A Practicum, a Picnic, and a Package

In my town, things are going well. I like my host mom more and more every day, I've been making more friends in the community, and the 'Practicum' we did went quite well. What is a 'Practicum,' you ask? Well, it is one of the many words, like 'competency' [used to mean lesson], that Peace Corps likes to throw around, like Columbia (aka 'Hispanic Studies' instead of 'Spanish'), to make things, in my opinion, sound fancy.

Anyway, our Practicum was a series of practice-teaching days. For the first week, we taught alone for 45 minutes, in addition to watching two of our peers teach in the same room to the same students. We exchanged feedback, and we also got feedback from either one of the staff members who observed or from one of the Volunteers from the first group of PC people in Cambodia (They are K1; we are K2. Peace Corps super loves acronyms.) Total we taught alone for 5 days, Monday through Friday. Then we had a week off from teaching. Then we taught for two days, this time jointly with a Cambodian teacher from the town. The teacher with whom the people in my classroom taught was really awesome and flexible, so it was really nice to work with him.

Tuesday, after the kids had completed all 7 days of their learning-with-Americans, we presented them with snazzy Peace Corps certificates. Here is a photo from that ceremony:

Richard, Janice, the Cambodian teacher, and I passing out certificates to the kids and shaking their hands!


Other than that, we've been working on techniques to train other teachers at the schools where we will be working, etc.

In terms of personally, everything is still going well. On my last free day, Robert, Bri, Greg, and I went to 'Sand Mountain' to attend a picnic party held by Robert's mom. We biked there---all the locals rode motos or random motorized cart things packed to the brim. Here are some photos of the road there/our trip there:Yup. This is just typical side-of-the-road fare.

When we go on bike rides, the views are gooooorgeous.

Robert and Greg (from L to R) posing for the camera with their chroma bat-wing sun protection outfits.

Bri, camera-shy, getting some stuff (probably sunscreen) out of her bag.
The road back to town behind us!

The road in front of us to the swimming hole!

It's about an hour-long ride, but the water there is cool and nice, even with the tons and tons of kids there splashing you and hanging out. As I was leaving to go back to town with Greg (I wanted to go to the Wat with my mom to meditate, and he had promised some kids he would teach them English for a little bit.), some of Robert's older aunts started dancing with him, so that was pretty interesting, too...And the food was, of course, tasty.

Bri and I during the picnic portion of the afternoon.

Greg picnicking with his Khmer 'older brother' and 'older sister.' He told us he didn't smile in anticipation of their not smiling. They have the CUTEST little girl. But she's too afraid of me to talk to me.

Robert with Socheata, one of the language instructors.

Oh! And I got a really sweet package from Mimi last week, and all my friends in the community thought the drawing of her dreaming about seeing me on the side was just utterly hilarious. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but that same night I came down with dengue and was shipped off, so I never got a chance to take a picture of it. (For more on dengue, see my next post.) I also let a bunch of my friends try a little of the peanut butter; they were all pretty intrigued.

One last thing! I know to which province I'm going to be going now for the next two years, although I don't know the town or anything yet because I'm still in Thailand. I'm not going to post it on this blog, but if you want to know which province, just ask me via email!

Thanks for reading! I'll try to be better about taking more pictures!!!