The First Week

10-16-08

Well, I have been in Svay Rieng for about a week and a half now. It's been quite a transition from training to actually being a volunteer. I suppose I should go over exactly what has transpired over the last several days.

We left our training villages and all congregated at the hub site for two last days of Peace Corps stuff. We had a day of lectures followed by a day of meetings with the school directors from our new places of work. This was somewhat awkward as practically none of them spoke English, and my Khmer is only good enough right now for basic communication. At this conference we worked out a few issues, such as what exactly we were going to be responsible for at our new schools, and what we were not allowed to do. Also we worked out exactly how we were going to get to our sites and when we were expected to be there.

The next day was our swearing in ceremony, held at a rather swanky hotel downtown. The acting US ambassador was on hand to do the actual swearing in, and the new Minister of Education was also there. The Minister is an interesting guy; he's only been Minister for a few weeks now, but he has been involved in building the educational system in this country up from nothing ever since the war ended. He speaks English and French and who knows how many other languages. After some speeches, we took the oath of service, and were officially Peace Corps Volunteers.

From there on out we were on our own. I didn't have to be in Romduel for two days so me and some of the others who have sites in the south of the country hopped in a taxi and headed to Phnom Penh. I took this opportunity to stock up on stuff that I knew I probably wouldn't see for the next three months; Oreos, peanut butter, Ovaltine, stuff like that. And then on Monday I hopped on a taxi again and made my way out to Romduel.

There are so many things that I need to describe for people back home that I don't even know where to start. One of the greatest things about my arrival was finding out that one of the five dogs my family has gave birth to puppies after I left. They were three weeks old when I arrived, and their eyes hadn't even opened yet. There are three of them, and I had named them Porthos, Athos, and Aramis.

The first week was primarily meetings held at the school between me and the various teachers. I also went to the various classes that my co-teacher teaches, which means that I will be primarily assisting in these classes, at least at first. Peace Corps wants us to branch out and work with as many teachers at the school as we can, so I still don't know exactly what my schedule of teaching will look like. As it is, though, I am already giving an English lecture to various teachers that want to learn from 11:00 until noon, then co-teaching or observing other teachers until 5:00 (school goes from noon until five here, with the lower grades meeting in the morning), then teaching another basic English lesson from five until six. It looks like this will be my schedule six days a week, though I will probably tell my co-teacher I don't want to teach the private lessons on Saturday.

On Sundays I will be biking to Svay Rieng town, about 15 kilometers away, to help my co-teacher teach an English class to monks at the main wat in Svay Rieng. This is something I sort of fell into; my co-teacher and I were in Svay Rieng to buy me some stuff for my room and we paid a visit to this wat. As it turns out, my co-teacher had worked with many of these monks in the past to help them with English. When they asked me to help them out, how could I refuse? Besides, it will be a great opportunity to learn more about Buddhism and the life of monks. Also being in Svay Rieng every week will give me an opportunity to go to the internet cafe and check my e-mail.

Over the next several weeks I will try and write more about what life is like here in rural Svay Rieng, what it is like to teach at a Cambodian school, and other observations about my life here. If you have any questions you specifically want me to address, you know my e-mail. Send them in and I will try and answer them all. For now, I have a coconut waiting for me to eat it.