Things that are both awesome and terrifying: 1. Teaching 2.Riding an elephant 3.Tuk tuks

I hope everyone back home is doing well! Thank you to the people who responded to my last post :)



So my life at Palm Tree is getting more normal now that I have a set teaching schedule. I teach 9-11 and 2-4 every day. The Grade 6 kids are interesting because they know some English so I can actually teach the whole lesson, but they don’t think they know as much as they do. My morning class is awesome- they try to trick me into thinking that it’s 11 when it’s not. Mike doesn’t have a watch and his class gets him to let them out a half hour early all the time, so my class will say, “Time to go!” And I say, “No, it’s only 10:25.”And they say, “Mike’s class.”And I say, “Mike doesn’t have a watch.” And they just laugh. And then they beg me to play games. They have so much personality, I love it.


My afternoon class is more hesitant. There are less of them so that might be why, but they’re so quiet. It’s like all of the quiet kids just ended up in the same class coincidentally together. They don’t like answering questions and they’re not quite at the same level as the other class for some reason. I don’t know if they’re just pretending that they don’t know as much English or what, but I think I need to come up with some more fun things to do to get them out of their shells more.


It probably says something about me that I like my rowdy class more than my quiet class.


Nita, the teacher who sits in with me and translates when I need it, also has to help out a lot more with the afternoon class. Nita is one of the greatest people here. She’s 21 and goes to the University of Phnom Penh now. Palm Tree pays for all of their teachers to go to the university-we aren’t sure if they also get a salary or not. But Nita’s hilarious. She’s in love with David Archuleta- she calls him her boyfriend. We’ve seen the music video of him singing Crush so many times I never want to see it again when I go back to the States. In reality she has two boyfriends. One of them calls her everyday and he’s in love with her, but she “doesn’t like him that much.” The other is this guy she met a few weeks ago at the library at her university who sounds really sweet but isn’t as cute as the first guy. This is why I love Nita.


I’m not sure how I feel about teaching yet. I like it a lot but I don’t like having to stick to the lesson plans and the class book. It’s all really boring- I feel bad for the kids. At one point, when it got too boring, Nita was like, “Do you have any games?” And I was like, “Uhhh.. sure.” And I just created a game on the spot. The kids also ask for songs all the time and it doesn't matter what we do so long as we fill the time, so I just start singing sometimes. I broke out in the Lion King the other day, it was pretty spectacular. The kids seemed to like it anyway haha. They also have this game that they love where I write a word on the board, and then one person writes a word starting with the same letter that I ended with and the next person writes a word starting with the letter that he ended with, and the two duke it out. They get really into it, screaming and cheering each other on, it’s fantastic. So I usually let them play that.


The problem is that there aren’t a whole lot of materials to work with. They have a whiteboard, markers, and some posters on the wall. That’s about it. They don’t even have student books- we have one student book and Nita copies pages from it to pass out to them for each lesson. I’ve been trying to find more fun things I can do with them that don’t involve any element of technology- I think I’m going to sing Grammar Rock to them next time they ask for a song because they’re learning verbs and adverbs haha. We’ll see.


Also Nita leaves class to go to meetings almost every day so I just teach by myself a lot. It’s kind of nice because the kids relax so much when she’s not there. Not that she’s scary at all (she's a sweetheart, I love her) but I guess they think they can get away with more with me- which is totally true and I’m not even going to try to deny it. As long as they try and we get through the lesson, I don’t care if they want to play a game afterwards. I was ten once- I know how much it sucks to be stuck in class when you want to go play with your friends. Especially when class is also taking place right in your home. But it gets dicey because they don’t understand a whole lot of English, so when I try to give instructions they’ll tell me they understand and then just continue to sit there because they really have no idea what I’m saying. I tried to play two truths and a lie with them today, and they did it but they didn’t get the game- they just kept saying one thing about themselves that was really obviously a lie. I’m definitely hitting all the challenges of teaching ESL head on right now.


The kids themselves are awesome though. They have so much spunk and personality, I love all of them. They also all just really like hugs a lot. They like attention but they share with each other and help each other, and I mean they’re kids so they also knock each other around a bit, but they’re so normal. It’s just amazing. And they’re so freaking smart. The high school kids are learning math that I still haven’t learned and I graduated college.


The schedule here is also really lax. Nothing happens on time and the lessons aren’t even that structured anyway. Class doesn’t start till like twenty minutes late sometimes and they just cancel classes sometimes for teacher meetings. They also cancel class when it rains a lot because the roofs around here are metal and tin, and rain is defeaning. I got to see a pretty legit rainstorm yesterday- it was wild. The streets flood to the point where it’s hard for people to even drive through them. We pretty much just hole up in Palm Tree when that happens because walking around knee-deep in water, mud, and garbage isn’t exactly appealing. But the rainstorms are extremely fierce and incredible to watch here.


I’m legit getting sick of the food. Palm Tree provides lunch and dinner for us every day. Which basically means rice plus vegetables plus either egg or chicken. Sometimes they just give us fried eggs or a piece of chicken with the rice. The meals are actually pretty tasty especially by Cambodian standards, and they do actually feed us well. It’s just that there are only so many times you can eat chicken and green beans before you want to just run away screaming.
We took our first trip out of the orphanage on Saturday (yay) and went to the main city section of Phnom Penh. Our initial plan was to find a bar that was showing the Stanley Cup because Jessi is from Pittsburgh too and we both desperately wanted to see it. Friday night at 8 EST was 7 a.m. on Saturday our time. No one was showing even highlights of the game- we seriously need to introduce hockey to these people- so we just started drinking at about 8:30 a.m. We figured it was Friday night back home so that justified our decision.


Also let's just take a moment to enjoy the fact that the Pens won the Stanley Cup. WOOOOOO!!


So back to Saturday. By about ten we dragged ourselves out of the bar and walked around for a bit, found some cute kids movies to show the kids since Saturday is movie night every week. Then we found this awesome English pub and got burgers. I know, I know, so disgustingly American. We drank beer in the morning and then ate burgers. We suck. But you have no idea how good that burger was. I don’t even care. I was full for the first time in a week, and it wasn’t from chicken and green beans.


But food issues aside, I’m really enjoying living in Cambodia. Like actually enjoying it- Cambodia is a sweet place. We took a tour on Sunday of a few major sites in Phnom Penh and I don’t know why people don’t come here more often- besides the slightly daunting regimen of shots you have to get before you come, it’s awesome.


We started at the National Museum, which had a lot of ancient Khmer inscribed on tablets. They kept giving us flowers to put in front of statues of gods as offerings- which we did about two times and then we figured we had enough good luck. There was also a gorgeous garden in the middle and we took loads of pictures- which I will post once I have enough spare time to load them since it takes forever here.


T came with us but he seemed really bored. And by “seemed really bored” I mean we asked him if he was bored and he said, “Yes. This is really boring.” So we didn’t hang out for too long. We wanted to go to the Silver Pavilion but it was closed, so he took us to a temple that is basically Phnom Penh’s version of Angkor Wat- but miniature. We parked the tuk tuk and he took us around a bit.


They also happened to have an elephant at the temple. We also happened to end up riding said elephant down the street. I wish I was kidding.


We decided we’d ride the elephant, figured it’d be like a five minute thing, and they took it out on to the actual street. Cars had to go around us. It was insane. It was also terrifying. We climbed up this tiny platform, crawled across the elephant’s neck, and sat on this little seat that was only made for two people at best. It kept sliding left and right and we had to keep adjusting our position so we didn’t fall off. Riding on an elephant is not my method of choice for getting around- take riding a horse and make it about ten times jerkier. Though it was cool to see people’s faces on the street.


We went in to the actual temple itself and there was a man leading what looked like a kind of church service, so we joined everyone sitting down for a little while. People came forward and gave money, and the man gave them what looked like a scroll, and then they proceeded to pray to the idols- of which there were quite a few. T came and prayed for his mom, which was sad but also an interesting process. He tried to explain it to us-he prays to his mom so that his mom will pray for him, since he’s Buddhist. It’s a strange cycle for an outsider to hear about, and kind of sad from our perspective about his mother, but he seemed comfortable explaining it to us.


I’ve only ever seen two kids at Palm Tree cry. One of them I can honestly say I’m not sure why he was crying, but it didn’t look provoked- he just sat in the corner and cried, it was heart-wrenching. Another girl who is probably about thirteen started crying one day because it was her mother’s birthday. The kids here almost never cry, but when they do it just breaks your heart. They can hit each other and chase each other around and tease each other, and they will never cry. So when they do, you wish it was something like a bruise or a scrape that you could just kiss away. The kids are super brave though and usually really happy, and can talk about tough issues. Which is why T could talk about his mother straight up to us.


Sunday was also Mike’s birthday so we took him out that night. We went to a random bar called Bogeys about fifteen minutes from Palm Tree, and stayed for a few hours just drinking beer and hanging out. The bar was basically us and three other creepy old guys who were probably only in Cambodia for one thing, which was disgusting, so we just kind of kept to ourselves the whole time. It was our first time experiencing Cambodian night life but it was Sunday so we really didn’t get to see a lot, unfortunately. But we bought Mike and T whiskey shots, and T, who is twenty (which is legal here), had never taken a shot before by the looks of it. First he asked for ice, and then he watched how Mike took his, and then he sort of took it after that. It was entertaining. We had to kind of cut him off after two because he was driving us home haha.


This week I’ve just been teaching each day. Monday night we went to a random market that was clearly for the upper class- it looked basically like an American grocery store and the prices were just as high, which we were totally not ok with. We’re planning to go to the night market tonight so we can bargain for things. T drove us in the tuk tuk and got us to buy him tons of stuff- he’s getting good at it, but it’s still really obvious. Pretty much the only reason he gets so much out of us is because Jessi and Alisa have a bit of a crush on him. Even though he’s twenty, I thought he was like sixteen the first time we met him because he looks so young- I still can’t get that idea out of my head.


I also got the best news in my class this morning. When the kids stood up at the end of class to say goodbye, they all said, “See you on Friday.” I was like, “Wait why don’t we have class tomorrow?” Apparently tomorrow is a holiday- something about it being the Queen’s birthday. I had no idea- it's like getting a snow day. So we’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do with our day off, besides sleep. And get rid of our apples because I’m pretty sure there is a mouse living in the box of apples.


Cambodia definitely has its ups and downs. The language barrier can get really frustrating, it’s insanely hot to the point where we pretty much all melt like Popsicles, and we get lots of unwanted creatures as visitors. Also the power decides to go out pretty much every time I take a shower- I’m getting good at showering in pitch darkness. But the culture here is incredible. I love meeting people and just watching what everyone does- the games they play, the way they dress, the music they listen to. Everyone in Phnom Penh plays badminton on patches of grass in the middle of the street at night. How else would I have known that if I didn’t live here for awhile? Plus the kids make everything worth it- I’d walk barefoot across coals for those kids, they’re that awesome.

I miss all of you! People keep asking me for Palm Tree's address so I'll post it as soon as I can- I don't have it with me right now. I'll also post pictures asap :)

Love from Cambodia,

Monica