It’s only a few days until my parents arrive, and I’m becoming increasingly more excited to see them, though admittedly a lot of it has to do with the promise that my homecoming is just a week away once I see their faces. I’m trying to make the most of my last few days here by myself. Hopefully when I see them I’ll be able to put on a fresh face and pretend I’m a tourist seeing everything for the first time.

It’s strange to think of my journey here ending. Part of me feels like I just left, and another part feels like I’ve aged 100 years. Time and experience are funny things.

There is no god, and morality is (unfortunately) relative. The most you can do to remedy this is to live with love and responsibility.

Don’t waste time and energy trying to be friends with people you inherently dislike. Civility is key, but it’s okay to dislike someone, and it’s okay to be disliked. It’s also okay to not interact with them, especially if it’s clear the feeling is mutual. In fact, you’re probably saving everyone a lot of time and effort by avoiding them or keeping your mouth shut. Don’t force it.

Don’t be afraid to show your true colors. Be honest. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, and don’t agree with things you disagree with just for the sake of peace and pretense. Again, civility is key, but so is being true to yourself, and both of these are imperative for a healthy and worthwhile friendship. Disagreement invariably makes for more interesting conversation anyway.

“Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.”

Extend and accept more invitations.

Don’t ever let another person make you question your worth. If they make you feel bad or make you think you’re somehow not enough, don’t doubt yourself — only doubt their good judgment, and waste no time in finding and surrounding yourself with people who see the best in you.

The world owes you nothing. We are not born, nor do we live, deserving happiness or success — we are only born with the burden of knowing what these are. “We get what we demand from life.” Seek and work hard, and you shall find.

If you sense you’re being lied to, you probably are. And if you sense you’re being lied to by someone you’re generally able to read like an open book, you most certainly are, and you most certainly shouldn’t let them get away with it. This can be done more covertly than you might think.

Learn when to put yourself and when to put others first.

Be smart, but follow your heart. Your mind can only tell you how to go about doing things, not about what you want. At the same time, see No. 4.

Seek out environments in which you’re appreciated for who you are and what you do. Jobs at which coworkers regularly show up drunk and apathetic, and at which you find yourself to be as unappreciated, disposable, and replaceable as a McDonald’s fry cook, are probably not for you, nor are they deserving of all you have to offer.

“Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.”

Life can hurt. I believe that if you’ve been hurt deeply enough, you’re allowed to harbor resentment and anger and sadness (to abandon your instinctual feelings seems untruthful), but whether it’s a big deal or just a little deal, there’s a certain grace and strength that comes with rolling with the punches, especially when you can’t punch back. It’s okay to feel bad and to hate what’s happened to you. Just don’t get bogged down — bitterness is not the only thing you should taste.

Little deals seem like big deals when they happen (with both the good and the bad). Distinguishing which is which probably won’t happen until time has passed, but you’ll always be the one to decide. Make the bad deals seem as little as you possibly can, and don’t let little deals be the only kind of good deals you achieve.

Real communication and the addressing of concerns should not be viewed as burdensome or confrontational. And it should not occur through a keypad or computer screen.

Your life is not hard. Sure, bad things have happened and there have been struggles, but compared to most of the world, you’re essentially living in a candy store. Don’t mistake your discomforts and difficulties for hard living… It exists, but you’ve certainly never experienced it.

Take lots of pictures of yourself and of family and friends.

Get a cat or a dog and treat it well. Let it be your friend. There is no feeling in the world that matches loving and being loved by an animal.

Find something good in each day. Seek concrete, abstract, short-term, and long-term happiness with every fiber of your being: Buy that pair of shoes you’ve been saving for. Smile at a stranger. Eat that bowl of ice cream. Pursue your dreams.

Finally, laugh a lot. Love even more.

I’ll see you all soon.

Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time

in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.” 

— Kurt Vonnegut

Since reading Breakfast of Champions a month ago, that passage has stayed with me through the thick and thin of an exhausting and ugly emotional crisis that was sewn with the seeds of my incessant thinking and watered with all that is absurd and frustrating. I find that it concisely and poetically encapsulates exactly how I felt and feel about living here and trying to make sense of things for which there simply is no explanation, reasonable or otherwise. I can’t say it’s made me feel any better about being here, but it’s certainly helped put my feelings in perspective and helped me realize that I’m justified in feeling this way and (I’ll just say it) hating this city. The senselessness is inherent and inescapable, and if you’re as sensible as I am and think as much as I do, there’s nothing to be found except exhaustion and frustration. I’ve tried and failed so many times to make sense of this place and the things that have happened to me, but trying to find sense in the senseless is a madman’s errand, and I think this quotation came to me just in time to save myself from… well, myself.

I’m not sure what this update will entail, as there’s not much information to relay at this point, but I feel as though I should make one, if for no other reason than to let you all know that I’m doing better than I was when I last posted and that I remain confident in my decision to return home at the end of February. I’ve been out of work for a full two weeks at this point, and it’s another three until my parents arrive, and another one after that until I start my 24-hour journey back to the States — and while the time tends to move slowly, I can’t say I mind too much in this case.

Generally having so many weeks with nothing to do doesn’t suit me, and I was admittedly afraid that being here for so long with so little to keep me busy would leave me bored and depressed to no end. But, much to my surprise, these past couple weeks with no teaching and no obligations have been quite helpful to my restless and frustrated mind. I did unashamedly spend the first several days of my five-week break watching a lot of TV, as I needed something completely mindless and effortless. But since then I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and I’ve started to do a lot of writing, which I haven’t really had the energy or motivation to do since I’ve been here (other than these posts, which, while often lengthy, can hardly be compared to the quality and style I’m used to producing). My friend Margaret (also a writer) told me about a travel website that’s driven essentially by contributions from freelance articles by people with firsthand experience traveling and working and living abroad. They have a lot of contests and a lot of wanted work, so I’ve been working on a couple of pieces to submit to them about my time in Europe and my time here. I’ve also been writing more creatively and narratively about this place — that is, putting my experiences here into a more entertaining and story-like format. Plus, I’ve returned to a fiction piece that I spent a lot of time on while I was in school.

In other words, the past couple weeks have been extremely productive and healing, and I’m excited to have found such a positive way to spend my remaining time here. I’m excited for the next few weeks and to see what sort of work I can get done with so much “me” time, which I know becomes more difficult to come by in the Real World.

What’s most important, though, is that I’ve been able to pull most of myself out of this funk, and, thanks to friends and several days spent at various beautiful swimming pools, I can safely say that, mentally and emotionally, I’m in a much happier place (my geographic location remains an issue, but knowing how soon that will be remedied is also infinitely helpful to my mind and spirit). I am excited for the time I have left here, but I’m also excited to come home and see my family and friends and eat real cheeseburgers and wear nice clothes and style my hair and drive my car and feel carpet under my feet. It’s strange… I thought that coming here would make me realize how little I desire the comforts and material things I associate with home, but instead I only seem to miss them more.

There are a lot of places I haven’t been in my life, but I’m realizing that there’s no shame in admitting that I’m probably a woman designed for the Western world. But perhaps I’m just homesick and really miss it right now. Either way, I can’t wait to see what this next month has to offer, and to greet Ohio with open arms and a great tan.

For example, I still have many of the same students, but because they’ve advanced, I’m now teaching levels that are slightly higher than what I was before. The kindergartners I had last term are now studying either Phonics 1 or Phonics 2. P1 covers letters A-M with a named animal and an object that starts with the respective letter. P2 is the same, but with letters N-Z. In classic and enragingly stupid Cambodian fashion, both groups have been placed in the same class, so instead of focusing on one lesson with one group of students, I get to focus on two lessons with two groups of students. They were together in kindergarten, and now they’re together again, and to the same frustrations and detriments.

Let me explain: At ELT, there are three levels of kindergarten. Since there’s apparently no way to skip a grade, despite my petitioning for several students to advance to a more appropriate level, some kids have to suffer through an excruciating year of pedantic baby bullshit. There’s level K1, which is the most entry-level you can get (and which I teach this year with newcomers). There’s level K2, which studies Phonics 1. Then there’s K3, which studies Phonics 2.

Last year I taught combined kinder classes of K1 and K2, but without being told what exactly each level entailed (I was, in classic and enragingly stupid Cambodian fashion, only given details of what each level entails THIS semester. So the K2 students I taught last term didn’t learn from me what they were supposed to, since I was told they had no workbook and that my job was essentially to make them have fun. The fact that they passed the level without me teaching them anything is indicative of just how little they belong in these lower levels.) My K2s are now in K3. My K1s (who were apparently supposed to be learning handwriting last term, which I was also never told) are now in K2. So it’s essentially the same class, which means we all have to deal with essentially the same problems, but with the added bonus of teaching two different sets of material.

The students are seated according to whatever book they’re working from, so they are physically divided on one side of the room and the other. My only real choice is to teach one side first while the other waits, and then to teach the other while the first side waits. I feel bad for all of them, especially the P2 kids who, for being technically only 10 weeks ahead in skill level, are substantially more apt to learn the material and respect the classroom rules. When they were in kindergarten they were also studying Phonics 1, and have now “graduated” to Phonics 2. These were my well-behaved kids, the kids I knew were too old and smart to be subjected to constant coloring sheets and the ABC Song. And they’re too old and too smart to be forced to mingle with the P1 kids, who are the kindergartners I failed but who, in classic and enragingly stupid Cambodian fashion, passed the class anyway.

So instead of focusing my attention on one group or the other, I have to divide my attention among the two groups and cater to very different needs. With this course there’s actually a curriculum, and a syllabus I’ve been given and am expected to follow. The difficulty is when the more advanced group moves substantially faster than the lower group. I’m afraid that after a few weeks the P2 kids will be done and wallowing in boredom while I try to catch the P1 kids up. I suppose I can just throw coloring sheets at them, but I hate doing that to kids for whom I believe it would feel dismissive. I don’t want to ignore anyone, but at the rate the class is going, I can see it happening pretty easily.

So my two kindergarten classes have graduated, and while they’re still technically in kindergarten, I’m teaching different material. My three first grade classes have also graduated, but I only see the evening one now. My morning and afternoon first graders have been passed on to a different teacher, which is okay, but I’m not sure they like him. I can tell they miss me, and it makes me miss them a little, too, especially considering the material they’ve graduated to. I wish I could teach it to them and see them use it, because it’s actually something real and worthy of their intelligence.

Thankfully I was able to keep one of my first grade classes, so I do get to see the material in action, and I get to see it with my best class. My evening first graders are now evening second graders, and they’re eating up the new lessons. They’re studying from a textbook that has eight units: My Friends, My Body, My Family, Happy Birthday, Toys, Yummy Things, Animals, and Seven Days. The units cover what you would probably guess: greetings, introductions, body parts, physical feelings, family members, numbers and ages, toys, food, likes and dislikes, animals, pets, and days of the week — your standard foundational elements. It feels much more rewarding to actually teach something useful as opposed to something merely preparatory (though I understand both are important).

I also have some new kids, ones that are so little that the class I teach with them is essentially a handwriting class. I sit for an hour and help them hold their pencil and trace the letter A. I point to a chair and say, “Chair.” I point to their notebook and say, “Notebook.” I teach two of these handwriting classes. There are about seven kids in each, which makes for a glorious, quiet class where my TA and I can devote a lot of personal attention to each child, which is good, because otherwise all they really know how to do is breathe and pick their nose.

And while teaching is going better (so far), I’m not sure Phnom Penh is working out as well as I’d hoped. It was when we were returning from Kampot (where I spent a lovely New Year with some friends) that I realized I was returning to the city with something close to dread. Usually, even after a short vacation, I’m always ready to return home… But I realized that, other than the people here, there are few things I appreciate or enjoy about this city, and even fewer things that would make it worth my while to stay until September, which was my initial intention.

Part of what makes this so difficult to say is that I fear failing, or looking weak, or being wrong. I dislike these traits, and I do my utmost to avoid being described as such, and my hesitation for leaving is essentially entirely based on this. Am I weak if I don’t stick it out? Am I a lesser person if I leave, a person who, turns out, needs the comforts she so brashly mocked upon her departure from America? What does it mean that I dislike this city? If I abandon my post here, am I giving up? Have I really done everything I can?

I won’t bore you with all of my philosophy on the subject, or all the thinking I’ve done since being here, but I will say that, in a nutshell, on the whole, I am not as happy here as I want to be. I’m not miserable, certainly, but I’m not having the experience I wanted, and when I think about the reasons why I’d potentially stay for an entire year, the only one that consistently comes to mind, other than my aforementioned fears of failure, is this: So I can say I did it.

So I can say I did it, and so I can prove to… someone (myself? you?) that I did it and I didn’t run home at the first sign of discontent.

But those reasons aren’t quite good enough for me, at least not right now, and not in a city for which I hold little but disdain and frustration. So my plan is to work for a few more weeks at ELT, then travel for a few weeks until I’m able to meet my parents here. And then, most likely, I’ll go home, thanks to parents who are both able and willing to catch me when I fall, even though I’m not sure yet whether my homecoming would be a fall…

I’m not sure it’s a failure to be 22 years old, try something, give it a decent shot, and decide it’s not for you. I entered this experience knowing it would be a temporary one, though perhaps that’s part of what’s making this difficult. I feel decidedly unsettled here… I’ve had dorm rooms that have felt more like home. Perhaps if my mindset were a more permanent one, or one of indefinite apathy, I’d be more inclined to really create a personal space here, and to accept and embrace the cultural frustrations and discomforts that have left me feeling so jaded and irate.

But as it is, I feel how I feel, and at the moment I’m confident in my choice and don’t feel lesser for it. People here always joke about people needing to be insane to want to live in Cambodia, and while I wouldn’t necessarily encompass the entire country in the sentiment, I do believe that it takes a certain character to want to live in Phnom Penh. I had a conversation with a good friend the other day who essentially said that if he had the option, he’d get out of this place in a heartbeat. “If you’re a person who has options, or money, or anything at all anywhere else, I have no idea why you’d choose to be here. This is an extension of hell.” I prefer to liken it to Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, except the quirks and nuances of that world are endearing in a way this world could never be for me. It’s like Wonderland, but perverted and twisted into a hopeless cesspool of human evil, greed, corruption, laziness, and stupidity.

I can’t help but feel this way. The things that frustrate me outweigh the things that I enjoy. And there are things I enjoy, and certainly things I’ll miss. People, mostly. Two-dollar meals. Delicious iced tea with fresh lime and sugar. People. Palm trees. Late-night hotdog stands that sustain the drunken walks home. People-watching from my balcony. People. Photocopied, black market books. Pirated, black market DVDs. Cheap clothes. And people. Did I mention people? People who are, for the most part, leaving in February and March, and without whom I would probably spiral into madness?

I’ve been told by many of these people that sticking out the year would be at the very least a character-building exercise. They’re probably right. But I don’t want to “stick it out”. I wish that I liked it better here. I wish that I wanted to stay. I wish September didn’t seem so far away. But given that I don’t like it better here, that I don’t want to stay, and that September seems an unreachable point in time, I’m not sure it’s wise to remain here for much longer, especially when the option to leave is right there. Phnom Penh and I have a complicated relationship already — I’d hate to stay for nine more months and have my impatient bitterness and discontent mutate into full-blown resentment and hate. And I would hate to look back on my time here and remember the last few months more than the first few, which were, in the sprit of honesty, truly wonderful.

But a lot’s changed. And that’s okay, because that’s what happens. And perhaps it would be in my best interest to stay and adapt and potentially embrace those changes. Or I can accept that this place is not for me and recognize a losing battle when I see one. This is not something I want to force. I don’t want to coerce myself into believing I love it here. So the plan is to remain until my reasons for staying (people) have left, and then to leave myself. After that, who knows?

I know I certainly don’t. But I know it will be okay.

I need to stress that I am in no way physically hurt. The whole thing, really, couldn’t have been less violent, which I’m thankful for. There are some terrifying stories about bag-grabs gone horribly wrong, and while I’m quite upset about all of it, the fact that I escaped without even a scratch is something to find solace in, though the comfort is a small one.

What happened was this: I was walking home from work. It was a bit after 6:30, the time I usually leave the school and start my short walk home. It was dark, and I was walking along a busy street where there was lots of motor traffic, but where, as usual in Cambodia, I was the only pedestrian. I walked on the sidewalk, but because the fucktards who live here have grown accustomed to parking their cars there, I was forced to walk quite close to the road. If cars hadn’t been parked in my walking space, I could easily have kept myself a good six or seven feet from the road and perhaps avoided this entire ordeal. But, as it was, I had to walk close to the road. All I was carrying was an empty water bottle in one hand, and my wristlet in the other. The wristlet was a small purse, with a little strap that wrapped around my wrist and a bag that was small enough to hold snugly in my hand. As I walked, I held the water bottle in my right hand, and had the wristlet around my wrist and in my left hand — the hand that was closest to the road. I walked about one block and came to a small intersection with no lights. As I was about to step off the sidewalk to cross the street, I heard two male Khmer voices close behind me, saw a moto round the corner in front of me, and felt a hand grab my bag.

I can replay it in my head as if it’s happening again, but it’s hard to verbalize. It was over in three seconds. I felt them pull, and I think my surprise allowed the passenger to wrangle the bag from my grasp. The wristlet was still around my wrist, though, and all I thought to do was pull back, but my force and the fact that they were still driving in the opposite direction combined to break the purse — they sped away with the bag, looking back at me, and I was left standing there with the string and an empty water bottle, stunned and calling for help, to which no one responded. In the bag was about $20, the keys to my apartment (attached to a most beloved keychain), and my iPhone.

It took a moment for me to feel the prickles of adrenaline. I’d chased them for a few feet, but then was left to stand and stew in my own sudden pent-up energy. I started to shake and then started to walk, at first aimlessly and without logic because I didn’t know what else to do, but a few deep breaths cleared my head enough to walk back towards my school, as I quite literally had no where else to go. I had no money. I had no phone. I had no keys. I couldn’t buy anything, couldn’t call anyone, and couldn’t get into my apartment. It was the fear that initially upset me when I realized what had actually happened. I was completely out of touch with everyone in a country where no one understands me and where I had no money and no way to access it. But as I walked in my daze, I reasoned that ELT had computers in their teachers’ lounge where I could get in touch on Facebook and email my parents.

I was able to contact my friend Florian, who has an iPhone and immediate access to internet, and he was able to help me get in touch with other people to let them know what had happened. Luckily my roommate Maggie also works at ELT, so I was able to wait for her in the lounge until her class was over. It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout the school, either, and I have to compliment them on their sincerity and efforts to help me (though the constant you-need-to-be-more-careful advice was decidedly unappreciated). I walked into the lobby visibly upset and shaken, and within a few minutes people from admin were doing all they could to help me, including letting me on one of their faster computers so I could change my passwords to the accounts I’d tied to my phone.

When I explained what had happened and what had been stolen, several staff members suggested I must have been being followed and that the boys very likely knew what was in my bag, otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to steal something so small. It also occurred to me that perhaps it was students from my school, who may have seen me with the phone since I carry it to class to keep track of time. I also leave the school when a great rush of students is released, so it’s likely they followed me through the crowd and waited until I was alone. But I don’t know, and when Florian called the phone, a woman answered, which suggests it’s already exchanged hands.

I’m not living in fear. I just wish it hadn’t happened, I wish I could go back and change the little things that might have prevented it, and I wish it hadn’t made me look at every moto that passes with two boys on it and think, “Fuck you.”

Part of what bothers me most, and what I keep thinking about and replaying in my head, is how easy it was for them. I didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight, or to chase them down, or to do anything at all except what my reflexes did for me. I’m so mad that that’s all it took, and now my phone (a device that I will unashamedly say I’d become quite attached to for many reasons) is probably wiped clean of everything that made it mine, floating around this goddamned and god-forsaken city, rotting in the filthy hands of some glue-sniffing, ball-scratching, nose-picking, certifiably retarded asshole. And there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it. It’s gone forever, and I couldn’t even fight for it.

But I will be okay, and again, perhaps it’s best that there wasn’t an opportunity to fight for it. Perhaps it’s best that I let it slip through my fingers and that’s that. I will be okay, but it will take some adjustment to living here without being so wholly in-touch with everything and everyone, which my phone allowed me to do so beautifully and easily. I have a new phone now, and already have several people’s numbers, so I don’t feel so terrifyingly unconnected anymore. But there’s no doubt this sucks, and no doubt that it’s dampened my experience here and disillusioned me to this place, these people, and the world. People are cunts.

I’m off to do some deep breathing exercises.

I apologize in advance. Most of this post will sound pretty bitter. And that’s because I am bitter. And I’m frustrated. I’m also highly logical, which, in Cambodia, is an essentially nonexistent mindset. I’m all alone in my World of Common Sense and Order. You’ll read this and think that I hate my job. I don’t hate my job. Just certain parts of it, mostly the parts that make no sense, which is admittedly a lot of it. My teaching here is made frustrating by forces I can’t control. I like my kids. I like what I’m doing. But, boy, there’s a lot wrong, and a lot that upsets me, and this post will hopefully get most of it out. And it needs to be gotten out. So here goes.

I still can’t get over the differences between my students, across ages, classes, ability levels, everything. In some cases it’s simply interesting, but most times it’s just frustrating. There are students in my kindergarten classes who should be at least in first grade. There are students in my first grade classes who should be in kindergarten, and those who should be in second or third. It’s honestly the toughest part of my job: trying to keep those who are really slow or really fast at the same pace so that no one’s bored or in over their heads. And everyday I fail. Everyday there are kids who have no idea what I’m trying to do, and others who will get it and do it and be done and have to sit and wait while I walk the others through it. It’s a struggle, for me and for them. Even taking the time to create two levels of work doesn’t meet with success, because kids wonder why they don’t have what the other kids have, and they get curious and confused and then there’s no getting anyone to do anything. As a former student, it’s hard, because what I remember hating most about school was feeling like I was being patronized, or that I was stuck with kids who weren’t at the same operating level as I was. But I just have to remember that it’s not my fault these kids are in my classes. It wasn’t me who placed them where they are. I can only work to keep them all busy and entertained and productive in the situation they’ve been put in.

Such is the standard in the Cambodian school system. Across the board, from grade to grade, from school to school, there’s total inconsistency with level placement, and it comes to the detriment of more than just the student. More often than not, students simply don’t belong in the class they’ve been placed in, whether they’re too advanced for the material or the material is too advanced for them. And the teachers have to contend with it also. It’s an incredibly frustrating waste of time, money, and resources to teach a child who should be taught something else, and the whole thing has sort of disillusioned me, especially considering the only motivation for placing students below or above where they should be is money. “It’s your son’s first year of study? He can already write the alphabet and basic words and speak basic sentences? No matter. He should start in our lowest level, since it’s his first year. He’s only a few years older than they are.” So then he’s given to Teacher Sara’s kindergarten class, where she teaches shapes and numbers and body parts to a boy who’s known them for as long as he can remember. But if he starts at the very beginning instead of somewhere in the middle, the school gets more years out of him, and more money out of his parents’ pocketbook.

On the other end of the spectrum, it should be noted that no one really fails classes in Cambodia. You can get an F, you can do nothing at all or do everything poorly, and you will more than likely continue on to the next level. “Your daughter failed Phonics 1? No matter. She can start with Phonics 3 next semester.” So then she’s given to Teacher Sara’s first grade class, where she teaches writing and pronunciation of certain sounds and words that the girl cannot even come close to writing or pronouncing. But if she continues on, the parents and their daughter don’t lose face over her failure, and don’t question the ability of the school or why they spent their money there only to have their daughter fail and have to repeat the class. Everyone knows you don’t pay twice for the same thing. So the school advances her, and the parents continue to fund it.

I fill out biweekly progress reports that essentially spell this out. Every two weeks we send home a sort of report card to the parents, with scores for reading/pronunciation, listening/speaking, homework, classwork, punctuality, and dictation. We place a check on a six-point scale from excellent to poor, and then write a little blurb in a box at the bottom. The child takes it home to their parental units, who may or may not respond in their own little blurb box, and we collect them back. At the end of the ten weeks (five pages of reports), there’s a final assesment page, which is where the percentage grades go for homework, tests, participation, and things of that nature. A final letter grade and percentage is totalled at the bottom, and that’s the recorded grade for the student’s term. The same progress report book is kept until the pages run out, so I have many students whose books have pages from past semesters filled out. Flipping back, I find what I expect to find: my excellent students got A’s in their past classes; my good students got B’s; and my poor students failed miserably. And yet… Here they are, in the very next semester, in a more advanced class, and performing like total shit.

The other difference I notice is between classes as wholes, not just between individual students. I teach five classes total, and while I encounter the same difficulties with each one, the ways they behave and perform as a collective are remarkably different. My classes are, in theory, at the same academic level, but with each one I have to take a different approach to the same material. My morning K class, for example, is nigh insufferable. The kids are wide, wide awake, running around and climbing on tables, always approaching me with their work, always being told to “be silent” and sit down. Simply put, they’ve got a lot of energy, and really no one but me to spend it on. They’re hard to teach because they don’t pay attention, so usually I have to start the class with a song to get them focused, then throw a coloring page at them, and then sit next to two or three students at a time and go over whatever I want them to start learning. Then I move on to the next group. They don’t operate as a whole, and they need very personal attention if they’re to do anything I want them to do. In the afternoon, though, my kinders are behaved almost perfectly. They’re the same ages and the same skill and ability levels as those in the morning, but there’s just a very different mentality there in terms of how to behave in class. I don’t think they’re tired: they participate and are active and I have their full attention. But they are clearly there to learn, not to fuck around. They get excited about the same things (coloring, games) and they still like to mess around and have fun, but they approach it with a quieter and more subdued enthusiasm, and they’re good at working and learning together. I can teach them collectively. They look at me, they look at the board, and they take it in as best they can. Some get it before I even start. Others require some more time, but that’s where I can take the time to give them more attention.

My first grade classes have a similarly interesting difference in class behavior. My morning and afternoon classes are loud and energetic, the morning especially. At this point in school they’ve made some friends, and so are always talking with each other and refusing to pay attention. They climb on the furniture and jump around and scream just like my morning kindergartners, but there’s a certain rebelliousness there that makes it harder to quell. The kinders do it because it’s all they know to do. The first graders do it because they want to, and that’s that. Part of them knows better. They’re the classes I get really mad at, and I often show it. I’ll rearrange the seating to split up friends, I’ll have kids stand facing the corner, I’ll yell, or just sit at my desk and wait for them to be quiet. They exhaust me, and while there are a few gems within the classes, most are just pure, incarnate evil. My evening first graders, though, are the polar opposite, in the same vein as my afternoon kindergartners. They’re beautiful, quiet, attentive, enthusiastic. They participate. We can joke around and not have it escalate into an uncontrollable riot. Their work is better than the other classes, they understand things faster and more thoroughly, they respect my rules and instructions, and they are my favorite class. It’s with them that I actually feel like I’m getting something across instead of teaching something just to have it go in one ear and out the other.

Another frustration is my TA for my morning and afternoon first grade classes. Her name is Vanny, and she means well, but she’s lazy and, I believe, detrimental to what I’ve been brought in to do. Part of the reason schools are so keen to hire native English speakers is because of our accent. We speak English, phonetically, as it should be spoken (most of us… there are some pretty heavy accents around here). The idea is that kids will listen to us speak and imitate us and somehow end up sounding just like a white person. I’m not sure sounding just like us is really necessary, but I agree that there are certain ways to pronounce things and that they should learn what those ways are. When I go into my first grade class, I teach about ten words every week, and I stress the importance of pronunciation. “Cat”, for example, is not pronounced the same as “cut” or “caa”, nor is “fin” the same as “fan”, though my students might try to convince you otherwise. The problem is that Vanny convinces them to convince you otherwise. She pronounces things in the exact way I tell them not to. When I have them spell “cat” and they say c-u-t and I tell them they’re wrong, she says, “No, they spell right.” Then she tells them to spell something, either “cat” or “cut”, I can’t tell because she pronounces them the exact same way. They’ll spout something out and she’ll look at me as if to say, “See? They’re doing it right.” But they’re not. They’re simply not. And all of the effort I spend trying to get them to say it right is totally out the window the next time I see them, and I’ve about given up on it. Vanny teaches them the same material before I do, so they can learn it in Khmer and understand what they’re reading and saying, which I think is helpful. But when I hear her pronounce “cake” like “cay”, “goose” like “goo”, “ball” like “baw” and myriad other ear-grating mistakes, I want to throw up my hands and leave, because no matter what I can do in my hour, by the next day they’ve already regressed. The challenge this week is getting them to pronounce the letter H correctly, without it sounding like “A” or “hay”. Getting the “ch” sound out of them is like the trial of my life so far.

It’s also frustrating when Vanny expects me to set low standards for my classes. Homework here is given daily, and it always consists of some sort of handwriting exercise, where the students will write a word or two in their notebooks about ten times over. They give me their notebooks at the beginning of class, and I’ll grade the work quickly before writing the next assignment. This methodology originally consisted of me sitting for fifteen minutes and writing the words in each individual notebook, marking ten dashes where they should copy it, and then handing the books back to the students. This process was completely absurd and a total waste of time, especially considering their notebook paper is graphed, so they should have absolutely no problem writing their homework in an organized manner on the page. So one day, instead of writing two words 20 separate times and marking ten dashes for each one in 20 separate notebooks, I wrote two words once on the board and told the kids that their homework was to write each word ten times in their books. The work was exactly the same, they just weren’t handed the structure. Vanny looked at me like I was crazy and said that they didn’t understand, that I needed to write the words for them and make marks to show where they had to write. I explained that I wouldn’t spoon-feed them, that they needed to learn how to structure their work on their own, that they had to learn to write words without a model, and that they needed to learn how to take oral direction. “If they don’t understand,” I said, “then do your job and explain to them what I want. They’ll get it, and by tomorrow they’ll need no help knowing what to do.” She translated, the students were in a teary, wide-eyed hubub over the change, but they came in with their work the next day, and it was pretty much the same quality as ever. I gave a similar assignment at the end of class, and they already knew what to do. What a shock to think that students might understand something new, or to think that they can do things on their own!

And just like resigning the students to retarding practices with homework, the homework content itself has often been the object of some contention between my TA and I. In the phonics book, words are introduced with a short sentence that involves some sort of named animal doing or having something. “Annie Ant has an ax.” “Candy Cat cuts her hair.” “Eddie Elephant has an egg.” Some kids are shit at handwriting. Some kids are excellent. Vanny firmly believes that the kids aren’t ready to copy sentences. “You give too many words, they cannot write. Just one word. The whole thing is too much for them.” And for some, she’s right. If I assign a sentence to be written out ten times for homework, I’ll receive several notebooks that are essentially completely illegible. Crooked, missing words, missing letters, sloppy penmanship. But I’ll say this: There’s a big difference from the first time I assigned a sentence to the tenth time I assigned one. It might be too much for their ability, but there’s noticeable improvement, and it’s not because they sat there writing only one word at a time. Considering how homework is based on participation and effort, there’s no harm in pushing them to do something more advanced. The ones who are ready for it deserve the challenge, and the ones who aren’t can’t start too soon. It’s just upsetting when my TA wants to tell me what they can and can’t do, not allowing them to progress, especially when they prove her wrong by doing what she says they can’t.

She’s also pretty soft on them, and what she considers a well-regulated classroom is several decibels above what I consider one to be. She lets students go to the bathroom too often. A girl burst into tears when I introduced a quizzes for the first time in the form of dictation, where I say a word we’ve been learning and the students write it. She completely broke down because she wasn’t good at writing, one of those students that gets her courage from relying on others. When asked to do something herself, she simply can’t. Today I gave another quiz in dictation form, and she starts crying immediately and complaining that her stomach hurts. Vanny translates for me. I tell Vanny that the girl is just upset because we’re about to do something she doesn’t want to do, that she was fine when she was begging to play a game as I walked into the classroom, and that she’ll be fine when it’s all over. I’m not being cruel. But Vanny simply doesn’t understand. The girl is crying and says her stomach hurts and that she wants to go home. I assure the girl and Vanny that she will be fine. But Vanny takes her to call her parents and go home. So the spoiled brat gets out of something she doesn’t want to do because she starts crying a little. I’m curious to see what will happen next week, but I won’t fight it next time. Perhaps it’s my resentment towards Vanny and my distaste for the girl, a chubby dummy who once had her parents call the school to complain about me not calling on her enough when we played a game. They want me here, but they don’t want to listen to me, and they don’t respect the perspective and experiences I bring. If I ever cried over a scary quiz in school and complained about my stomach hurting just as it was about to begin, my teacher would know what I was doing, and she’d make me sit my ass down and take the goddamn quiz. Letting her out of it teaches her nothing.

Just as inefficient and backwards as my TA is the administration and most other employees of ELT. The aides who are placed in the teacher’s lounge to answer questions and help you can’t understand the questions you ask and are completely inept at offering any sort of assistance. They sit behind computers and play flash games and scroll through fashion sites all day. They’ll often direct me downstairs to administration without knowing who to talk to or why they’re telling me to go there. But go I will, if only because the English is slightly better in that office. But even then I’m not fully understood. When I went to my supervisor on my hands and knees, begging to be allowed to print directly from the internet (instead of saving each page, putting it on a flash drive, going to another office to get it printed, having to tell the person what exactly I want printed, having the PDF take ages to load, or not load at all), she just kept explaining that I already have access to computers with internet. I was there for fifteen minutes trying to get her to understand what I meant, and still no dice. If I do manage to get something printed, I’m supposed to turn it in for copies to be made at least six hours before the class I need it for. This means, theoretically, that if I need a worksheet for my night class, I could turn in a printout in the morning when I arrive and have enough copies by the time class rolls around the same day. Only, that doesn’t happen. I’ll request copies an entire day before I need them and still won’t have them in time. Then I have to bother the aides, conduct the trial that is getting them to understand, they make some calls that result in nothing, and I go to class, thinking of something to do to replace the worksheet as I walk to my room.

I have to take many, many deep breaths throughout my teaching days. It is, however (apart from dealing with admin and Vanny), getting much easier, which is good. And my students do like me, even the ones I always, always yell at. They’re always excited to see me, always greet me with hugs at the door, always say hello in the hallway, and get my attention whenever they can outside the classroom. When I get my afternoon break, I usually head a few doors down to a cheap Cambodian restaurant, and there’s usually a student or two getting picked up or dropped off by a parent, or waiting in the school lobby, and it’s all they can do to contain their excitement from seeing me outside of class. It’s really very sweet, and always makes me smile.

In terms of life away from school (which, despite the frustrations, really is getting easier and more second-nature with each day), I’ve little to complain about. It’s definitely a work hard/play hard lifestyle here, so it’s exhausting but extremely fun, and I’m having a great time. I’ve made a habit of recuperating from hard weeks and long nights by watching marathons of The Sopranos in bed while stuffing my face with Pringles. It’s the cure for what ails you.

Last week was a long holiday to celebrate Cambodian Independence Day and the end of the rainy season. The Water Festival, however, was cancelled, in part because the river was so high, and in part (supposedly) to use the funds to make donations to victims of flooding in the rural provinces. There was a night here the other week when the street I live on flooded a good foot or so. Thankfully the streets were relatively clean, but it was definitely an adventure getting from one place to another, and when the downpour stopped, the waters disappeared almost eerily fast. The owner of the bar we were at said that, in his seven years of living in Phnom Penh, he’d never seen the street flood. So it’s been one hell of a rainy season, and unfortunately one that was enough to cancel the boat races and other activities traditionally associated with the Water Festival. There wasn’t much to stick around for in the city during our five-day weekend, so Mark and I took a brief excursion to Sihanoukville for a few days of beaches and hedonism. We were able to meet up with one of Mark’s Khmer friends, and we spent a night bar hopping and playing pool. (For the record, I’d never played pool before. Despite having access to a pool table for as long as I’ve been alive, I never learned until a couple weeks ago. Mark taught me, I played, and his friend chuckled at me and my drunken/inexperienced ineptitude. I’ve played a few times since, though, and it’s a lot of fun, and I think I’m getting better! Pool tables are everywhere here, so I’m gonna be awesome when I come home. Maybe. Probably not. We’ll see.) And obviously there was the beach, which was nice because the weather was much better than my first visit, but it was also very crowded. But the trip was definitely a lot of fun, and I was sad to leave the carefree and relaxing environment behind. It was a good enough time, in fact, that I’m considering perhaps moving there for my last couple of months in Cambodia. I enjoy life in Phnom Penh, but I think while I’m here I’d like to get some longer-term experience living somewhere else and doing something else. That, and it’s a beach. And it’s really fun. That’s explanation enough.

There are so many things I still want to write about, but I don’t have the time or space at the moment to do it. There’s just so much to talk about! I still have pictures to upload, including ones of my apartment, the last of the Koh Kong trip, and a few from Sihanoukville and adventures in teaching. I’ll do that soon, hopefully. In the meantime, I hope all of you have a happy Thanksgiving! You make it easy to know what to be thankful for.

Over and out, kiddos. All my love!

We really did have every intention of pulling an all-nighter. But at about 1:00 in the morning, I received a text from a member of our travel party kindly informing me that we didn’t need to wait for her the next morning because she’d apparently found a better offer and had decided to travel to Koh Kong with some other friends. This was, as you may guess, really great news to hear at the last minute, because it meant that the weekend we’d budgeted by splitting things four ways was now to be split only three ways, which meant the rest of us got to spend even more money, and with the added bonus of being jilted! Such respect and consideration for already-made plans put me in an overwhelmingly good mood, and I managed to remain awake until about 2:00 in the morning, four hours before our planned departure, at which point the work week caught up with me and I quite literally started falling asleep on my feet. I managed to make it home, where I commenced my inebriated stumbling and tore through my room, a mumbling, drunken, smelly, tired tornado trying to finish packing for a three-day trip, a simple task that when drunk and exhausted becomes infinitely more difficult. Things did get easier when, after fifteen minutes of bumping into things and scrambling around, I remembered to turn on a light.

I managed to pack a backpack of stuff and take what I now guess to be about an hour-and-a-half-long nap before waking up at about 4:30. Talk about being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! I awoke smelling like roses and ready to run a marathon! I leapt right out of bed, did a backflip and some cartwheels, danced a little jig, floated into my bathroom, looked into my mirror and beheld a goddess of the morning. With unmatched beauty and grace she returned my gaze: her hair, a rat’s nest; her eyes, racoon-like and smudged with makeup; her skin, a blinding, oily reflector of the too-bright fluorescent light. A vision! Having to confront such beauty is enough to make any girl feel self-conscious, so I took a very quick, very cold, and very sobering shower before zipping my backpack and making my way downstairs. And I suppose at some point I got dressed.

We’d arranged for our taxi to pick us up outside Walkabout, a restaurant/bar that old fogies or people from the Victorian era might call “a place of ill repute”, but what I’ll just call a hooker bar, which is open 24/7, and which sits directly across the street from my apartment. This makes it convenient for accessing A) drunken breakfasts, and B) hookers, because I can get any or either whenever I want, and all I have to do is cross the street without getting hit by a tuk-tuk (which is sometimes a challenge). In this case, though, there was only time to satisfy one voracious appetite, so I opted for the less-talkative and better-dressed choice A.

I had breakfast with Mark, and we met Kristin there as we were finishing our eggs and toast (I won’t go into the epic saga of my quest to order a baguette at this damn restaurant, or the fact that ordering said baguette apparently requires several people asking several other people something about something, and that ordering a baguette for some reason necessitates a summit in the kitchen that involves every single staff member, and that once it’s decided that I can have a baguette because I ordered and paid for a baguette, I might as well go buy the ingredients myself, mix them, bake them, scratch my balls for half an hour, AND hire a hooker, because all of that would be faster and more efficient than whatever the hell I waited through to get a damn piece of bread). We met our taxi man around the corner, loaded our bags in the trunk, and I climbed in with my Spongebob-clad pillow and passed out. It was a glorious half hour before I was awakened by the gentle jostling of our Toyota Camry plunging in and out of foot-deep potholes. As you may have guessed again, even despite my exhaustion, I was so thrilled to have been awoken that I burst into a song of joy that my travel companions later likened to the yowlings of a grumpy cat.

The rest of the journey was essentially a struggle for sleep, an epic battle between myself and the Camry, who had the roads of Cambodia on its side to assist in destroying any possible chance of slumber. I think I managed to catch about 15 seconds here and there, and combined with the time it took to eat a bit of stale baguette I’d wrapped in napkins and brought with me, it felt like we arrived in Koh Kong in no time at all, because, as they say, time flies when you’re having fun, and if you haven’t guessed by now, I was having a really, really great time! Really!

All sarcasm aside, I really was looking forward to the trip, but just wanted to get there already, and probably should have gone about it with a little less alcohol in my system. But despite my poor choices and a slight-but-obnoxious change in the arrangements, get there we did, arriving in Tatai Village in the early afternoon. Our taxi dropped us off at a bridge, and we walked under it to meet the boat that would take us to our lodgings. It was a simple canoe with a roof and a motor, and more often than not it felt like we were going to tip over, but we sailed safely, basking in the pure nature: the clean water, the fresh air, the bright sunshine, the dense jungle. It was a perfect transition from the city, and when we reached the dock and our captain cut the motor, the silence was almost as gorgeous as the sights. We took a short trail through the forest to reach the lodge, which I linked you to earlier and which is as beautiful and wonderful as it looks. We met one of the operators, Gee, and he gave us the rundown of the place and the various ways we could spend our time. There were kayaks and trails we could take to caves and waterfalls, and longer treks through the jungle that could take us to the really cool places.

Gee took us to our bungalow, the one they call the family unit, with two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was quaint but beautiful, with little lizards scurrying around the walls, and mosquito nets over the beds. We ate lunch and spent a relaxing afternoon in the river. Kristin took a kayak to explore, and Mark and I stayed near the dock, swimming and struggling with an inner tube that was about the size of a tractor tire. We took naps and showers and made it to the great house for 7:30 dinner, which was a three-course buffet of scrumptiousness. We played some card games, watched Scream 4 (in the spirit of Halloween!), and went to bed early to rest up for the next day’s trek.

We set out at about 10:30 after a leisurely morning and breakfast, our skin already shiny with mosquito repellant and sweat. We’d been told that the leeches would get us, so it was suggested to wear as little as possible or as much as possible, so you could either see them and get them quickly, or so they couldn’t get through at all. (There’s a picture in an earlier post of the three of us about to set off. You might tell I opted to wear as little as possible. This was not a day long pants were made for.) We set off and spent the next two hours ducking, leaping, trudging, and climbing around the mountainside that would take us to the Tatai waterfall. The heat was unbelievable. In the dense parts of the forest there was little sun, but the air was so still that everything just seemed to stick and build up on my skin, and I’d brought nothing with which to wipe off, so there was a delightful mixture of sweat and dirt beading and dripping from my face. There also wasn’t much to see, except for bamboo, so I must admit that the trek itself left something to be desired. I was a sweaty, hot mess, smacking bugs and flicking leeches away, trying to wipe sweat from my face with an arm that was just as sweaty, all while trying to convince myself that the waterfall at the end would be worth it.

And it was worth it. It was so worth it. The falls were beautiful and untouched, and there was hardly another soul there. The water was cool and clean, the sun was shining, and we were free to explore wherever we wanted for as long as we wanted. The only rule was that we keep our socks on: socks on the rocks, as Gee explained. When they’re not wet, the rocks are fine to walk on, but when water touches the surface, they get extremely slippery and are difficult to maneuver. Socks are the only thing that provide some sort of traction (shoes are no good, nor are bare feet), but even then you have to be careful. I slipped several times, luckily where the water was deep enough to break my fall, but Kristin and some others suffered some pretty hard hits.

The waterfall really was a blast, though, and it was awesome to play in the water and lay in the sun and take in the scenery. We stayed there for several hours, and had our lunch delivered by boat, which took us back down the river when we were ready to head home. When we returned, we journeyed across the river to a small village, where we walked around for a bit before getting caught by an evening rainstorm. A generous family saw us take shelter under a pitiful palm bush and invited us into their home, which was a small shack set up on stilts. We kicked our shoes off, wiped the jungle rain from our faces, and climbed a short ladder into their house, where we sat with them for about ten minutes, waiting for the boat to come back for us. They didn’t speak English, so we weren’t really able to communicate with them, and we just sort of sat and smiled while they stared and grinned at us. The boat returned to pick us up, and we had a nap and another delicious dinner.

When we stepped out of the great house at about 9:30 that night, the sky was a complete explosion of stars. I’ve never seen so many stars, and the night was as clear as glass. There was even some sort of cloudy whiteness whirling into the depths of the night that we hypothesized might be the Milky Way, which I’d never seen before. It was unbelievable. I feel hesitant to write about it for fear of sounding trite and dramatic, but that sky was a very humbling and confounding thing. It was at once flat and endless, and made me feel both small and huge. There were moments when it felt like a sort of safe blanket around the world, and then other times when I could practically feel myself spinning through dizzying, infinite space. The stars felt so close and so far, and there were so many of them. I can’t get over the number of stars, and I can’t articulate the vastness or the beauty of that sky, or how mysterious and contradictory it was, or how hard I tried to find something there to grasp. There were moments when I felt like it was mocking my existence and showing me how insignificant I am. Then there were moments when I would listen to the chirping bugs, feel the people on either side of me, think back to the beautiful waterfall, listen to the wind in the trees, smell the clean night air, think of home and the people I love, and I would feel that I am part of all of this, part of something, and that while the sky can look at me and make me feel small, I can look back at the sky and realize I feel small — and that’s not nothing. We laid on the walkway for an hour and a half just gazing, and even saw seven shooting stars (seven!). I can’t get over the number of stars. It was a powerful experience, and I can never forget that sky.

The next morning was our departure, but we didn’t leave before doing a bit more exploring. Kristin headed out on some trails around the lodge, and Mark and I kayaked to a smaller waterfall set off the river. The kayaking itself was an adventure, as I don’t particularly enjoy it, and both Mark and I were pretty bad at it, and our kayak kept wanting to steer towards the shore, so any time we got a good pace going, we’d have to stop and steer our vessel and start back up again. It took us a while to get there, but the waterfall was another beauty, taller and with less water than the other, so it was more fun to climb around than to actually spend time in the water. It was also more secluded, being inside the jungle, so it sort of felt like our own little world there. We managed to climb pretty high, scrambling around rocks and plotting the best course to take. We’d hoped to reach the opening at the top, but about halfway up the rocks became too steeply tilted and far apart and hard to grip. So we acknowledged nature as our superior, made our way back down and kayaked home in time for a shower and lunch before the boat took us back to the bridge from whence we came so we could catch our bus back to Phnom Penh.

We opted for a bus home instead of a taxi because it was cheaper ($7 a ticket), and because we were in no real hurry to get back to the city. It was a nice bus as far as Cambodian standards go, but it was a little cramped, and child a few seats up vomited (I can’t escape vomiting here), and it did take longer to get home. We also managed to arrive in the city right when everyone else was arriving, so it took an excruciating hour and a half to crawl through the streets of Phnom Penh, battling vacation traffic. But we finally made it home, grabbed some dinner, and went our separate ways to prepare for the work week. It was a weekend well-spent, and if anyone reading this is ever able to make it to Cambodia, I would definitely suggest making time for a stop in Koh Kong. I hope to visit again, and I also hope to slowly but surely post more pictures. It will happen. Someday it will happen, when the internet allows. There are a few more below.

In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who’s been posting messages and sending emails. It means a lot to me that all of you are thinking of me and that I have your love and support. Forgive me if I don’t respond right away, or at all. It’s a very busy life here, and it’s sometimes hard to find the time to sit and compose different responses to everyone, so I’m trying to just update everybody collectively here. But I am most certainly getting your messages, and I do really appreciate them.

Also, lots of you have been asking me what I’d like in a care package. I honestly can’t think of much to tell you, except for peanut butter and perhaps chocolate, both of which are quite expensive here. Cereal also is expensive, and another thing I miss (Rice/Cinammon Chex, Life, Cheerios). I’d also love some disinfectant wipes (like Lysol or Clorox or something) to do some quick cleanups in the kitchen and bathroom without having to drag out a bucket and sponge (wipes are a luxury that aren’t present here). I could also use some coloring/activity books appropriate for kindergarten-aged kids. Animal pictures, little mazes or matching games, and other activities that don’t require knowledge of English. Just pictures they can interact with in some way. Perhaps some shaving cream, if it doesn’t make things too heavy. And some Kraft parmesan cheese. And a Chipotle burrito, if you can manage it.

Thank you again for your love and your interest in my experience here. It makes it all the better for me! I’ll update more soon, as I’ve a lot to tell you about my school and my kids (never thought I’d ever say “my kids”). Until next time, all my love!