Schedule

It’s actually cold here! Well, cold for Cambodia. The maybe two months where it is cool in Cambodia are beginning. It’s great to not be hot all the time and I actually may need to sleep with a blanket soon. Cambodian people are starting to wear jackets and complain about the cold. I’m still fine with just a shirt though.

I’m getting pretty comfortable here and life here is almost routine. At least one thing surprises me every day, but I’m starting to sort of know what’s going on. So, I can give you an overview of my schedule. In future posts, I will go into more detail about the work I’m doing, but here are the basics.

On weekday mornings I teach at the school. This usually consists of co-teaching 10th grade with a Cambodian counterpart in order to help them become better teachers. It’s a subtle, slow process. Monday is my long day. I go to the health center in the morning and then teach in the afternoon. Once my Khmer gets better, I’ll hopefully start doing some projects out of the health center. Right now, I just try to speak to people and figure out what’s going on and make connections.

I usually teach from about 7-11 and then go to the market to eat lunch with my host-family. My host family owns a pharmacy/money exchange/general store type place, so they eat lunch while they work. It’s typical for a Khmer family to do household things and run a store at the same time. As a result, stores do not offer American style service. Yesterday, I went to buy a pen and had to almost yell to have a woman come from doing her laundry so I could pay her the 12 cents for the pen.

Anyway, I usually eat with my family and then go back to school. I’m lucky that my house, the market and the school are all about a five-minute walk apart. From 1:00-2:00 I am in the English Library that was built with the help of the Peace Corps Volunteer who was at my site before me. Some days I receive Khmer lessons there and some days I offer an extra English class. It’s nice to be able to teach by myself and without the awful English for Cambodia book. The focus of the class is speaking. Typically 15-20 students show up, but I’ve only had a few classes so far.

Private classes are a big deal in Cambodia. My class is free, but many Khmer teachers offer private classes to supplement their incomes. Sometimes these classes are honest. Many of the teachers I work with charge a little, but offer the class for free to students who cannot afford it. Unfortunately, many students have to work to help their family, so just do not have the time. Some teachers, however, do not teach all the material so wealthy students have to pay for their private classes.

After my time at the library, I usually go back to my house to read and do a few odd-jobs around the house. Around 3:30 or 4:00, I go for a walk around the community. It is a good chance to get some exercise and practice my Khmer. Maybe once a week, I’ll bike to the local university to use the internet or run errands in the provincial town where the post office and the bank are. I come home around 5:30. Then, I read, shower and have dinner with my family. I spend a lot of time in my room at night because my family usually likes to watch lots of Thai soap opera DVDs dubbed over in Khmer. I can only watch so much.

I certainly have a lot of time to read each day, but I still wish I had more. There is so much to read. In addition to reading for fun, I spend a lot of time reviewing my Khmer language notes. I also try to read a little from the plethora of materials Peace Corps gave us about Khmer culture, teaching strategies and health. I also read news from my flash drive when I have electricity and I try to write a little about my experience and random things.

On weekends, I have a little more free time. I usually spend one half-day going to the provincial town or the university to use the internet. I spend the other time relaxing or talking to people in my community. Some weekends, I also take short trips. For example, this past weekend, a few volunteers and I went to Bavet, a town right before the Vietnamese border, which has lots of casinos and some western food. If you leave your passport at the police station, you can cross over to an international market in between Cambodia and Vietnam. It was fun to eat some good food and see a new place with more of a Vietnamese influence.

A few other miscellaneous things:

Interesting food: bon chio. It’s basically fluffy omelet filled with bean sprouts, meat and some other random stuff. It’s served with a spicy peanut sauce. Once the sauce is on it, it has the consistency of a watery omelet/pancake. Delicious.

Cross-cultural moment: At one Cambodian university, if you fail your year 1 medical school final exams, you cannot go onto year 2. You either have to reapply for year 1 or transfer to nursing school. Fail means get an F and, unlike America, you can get an E and it’s a passing grade. Students that failed were protesting because thought it was unfair for them to reapply with other students for year 1. The school and government argued that the practice was fair and that the country did not want unqualified doctors.

I was talking about it with one of my co-teachers. I had no problem with the policy, but his perspective was that students in Cambodia work very hard on things besides school, such as another job. So, the students should be allowed to go onto year 2 even if they don’t pass. It’s clear to me that he viewed the policy through a different lens than I did.

Also, I have some exciting projects coming up next month. I’m going to help some Cambodian teachers offer a class to university students about job interviews and CV and cover letter writing. We will offer the class again at my high school too. I’m also going to speak about saving money in America with a group of Cambodians who are learning about saving through an Ox-Fam program.

Lastly, to answer Watson’s question, I did see a Taylor Swift music video in a Khmer restaurant a few weeks ago.