For the past 9 days, I have been teaching in "practicum," which is an opportunity for all of us to practice teaching primary students and high school students before going off to our permanent sites (which we find out about on Monday-eeek!). It is always nerve wracking getting up in front of the classroom to teach students, but I think it overall went really well and all of the students I taught
were really excited to learn and always gave me their attention to write down the important notes. Making activities for the primary school students was such a fun time and teaching grammar to the high schoolers was rough at first, but I think it got better! On the last day with the high schoolers, they all got certificates to show they completed our teacher training classes and they all kept asking me to take pictures with them. They also kept saying "we love you teacher and we will miss you!" It honestly felt really good to know that they liked me as a teacher and hopefully they learned something from me. After that day, our LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) took us on a bike ride to the rice fields and we had passion fruit soda and ate dragon fruits. Finally on the 10th day, we had a community event to put on activities as a thank you for all of the students' hard work. My group did a scavenger hunt, and after some very rough directions from me (trying to act out that they look for the papers and then do the activites-like jumping and dancing), we needed a PC Khmer staff member to explain. Once they explained the activity the kids were excited and ran all around the school looking for the clues. The winners got stickers but we ended up giving everyone at least one sticker. I for sure felt like the "cool" teacher (although I don't think it makes me cool by saying that) when I played some songs that I know the students like. I put the music on and they ALL started singing. Overall a successful couple of days (but I am for sure ah kahmlang-aka tired).
In my personal life at my Khmer home, my host sister loves calling my mom on facetime. She will click the facetime button for her, which results in me being the translator between my mom and her. But it is a good time. My host sister is like my real sister. She shows me how to do everything and is my permanent buddy. She even gets mad at me when I tell her I will come home at 5 on a day and then pull up to the house at 5:07. Although we fight and laugh together like sisters, it means a lot to me when she said she will miss me when I leave (and I will also miss her). She has already asked to chat with me everyday and said something about "being able to chat 24/7". Trust me, I know she will chat everyday, and although I cannot write Khmer, Facebook audio messages are working just fine for her to ask me where I am and why I am late to come home. I look forward to coming back to visit them during my service.
Also another side story is how cute it was for my host mom and my American mom to meet over facetime. While I was on the phone with my mom, my host sister took me outside to show my mom the dogs we have. My mai asked to meet my mom and so they got to meet! However, my mom cannot speak Khmer and my mai cannot speak English, and so I had to rough translate what they were each saying. My mom said that "she is so pleased that I am with a lovely family and is content that I am happy and safe". Well, I could not remember about half of those words at the time and so instead I rough translated to my mai that my mom said "I am happy because Alex is happy because she has a great family and they make her happy". At least now they know that I am very happy, and so is my mom. My host mom also said that she thought my mom was beautiful and Crystal goes "well that is a real compliment especially because right now I am in my pajamas and have no makeup on."
These are some of the outfits I wore to teach:
In the rice fields:
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