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Published: March 8th 2009
Our last couple of days have been a nice mix of little tasks and down-time.
On Friday, we went back to the Tchey School with Lori and helped give an English exam. “Help” might be a bit of a stretch, since all we did was supervise groups of kids taking the exam and try to prevent cheating, which they seem to have no qualms about. The English 1 classes have about 40 kids each, so we split the classes up into groups of 10 or so and moved the groups into other classrooms, spreading them out across the room. We had to remove books they were using to cheat, stop them from talking to each other, and chase away kids who came to stare in the windows and chat with their exam-taking friends. No shame when they were caught at any of this, just big grins.
The exam consisted of:
- an opportunity for the kids to write the alphabet
- a handful of “a is for _____” blanks where they could fill in any word that began with that letter
- a series of pictures with the first letter of the word filled in and blanks to finish the word
- a picture of a family and the instructions “write the members of your family”
- two cartoon panels with blank conversation bubbles with instructions to “make a conversation.”
The results ranged from kids who could essentially get most all of the answers correct (about 7-8 out of the 80 kids in the two classes) to kids who wrote nothing but complete gibberish in all the blanks or just copied words from elsewhere on the page (the family members were labeled “write,” “the,” “members,” and “family,” for example), and most commonly, kids who got a few things right, a few things wrong, and left a lot of blanks. It was painful watching them take the test at times. There were a few kids who clearly had absolutely no idea what to do. It may have been the unfamiliar concept of an exam that threw them, or they may be the kids who show up for school only sporadically, so they really hadn’t learned any English yet. These kids sat in the classroom for that whole hour, paper in front of them, chewing their pencils, looking out the window, examining the scratches and dents on their desks, and probably feeling like they were experiencing one of those nightmares about coming to school naked and unprepared for an exam - except for the naked part. Nevertheless, every kid got a gold star sticker for their efforts as they were dismissed to go bursting out into the schoolyard.
Friday evening, we celebrated Ponheary’s birthday with her and her family. Cambodian birthday parties - at least in this family - have many similarities to American birthday parties, along with a few surprising twists. There were party hats, a cake with candles, and singing. There was also frosting smeared all over everyone’s faces, a Silly String attack on the birthday girl, and sparklers. There were dozens and dozens of sparklers, and you’ve never seen anyone more excited than a three-year-old playing with sparklers! And yes, by “sparklers,” I mean those metal sticks that you ignite so they throw live sparks in all directions. And by “three-year-old,” I really do mean that even the three-year-old was given a box of sparklers and access to open flame so she could light them and dance around. I started doing a mental inventory of what first aid supplies I had in my room in preparation for the inevitable burn, but when five-year-old Fifi (that’s Ponheary’s nephew, not a French poodle) finally blistered his finger, the only thing anyone wanted to put on it was Tiger Balm and they were not impressed with my offerings.
(Here's my new experiment with photos: Travelblog is pretty slow to load photos, and all my photos exist online on PicasaWeb anyway, so I'm going to try to put a link here to the Picasa photos. Try this:
March 6 photos and then let me know if this is an easy way to view them!)
Saturday morning I took a bike ride while Jaz was sleeping and before the heat of the day made such an idea pure madness. I headed out along the river away from downtown and found myself along a tree-shaded narrow road lined with little restaurants and beauty shops and fruit vendors and other local businesses. I never saw another Westerner the whole time, and I guess I’ve become accustomed to whatever attention I attract because I’m not really aware of it most of the time. People smile, and sometimes stare a little longer than might be considered polite at home, but I don’t tend to feel self-conscious, which is nice.
I stopped in at a beautiful
wat (temple) at one point and entered the grounds. Besides the temple itself, there are stilted houses, where I assume the monks live, and lovely shade trees and a couple of food vendors. Kids run around, monks sit around, and dogs nose around through the trash. There were two men working at molding concrete decorations - tapping wet concrete into heavy stone molds, then flipping the finished product out of the mold to dry in the sand. While I was watching this process, one of the monks approached me to chat. His English was pretty good, so we chatted for a while about what the concrete workers were doing, where I am from, how long I will be here, and his story: He is 25, and has been a monk for ten years. He comes from a nearby province, where his mother and two sisters still live; his father died when he was young. He asked if I had been inside the temple, which I hadn’t, so he offered me a guided tour, which I gladly accepted. He ran off to get the key to unlock the building and took me in to see the collection of Buddha statues and offerings and explain some of the brilliantly-hued paintings that cover the walls and tell the story of the Buddha’s life. He seemed to be enjoying showing me all this, and I could have stayed for a long time except that I had to get back before Jaz wondered what became of me. I thanked him and promised to return when I had more time to stay.
As I rode my bike, I stopped from time to time to take photos. (I’m sure that comes as a complete surprise to all of you!) One time I stopped just to watch a tiny naked boy taking tentative steps between big water bottles, practicing what was obviously a brand new skill. I didn’t intend to take a photo, feeling like that might be crossing some line (he’s naked, he’s too little to let me know if he doesn’t want his picture taken, etc.) but then his father appeared on the scene. With a big smile, he turned the toddler around to face me, gesturing for him to look at me and gesturing to my camera dangling from my hand. This seemed a pretty clear signal that a photo would be OK - if the kid’s father is going to line him up in front of my camera, I guess he thought it was OK. The little guy was grinning a big two-toothed smile and his father and I exchanged admiring smiles in the universal language that says, “
Gee, your kid is really cute!” and “
Yes, he is, isn’t he?”
Here's the link to the photos from my morning expedition: Morning Bike Ride Photos
I got back in time to find Jaz rolling out of bed, and we were disappointed to find the wi-fi not working again. We headed off to the Blue Pumpkin café to get some mango shakes, a croissant and an internet fix, which kept us busy until noon or so. We managed to kill the early afternoon showering, eating lunch, turning an empty cardboard box into an under-bed storage drawer, and generally hanging around before Jaz went off to Wat Bo School for her 4:00 computer project class. I plan to write about this in more detail another time - or convince Jaz to be the guest-blogger and do it herself! - but she goes six days a week to the school and does it completely on her own. I haven’t even been to see what her classroom looks like, but I love hearing about it when she comes back each day, and she seems to be enjoying herself. (The kids are apparently enjoying it too - they asked her if the class could please meet from 1:00-5:00 every day!)
While Jaz was gone, Lori and I headed out to get a couple of odds and ends she needed and to have a couple of beers. One of Lori’s many ongoing projects is “pimping the guesthouse” with the intent of freshening it up and increasing business. In addition to all the construction work going on to add on to the existing structure, she’s painting guestrooms and working on a plan to upgrade the lobby. This is another good subject for its own blog entry one day - the construction itself is pretty interesting, let alone the whole living situation of Ponheary’s family. (Ponheary, her mother, her brother and two sisters and her 7 or 8 nieces and nephews all live here in the guesthouse in a few 10 x 15 guestrooms. They had lived in the stilted wooden house in the back yard until it had to be demolished to make way for the addition.)
I helped do a little painting touch-up in one of the guestrooms in the evening, while Jaz played with the four youngest kids (Fifi, Alice, Neenee and Yaya - though who knows if I'm spelling those right) to their great delight. They trashed our room, checked out the contents of our refrigerator and had some snacks, put stickers on our laptops, jumped on our beds, and generally had a great time. Eventually we had to lock them out of our room when it was obvious that they were now comfortable enough with us to barge in even after being told it was time to go away. “
See you tomorrow!” we called, waving them away down the hallway. “Tomorrow!” they would call back, and as soon as we closed the door they would rush back and burst in on us. They’re adorable, but I think now we’re going to have to keep our door locked when we’re away from the guesthouse!
Jaz and I went out to a very nice restaurant down the street in the evening.
Viroth’s has tablecloths and cloth napkins and a wine list, as well as a lovely candlelit outdoor garden setting. We had “Tropical Pork” and “Lemon Chicken Soup” as well as a glass of white wine and a two-layer chocolate mousse dessert. We paid $21.25 for this luxury, and had lovely conversations about what we love about this place (Cambodia, not the restaurant) and how sad we think we will be to leave. Then on the way home we got completely punchy and silly and laughed our butts off about nothing in particular.
We’re starting to think about what we might do with ourselves when we leave here around the 5th of April, with a couple of weeks of free time to travel. We know we want to be in Chiang Mai (Thailand) for
Songkran, around the 10-14th of April, but other than that we have no definite plans. Maybe Vietnam? Maybe some beach time? The very thing I usually love to do - plan trips - feels a bit daunting. I can’t
plan a trip when I’m already
on a trip! I’m enjoying the lack of need to schedule and plan everything. I enjoy getting up in the morning sometimes with no idea what I will do that day. I don’t want to think about what we’ll do in April because that means thinking about leaving, and as much as we miss Steve, we know we will be sad to leave this place.
Some random observations:
There’s a construction-related sound, that sometimes starts as early as 7 am, that sounds like someone is cutting through corrugated iron with a giant circular saw, or perhaps the world’s largest dental tool whining and grinding its way through steel-coated ceramic tiles. Ouch.
At the same time, there is a slow Khmer song/chant booming in the distance, and the ubiquitous sound of motos, tuktuks, cars and trucks bumping past. The sound of a child’s bicycle horn - the kind you squeeze - squeaks rhythmically eight or ten times every minute or so as the rag collector or bottle collector or broom seller pushes her cart up and down the streets and announces her presence.
At night, we hear cat fights in the alley outside, and the chirp of geckos and another kind of lizard.
I splurged at the grocery store and bought a roll of paper towels. They’re handy to have in the room, and even to take a few along. Most restaurants have what is essentially a roll of toilet paper in a wicker basket on the table. The roll feeds out through the top of the basket, like a pop-up Kleenex dispenser, but the paper is even less substantial than Kleenex. I find that trying to clean my hands with it just leaves me looking like a half-assed
papier mache project with bits of torn tissue stuck all over me.
Our room at the guesthouse has a little TV with a lot of channels, including English-language channels. We turned it on once for about ten minutes to see what was available, and I don’t think we’ve even thought of turning it on since.
A common sight along the roads are motorcycles carrying pigs or chickens. They always carry two pigs at a time, big ones - maybe 250 pounds, if I can still judge anything based on my own pig-raising experiences. The pigs are strapped down crossways on a board behind the driver, head to tail, feet on the air. This final ride to market must not be a whole lot of fun; I can’t imagine what they’re thinking. The chickens are carried by the dozens, strapped by the feet to two poles that hang out to the side of the moto, hanging upside down like densely-packed laundry hung to dry. I thought for sure the chickens were already dead when I first saw this, but having been close enough to see, I can tell you that they are also still alive. They hang there, looking down at the road, with quizzical chicken looks on their faces. (Okay, maybe I’m imagining the looks on their faces.)
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dad
non-member comment
ha ha
Hi, You write the most funny, interesting and witty stuff. Love the observations. Granted you are the love of my life but it's true. Thanks. LOVE, me