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.