Wednesday, January 30, 2013

7 Months, 7 Things


I'll be stateside once again in 7 months (give or take a month)

7 Things I Can't Wait For...
  1. Dr. Pepper
  2. Printers and scanners
  3. Wifi
  4. Getting your own seat on all modes of transportation
  5. Wearing sweatshirts
  6. Wearing sneakers
  7. Deoderant


7 Things I Don't Want to Leave
  1. Super cheap hotels
  2. Elephants
  3. Cambodian Iced Coffee
  4. Detail manicure/pedicure for 50 cents
  5. Tuk tuk rides
  6. Reading and writing Khmer
  7. Cambodian Rice
Driving up the new road that goes to the top of Bokor Mountain

The plans of an enormous community and resort they are building at the top of the mountain

Decorating mounds of dirt at the pagoda for Khmer New Year

Training host sister

Training host brother

Lyny helping to decorate the mound of dirt

The ferry at Neak Loung, crossing the river to get to my site

The garment factory down the block from my house. Hundreds and hundreds of young women work there.

My site. The road to the left leads to Kampong Cham. The dirt rad to the right leads to my school 

A recycling truck

They pick up recycling and bring it to Vietnam. There is no recycling system in Cambodia


Thursday, January 24, 2013

A Week of Small Successes


          In the Peace Corps, your job is your life, and your life is your job. It's a 24/7 gig. So when you are constantly hitting road-blocks in your job it can really take a toll on your happiness.
          As cliche as it sounds, it is so important to focus on the small successes from day to day. It would be just as easy, actually even EASIER, to make a blog post titled "A Week of Big Failures," but that's not helpful to anyone. Instead, I kept track for a week of all my small successes. There was even a big success thrown in there! It was difficult at times. For example, on Monday I had to change the way I would normally think about the situation. Instead of saying "almost half the class didn't do the homework," I instead said that "more than half the class did their homework."
          We come here to change lives. To make a difference. Do I make a difference every day? NO. very week? nuh uh. Every month? hardly. But add up all these tiny successes over the course of 2 year, and I can say that yes, I am successful in this career.
          I've been having a hard time of it the last few weeks. Teachers don't want to work with me. Students have given up and are disruptive to the rest. I got really frustrated and started feeling really down about my job. After moping for like 2 weeks, I finally took charge. I changed my schedule. I'm now leaving alone the teachers who would rather have nothing to do with me. I've made myself more available to students who do want to learn from me. I wrote this blog post. And, to top it all off, my bible verse of the weeks is "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you" from Luke 8:39. This not only goes for when I return home to America in 8 months, but also as I return home from work or teaching every day. Stop declaring and whining about what didn't happen that was supposed to happen according to your idea of success. Instead think about what God made possible in your situation.
           And here is the list of successes.

Friday
  • I noticed a 10th grader who came to the library all alone a few times every week. She would read through the books for about a half hour, choose one to take home, and then bring it back to exchange for a new book just a day or two later. I asked her if she would be interested in volunteering at the library in her freetime. She agreed, and I trained her right then and there.
  • I learned Happy Together on guitar

Saturday
  • I learned big words in Khmer, like scholarship, and went class to class making the announcement about tomorrow’s workshop, successfully collecting 60 students’ names on the sign-up sheet.
  • I feel confident that the 2 Korean kids that I tutor understand questions with “do you have” and “how many.” Also, they now say “why I oughtta” when they get angry with each other. It's highly entertaining.

Sunday
  • 40 students came to an AMAZING workshop about university, and most of them learned for the first time the plethora of fields of study to choose from. They made plans and goals for their near and distant futures. They learned about how to become a competitive applicant and where to look for scholarships. They left visibly excited and inspired. This was a BIG success.
  • I watched my students- many of whom used to be too shy to even say hello- lead discussions and volunteer to speak publicly during the workshop.

Monday
  • More than half of my Grade 10 class completed and submitted the homework assignment I gave them. A huge increase from the previous 0% submission.
  • A new counterpart pronounced “are” correctly during his teaching.

Tuesday
  • A sweet student went to the beach over the weekend, and brought me back a souvenir- a shell necklace
  • I actually got my chorus students to sing in 2 parts! 
  • 6 boys auditioned for 3 solos. 3 of them were even capable of singing in tune!

Wednesday
  • 2 students were sitting in the library reading a book about the history of chocolate together. One would read a paragraph in English, and the other would translate. Independent studying ftw!
  • I had lunch with my school director. Conversation was fun and easy, and he even treated me.
  • I finally had a long chat with my coffee ladies, who up to this point I think have been afraid to talk to me. We even happened to touch on the subject of womens’ rights.
Thursday
  • Both grants were approved for the Create Cambodia Arts Festival coming up this March. A local organization has donated $2000, and we can officially start fundraising for the rest of it. Please consider donating to the project! https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-303-011
Me and my host dad

Me and my older sister

My mom, me, my little sister, and my older sister

Marady, Titi, Diana, and Ma at the Wat

Inside the Wat

Being silly

But she thought it was cute so she copied.

A-dor-able.

The stupa (grave) of a grandparent at the Wat

The extended family at the stupa




Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Awesome Person Award, Part II


            There are 2 librarians assigned to working in the library. One of them, Rothavy, is the winner of today’s Awesome Person Award.
            Rothavy is a middle-aged married Khmer woman with a young daughter. She is both a teacher and the school librarian. She was the librarian before I even came here. Her responsibilities included organizing and lending out the national textbooks at the beginning of the school year, and then collecting them at the end. Now that we have a real library, she was also given the responsibility of helping to run it. In addition to her teaching hours, she is scheduled to run the library for 5 hours every week.
            Rothavy is an Awesome Person because she does her job, she does it really well, and she even does MORE than what she is supposed to. She is never late, and the only time she is absent is if she is really ill, or if the school director makes her do something else. I can count on her going to the library when she is supposed to every day.
            There are so many responsibilities the librarian has to do- sign students in and out, return books to the bookshelves, sweep, stack chairs, distribute library cards, keep an accurate inventory, log borrowed and returned books, fine students for late and lost books, keep students quiet and following rules, and keep an eye out that students aren’t sticking books up their shirts and trying to get out the door with them. Well, she does it all and never complains once.
            Maybe it doesn’t sound that impressive. After all she’s just doing her job. Well, here in Cambodia, I know very few people who actually do their jobs like they’re supposed to. Practically all of them- except farmers and maybe shopkeepers- would be fired within their first week if they were living in America. Anyway, what’s more impressive is when I catch her adding to her responsibilities.
            Students are often rough with the books, and the light paperbacks can’t really handle that kind of treatment. Rathavy has taken it upon herself to tape the covers of all the weak books so that they last longer in the library. That was all her brilliant idea.
            Rathavy very often does more than her 5 hours in the library. If she has free time, she will come to the library if the other librarian does not show up. Also, she keeps the library open late a lot. She sees that students are engulfed in their books, and at least once a week, she keeps the library open an extra hour to let the students keep reading. She will even open the library extra hours if she notices a class or two where the teacher did not show up.
            When things are slow in the library, she takes that time to pull out the log books and a ruler and label the sections on the upcoming pages. The other librarian never does that.
            Once she convinced the school director to give me almost $40 to buy more books for the library because there wasn’t enough Khmer books. THAT was impressive.
            She is a hard worker, and also very smart. She just learned all these library skills a few months ago, and now she’s a pro. She can even shelf the English Fiction books, even though she doesn’t speak a word of the language.
            In Cambodia, the most commonly given reason for not doing your job is “I’m busy.” Rothavy is no less busy than other people. She has 2 jobs, a young daughter about 5 years old, a husband to care and cook for, and a house to clean. Sometimes she even brings her daughter to school with her. She is a wonderful role model to the students, and I hope they see that.
            I also really like Rothavy because she is my friend. We hang out in the library together a lot. We talk about our problems and our successes, and she is very patient with my Khmer. I can tell we’re really good friends because she sometimes pets me or touches my butt. I dig it.
            This library is very much like my baby here at site. It took me a whole year of hard work and a lot of headaches to put it together. It’s scary for it to be open without me there supervising. What’s even scarier is me leaving this home forever in just a few months. But I’m much relieved knowing that Rothavy is in charge. If anyone can keep this library going after I’m gone, it’s her.

Unrelated photos from Khmer New Year last April with my training host family:

Playing uno with Lyny and Titi

Sisters

<33 Lyny

burning incense

me and mommy

Jimmy (16) pretending to eat a fish head, Bunyavon (22) making a face, Titi, (14) making a better face

goofy

Dad

Marady (25)

Titi and Diana

Thursday, January 3, 2013

8 Months, 8 Things


First of all, ignore the new blog that I spent over an hour making. My good friend Matt taught me how to get around the system so I can still upload photos to this blog. Thanks Matt!

So, I go home in about 8 months, give or take a month. Here is this month's list:

8 Things I Can't Wait For:
  1. Driving a car
  2. Singing at the top of my lungs while driving a car
  3. Cushioned seats and couches
  4. Ovens
  5. Leopold, the best dog in the world
  6. Christmas lights and trees
  7. Trash cans and garbage trucks
  8. Not being famous


8 Things I Don't Want to Leave:
  1. Being famous
  2. Being called Teacher like it’s my name
  3. Monkeys
  4. Beer with ice and a straw
  5. Students standing in respect when I enter a room
  6. Vast green rice fields
  7. Pink and orange sunrises and sunsets over the vast green rice fields
  8. Nom Pow and Jayk K’tee
Happy New Year!
Enjoy these pictures from the Khmer New Year party I went to last April.

My little host brother stole my camer

Me and my dad

Hardcore PCVs

Even more hardcore with our old language teacher

A neighbor from training

goofy brother

Me and dad again

Khmer dancing with Dad

The hired band and dancers

Dad sabai sabai

me sabai sabai

is that what you had said??