December

December was also a pretty meaty teaching month. I lesson planned with my new coteacher for 11th grade



watched my essay students chase a very small snake out of our classroom and kill it with a rock



went to the wedding of a teacher at my school with a Cambodian American



and took my Christmas trip to Siem Reap. I also got word that the rice harvest begins in earnest in late December, so students would start disappearing from class to help their parents cut the rice, thresh the rice, dry the rice, and take it to the rice mill.

November

November was a very meaty teaching month. I began to teach an essay-writing workshop using a fellow Volunteer's syllabus and to teach occasional English classes at a local reproductive health organization. Also, I had a visitor (good to see ya, George!), biked to Ek Phnom with the boys



got a puppy with a diva name



caught a bit of the Bon Om Touk (water festival) after a small meeting in Phnom Penh



and got a computer room installed in my school (not that the computers began working in November).

First Semester Review (October)

The First Semester is officially over in Cambodia. Or it will be in a few days, when the 12th-grade students finish taking their semester exams. But since I don't have to do any more work until March, I say it's over.

The end of a semester is a good time to take stock. So here's a quick review of my school year. I think I'll do a different post for every month so if I get lazy I can stop in the middle.

OCTOBER

School theoretically begins on October 1, but because of Pchum Ben, an important religious Cambodian holiday around the 11th, school really begins around October 15th. I spend a lot of time making Cambodian rice snacks filled with bananas (called ansom jayk) and pork (called ansom chrook). Here's the fam wrapping the snacks up outside my host aunt's house on the ubiquitous bed frame.



Here are the starting ingredients: cut banana leaves for the wrapping, partially cooked rice, yellow beans, and pork fat (bananas not shown).



Here's my mom wrapping her ansom jayk.



Here's a bucket that will eventually be full of our dessert.



Also, the national highway in my town got yellow dashes. Woot!

A Note on Trash

Last month I stumbled on an old issue of Harper's magazine in Phnom Penh, and by a lucky chance it had a great article about a huge dump in Manila, Philippines, which reminded me of my trip to the Phnom Penh dump. If you get a chance, check it out.

A Very Happy Un-Birthday To Me

Today is the 1-year anniversary of my arrival in Cambodia. A year ago today, I couldn't speak a word of Khmer, had never drunk juice straight from a coconut, had never taught the concept of "would rather...than..." to a Cambodian high school student, had never ridden a bike in an ankle-length skirt. It's amazing how much can change in a year.

This means that my scheduled date of return to the United States is 14 months away. I'm hoping to stay to finish the next school year, though, so I might be closer to 17 months away from daily access to French fries.

I suppose an anniversary calls for some reflection on where one has been and where one is going, but I'm feeling kinda sweaty and rather unreflective. We had a small out-of-season rain today, and it made me fall back in love with this country. That is all the reflection I can muster. I promise, I'll try to do more soon.

Picture Problems

Soooo, I've been having some problems with my camera's XD cards. Which is why I haven't been putting up a lot of pictures lately. And it's a shame, because I've had some good photo ops in the last few weeks. But I think everything is ship-shape again, so I'm going to start taking more photos. Now just to get more time on the internet to post them....

The Oil Conundrum

I love my bicycle. It's a blue Trek 3900 16-inch-frame mountain bike with shocks and other assorted features. It's the nicest bike I've ever owned. (Cambodians love my bicycle too. It's got this irresistible beat-up old bell that no one, young or old, can refrain from ringing. Repeatedly. But I maintain that I love my bicycle more than anyone.)

So I try to take good care of it, which brings me to my point. I remember, back in the U.S., when I was just a little novice cyclist trying to learn how to take care of my bike, asking my friends what brand of bike-chain oil is the best to use. I wanted only the highest quality product to guide and caress my bike chain, to ensure its unhindered path through all the, um, stuff that it has to touch on its elliptical journey (derailleur? sprocket? gear? I have no clue). Oh, those days of abundance!

I currently have two choices of lubricants for my bike chain: motor oil or cooking oil. To date, I have opted for the motor oil, as advised by numerous Cambodians. It seems to serve just fine as a lubricant, as far as I can tell, with the only negative consequence being that I have a semi-permanent black oil patch on my lower right leg. (Perhaps I applied it a little too enthusiastically.)

But I've learned an important lesson from all the agonizing I did about how I was going to lubricate my chain, and from all my trepidation about following the advice to use the suspicious motor oil: don't be such a damn snob. I may never go back to fancy bike-chain oil again.