Advertisement
Published: February 19th 2010
There are always new things to learn here, and new observations to make. Some things are big and important and even awe-inspiring, and some are mundane. Here I will offer you some random observations about life so far this week:
Some things here are delightfully predictable. Little children still wave and say “hello,” sellers in the market still try to negotiate “good price for you, good price for me,” monks still wander barefoot up and down Wat Bo Road with their orange umbrellas, tuktuk drivers still try with a grin to talk you into using their services even when you have a bicycle: “Oh, but in Cambodia very hot! Ride bicycle, you too hot!” The kids who live here at the guesthouse (ages 4-6) still like to come in my room and play on my bed and ask if I have candy or will play a game. A battalion of tiny ants still marches along the walls in my room, following mysterious orders to move in formation across the room and into my coffeepot.
On the other hand, change happens fast around here. Wat Bo Road (where the guesthouse is located) has been paved and the traffic moves faster. The corner supermarket down the street has turned into a supermarket/internet café/restaurant/guesthouse. The town seems to have more tour buses full of Korean and Japanese tourists than I’ve ever seen. New restaurants have popped up and old ones have changed their name or disappeared. There is ever more construction along the airport road.
One of my first errands when I arrive is to stock up on some food in my room. I learned this week that buying off-brand breakfast cereal in Cambodia may not be a good idea. Healthy cereal is difficult to find and very expensive, so when I'm here I usually indulge the seven-year-old in me who never got her fill of sugary cereal. Frosted Flakes are a little pricey, but for 80 cents less, I bought "Lerry's Alaska Flakes." Seemed reasonable enough until I tried to eat them. Sugar-Frosted? I don't think so. Edible? Only if it's 4:00 am and they are the only edible thing in your room. Blech. Oh well. The little kids love them so they will not go to waste.
On the other hand, banana fritters, fresh out of the sizzling wok, cost less than 25 cents each. Oh, yeah. Too bad the banana fritter lady around the corner isn't out frying them up at 4:00 am.
Because of our long-term plans, I'm paying more attention than ever to prices of everyday items, and it's fascinating. I will never again bother bringing things like toothpaste and batteries. Colgate? 30 cents. Four Duracell AAA batteries? Two bucks. A bottle of Kahlua is $3. A pound of butter is $8! (Most dairy products are very pricey.) A Khmer-English dictionary, $2. A lovely notebook whose cover has the lovely sentiment, “Something to tell for someone” cost me 50 cents. And don't get me started about cigarettes at 28 cents a pack.
Speaking of costs, and why I can’t afford
not to move here, I provide you with this example: Just before I left home, I needed routine blood work done to check my thyroid levels. I had to call my doctor, leave a message, play phone tag with the nurse until I could request that an order be electronically sent to the lab, wait until the order was transmitted, pay to park at the hospital parking garage, wait in the lab for close to an hour to get the blood drawn, and pay $268 for the privilege. Here, I walked down the street to the lab, told them what I wanted, and paid $20. No waiting. When I get the results, we'll see how accurate the Cambodian lab is. I'm guessing it's going to match last week's results done at home. (I realize that the state of healthcare for Cambodian people is horrible and that $20 can be two week's salary here; I get that, but I’m making a different point here.)
Learning Khmer (the Cambodian language), at least a little bit, is a goal of mine, and it is going to be interesting. On Wednesday we went to the market for lunch with Jaz's primary school students (whose English is coming along quite nicely!) I decided to put some effort into expanding my nonexistent Khmer vocabulary, and they were happy to help me learn the names of fruit (some of which I don't recognize and don't even know the English name for.) It appears that I can only learn words with two syllables or less, can only retain about 50%!o(MISSING)f those words for more than five minutes, and by the next day, only 3 or 4 of the original dozen words have remained in my head. It’s gonna be a long, slow learning curve for me, which is the difference between learning French at 14 and learning Khmer at 47.
Jaz’s Khmer, on the other hand, impresses me greatly. She understands a lot of what she hears and can respond in kind quite often. She provides me the vocabulary when I ask and corrects my pronunciation when I attempt to repeat new words. I only worry that she will damage her eye muscles from all the strain of trying not to roll her eyes at my pathetic efforts.
Thankfully, I am fluent in my own language, but I have become ever more aware that being a native English speaker with an ability to speak correctly does not always prepare one to teach English grammar. This is especially true when teaching older students who want to understand
why we say things in the way that we do. Erin and I have an English class of very motivated kids age 13-24 who come for three hours in the evening to study English, and they are a very different kind of student than the primary school kids I've mostly taught before. We were working on correct use of "to be" both present and past, and eventually moved beyond “I was hungry…” to examples like "I was walking..." Consternation began to show on the face of one girl in the front row.
"Teacher, why? Why not 'I walked'?" What an excellent question! And now I challenge all of you (who are not language teachers!) to come up with the concise explanation of the difference and when you would use each form. I consider myself a person of reasonable intelligence, and I had to tell her I would get back to her on that. Thankfully, I have a great resource in Jaz, who could provide me with the three-minute tutorial (and visuals) on how to solve that mystery, as well as some other pointers that will be very handy. Jaz, who teaches English four hours a day, announced, “I learn something new about English every day.” She still apparently knows plenty more then I do. I love that kid!
For those who are wondering, I think Erin is having a good time. She’s easy-going and even-keeled at work, and not surprisingly, it seems that she brings those traits everywhere she goes. She’s mastering the skill of riding a bicycle in crazy Siem Reap traffic, she has successfully bartered her first purchase in the market, and she takes the constant minute-to-minute changes of plans that are unavoidable here in stride without complaint. I love that kid! Perhaps she can be persuaded to write her own update here at some point.
Nothing more of interest to report at the moment. And no photos to post as yet - so far they all look just like any photos I’ve taken on every other trip here, and I think you’ve all seen the market photos, the cute kid photos, and the food photos enough by now. (If not, look back over past entries!) Lucky for me, Erin has a great camera and I suspect is taking fantastic photos, so I am taking very few and looking forward to seeing hers.
I hope all is well with all of you -
Advertisement
Tot: 0.235s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 51; dbt: 0.075s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Janice E. Cable
non-member comment
It's a case for Grammar Girl!
Jess, Try Grammar Girl: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/present-tense-novel.aspx She's kind of awesome and my resource when I can't explain our little English intricacies. j