First Day of Teaching

After feeling really nervous and anxious for the past 3 days, I finally taught my first lesson today and absolutely loved it! As it goes with teaching, I was worried about not having enough to do, but ended up not getting to half of the activities I had planned and ended up radically changing my lesson to suit the abilities and needs of the students. I get to use a fairly nice classroom with a whiteboard(nicer than Wilson Hall, because it has windows!) and I am teaching university students who are enrolled in the Chances for Cambodia program. These are students who have received full scholarships to attend a four-year university in Cambodia; they come from very poor families but were some of the brightest students in high school and would not be able to attend college without this program. Accordingly, the students were all very motivated and eager to learn. The hardest part is learning their names, as the pronunciation of the Khmer language is a real challenge for me! Yesterday I walked home from the school to see how long it would take. This was not such a good idea because even though it was only 25 minutes, the 100-degree heat was too much for me and I ended up with a heat rash and symptoms of dehydration!

Today, Leak (one of the girls from the house) helped me get to school by calling a moto but made me do the talking(like taking a taxi on back of a motorbike). Last night, The girls helped me draw a map to show to the moto driver, as well as helped me learn the key phrases I would need use to talk to the driver ( turn left-right, stop here, as well as "How much"" and "that's too expensive!) If you do not know exactly where you want to go in Phnom Penh, chances are you may end up on a path to nowhere, as the moto drivers tend to just keep driving until you tell them something. You are also expected to know how to barter the price for everything. Every time I try to say something in Khmer (actually pronounced Kah-my, much to my surprise), the girls laugh at my awkward pronunciation. I have found that the only way I can produce the correct sounds is by plugging my nose to make a nasally sound- something that really got the girls rolling on the floor laughing after I tried it last night. Care to learn?

These are some of the phrases that are written purely as they sound to me (Khmer uses a totally different system of writing, so there are no corresponding letters!)

Hello- johm riep sua
Can you please take me to... sohm juhn k'nyohm t'ai...
Left- chvang
Right- s'dam
stop here!- chop tee-nih
How much? t'lay pone maan?
Thank you -ah gohn