In which CHRISTMAS

Christmas in Cambodia. How to celebrate a holiday, you ask, which no other natives of your host country celebrate? To start, we Americans decided to have a White Elephant gift exchange this weekend in Siem Reap. The rule was less than $5 per gift, so some creativity had to go into it. Here is not one, but four pictures of what I made. I kind of wanted to keep it for myself, but that's not how it works, unfortunately. 

Rachel, my friend who lives nearish me, was the excited winner of this spectacularness. 

During Christmas Day, I managed to find a Santa Claus hat for kids in the market, and made it my goal  to wear it all day on Christmas, so here are some pictures of that. 

I'm even including a selfie. 

Unexpectedly, my awesome students from my private class all gave me gifts for Christmas, which was amazingly sweet. 

At any rate, despite the fact that I spent Christmas far from the people that I normally spend it with, it still turned out to be a pretty special day, thanks to all my wonderful Cambodian friends. 

In which I find a new goal in life

     That's right, I just bought "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in Khmer. Not only is it awesome for the sake of its awesomeness, but it also sparked a new idea, a new goal for my future book collection. It is now my goal to acquire Harry Potter books in all the languages that I've learned in my lifetime. Of course I will try to read them all at some point, but the collecting is the real goal here. So far I've got English, Latin, Ancient Greek, and now Khmer. All that's left are French, Mandarin, Modern Greek, and any languages that I may study in the future. Also, it just occurred to me that someone should totally write a Harry Potter in a fantastical language, like Elvish or Klingon or Vulcan. I also bought another copy for Voleak, my friendcoteacherstudenttutor whom you met last time. This whole ordeal was in fact spurred on by Meghan, my site mate who is an amazing health volunteer, who had found this book in a book store on Siem Reap for pretty cheap, and had bought it with the intention of using it in her tutoring sessions to practice Khmer. An excellent idea. 

The troublesome mews, Tigerlily and Totoro. Totoro recently got run over by a moto, but somehow she seems to be doing fine. 

Today I was exhausted. I could barely teach 7th grade, and then going to my private class seemed unbearable. Luckily they always make me laugh. One of my students was supposed to be copying something off the board, but he kept getting distracted, so I made fun of how slowly he writes. Anyway, we argued back and forth for awhile, fast slow fast slow fast slow, until finally he retaliated that I write slowly in Khmer. I said true, wanna teach me? So, he goes to the board and writes down some Khmer, and asks me to read. Then he erases it and tells me to spell the words. Now, cheating is one of the worst things about teaching here in Cambodia. It's just the thing, everyone, literally everyone, does it, and there's no stopping it. With that, if I ask one of my students a question, every single other students answers except the student I asked. Every time. Anyway, so that's exactly what happened to my student, and it was me who got to enjoy it this time, so I didn't have to actually think. But, my student was not happy, and this 12 year old went all teacher, lecturing to the much older students while I sat there cracking up. I'd like to hope that he being in my position for a minute might help in the future, but I probably shouldn't get my hopes up. I've been working with them a lot, especially since there are only a handful of students in that class, but every time I get a new student, I have to start all over again, which is oh so frustrating. 

Also this month I got my first ever official wedding invitation. With a kitty on top. 

Lastly, Meghan and I have just begun a World Map project, painting a giant world map on the side of a wall at the high school. We'll be attempting the old-fashioned grid method. My goal is to take lots of pictures, but don't hold me to that. Here is the grid laid out on my bedroom floor. 

At any rate, hopefully there will be pictures of the actual map coming soon. 

In which Cambodia becomes my norm

    After these hectic 4 months of training, traveling, getting a new permanent site in which I am dropped off in the middle of nowhere to fend for myself, and then struggling to get a schedule set up at my school for the next few months, finally, I feel like I have a somewhat normal daily routine. 

    I teach at the high school Tuesday through Saturday, everyday in the afternoons except Wednesday, which is from 7-11 in the morning. Usually, I wake up at about 7am, wash up, get ready, etc. Then, since I have the morning free, I do anything from going to the market, do laundry, or just relax and read a book.  Later on, I start my lesson planning. I'm teaching grades 7, 9, 10, 11,and 12, and also a private class Monday through Friday, so there is a lot of lesson planning to be done. At 11, I usually have my Khmer lesson for one hour with my friend, co-teacher, and student Voleak. 

Here she is, texting during our lesson, while I'm playing on my iPad. Very productive lesson, that was. 

After that, at about noon I eat lunch with my family. My host mom cooks delicious food, and when she's not home, my 15 year old sister, Srey Nut does the cooking, also delicious. At 1 I go to school. I have 3 co-teachers. Nekroo Voleak teaches 7th grade, the other, Lokroo Snaa, teaches 9th and 10th grades, and the last, Lokroo Sian, teaches 11th and 12th grades. Kroo Sian is also my uncle, so that's convenient. Generally I teach for 4 hours at the school, two 2-hour classes. Afterwards is my private class from 5-6, which is across the street from the school, at Voleak's uncle's house, Boo Pomm. That has about 7 students on a good day. Dinner with my family is at 7pm, then shower time, last minute lesson planning or reading, and bed time. 

This is one of my 11th grade classes, trying to figure out a fill in the blank activity I gave them. 

    My unusual days are Wednesdays, and weekends. On weekends, I'm either traveling, or finding something to do around site. Wednesdays are different, because I teach in the mornings. In the afternoon, I hold an English club, and then help my site mate with her Girl's club. On my breaks, besides trying to be productive, I also try to dar laing (visit) all my friends around the community, and am always trying to meet new people. It's also fun to ride my bike to some of the outer villages, because they usually don't yet know of my existence. 

Here's my English club, on only it's 2nd day. 

    Today my site mate, Meghan, brought her parents from America to our site.  They were super nice, and they visited my house and my family, and afterwards we went to the schools and the health center, where Meghan works. While we were walking, her mom asked me what the most difficult readjustment has been for me thus far. I gave her some long-winded response about the language, and how frustrating it is sometimes that I can't have more in depth conversations with people, and that at this point I'm just an expert at small talk. But, then I went home, and just took my shower, and, it being winter in Cambodia, it was a freezing-cold-I-swear-I-could-almost-see-my-breath shower. So, I take it back, the language problems I can get over, but ice cold showers suck. 

    Finally, here are some pics of my crazy bro and sis.