It's already November?!

Hi everyone!

Sorry it has been a week since my last post, but nothing has really changed since my last post.

At school, I have been conducting the interviews and I am just so happy that I am. It’s rather frustrating when the students can’t answer either because they are too nervous or they just aren’t as good at English as some of the other kids. But I have learned a lot about the students. A few kids are really motivated and have established goals. For instance, one student told me that he wants to be a director and move to Hollywood and direct movies. I was impressed that he could actually say that in English (I don’t know how to say that in Khmer!) and that he has his goals in place. Many responses include “I want to be a doctor because I want to help poor people and support my parents when they get older and sick.” The questions are really straight forward- what is your name? how old are you? How many brothers and sisters do you have? What did you eat for breakfast today? (the response is ALWAYS rice, I don’t know why I even ask it anymore) Do you want to study at university? Where do you want to study? What do you want to be in the future? Why? So, I am able to learn about them as people and more importantly, I am figuring out how I can help these kids mold their future. How do you become a doctor here? I have no idea, but I need to find out, because half of the students want to be doctors.

At home, I think I am growing on my family. I still am really bad at Khmer, but my host brother Huck, who is 23, is probably my best friend. He is getting a lot better at English and we talk and hang out. We watched game 6 of the World Series when the Yankees won it all (Sorry Winn!) and I have never seen someone so confused. When it was over, Huck asked me what was happening. How do you explain baseball and the World Series to a person who has only seen one inning? Well, I tried but after my explanation, he said, “I am confused. I do not understand.” I chalked it up as a loss, but I will try to explain in later, when his English improves. The other night we were sitting outside, like we do every night before dinner and he told me that I need to be really careful about gangsters here because they are almost always drunk and love to cause problems around Battambang. He said this because the last night of water festival, my host family took me to the wat to watch the festivities. It basically is a lot of people, fireworks, food stalls and performers. It was really cool, but it took a long time to actually get into the wat. From the second we left the car, I felt really self-conscious because people always say hi to me. It’s really embarrassing at times because I feel like a celebrity. Sometimes people make fun of me, I don’t really care, but I know my family feels protective. Well, as we were leaving, someonbe said hello to me, and it’s kind of a double edge sword because if I ignore the people who say hello, am I being a jerk? But if I say hello, I feel like a celebrity or something. So, this person said hello and I said hello back, and I realized right after I said hello that he was drunk. He said something to me in Khmer and the only thing I caught was “how many people” and the way the his friends reacted, I could tell that he made a gross comment. I was mortified because he said it, and for those who know me well, I would have said something back to him if I wasn’t horrible at the language. So, my host sister turned and said something to him and it shut him up. I was really embarrassed, but I was so glad that my sister stood up for me when I simply couldn’t. So, Huck brought this up because he was a “gangster” and I need to steer clear of those people.

For those who keep asking what I need, I have something that I need, desperately. My ipod broke last week and I had to restore it, but I lost all 4,500 songs that I had been collecting after the past 2 years. I was pretty upset about it, but those of you who can and want to, I have my laptop, so, I can take CDs and put them on my laptop and then on my ipod. I would greatly appreciate it, because I am lost without my ipod. I never realized how depended I am on it.

I decided that I will start teaching a pronunciation class at the university soon just because I feel like I will never start teaching at Net Yong. I decided that I have to finish the interviews before I start teaching (because grouping the students is really the only way to get anything accomplished in a class of 60-70 students...) But when class gets canceled all the time, it's really hard to get anywhere with the interviews. I only had one class last week because of the water festival during the week and then my class on Friday morning was canceled because the students had to participate in a funeral. Class is canceled again tomorrow because it is Independence day. There are so many holidays here. I think by teaching at the University, I will have a little more control over my schedule. The inconsistency is the killer. It's strange to think that I am a teacher, but teaching at a university? Crazy. Just call me professor from now on, thanks....

Hope all is well with everyone from home! Miss you all!

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not reflect the thoughts and opinions of the Peace Corps or the US government.