This is not including the students who didn't show up for the exams. Classes at my school cost $180 to $220 for a 10-week term. This is a fortune in Cambodia. Yet there are students who pay the tuition and then don't attend. Baffling.
(To put this figure in perspective, I just returned from Siem Reap. The guys who worked in the hotel where I worked have one or two days off per month. They start work at about 4 a.m., to serve breakfast to guests who are going to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. After working all day and all night they sleep on cots in the lobby so they can get up to unlock the door whenever guests stagger home drunk from the bars. They make $50 per month.)
Back to school... I am a stressful person under the best of conditions. I actively seek out things to worry about. Teaching has been nervewracking because, let's face it, I have no idea what I'm doing. Every time I teach a lesson it's the first time. I have to teach grammar that I haven't studied since elementary school to teenagers who know it chapter and verse.
I was stressed out but I genuinely enjoyed the experience. Most of my classes were fantastic. In Vietnam I felt more like a zookeeper than a teacher. Here behavioral problems were nearly non-existent.
This was my Tuesday/Thursday morning intermediate class.
They were a joy to teach. Bright, friendly, hard-working kids. Oddly enough, I took this photo on one of the few days Chetra, the boy on the far right, showed up. He attended a half-dozen classes and missed the exams. What photo of a group of Asians would be complete without at least one of them making the obligatory V-sign with her fingers? Thanks, Raingsey!
In Vietnam I found it impossible to memorize the names of the students. Maybe it was because I spent the majority of class trying to get them to shut their stinkin' pieholes instead of actually teaching. Actually, it was probably because of the similarity in their names. All Vietnamese words and names are one syllable. There were so many girls named Thu, Thuy, Thy, etc. that it was hard to come up with mnemonic devices for remembering them.
Cambodian names are more varied. Some of the girls' names are pleasantly musical and roll off them tongue, like Molika (printed tshirt) and Chanmarie (black tshirt). Some of the names are long and difficult for foreigners to say. There are two girls in my class tonight named Sochanmoninit and Sopheakleap. Then there's the girl in the black and red plaid above. The English spelling of her name is E, pronounced like the letter.
This variety may be why I was able to memorize them in just two or three weeks. I was quite proud of this, since I taught six different classes. I was even prouder when I discovered that some of my fellow teachers, some of whom have been in Cambodia for years, don't even try to learn their students' names. I found it a bit sad to see classrooms in the final weeks of class where students still had name tags on their desks.
This is my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon intermediate class.
I should mention the boy in the pink shirt because he's a whipsmart student. Oh, and because his name is Rambo. Today I start my second term. Let's hope it goes as well as the first.
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