On being busy.

I can’t believe how busy I’ve been the past few weeks! It is amazing to have things to do, work that needs done, responsibilities to uphold. A soon as I get a taste of this, I never want it to end… So I’m trying a few new things with the hope that it doesn’t – things like assigning homework and actually checking it (though only one class actually does it themselves…the rest copy off one person). I’m planning on writing a blog each week, even when not much is happening. I’m planning on organizing everything in my computer as an extra only child thrill. I’m planning on learning how to cook all the things that my host mom can and more. It should be an eventful winter.

I’m also planning on finishing this project, the Appropriate Projects Bathroom that I just got funding for. At the moment, and for the past year, there has been no bathroom at my school, which is quite a problem for my female students, some of whom live several kilometers away from the school and who have to bike to and from school. We’ll begin construction this next week, I hope, and finish it soon.
http://appropriateprojects.com/taxonomy/term/33

In addition to all of that, my classes are doing well, and I have my own classroom to teach in as well, which means that I can do all sorts of things that I couldn’t do before. For example, I can play any manner of loud games that would otherwise distract all the other classes… I can put up artwork and visual aids for the English learners… I can even move the desks around however I wish. For those of you who don’t know, the normal way of things over here is for a set class of 40-50 students to have their own class (ie 11 A, 11 B, 11 C…) and their own room for their class alone. They stay in their same seats every hour of every class and the teachers move around. Most of their classrooms are bare, some with a picture of the king or a Khmer proverb, one with a painting of a dinosaur (?), and there is certainly no way to leave a visual aid in a class without worrying about its safety.

My school only has enough classrooms for 3 grades, even though it hosts 6, so in the mornings grades 9, 11, and 12 come to school and in the afternoons grades 7, 8, and 10 come. It is slightly inconvenient for any teacher who wishes to do something with art, granted that only teacher is me. So far, I have hung a map of the US and a Nat Geo map of space in my class, and the students LOVE it. They read all the names of the states and one even asked me where “Lo-a” is… He confused the “I” for an “L” and I didn’t know what he was saying until he spelled out my state.

The bottom line is that things are going well. I’m running into a bit of cultural misunderstanding with my co-teacher, but we’re working on things. I’ve also found that I’m a bit more sensitive some days to what used to be a bit of a novelty. People talking about me in front of me, being harassed a bit by strangers in places that I consider my stomping ground, staring and hellos… they’re all things that I’ve dealt with since the beginning, though I imagined that after a year in a single place that they would be a bit less pronounced. They’re not, and I’m beginning to regret my previous expectations.

However, I did get my first invitation to a party that was just for me, and that is pretty thrilling. I went, paid my respects, took some photos, and had a wonderful time. The to-be monk, the brother of one of my students, was super sweet, as was the rest of the family. He also looked fantastic – with blush and lipstick on… not to mention the drawn-on eyebrows. When I asked my family about this, they said that the monks need to be pretty for the party, which they can’t be after they have shaved their heads and their eyebrows off. He was also wearing a crocheted top and shiny pants. I was pretty happy around all the Khmer folk and the groups of yieys. I should also add that later that day I got a free ride into Sway because I “help Cambodia.” Unlike that last paragraph, this is what I would cal a “good Khmer day.”

There’s also the religious festival that I went to with my grandma. There was a money tree… need I say more?

About the weather – Rainy season is almost over and I am beginning to feel a chill in the air, something I have been looking forward to for about 7 months. A few more weeks and we will be in full winter… hello 70s!