Well I survived my first week of teaching!! It is quite a
bit more work than I originally imagined. But you know what happens when you
think life is all fun and games?! It smacks
you right between the eyes with a class of rowdy prepubescent boys. Of course I
am being overly dramatic, but I kid you not when I say teaching is not for the
faint of heart. I now understand why
there are so many terrible teachers out there. It is hard work and easy to just
give in to not caring. I also now have a
strong compulsion to write to every teacher I ever thought was even slightly
good at his or her job and thank him or her for not murdering us all right
there in our seats. So Mrs. Sylvis, Mrs.
Englbright, Ms. Dine, Mr. and Mrs. Reddick, LT, Mr. Smith, and anyone else I
forgot: Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
The past
week my mornings are taken up with lesson preparation before I teach for 1 hour
at the Korean Center. In my class I lord
over ten boys ages 10-13 years old…that’s right, not a single girl in sight but
me…and I get them right after lunch and recess…joy. They are energetic to say the least, but all
of them are sweet and if I can get
them excited about English are happy to apply themselves. On Friday I had them do country reports. Since
it is a beginner level class, instead of doing written reports, we made
collages and each boy got a different SE Asian country. It was actually super fun although they spent
half the time giggling over the magazine photos of women and cutting out
pictures of motorcycles and racecars…some things never change… ;)
In the
afternoons I co-teach the hotel bar staff with another teacher in training and
that is a real hoot. There are about six
women in the class and we really have a ball together. They are all really sweet and goofy and eager
to learn which is nice. Also because
they work in a hotel, they actually get to use their English skills often and
it’s very rewarding to hear them
improving outside the classroom. In the
late evening I have Chinese class, which is basically a two-hour painful
reminder of how much I have forgotten in three years. It’s shameful really, but
it’s coming along quite nicely.
This
weekend was the first weekend since I’ve been here that was all mine! On Saturday my friend Matt and I had a day
out on the city exploring and visiting friends of his. We had a great lunch at
a local market and that afternoon we went to Tuol Sleng Museum. It was quite a sobering experience. For those of you who are a bit rusty on your
history, in the mid 1970’s Cambodia was thrown into somewhat of a civil
war.
The government in power made the
decision to reform the entire country into an agrarian society. They liquidated
the all the cities, relocated the people to work camps, killed anyone educated
or with ties abroad, and indoctrinated the countries children into what was to
be the “new society” where education was abhorred and only hard work was of any
value. The name of this group was called
the Khmer Rouge and the head honcho went by Pol Pot. Sound familiar?
Tuol Sleng
was a high school built in the in the heart of Phnom Penh in the early 1960’s
and when the Khmer Rouge took over the city, turned it into a prison that went
by the name S-21. Over a period of three
and a half years thousands of Cambodian citizens were held there on mostly fictitious
charges, tortured, and eventually killed. The Khmer Rouge went to great lengths
to document the intake, torture, and disposal of every inmate, whose photos now
line the walls. This school turned
prison turned museum is a bit much to describe on a blog, and you probably
wouldn’t want to read it if I did. All I
will say is that the place has an indescribable presence. Chalkboards still hang on the walls where you
can see writing never fully erased along side bullet holes. It is surreal. 
When the Vietnamese overthrew the
Khmer Rouge and took control of Phnom Penh, the first images of Tuol Sleng made
their way into the media. Of the thousands who passed through the prison there
were only seven survivors, and only two are alive today. Yes, those are human skulls. Dear God, forgive us for what we have done to
each other in this world.
The truly staggering thing about it
all is that conflict between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge went on until
1992. Not only is that within my lifetime, but also means this county
has been at peace for only roughly 11 years.
I try to remind myself of that when I get frustrated with the infrastructure,
flooded streets, unreliable cell towers, and power outages. They are rebuilding a society from the ground
up so cut them some slack.
Ok, enough
with the heavy. If you are like me and have an interest in history I recommend
renting a movie called The Killing Fields. It is about the genocide here
and is not as gory as the title suggests, but is very informative. We took a tuk tuk from the museum just in
time to get caught in a serious rainstorm and arrive at to our hotel to find
the whole place flooded! All the rain
overwhelmed the roof drains so the water just poured into the 7th
story stairwell and subsequently all the way down to the lobby. Along with the hotel staff, we spent the
evening pushing mini title waves down the stairs with brooms, towels, and squeegees.
It was actually kind of fun to be honest. We got all the mess cleaned up and
now you would never even know. ;) It's hard to see in the pic, but that is a waterfall on the 5th floor stair well!!
Next week will be just like the
last and on Friday I will be a certified ESL Teacher!! O boy!! I know I told
some of you I was planning a trip to Thailand for a few days after the course,
but instead I have decided to stay here in Cambodia and explore some other
regions of the country. I have been so busy with school, that in my four weeks here
I have not gotten to explore the world around me as much as I’d like. Cambodia, I am just not done with you
yet. So that is the plan, and next time
you visit the blog I will be graduated and on my way to becoming a real
teacher!!! I love and miss you all dearly. Extra kisses to Mr. Charlie Pants.
xoxo
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