Sunsets on Tropical Islands

Sunsets on Tropical Islands
Sunsets on Tropical Islands

Saturday, December 7, 2013

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. 










1 comment:

  1. It's wonderful that your student switched places with you. I use to do this when I was teaching - especially with Native American students. I realized that I had so much to learn about them and their culture, that when we studied some units that could cross over, I would have them teach me about things familiar to them. I learned so much. I have also found (ignore if not interested) that students respond to learning when working with other students. Great idea to have them teach each other. For me the lecture format was very ineffective. Collaboration using games seems to really get students involved and the competition between groups seems to spur them on. It was not unusual for me to have students stand up holding words on construction paper as I guided them in making sentences, clauses, phrases and such. Somehow the movement seemed to help. The goal was then for them to be able to make such constructions on their own and then to build simple, compound and complex sentences... may be way off, but thought I'd throw it in there. I hope that you continue to interact with your students in ways that show your respect for who they are.. ;-) So happy that you are enjoying your time.

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