Into the 10th month now....

 My host brother Huck, on his 24th birthday

I know that it has been a while since my last post, so I will do my best to catch you up to my present situation….

After my trip to Vietnam, I was really excited to get back to work (teaching) and my regular schedule.  Well, that didn’t really work out like I had hoped.  The school year is tricky because the religious holidays are based off of the lunar calendar, so it’s difficult to know when those are.  The other holidays, such as the King’s birthday, are the same every year, but the school year is littered with various religious, international and Cambodian holidays.  It’s difficult to get back on track when the school year is disrupted like this.  So, Khmer New Year holiday was scheduled from March 29- April 20.  The teachers and students at the school said that the students may not come to school during the week of April 20^th because they “may want more days off”.  I took that to mean that not all of the students would come, but we would have enough to have class and at least make the most of coming to school.  Well, I was wrong.  I went to school on April 20^th to find about 5 motos parked outside of the office.  Not a good sign.  As for class, out of my 70 students in each class, about 5 kids came.  I went to two of the classes and we just talked about what we did for Khmer New Year.  Because there were so few students and I spent last week in PP, I didn’t want to teach something new or even review because we would have to do it again two weeks later.  Essentially, it was a wash of a week.  At first, I was really mad because it seemed to be a waste of time, but I was able to spend a lot of time with my students and we had fun.  I helped one 12^th grader with her iPod that her cousin sent to her.  I met with my loyal English Club students and we started to work on our public speaking project.  I realized how frequently in high school students are obligated to present something to their classes (regardless of the subject or means, students are always giving presentations in America).  I wanted my brave students to work on this task.  So, like many ideas that I have here, I had to start from square one.  The students that come in had no idea how to do any of this, so I had to explain to them the types of public speaking (informative, persuasive and instructional/how-to) and encouraged them to not do persuasive.  We made lists of ideas to present on and scheduled a field trip to the university library.  Now, my high school’s library was two floors with an electronic system, but at Net Yong High School, we have about 200 books and most of them are American girl doll books, such as Samantha’s Big Day or Meet Kirsten!.  Those are some fine reads, but not in this case.  I talked to my friend Raya, who works afternoons in the American Corner library, and he gave me the ok to have my kids come and research their ideas.  The next day we set off for the library.  There were only two kids who came, which happens from time to time, but it worked out better because I was able to give them my attention.  The girl, Kimny, who came to our International Women’s Day event was REALLY nervous because she had never been to a library and she told me that she has never done research and had never used a computer.  When we walked in, they both (as in Kimny and Vida, the boy who I write a lot about) both signed up for a library card, which only costs 50 cents.  Vida decided that he wanted to present on how to improve study skills (which is a great topic because study skills aren’t really taught here) and Kimny wanted to present on a famous person.  Because there aren’t that many internationally famous people in Cambodia, she chose to present on Hun Sen, the Prime Minister.  We started in the Encyclopedia while Vida looked for books on his own.  There was a small little blurb about Hun Sen and she was able to get some information from that.  The other books didn’t mention Hun Sen at all, so we went onto the computers.  I could see how nervous she was because she had NEVER used one before, but we went to Wikipedia and looked at Hun Sen’s page.  I know that many of you believe that Wikipedia is not the best source, but because she had never used anything like this before, I didn’t want to overload her and scare her off of research.  She took notes and had some difficulty with it, but was able to get some good information about him.  Vida was unable to find any books, but started messing around with google searches and I left them alone to search on their own.  For about a half hour, Vida helped Kimny with some basic computer ideas, such as email and google.  It was so great to see them branch out and go at it themselves, without me holding their hands.  We still have a long way to go, but it was a pretty great first step.

Khmer New Year only lasted 3 days officially, but it really was a week.  Cambodians all went home to their “homelands” and the country was pretty much shut down for a week.  It was a rather boring week and therefore I went into PP on Sunday, which was the day after the field trip to the library.  We had training on Tuesday and Wednesday, but a bunch of people came in early.  The purpose was to begin the preparation for the arrival of the K4’s and their training.  I am in the K3 group and the year ahead of me if the K2 group.  We are only the third group in Cambodia (the K stand for Kampuchea, which is the Khmer word for Cambodia).  It was very strange to sit in a room with all of the K2’s and K3’s because we have never all been together.  Moreover, we were talking about the next group coming in! The school year is almost over and the K4’s will be here in July, that means that we won’t be the babies of Peace Corps Cambodia anymore, such a strange thought.  We spent Tuesday and Wednesday coming up with ways to improve training for the K4’s.  The K2’s also had a conference about COS, which stand for Close of Service, which is essentially when they end their tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  

 Chun Lai eatin some cake

We also talked about summer projects.  After living here for 7 months, I have decided that my summer projects will most likely not be projects that I create on my own simply because there are so many projects already in progress here and it makes more sense for me to join a team and help with something that is in the works instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.  The next few weeks will consist of teaching, of course, and looking around for non-governmental organizations that need more manpower.  Obviously I will not just sign up for anything, so I am going to get a feel for what I want to do and how I can help.  It’s really exciting to think about being able to take part in some really great projects.  While I enjoy teaching, there are so many things that are happening here that I want to be a part of. 

In PP, we did what we normally do- shop for things that we can’t get at site and eat western food.  We all go back to site with digestive issues, but it’s worth it.  It’s funny though, because a common topic of conversation with my host family is that in America, I only eat rice once a month, but in Cambodia, it’s usually twice a day.  Well, now I NEED to eat rice once a day or I feel sick.  I crave rice and I never really thought that I would.  So, sometimes when we are in PP and we are making plans for lunch or dinner, we bypass the western restaurants and head for the 50 cent plate of rice and pork and feel really satisfied. 

So that brings me up until today.  My next few weeks will be at school, but the school year is really winding down.  I graduated from college almost a year ago and my first school year as a teacher is almost done.  Some really strange things to think about.  It makes me look back on my nine months and ask myself where they went.  At this rate, I will be at the COS conference wondering where my two years went.  It scares me that time can move this quickly, but also gives me comfort because those volunteers that are unhappy tend to comment that time moves really slow for them. 

 JaNise and Jacqueline at the Chinese Noodle Shop- $4 and we ate like QUEENS

I hope that all is well at home with all of you! I miss everyone and love to get updates, so please feel free to contact me either here or my email address is kealanwaldron@gmail.com. 

I have also posted a lot of pictures on my facebook account, so check them out if you are on. If not, find someone who is if you want to see them!