**Above pics and the new collage at the top of the page are all from the past few weeks in Cambodia and Thailand.**
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I would write about my experiences in Cambodia thus far and I’ve been procrastinating over and over on writing this blog post. The longer I’ve waited, the more has happened and the more I have to write about. I feel it’s quite a challenge to write and portray accurately in words, the sights, sounds, smells, and just the experiences and feelings of being in this country. First I’ll write a ‘bit’ about what’s been going on with work and what not, then do my best to describe the country and my feelings about it so far in my next post.
As I wrote in my last blog post, many weeks ago (I apologize), I found a couple jobs within a week of being in the country. For the past few weeks I’ve been working at a private school named Sovannaphumi and a private English learning institute called New World Institute. I am a primary school teacher at Sovannaphumi (I’ll refer to it as SPS) and I teach three different 6th grade classes, two 10th grade classes, and eight (yeah, eight) different kindergarten classes. When I first started the job I figured it would be similar to the way that Hanna and her coworkers teach, with me having my own group of students that I teach every day, one group in the morning and one group in the afternoon. At my school it couldn’t be more different, with me moving from class to class and teaching each class no more than a couple hours a week and all the kindergarten classes, only one hour a week. It was fun at first but over the past couple weeks it has become more stressful and I have been contemplating leaving the school and looking for work with a different organization, no longer in teaching. I had an interview and meeting with a local NGO that works in social enterprise and helps victims of trafficking, for a position as a grant writer, something I do have experience in, but they are looking for someone to fill the position long term. As I am only here until September, it will be difficult to find short term work other than teaching, but my contract with Sovannaphumi is up in early July and I will be working there until then, save the money I make, and see if anything comes up after that.
My other job, as a TOEFL instructor at New World, is pretty fun and I enjoy it a lot more than Sovannaphumi. I work there in the evenings, teaching two classes every night Monday to Friday, one group of 28 students who are really fun, smart and charismatic, and one smaller group of 7 students who are really quiet and shy but very smart. The work at NWI (New World Institute) is fun and very relaxed, with an easy to teach curriculum and students who are there because they want to be. I will definitely continue to teach there part time until I leave Phnom Penh. I make decent money at both jobs and even when I stop working at SPS, the money I make at NWI will allow me to still live somewhat comfortably, especially with Phnom Penh’s low cost of living. When I see how much money we spend on groceries during the week and how much we get, I sometimes think about how lavishly someone could live in this country if they had a real career/well paying job like something in the Foreign Service. We spend about 20 bucks between the two of us for a week’s worth of groceries and that includes fresh fruits and vegetables, oatmeal, cereal, eggs, milk, bread, and other things. It’s pretty crazy. The times that we end up spending the most money is on weekends when we go out to one of the many delicious restaurants around the city. You can get a great Khmer meal for a couple bucks and there are some fast food style places for cheap with burgers, fries, fried chicken, milkshakes, etc. and there are some western style bar/grill/restaurants that tend to be a bit pricier but have really good food.
Outside of work and eating, I try to spend as much time as possible working out and reading. I have been using my dumbbells and jump rope when I have free time, we’ve been swimming a few times, and today I used a really nice hotel’s fitness center and pool, which was really nice. We’re looking into buying a package deal where you can spend one amount and use the gym 12 or 20 times over a period of time, which seems like a pretty decent deal. One of my personal goals over the next few months is to get into the best shape of my life while I’m here. I have been slacking a bit and I haven’t been working out as much as I’d like but with how much I work, it’s hard to stay on track. I think with being able to use a gym/fitness center on the weekends, it will be easier to reach my goal and come July, I’ll have a lot more free time to do the things I want to do, i.e. working out and reading as much as possible before I come back to the U.S.
During one of the first weekends I was in the country, one of Hanna’s teachers’ assistants invited us to go to Sihanoukville, a town by the beach, southwest of Phnom Penh for a couple days. We went with her and her family, taking a five hour van ride down and spending a day and a half by the beach, swimming in the ocean, getting some sun, and eating a lot of fresh seafood. We tried a delicious fruit we’d never had before called ‘mangosteen’, ate more shrimp than I’ve ever had in my life and really enjoyed ourselves, spending some good quality time with a Khmer family. On the way back we stopped at a river/picnic site and ate some more, did some more swimming and exploring and I of course, took a lot of pictures. A couple weeks later, for my birthday weekend, Hanna, myself and a few friends of ours went to Koh Chang, Thailand. Koh Chang was a place that Hanna and I really enjoyed on our trip to Thailand and this time we went when there were a lot less tourists and we stayed on the more popular, less isolate white sands part of the island. Being that it was my birthday, Hanna made the trip part of my birthday present and covered all of my expenses, which was really, really nice. We ate a lot of good food, did some more swimming in the ocean, got some sun, and spent some tine at a really nice waterfall in the jungle. My birthday, which was on a Monday (in Phnom Penh), was really nice too, as we went to a nice private pool, had some good Mexican food, and I had a massive sub sandwich, and custom birthday cupcakes. Needless to stay, it was a wonderful birthday that lasted a few days. Thanks Hanna.
I’ve taken hundreds of pictures since I arrived in the country and I’ve seen a lot of things that I still need to take pictures of. I need to remember to bring my camera everywhere I go. I have put a decent amount of pictures on my Facebook account so anyone who is on my FB friends list should check those out. When I have some more time online, I’ll see about putting my Cambodia and Koh Chang photos in one of my Photobucket accounts. Pics and new updates coming as soon as possible!
