Good Morning Teacher!

The students greet me in the early morning hours with a chorus of little voices and a sea of excited, smiling faces. I wave and say hello in Khmer before they sit down and pull out their pens and notebooks. As a sign of respect, the students always stand and bow whenever Jen, Liz, or I leave the room. It makes me feel almost like a real teacher! The plastic yellow flowers on my tiny wooden desk add even more to the classroom atmostphere.

I’ve been teaching English for over two weeks in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We are volunteering in a small village at Lolei school, about 20km outside of town. It is one of the poorer schools in the area and does not receive much government funding. The students do not wear the typical white and blue attire seen on the majority of young school children and they have minimal supplies. We teach most of our lessons with just the chalkboard and lots and lots of creativity. Many of the students are quite young, between seven and eleven years old and have had no previous exposure to English. Therefore, we started with the basics, “Hello, my name is,” “how old are you,” and small words such as can, pan, cat, and bat. Personally, I think the kids get more enjoyment out of watching us make up silly songs and dances in the front of the classroom than actually learning the language, but we all have a fun time.


The first morning was wonderful. I bikes by myself to meet the English speaking monk and arrange a teaching schedule (yes, we bike the 20 km back and forth every day). All of the classrooms were currently being used so my orange clad helper unlocked the storage closet. It was a small, cluttered room filled with boxes of junk, stacks of broken desks, and many, many homes of little mice families. Narong (the monk) called over his monk friends and I soon had an entorage of helpers sweeping the floors and shooing away the mice. Well, I did the shooing. The monks stood on top of the desks until they were all gone. By the end of the morning we had a semi-clean classroom with five neat little rows of desks.


I thought we would have about twenty kids, but we were greeted the next day by more than twice that many. Everyone wanted to learn English and even the principal was a “student.” We were recruited the second day by another school three miles down the road. Rumor had gotten around that there were three American girls teaching English and we were confronted by two teachers, pleading for us to help them out at their school. The second school was a bit more difficult to organize. We had about fifty students between the ages of six and twenty-five crammed into a room. They were all on different learning levels as well. Some could hold entire conversations while others were still struggling with the alphabet. We took our time, split up into groups, and did the best that we could. I couldn’t help but think that we were simply training many of the younger kids so that they could sell to the tourists. Many children have “jobs” selling scarves, bracelets, and other odds and ends around Angkok Wat and the other temples. They were happy to have us there though and eager to learn.


Our morning bike ride was entertaining if you didn’t think about how hot it was, didn’t get crushed by the crazy moto-drivers, or develop leg cramps from the constant peddling up and down hills. Actually, our daily trek had almost a carnival atmosphere to it. We passed elephants, ponies with jingle-jangle bells, pigs in baskets, oxen, cows, bikes stacked high with bread and coconuts, and hundreds and hundreds of local Cambodians biking into town for work. Cambodia is a funny country. The women have decided that it is fashionable to wear pajamas - the long pants, button up top kind of p.j.’s that were popular during our pre-teen years. The more teddy bears, rainbows, and pink ribbons that the “outfit” has attached, the better. Better yet, they top off the ensemble with ultra high heels and wear the outfit during all hours of the day. So, I often see women pumping gas, selling oranges, or chopping grass along the side of the road in this attire. Cambodians also like to play the fun circus game of “How Many Can We Fit on My Mo-ped.” Entire families squeeze themselves onto the tiny scooters - sometimes four or five people, including their little kids and the family dog hanging over the handlebars (or the family dinner, whatever they decide to do with the pup.)


We are well known around town. I have my own special market lady who expects me every day to buy mangos and another family that eagerly waits for us to come to dinner every night. The little boy chases us on our bicycles until we pull over and sit down for noodle soup. We tend to eat in the street stalls along the main drag of downtown. Meals are cheap, only 50 cents and yummy. There are a handful of actual restaurants in town, all of which have signs that claim they don’t serve dog, cat, rat, or worm.


We met up with two fun English guys whom we bumped into both in Thailand and in Laos. They hung out with us for a couple of days, keeping us entertained. We spent one afternoon biking out to the only free pool in Siem Reap - 15 km out of town and later enjoyed happy hour at a local pub. We spent the rest of the night at the town’s biggest night club- the Martini Club. Apparently, we don’t dance properly. I think we try to use a bit too much hip action. Several times during the night we were pulled aside and shown the “proper” way to dance - simply walking in a circle, hardly moving at all. We put up with that for awhile until the DJ played some real music. I think they were American songs that were translated into the Khmer language, but they sounded better than the elevator music they were playing beforehand.

Whenever we pass a gas station along the road, I can't help but giggle. They are usually simple wooden stands or a broken and taped together table. On top of the table are liter and two liter bottles of gasoline, usually left over coke bottles do the trick. A moto driver just pulls over and the little lady empties the coke bottle/gasoline, takes the money, and waves him on his way. Such a simple way of doing things. Welcome to the easy life!

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