Time flys...or does it?

So I kinda promised this post yesterday, but things happen, plans change, life goes on and instead of yesterday this post is going up today. 

I realized today that it has been nearly three weeks since my last post.  I didn't think it would be hard to find time out here to update my blog, but I do not have the internet readily available so I have to seek it out to communicate with all of you.  It really doesn't feel like it has been that long since I started teaching, but tomorrow I start my 4 week which is pretty crazy.  Almost a month of school finished.  I think I am close to getting into my teaching grove.  I am having a lot of fun with my intermediate class and they are really challenging me when it comes to my grammar.  My pre-intermediate class has been a lot more difficult and I am having a tough time explaining concepts to them.  I keep praying for patience as it can be frustrating when they look back at me with blank looks after I have tried to explain it multiple times.  There are small successes in class and I try to focus on those.

So a quick run down of my time since the beginning of my teaching career.

-After the first week of teaching we had a 3 day holiday.  Most of the Cambodians went back to their home towns for this holiday.  If you would like to look the holiday up it is called Pchum Ben.  I spent most of my time in Phnom Penh with the host family.  It was nice to enjoy the empty streets and the slower pace of life.
-On the Tuesday of Pchum Ben I went with some friends to the province of Takeo.  There we went to the zoo.  Zoo's are quite big there so we drove around most of the zoo on our mottos.  We also had lunch on the river, and played a ton of dutch blitz. (hopefully there will be some more photos up on facebook soon)
-Last weekend I went to the market and picked out some fabric to make a pair of pants and a shirt.  Look for a picture in the near future.
-This past Friday I went to a Taize (not sure about the spelling on that one) service.  It was a peaceful and calming service.  We sang some catholic verses and read some scripture and meditated for long periods of time.  It was definitely a nice way to wind down and clear your mind after a busy week. 
-After the service a co-worker and I went and got massages, which is another great way to relax after a busy week.
-Last night I went out to dinner with the family.  We had wanted to go out on a boat but it was raining, so we went out for pizza instead.  Safe to say I got completely soaked.  Still trying to figure out a way to keep my pants dry during the rain, they don't make big enough ponchos here for me.  So when we got to the restaurant I went to the bathroom and proceeded to wring out my pants as best as I could.  Ahh another great story.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in Canada, so happy Thanksgiving to you all. I am thankful that I have been blessed with good health so far and a great support group.

And also for those of you WGMers following the blog you will never guess who I ran into the other night at a small house church.  Mr. Hugh Campbell's daughter.  Talk about a small world!

Professor Heidebrecht

It is now official.  I have completed my first day of teaching and as far as it went I have mixed feelings.  If you were able to read the blog I posted before class yesterday, my theory did work(you'll have to look at yesterdays blog for that theory).  I was not nearly as nervous as I thought I would be, and I was also able to fill up the entire hour and 20 minutes (that had been another fear of mine).  So a few impressions I had from my first 2 classes.

- The students are amazing.  Very polite and really try to understand what is going on.  They are also very helpful.
- It is going to be difficult to create lessons for my 201 class.  They know very little English and I spent most of my first class trying to explain activities to them.  The challenge over the next few weeks will be finding a type of lesson that they can understand.  If any of you have ideas I would be happy to hear from you!
- A class of 30 students is a lot bigger than I thought I was going to be teaching, which may make it hard to keep everyone engaged all the time.
- Remembering names is going to be extremely difficult.  I took a video of all the students introducing themselves, so I am hoping that will help me to learn their names as quick as I can.

All in all I would deem it a successful day.  Today will be my first day with the actual curriculum, which will be another adventure in and of itself.  I am currently at MCC so once I finish this blog posting I will finish putting together my lesson plans for my classes today.  Once again hopefully I can fill up my entire 80 minutes of class.     The nice thing is that we are supposed to stay very close to what is in the textbook so nearly all of the activities will come from the textbook.  For a new teacher this is great.  I can just pick and choose activities from the book.  The hardest part will probably be teaching Grammar, not my strongest point.

2 hours to go...

So I am sitting in the English office here at the University, getting ready to grab some lunch.  A couple more hours and the reason I am halfway across the globe will finally take shape.  Nervous you ask?  Well it comes and goes, but as I write this blog the nerves are not that bad.  You know when you hear how good a movie is from all your friends, and your expectations are raised significantly.  You go to the theater to watch the movie and you are extremely disappointed because your expectations were to high.  I liken my situation to that.  Every time I talk to someone I mention how nervous I will be for this first day.  I am hoping that I have hyped my nerves so high that it will be a disappointment when I don't have any.  Haha, It is worth a shot anyways right? :)

Stay tuned for tomorrows update about how the first day went.

The Prey Veng Trip

So I’ve been in Cambodia for 3 1/2 weeks now.  Sometimes it feels like it has been a lot longer than that, and other times it feels like just yesterday I was back at home picking saskatoons, and filling out a zillion forms for this trip.  I’ve slowly come accustom to my surroundings and though I won’t go as far as saying that I feel at home, I definitely feel more comfortable than when I first got here.

                         

So a quick update on the Prey Veng trip.  We left last Thursday and stayed until Monday.  It was nice to get away from the big city and get out to the country.  Thursday and Friday we visited a number of MCC’s partners, most of them to do with Agriculture sustainability.  On Saturday we got up at 7 and went for a 3 hour bike ride through the different small towns around Prey Veng.  There really isn’t a lot of sleeping in here in Cambodia, which is something I am slowly getting used to.  It does help that I’m in bed most nights between 9 and 10.  The rest of the day involved some motto driving, which was a lot of fun.  Almost ran into the ditch as I was leaving the MCC offices but after that I regained my composure and kept the motto in the upright position.  We had a lot of fun just cruising around the countryside and exploring the area.

Quick list of firsts

-          hand fed bananas to monkeys

-          drove a motto through rice paddies

-          drove a motto in Phnom Penh

-          rode a bicycle past a herd of water buffalo

-          ate some kind of intestine, or so they tell me

-          had my first staff meeting as a professor

-          attended my first Khmer church service

The rest of the weekend in Prey Veng we had the chance to just relax and get to know each other a little bit more.  We played some games (of course dutch blitz) and watched a number of movies, all in all it was a great time.

This past Sunday I went to church with my host family.  It was my second adventure in a Khmer church and it was not quite what I was expecting.  Most Khmers are generally reserved and quite.  This church service was quite the opposite.  It was loud, it was charismatic, and it was long, at least long for me.  It will take some time to get used to the service, especially the length and really not understanding much of it.  I am also going to try to see if there is an English service that I can attend.    

We have a few MCC guests in Cambodia at the moment, 3 from Akron and one from Manitoba.  Actually mom and dad Brad Reimer is out here and he said to say hi.  He said that he went to foothills for awhile and actually started the early service with Uncle Darryl and Aunt Gladys.  So Hi from Brad!

Looking into the future now it is only 5 days until my teaching career begins.  At times I feel like I am ready, and at times I ask myself what did I get into here.  I could be working at home with people I know.  Instead I am teaching for the first time, at a university no less, with people I hardly know.  It’s tough, but I am looking forward to the challenge and luckily I have a lot of support at the university and MCC.  God Bless!

My New Home

It is the day after the first night and I am still kicking, haha.  My first experience with my host family was a lot of fun.  After the half hour tuk tuk ride my host father and mother showed me to my room and let me set up.  I have a pretty big room and my own bathroom which really surprised me.  I had dinner with the whole family (father, mother and 2 brothers) then hung out with the neighbours for awhile before going to bed.  Also our neighbours next door organize an exercise class so there was music pumping for an hour or two during supper.  I might have to join in sometime!

Like I said it is quite far from the MCC offices so my commute to the MCC offices is a little long, but it is close to RUPP where I will be working.  My host father, So Pan, said that I could borrow a bicycle and ride it to work if I wanted.  I'm hoping to get my Cambodian license soon, so that I can start driving a motto, and not have to pay for a motto dope each way.  5000 Riel ($1.25) each doesn't seem like much, but MCC would like us to stick to a travel budget of $30 a month.

I took a motto to MCC this morning, and am hoping that I can contact the same motto driver for my ride home.  It could be a little interesting because he did not speak a lot of English, so I am hoping everything goes well.  Other than that we said goodbye to the YAMENer going to Laos by going out to the River Front on Monday night.  We had some ice cream which is a treat anywhere you go in the world and walked along the streets for a few hours.  Khmer lessons continue and I am remembering words, but it is difficult to string them into sentences or pick up meaning when Cambodians speak Khmer to me.


Tomorrow us YALTers are headed to Prey Veng for 5 days.  It will be nice to get out to the country side and get some fresh air.  We are going to meet Caleb's host family, meet up with some of MCC's partners, and practice driving mottos.

One other thing that I forgot to mention is that I experienced my first Cambodian delicacy last night.  I had a baby duck egg.  Essentially it is a partially formed duck fetus.  Looks like a hard boiled egg with some extra things.  Not as bad as I thought it would be.  Don't know if I will be eating it a lot, but I think I will probably try it again.

Sometime

Sound Track Addition

I had meant to add this to yesterday's blog but I forgot so here it is.  I couldn't think of just one song to represent the Akron orientation so there are two that I have.  The first is 'I Gotta Feeling' by the Black Eyed Peas.  Please don't judge me too harshly, but the song was played a number of times during the many parties we had through out the week (who would have thought a Mennonite event would have so much dancing).

The other song is 'Home' by Edward Sharp & The Magnetic Zeros.  It was at orientation that I first heard this song.  After listening to it once I probably listened to it another 10 times.  Everywhere I went it seemed someone was singing it or humming it.  If you have not heard it I definitely recommend it!

So we are now up to 3 songs for those of you following along.

First Impressions of Cambodia

I have now been in Cambodia for nearly a week, but it actually feels like it has been a lot longer than that.  So a quick recap of what happened before Phil, Caleb and I (the SALTers) took our first step on Cambodian soil.  The night before we left for Cambodia we had a talent show, and all I can say is WOW!  I knew I was among an amazing group of people, but I felt a little insignificant after witnessing some of the talent that was there. A number of amazing musicians who definitely have a future in the industry if they choose.  We were treated to a rendition of N'Syncs 'bye, bye, bye' which was probably the highlite of the night.  The night then transformed into a dance party (the 3rd or 4th one of the week) and then a late night of Deutch Blitz as we waited for the first SALTers to take off early that morning.

The following day we said our goodbyes and then 11 of us boarded a small bus and headed to New York City. Our 3 hour trip turned into 4 hours as we had a nice tour through Brooklyn on our way to JFK.  We had our last meal in America ( I think it was a chicken bacon sandwich or something) and then waited.  And waited a little more.  The waiting was due to lightning that lit up the sky every 30 seconds or so.  After we got on the plane and readied ourselves for takeoff we waited some more.  At least another hour perhaps 2 but we did finally take off and I don't remember much of the flight because I slept through most of it.  We had a quick layover in Frankfurt and then we were off again to Singapore.  I had heard a great deal of good things about Singapore Airlines so maybe my expectations were built up to high, but I didn't think it was heads and tails above anything else I have experienced.  The food was good but we were packed in the middle of the plane so it wasn't super comfortable.  Anyways we landed in Singapore quickly said our goodbyes to the other Southeast Asia SALTers and just made our connecting flight to Phnom Penh.

Coming in to Phnom Penh was quite amazing.  The Mekong river, which starts in China and runs all the way through Cambodia, floods a lot of the countryside during the rainy season.  From the airplane it looked like there was water everywhere.  Homes built on stilts were surrounded by water in some instances.  The ride from the airport to the MCC office was eye opener.  This being my first time to a developing country I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  The amount of rundown buildings, people walking on the roads, or people just sitting on the side of the road because they have nothing to do was well quite large.  And the smell...not much fresh air here in Phnom Penh.

It has been quite a world wind since we have been here, not a lot of free time to speak of.  We have language lessons that start at 8am and then we are usually going here and there until 8 or 8:30pm, so the only time we have is the couple hours in the evening.  Jet lag kept me tired for the first couple days, but I think now I just get tired because of our busy schedule.  It does keep us from getting bored which is good (always trying to be positive).

A quick list of what we have done so far:
- visited Wat Phnom (they give elephant rides there which was pretty cool)
- visited the National Museum (lots of Buddhist statues)
- attended Mennonite church on Sunday (all Khmer)
- went to the Olympic Stadium ( jazzercise is huge here)
- visited a number of MCC's partners
- have had pork and rice for nearly every breakfast (not bad but wouldn't mind some granola and yogurt)
- fit 7 people into a tuk, tuk
- and have ate at a number of different restaurants (our first meal in Cambodia was actually Vietnamese)

That about catches you up to my happenings over the last week or so.


Ohhh.........

I had to put in a picture of me and my Krama.  It is a traditional Cambodian garment that can be used as a scarf, bandanna or as I have it.  Yes it pretty much is a skirt, but it is super comfy and a great way to relax in the evening.

So put in your orders now because you will definitely have to try it out.

I will leave you with the Khmer translation of good bye

chum riep lie!