Everything has been pretty good since I’ve departed from site. I’ve been here for two weeks now.

The day I arrived, I took a taxi from Phnom Penh with four other people from my province and got off at the market shop where my family works. I wasn’t expecting to be nervous, considering I had been to my site already and knew my family, but there was definitely a shock of “wow, this is real:” the only American in a foreign, developing country. It’s funny that that is the experience I’ve wanted for a while, yet it’s weird when it finally comes. My friends in the taxi were feeling it too. As a result, I basically forgot most of my Khmer for my first afternoon at site.

The next day, I went to school and met with the school director and started to meet some of my fellow teachers. I also worked with Sopheap, one of my co-teachers and my Khmer tutor, on the speech I would have to give on Thursday for the school-opening ceremony. Oh, and the speech would be in Khmer in front of about 1500 people. No big deal.

Skipping to Thursday, the ceremony was pretty cool. The school director and district governor talked about the importance of education and gave me praise for helping. My speech was nothing glorious. I had to laugh in the middle of it because I would make mistakes and the students would giggle. The speech consisted of me thanking all the important people there, introducing myself, saying what I will be doing, apologizing for being bad at Khmer but saying that I will learn, then thanking all the important people again. Respect is very important in Cambodian culture.

Everyone thought I did a good job considering I’ve only been speaking Khmer for two months and everyone was happy to have a foreigner at their school trying to learn their language. Cambodia is basically the opposite of America with respect to xenophobia. If someone who could barely speak English gave the speech I gave in America, they would be ridiculed (or in all likelihood not asked to give a speech at all). In Cambodia, I was great.

I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that Cambodians like foreigners so much. I’ve been walking around my village, meeting people. They are always happy to talk to me. It’s also a great way to get some exercise (which Cambodians think is hilarious) learn about my community and practice Khmer. A frequent conversation topic is if I am married and why I will not get married while I am in Cambodia.

In the days leading up to the school opening ceremony, I spent my mornings at the health center. I got really lucky because the second day I was there the village health volunteers had a meeting and I joined them and now I can go to their meetings. The village health volunteers are an important resource for me. They are the people in the community that are turned to with questions about health. They also do outreach activities, like encouraging parents to take their new-born children to the doctor frequently. Some of their projects are supported by NGOs. Many of the village health volunteers are very nice; I had lunch at one of their houses over the weekend. I hope I can contribute to their activities and they can help me with future projects.

I also started classes this week. I will be teaching grade 10 and working with three teachers. This past week and next week, I’ve been observing classes to see how I will be able to help the teachers improve, learn from them and reach the students. When I get settled into teaching, I will go into more details about what the Cambodian education system is like.

Interesting food of the week: Prohap. It’s basically stinky fish goo. I’ve had maybe one bite. My family eats it every single day and it’s disgusting. They think it’s funny that I don’t like it. A funny thing about the Cambodian language is instead of saying I don’t like prohap, what my family says to me translates into English as I don’t know how to eat it. I would also like to remind everyone that I eat rice with every single meal, totaling 5-7 bowls a day. I’ve loved the western food people have sent me, but if someone could mail me ice cream and a pizza that would be great.

That’s all for now. Next time I post (hopefully within the next week), I will probably describe a typical day and go into more detail about how rugged I really have it. The fact that my family has a washing machine is a big deal. I also may have a good internet situation, but I'm still figuring it out.