Puppy Smackdown

My aunt has a new puppy. He may be the cutest dog in the world. The only problem I have in proving this is that whenever I pull the camera out, the little guy gets so excited that he gets tangled up in my sarong. I did finally succeed in snapping him nibbling on my finger.



Is my dog cuter than yours, Jeska?



Maybe. Maybe.

What It's All About

For a long time, I've been meaning to write about what it is exactly that I'm doing here in Cambodia. But it turns out that it's not so easy to describe in just a few paragraphs. Being a Volunteer is its own little world, and to describe it, I need to talk about some of the philosophy behind the Peace Corps, which can't be that interesting to you all and also makes me feel self-conscious because it's so....self-promoting?

But I can't let this all go unsaid any longer. After all, it is the very reason that I am here, and it is what I have really, REALLY been doing these last 9 months (even though it looks like I've just been taking a lot of vacations and trying desperately to amuse myself).

So. What is it, exactly, that I'm doing? The first answer is that I'm an English co-teacher at a rural Cambodian high school. That hopefully, with support from me, my co-teachers will improve their English and their teaching methods and my students will improve their English. And that I, along with the other Volunteers, will develop low-cost student-centered Cambodia-specific English teaching materials for future use by Volunteers and Cambodian teachers.

But that is just the beginning. And here's where the Peace Corps philosophy comes into play and I get a little squirmy. In theory, Volunteers integrate themselves into a community by learning the language, working with an existing local organization or government office, and (in our cases) living with a host family. We do this to be effective at our jobs and also to gain trust within the community. Once we have gained that trust, we are, working with the community itself, to analyze and try to meet our community's other needs, be they health needs, infrastructure needs (God forbid), knowledge needs, sanitation needs, agricultural needs, etc. We are not to do this on our own, because as outsiders (despite our integration), we are not as familiar with our community as the insiders (duh). And because any projects to meet the needs of the community will fail if they do not have community support (also duh).

So. We are not only engaged in our primary activity (English teaching) but also engaged in facilitating positive changes in our communities (squirminess level increasing...).

In addition (you thought this couldn't go on any longer, didn't you?), we are supposed to be loci of cross-cultural exchange. We are to introduce host-country nationals (HCNs) to some aspects of American culture, and to introduce Americans to some aspects of our host country's culture. (These are known as Peace Corps Goals 2 and 3, Goal 1 being what I described above, to provide technically trained Volunteers to host countries to build the host countries' own capacities in certain fields.)

This part can actually be a lot of pressure. We're the only direct contact many Cambodians have with Americans, and we don't want our own country to be perceived poorly based on our behavior. And because Cambodian culture is more conservative than American culture, we (especially the women) have to be careful how we dress, what we drink, what we say. That is why I have attempted not to write anything controversial in this blog. If any of my Cambodian colleagues were to read a negative comment I made about some aspect of teaching in Cambodia, it would undermine their trust of me. (This may be why I've said very little about teaching, period: it's hard to separate my acceptable thoughts from my controversial ones. What I can say is that overall, teaching is fantastic. There are minor irritants and institutionalized quirks, but the general practice of helping young people learn gives me warm fuzzies.)

When you put it all together, we Volunteers are supposed to be teachers, development workers, and cultural ambassadors (squirminess level approaching red...). How much of this happens in practice and not just theory, I have no idea. There's plenty of time for me to find out: I have nearly 2 school years left before I am finished here.

Now you know more than you ever wanted to about the Peace Corps, but I hope it gives you a better picture of what I'm doing, or trying to do.

Finally, altogether, in conclusion, to sum it all up, I just want to say that some days are hard and some days are easy and some days are in between. But what has so far distinguished my time here is the vividness with which the bad days suck and the good days shine. And in the end, that is what Cambodia has given to me, and why I don't give up on the ideal of being so many different things at once.

Cows and a Palm Tree

I've had the darnedest time learning to tell coconut trees and palm trees apart (yes, they are different) since arriving in Cambodia. But I am fairly sure that the specimen below is a palm tree.



I'm also fairly sure that cows + palm tree = something funny. I'm just not sure how. Maybe it has to do with my lonely bicycle standing by the tree?

At any rate, this is near the ancient ruin of Ek Phnom and one of the biggest Buddha statues I've ever seen. See if that impresses the cows though.

Sunset over the Tonle Sap

Phnom Penh during the Water Festival (Bon Am Tuk) is a place of frenzy and motion. The sunset was in motion too, blazing across the sky and disappearing as I crossed the Tonle Sap on a ferry.

Links

I'm trying to collect the links to the blogs of the other PCVs in Cambodia over on the left. If you're sitting around at the office with nothing to do (and I know you are), check them out. We are all in slightly different situations and have different perspectives on our service. Also, some of them are better photographers than I am. Enjoy!

Library Update

The Ministry of Education has decided that the site originally picked for the new library is not suitable, as putting the library there would not be attractive. So no further work has been done on the library. They are looking into two other sites, both of which are currently under water (one spot is actually a pond, the other is just flooded from all the rain we had last week). I am reserving judgment until the thing is actually built.

An Uphill Battle

These are the results of my attempts to introduce ultimate in Cambodia. Perhaps I should have started with an age group that doesn't encompass 2-year-olds.



Aagh! This disc's gone to the Dark Side: it's eating her face!



But I think she has promise....

Rain Day

Despite my claims that rainy season has ended, there are still occasional showers that make life unpredictable. Last week the weather in Cambodia once again threw me for a loop. (Forgive me if I've turned into an old lady, talking about the weather all the time.)

One night last week we had a powerful storm (lying in my bed I got sprinkled because my window wasn't closed tight enough and the rain came in through the cracks between boards in the wall). The storm kept up through the morning. I didn't really want to go to school in the rain but it's my job so I put on my skirt and biked reluctantly to the school. When I got there, I found that only about a quarter to a third of the students had shown up that morning. About the same proportion of teachers showed. The teachers, after seeing the half-full classrooms, decided they couldn't teach, as they would simply need to do the lessons over again when all the students returned. So all the teachers hung out under the eaves in front of the school office, chatting. Once the students realized that there would be no instruction, they drifted away as well, slowly riding their bikes and motos out of the schoolyard and back to their homes. Once the teachers felt that the students were gone for good, we left as well. By the time the sun came out around 9 o'clock, the schoolyard was empty.

Frustrating? Of course. After all, we live in Cambodia. It rains here. Students can't just skip school every time it rains: they'd never learn anything. But somehow just enough truancy was involved on all sides so that the teachers could blame the students (for not coming) and the students could blame the teachers (for not teaching). Since my coteacher had left by the time I got to school, and he was the one with the copies of the test we were to give that day, I decided not to make a point by teaching my half-empty classroom. I just let it go and drifted away myself, complicit in the students' and teachers' one-day escape.

Dedicatin' the Library

Work on the new library at my school is scheduled to begin soon, so we had a ceremony last week to bless the undertaking. There was a school assembly where officials gave speeches and a dancer performed a traditional Khmer dance. I was told that she is supposed to look like a peacock, with the feathers in her hair and her delicate hand movements.



I have no idea what the scarf is for. But it sure is purdy.

Wintertiii-iiime

The weather in Cambodia has finally broken. It's cool season now, and the temperature here falls into the range of Tropical Paradise. It's balmy; breezy; temperate, even.

Not that I want to seem ungrateful for all this, but....well, the drop in air temperature has caused a corresponding drop in the temperature of the water we use to bathe. I estimate it to be hovering right around 14 degrees (hey--it could happen). Pretty soon I'm going to start boiling my bathing water. Just like the pioneers!

Overall, the trade-off is worth it.