Last full week in Takeo

This past week was my last full week in Takeo before the big move! On Monday we found out where we all will be going for the next two years. I found out that I will be teaching in a primary school in the Banteay Meanchey province which is in the northern part of Cambodia between Siem Riep and Battambang (as well as bordering Thailand). This will be a slight change from being in the southern part of Cambodia but I am really excited to see a new part of the country! Because I will be teaching in the primary school, the primary school teachers got to go to Phnom Penh to meet their co-teachers and do a practice workshop with them to prepare each other for teaching together. After meeting my co-teachers, I became even more excited to go to Banteay Meanchey. The teachers I am working with are so nice and they match my energy so well (they kept telling me to volunteer for some of our demo practice). After the long day in Phnom Penh, we all went home and it was so sweet that my new co-teachers all called me to make sure I got home ok and I wished them safe journeys home.

The rest of the week I have been studying hard for my language proficiency exam (LPI) which is on Monday. Yes, we have to take a Khmer test to show we have been working hard! We have great teachers for Khmer and so I am not too worried about it, but taking tests are always scary no matter what it is. Especially during the practice tests, sometimes my mind goes blank on what I want to say. But it should be ok (I have taken some destress walks with friends through the rice fields!)

Then on Saturday, we had a half day of learning to study and then we all went home to get ready for a Peace Corps thank you party for the community and for the host families. My host family gave me a nice shirt to wear that night and I was looking stylish with my professional shirt and my sampot. I volunteered to say a speech in Khmer to all of the families and so I was also practicing that a lot (I really did not want to mess up, especially some of the formal greetings that I needed to say to the important community members-shout out to Yanuth for helping me so much). The speech went well and my fellow volunteer, Anyar, also gave a great speech! After all of the speeches were over, we all ate dinner together and then danced to some traditional Khmer music. I have not been known to be a dancer and so I was slightly struggling to keep up with the dance but that's ok because we all had fun!

We took the car home and when we pulled up we heard my puk listening to music on the loud speaker outside. This resulted in me changing into comfy clothes and we started playing music and just hung out. The music was so loud it was shaking the house and so I texted the volunteers that the house was loud. I texted Reagan asking if he could hear the music from his house (he is my neighbor) and he said yes and so I told him to come over with his host brother! He came over to dance and then Kaylee appeared with her host brother (who is also my host cousin). We danced to Khmer music and then we started to put on some American music because they wanted to learn some dances. We danced to the Cupid Shuffle, the Macarena, Baby by Justin Bieber, and Dancing Queen. I learned that they didn't like the predominately singing songs, but instead liked the songs we could all dance to. I choreographed a small dance to Baby and now I think that my host sister and the neighborhood kids think that is the official dance to the song (so I guess I set a trend there). My host family kept telling me to invite more and more people and so I texted the group of guys that live at the top of my street to come down and dance. This resulted in a whole group of people, volunteers and siblings, dancing at my house into the early hours of the night. Safe to say I slept very well that night because I was so tired by the end of it.

Now on Sunday I have had to do all my laundry (by hand of course) to get ready to move!