled vegetables that one can imagine. My skin has now gone from normal to oily in a week. AWESOME. Add humidity and that’s one hot mess. Return to my home on Saturday night, and then Sunday has one heck of a rainstorm. My family and I were on our nightly runs at dusk, which is my saving grace here, and it started. I don’t think I had been so wet in my life! My shoes took 2 days to dry out, and my socks still aren’t dry 3 days later. [Another problem is that I did laundry about 5 days ago with all my running socks, low and behold they still haven’t dried!] Okay so back to the rain…. well it didn’t exactly stop. The back area started filling up with water, my mom and sister were freaking out about fixing the pipes to maximize water collection… and it was about then I discovered that my ceiling was leaking brown nasty water onto my bed…onto my sheet, mattress, and bed in general. So after an hr of this nonsense (by the way there is another level above me) my mom decides to rickshaw a huge plastic sheet across my room lowering the ceiling to 5 feet. At this point the brown water has almost ceased coming from my ceiling but instead down the walls creating quite an ugly scene. Oh and the backyard water is about to come through the back door. It was an eventful night that I was glad was over after dinner. Where I proceeded to sleep on a mat with no sheets in a sarong. That’s almost all the horrible events of the first week. But you have to factor in 2 other things, 1. My Khmer language skills have seemed to go down on account of stress, I believe. And 2. Ever person I meet asks me to teach them English, yea I know that’s why I’m here but really makes me feel used here. Which is really overwhelming.
Okay it doesn’t end there… solutions… my host dad fashioned a screen in the gap between my walls and my ceiling to keep out said varmint. The brown water had mysterious disappeared after I asked why it was brown. The 6 cisterns of water some how got the chemicals that kill mosquitoes, but don’t harm humans, the same day I asked if it had any. After I hearing the neighbors most likely don’t use it excuse, hence the mosquito problem. My water stained wall, now has a green curtain that my mom somehow fashioned when I was at school one morning. I gave up on the pants and the tailors in this town. And learning Khmer will come once a routine is established, and stress diminishes. Currently, I am trying to learn the words and way to convey that I need to start cooking for myself. i.e. less oil and more protein. The blessing about this country is they have vegetables galore… things Americans would see as weeds, they see as the perfect item for a soup… i.e. morning glory and not the flower part, or pumpkin leaves and stems….
