The Angkor Wat International Half Marathon and Bike Race is only 6 months away. Time to start training!
For those of you who like the idea of exercise but dislike its manifestation, there are also 10 and 5k races and, even better, a 50k bike rally! (The last is my chosen event.)
If the name alone doesn't convince you, check out the maps! You get to do athletic crap at Angkor Wat! How cool is that?
Of course, sane people would say, "I could go to Angkor Wat and *not* overexert myself at 13 latitude." To you people I have no coherent response.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Visak Bochea
OK, I'll admit that before, I didn't fully understand the theological underpinnings of Visak Bochea. But recently I was talking to a monk at a nearby pagoda, and he filled me in. First, it's pronounced Visaka Bochea, even though my calendar leaves out the final "a." Apparently, this day is the commemoration of 3 events that all happened on the same day of the lunar calendar, the full moon day of the 6th lunar month: Buddha's birthday, the day of his enlightenment, and the day of his death. Now I'm no scholar, but trying to put it into my own frame of reference, I thought that would make it like rolling up Christmas and Easter into one. A big deal, right? It turns out that the actual celebrations resemble those of a typical holy day at the pagoda: laypeople bring food and incense, and prayers and chants are offered. I guess Buddha, in the spirit of humility, wouldn't have wanted us to go to too much trouble.
Dear The U.S. Dollar,
I know your ride on the currency coaster has been thrilling and now you want to kind of sit there laughing dazedly for a while, but I was hoping you could, y'know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just a bit, just to maybe 4,000 Khmer riels. Because 3,993 is a really awkward multiplier.
I'm sure you'll take this into prompt consideration.
Love,
Liz
I'm sure you'll take this into prompt consideration.
Love,
Liz
Monday, May 19, 2008
The Longest Chapter
The Cambodian public schools use a book called English for Cambodia that supposedly integrates culturally relevant content with English grammar points (non-explicit) in a series of 6 books. Theoretically, 11th graders learn out of Book 5.
Chapter 6 of Book 5 is entitled The Importance of Education. The second section is called Life Skills. The grammar points to be focused on in this chapter are "either...or" and "neither...nor." Just to give you a little taste of the, um, really interesting content of the books, I reproduce for you the first third of the selected text.
"Education has various purposes. One purpose is to prepare students to meet the demands of society. Society, however, needs well educated girls as well as boys. Both girls and boys must, therefore, be given the same opportunity to go to school and find a job when looking for employment. They can hardly succeed in this, however, if the content of the materials they are provided with focuses neither on the real needs of society in general nor relates to both boys and girls in particular. Rather, educational materials need to focus on life skills - skills that are needed for work and everyday life in society and at home. Without them, students will neither be able to learn anything useful for themselves, nor want to take their education seriously."
The irony is painful.
Chapter 6 of Book 5 is entitled The Importance of Education. The second section is called Life Skills. The grammar points to be focused on in this chapter are "either...or" and "neither...nor." Just to give you a little taste of the, um, really interesting content of the books, I reproduce for you the first third of the selected text.
"Education has various purposes. One purpose is to prepare students to meet the demands of society. Society, however, needs well educated girls as well as boys. Both girls and boys must, therefore, be given the same opportunity to go to school and find a job when looking for employment. They can hardly succeed in this, however, if the content of the materials they are provided with focuses neither on the real needs of society in general nor relates to both boys and girls in particular. Rather, educational materials need to focus on life skills - skills that are needed for work and everyday life in society and at home. Without them, students will neither be able to learn anything useful for themselves, nor want to take their education seriously."
The irony is painful.
Dirty Footprints
I've been playing around on the internet a lot today, and I decided to calculate my carbon footprint. This should be easy, right? Just type "carbon footprint calculator" into Google and have my pick of corporate, NGO, and government-sponsored calculators. Here's the problem. Most of these calculators assume that you live in a developed country, usually the U.S. or Europe. I did find one that had "China" as the only Asian option, so I selected it. But then the questions started: "How do you insulate your house from the cold?" Um, how do I break this to the calculator? It's not what you might call "cold" here. The house I live in is made up of one layer of boards, placed next to each other, with no insulation. Any insulation would just fry us all in our beds come hot season.
The calculator also wanted to know what my primary vehicle is: a motorbike, diesel small car, diesel truck, or regular-fuel car or truck. I looked hard but couldn't find "mountain bike" in the list of options.
Clearly, I am not emitting enough carbon to use these fancy calculators. In fact, my internet search for carbon calculators today has probably resulted in the emission of more carbon than any day full of normal activities back at my site. Still, I'd like to know for sure.
The calculator also wanted to know what my primary vehicle is: a motorbike, diesel small car, diesel truck, or regular-fuel car or truck. I looked hard but couldn't find "mountain bike" in the list of options.
Clearly, I am not emitting enough carbon to use these fancy calculators. In fact, my internet search for carbon calculators today has probably resulted in the emission of more carbon than any day full of normal activities back at my site. Still, I'd like to know for sure.
Seriously?
April lies at the epicenter of Cambodian holidays, with many public employees (or at least schoolteachers) taking the entire month off. May is not far behind, with some esoteric holidays of its own. Starting off on the right foot, May 1 is International Labor Day. Just when you're about to despair, having worked for nearly 2 weeks straight, the king's birthday affords you 3 days of relief: May 13, 14, and 15. Coming right on its heels is Visak Bochea, or the day Buddha was born (and walked on 7 lotus flowers). Finally, the Royal Ploughing Ceremony rounds off the month with 2 days of festivities involving oxen. Who could ask for anything more?
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
How Now Brown Cow?
Khmer New Year is the biggest holiday in Cambodia. Unfortunately, it happens to occur at the hottest time of the year, so a few other Volunteers and I decided to escape to Laos over the Khmer New Year school vacation, which, to be completely honest, started on about March 1. (I taught for roughly 8 hours in the entire month of March, and when I asked why students weren't showing up to school, I was given the logical answer, "It's almost time for vacation." With that reasoning, why do we go to school at all? After all, vacation's never more than 3 months away...)
Anyhow, we came up with a name for our trek, The How Now Brown Cow Lao Pow-Wow (Yow!), bought us some o' them airplane tickets, and made as few plans as we could get away with (apparently, you can get a visa at the airport!).
We found Laos to be a truly awesome place, and repeatedly voiced our longing to be Peace Corps Volunteers placed in Laos (yeah, it's never gonna happen). It was perfect for an outdoorsy type of vacation, since you can do just about any activity there that will cause you to break a sweat (although there's no snow skiing). The people were laid-back but friendly. And Lao New Year is a fantastic hootenanny, with 2 main liquid ingredients: water, which is thrown at hapless passersby, and Beer Lao, which is guzzled with abandon (not by yours truly of course).
We landed at Luang Prabang. The town itself was cute enough, but the biggest draw was the Kuang Si waterfall, about 30 km away.
We went to some caves of spiritual significance where peope had been putting Buddhas for (apparently) hundreds of years.
We also went on an elephant ride. The experience made for some great pictures but it was a lot like riding a big, water-squirting horse. Still, I would do it again.
We also did a 4-hour river kayak trip. By the end, we were all ready to commit hara-kiri with our paddles. It was the longest workout of my life.
After we had exhausted the marvels of Luang Prabang, we headed to Vang Vieng and Vientiane. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to continue the story of my best vacation ever because I have to hop on my bike and go back to my site so I can teach some English tomorrow. Guess I'll hafta leave you hanging....
Anyhow, we came up with a name for our trek, The How Now Brown Cow Lao Pow-Wow (Yow!), bought us some o' them airplane tickets, and made as few plans as we could get away with (apparently, you can get a visa at the airport!).
We found Laos to be a truly awesome place, and repeatedly voiced our longing to be Peace Corps Volunteers placed in Laos (yeah, it's never gonna happen). It was perfect for an outdoorsy type of vacation, since you can do just about any activity there that will cause you to break a sweat (although there's no snow skiing). The people were laid-back but friendly. And Lao New Year is a fantastic hootenanny, with 2 main liquid ingredients: water, which is thrown at hapless passersby, and Beer Lao, which is guzzled with abandon (not by yours truly of course).
We landed at Luang Prabang. The town itself was cute enough, but the biggest draw was the Kuang Si waterfall, about 30 km away.
We went to some caves of spiritual significance where peope had been putting Buddhas for (apparently) hundreds of years.
We also went on an elephant ride. The experience made for some great pictures but it was a lot like riding a big, water-squirting horse. Still, I would do it again.
We also did a 4-hour river kayak trip. By the end, we were all ready to commit hara-kiri with our paddles. It was the longest workout of my life.
After we had exhausted the marvels of Luang Prabang, we headed to Vang Vieng and Vientiane. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to continue the story of my best vacation ever because I have to hop on my bike and go back to my site so I can teach some English tomorrow. Guess I'll hafta leave you hanging....
Take Ur Daughter 2 Work Day
International Women's Day was March 8. I decided in February that I wanted to plan a Take Your Daughter to Work Day for girls in Battambang province. Apparently, planning an event takes a lot of work (who knew?). So I and one of the Volunteers in Battambang town, Kristine, scrambled for several weeks to put this thing together. Our vision was to bring about 12 girls (3 from each of the Volunteers' high schools)to Battambang town to meet with successful women in different career paths in order to get them thinking about what they might want to do in the future.
A fantastic local NGO, Aphivat Strey (Women's Development), helped get the logistics in order, and we got funding from several different local sources. A lot more planning had to go into the event than I ever expected: we needed to rent a van to get from one place to another within the city, find transport for the girls from their small towns to Battambang, secure a venue to do short debriefing sessions at the beginning and end of the day, buy snacks, and find small gifts for the hosting organizations. Oh, and also ask 4 professional women to talk to a group of high-school students about their own jobs and experiences. In the end, the students got to visit the Regional Teacher Training Center (where junior-high teachers are trained to teach English, chemistry, Khmer, etc.), whose director is a woman; Digital Divide Data, whose local director is a woman; Emergency Hospital, where there are many female doctors and nurses; and ANZ Royal Bank, whose tellers are mostly women.
Not everything went perfectly according to plan, but the students' eyes were opened about their many different options after high school. At the RTTC, they toured classrooms and learned about how one gets admitted to the RTTC. Here are the girls in a biology classroom.
At Digital Divide Data, the director told them how important it is to make career goals and related this to her own career path. The students also met some of the employees, who do data entry for Western institutions and get computer training.
Emergency hospital, which is run by an Italian NGO and cares mostly for trauma patients, generously provided lunch for us. The students took a complete tour of the hospital (including all the wards) with an Italian doctor. Later, a Cambodian woman told them the story of how she had grown up in poverty but had worked hard to become a nurse.
And here are the students listening to the manager of the local branch of ANZ Royal Bank. This is one of the things that wasn't exactly according to plan: they were supposed to meet with a teller but the manager just ended up telling the girls that women are better employees than men. He also ended up telling them how banking works, since most Cambodians in villages use jewelry as their bank.
We all had a great time. The students had never visited any of these workplaces before, and they seemed to enjoy being in the "big" city. Their enjoyment fueled the Volunteers' enthusiasm, and we got to feel like we were doing something important. Personally, this event is the single thing I have enjoyed most since arriving in Cambodia, and I wish I could do something like it every day.
A fantastic local NGO, Aphivat Strey (Women's Development), helped get the logistics in order, and we got funding from several different local sources. A lot more planning had to go into the event than I ever expected: we needed to rent a van to get from one place to another within the city, find transport for the girls from their small towns to Battambang, secure a venue to do short debriefing sessions at the beginning and end of the day, buy snacks, and find small gifts for the hosting organizations. Oh, and also ask 4 professional women to talk to a group of high-school students about their own jobs and experiences. In the end, the students got to visit the Regional Teacher Training Center (where junior-high teachers are trained to teach English, chemistry, Khmer, etc.), whose director is a woman; Digital Divide Data, whose local director is a woman; Emergency Hospital, where there are many female doctors and nurses; and ANZ Royal Bank, whose tellers are mostly women.
Not everything went perfectly according to plan, but the students' eyes were opened about their many different options after high school. At the RTTC, they toured classrooms and learned about how one gets admitted to the RTTC. Here are the girls in a biology classroom.
At Digital Divide Data, the director told them how important it is to make career goals and related this to her own career path. The students also met some of the employees, who do data entry for Western institutions and get computer training.
Emergency hospital, which is run by an Italian NGO and cares mostly for trauma patients, generously provided lunch for us. The students took a complete tour of the hospital (including all the wards) with an Italian doctor. Later, a Cambodian woman told them the story of how she had grown up in poverty but had worked hard to become a nurse.
And here are the students listening to the manager of the local branch of ANZ Royal Bank. This is one of the things that wasn't exactly according to plan: they were supposed to meet with a teller but the manager just ended up telling the girls that women are better employees than men. He also ended up telling them how banking works, since most Cambodians in villages use jewelry as their bank.
We all had a great time. The students had never visited any of these workplaces before, and they seemed to enjoy being in the "big" city. Their enjoyment fueled the Volunteers' enthusiasm, and we got to feel like we were doing something important. Personally, this event is the single thing I have enjoyed most since arriving in Cambodia, and I wish I could do something like it every day.
My Writing Workshop
Back in November, I started teaching an English essay writing class. Another PCV wrote up a syllabus for such a class, and I, needing somewhere to channel my energy, decided to use it to teach a class and see how it went.
First, I had all interested students meet in a classroom and write a letter of introduction about themselves. I told them I'd accept 40 students (out of the 70 who were interested) to be in the class. And I also told them not to cheat off each other (this is a completely futile command in Cambodia but you hafta try). I got home and spent hours agonizing over which students I would accept: a lot of letters were partially but not fully copied. Should I accept students who seemed talented but who had copied a third of their letter from someone else (or allowed someone else to copy a third of their letter)? Finally, Kevin told me to be a hard-ass, so I disqualified any students who showed any sign of cheating. This left me with only 35.
So! I had them all choose English names so I wouldn't go crazy trying to remember their Khmer names. (And even though I gave the boys a list of about 35 choices, Victor, Nicholas, and Philip were picked by more than one student.) And then we started learning how to write an essay in English. We talked about the main idea sentence, about putting details in the body paragraphs, about the introduction and conclusion. We talked about alternative ways to say "and" and "but." We talked about the difference between "give" and "allow" (which have the same Khmer translation). We talked about comparing and contrasting 2 things.
And then, when I had taught them all I could about essay writing, and I had only 24 students left in the class, we had a graduation party. It seemed daunting to plan a graduation party on my own, so I delegated that task to the students. They collected the money, bought the raw ingredients, made the (delicious) food themselves, and brought their VCD karaoke collections over to my house. All I had to do was make certificates.
So here are the students, checking out their scores from the class.
And here are some of the girls, preparing the veggies.
Here's the whole class (minus those who were absent for weddings [not their own weddings]).
I also had 2 students read their essays out loud to the class. This is Sarah.
And this is Victor.
Reflecting on the whole experience, I think the biggest thing the students learned wasn't necessarily about essay writing. Instead, they learned how to listen. I taught the class almost entirely in English, and my funny American-accented English at that, translating only when I had to. So the students were forced to listen to me, and listen hard. Even though they didn't learn exactly what I expected them to, they learned something, and that's all I can hope for.
First, I had all interested students meet in a classroom and write a letter of introduction about themselves. I told them I'd accept 40 students (out of the 70 who were interested) to be in the class. And I also told them not to cheat off each other (this is a completely futile command in Cambodia but you hafta try). I got home and spent hours agonizing over which students I would accept: a lot of letters were partially but not fully copied. Should I accept students who seemed talented but who had copied a third of their letter from someone else (or allowed someone else to copy a third of their letter)? Finally, Kevin told me to be a hard-ass, so I disqualified any students who showed any sign of cheating. This left me with only 35.
So! I had them all choose English names so I wouldn't go crazy trying to remember their Khmer names. (And even though I gave the boys a list of about 35 choices, Victor, Nicholas, and Philip were picked by more than one student.) And then we started learning how to write an essay in English. We talked about the main idea sentence, about putting details in the body paragraphs, about the introduction and conclusion. We talked about alternative ways to say "and" and "but." We talked about the difference between "give" and "allow" (which have the same Khmer translation). We talked about comparing and contrasting 2 things.
And then, when I had taught them all I could about essay writing, and I had only 24 students left in the class, we had a graduation party. It seemed daunting to plan a graduation party on my own, so I delegated that task to the students. They collected the money, bought the raw ingredients, made the (delicious) food themselves, and brought their VCD karaoke collections over to my house. All I had to do was make certificates.
So here are the students, checking out their scores from the class.
And here are some of the girls, preparing the veggies.
Here's the whole class (minus those who were absent for weddings [not their own weddings]).
I also had 2 students read their essays out loud to the class. This is Sarah.
And this is Victor.
Reflecting on the whole experience, I think the biggest thing the students learned wasn't necessarily about essay writing. Instead, they learned how to listen. I taught the class almost entirely in English, and my funny American-accented English at that, translating only when I had to. So the students were forced to listen to me, and listen hard. Even though they didn't learn exactly what I expected them to, they learned something, and that's all I can hope for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)