I knew that I had to get as much done as possible before I went into school yesterday because, although I wasn’t necessarily dreaming fondly about my lessons for the day, I was excited about seeing everyone from the department and finding out about their New Year’s breaks. I’ve now been teaching long enough and know myself well enough to know that chatting casually with everyone around me on my first day back means last minute lesson plans as I suddenly realize that time is running out before classes, which results in a less than perfect reintroduction to my actual classes.
Somehow, I managed to finish all of the grading that I had been meaning to get done over break by the time I headed to the university. Although I didn’t leave myself much time for the first day’s lessons, I at least felt accomplished knowing that I had nothing looming over my head and that I could return my students’ midterms and some additional essays. I called Buntha to arrange to go to the university and was as happy to hear his voice as I think he was to hear mine.
I see him virtually every single day, and the two weeks that I just spent out of town was the longest I’ve been away from Phnom Penh since I arrived, so we had an exciting reunion with an appropriate amount of accompanying awkwardness as well. It was one of those situations in which I probably would have normally just hugged my friend, and I got the feeling that he felt the same, yet neither of us knew if that would have been considered appropriate with the other. I feel like I know Buntha so well and feel very close to him, but when I stop to think about it, we still really can’t communicate that much, language-wise at least. So after seconds of exciting but awkward greetings, we settled on patting each other on the backs.
We don’t always have things to say for the entire ride to school - as I mentioned before, I see him almost everyday, and language has to be kept relatively simple - but I was happy to have been away for long enough that we both had enough to talk about to fill the time. Even more so, I was happy to hear that when I asked how his New Year’s had been, he responded that it had been great. Cambodia is refreshingly (in comparison to neighboring countries) not a place where people gloss over how they really feel. Many Cambodians seem to express themselves in a pleasant or even humble way, but at the end of the day, they’ll tell you how they really feel. Expressing that level of honesty, it seemed for the couple of weeks before I left for Laos, Buntha had been consistently responding to my questions about his preceding weekend or morning that he was simply okay or alright.
I finally found out when I returned from Bangkok, the week before I left for Laos, what had been bothering him. He asked to borrow $10 on a very temporary basis shortly before I left, offering to pay it back with rides over the following days, and said that he felt that he had to tell me that he had gotten divorced from his wife. As a result of his wife splitting, he had been rushing home to make dinner for his kids and was having to find neighbors to look after his children each night while he pulled his 10PM-6AM shift as a security guard. After a week, at around the time I returned, he decided that the schedule was too much to maintain and quit his night job.
I didn’t know what to say, and I wanted to somehow help, but I also didn’t want to offer some money in a condescending way and couldn’t think of any other way to help on the spot. I was completely shocked. Hindsight is of course twenty-twenty. All of a sudden, the fact that Buntha and his wife hadn’t really seemed too enthused whenever I offered to take their picture together at Buntha’s cousin’s wedding, even when Buntha asked me to take many pictures of other groups of family members, seemed to make complete sense now. So did the fact that he, his son, his daughter, and I had gone up earlier to and come back later from his hometown than his wife had. I had simply attributed it to the awkwardness of being with the in-laws for a long period of time at the time.
I, of course, feel that it was probably his wife’s fault, even though she seemed nice when I met her. I could never picture Buntha doing anything mean. The kid’s have stayed with Buntha in his house, and beyond that, I didn’t really pry for details. I was appreciative enough that he had been willing to share, since even he admitted that it took a couple of weeks to work up the courage to tell me. Divorce here isn’t the same as it is in the US, and I know it must be hard for Buntha when everyone’s here is expected to remain with their partners and care for a large family, even though newspaper reports of spousal acid attacks are clear signs that everything’s not always as people would like it to appear.
Even the very essays I graded yesterday morning were related to the topic. My students were writing cause and effect essays and were given eight topics to choose from. An overwhelming majority, however, chose to write about the consequences of divorce, none of which were good, according to their perspectives. Lack of attention paid to children, declining incomes, and unhappiness were all deemed to be the concrete results of divorce, yet no one mentioned that quality of life might actually improve when a source of tension and unhappiness is resolved. Even among my teen and twenty-something students, divorce carries a stigma.
But anyway, it was great to hear that Buntha had had a wonderful New Year and that his kids were doing well. He seemed genuinely happy when I saw him.
I got to school, and as expected, it really was great to see everyone. I caught up with most and started having lunch at the usual time with the usual crew that brings their lunch instead of heading home for two hours at midday. Just like before break, Sopheap brought lots of extra fruit, which she had not only made the effort to get for everyone but also generously peeled, and cut.
As of a few weeks ago, the ELSU department gained a second office at the university. With a growing staff, it was decided that it really was getting too squooshed to have all 30+ teachers in a one room space with all of the accompanying mailboxes, computers, cassette players, and textbooks as well. Because none of the other departments were willing to give up their first floor spaces so that we could have an adjacent or at least nearby office to the original one, the second office is now on the third floor while the first office remains on the first (as our department wasn’t willing to give up our prime real estate either). Originally, it was unclear how the uses of the offices were going to evolve, but it’s actually worked smoother than I would have expected. I had wondered myself where I’d spend my time or if I’d go whole weeks now without seeing people I was used to seeing everyday. The upstairs office is for quiet work and cool work, as the air conditioning is significantly better in that room. You can usually find Boramy and Steve working up there. Downstairs is where the administrators remain and is the place for meeting for lunch, reading the Cambodia Daily, coordinating anything across sections or the department, and working on handouts. We now have two spots for internet.
Boramy, who I spend some of the most time talking with at school everyday was upstairs. I usually try to split my time between both floors but didn’t make it up there yesterday in the short time I was at school before classes. Boramy came down to the other office briefly, though, and it was great to say hi. Among all the people she hadn’t yet seen, she wished a Happy New Year, and I could see her looking through everyone else to direct the message to me. I was happy to have caught her since I was feeling like I had really missed seeing her on my first day back.
I caught up with Steve and shared my Laos adventures. He told me of not only visiting Vang Vieng before it was overly backpacker-y in the mid-1990s but also about seeing a very pre-backpacker Vang Vieng in 1972. During Laos New Year’s actually, he had been flown by the family of one of the students he was teaching on his Fulbright in Vientiane. The father was a general in Laos army during this time of war in the country, but they had a vacation to fulfill, so they boarded the army helicopter and made their way. Apparently, the family (and Steve) didn’t even spend time in what was then just a tiny Lao town and a hub for US equipment and helicopters. They simply made use of the US-operated runway and base and then headed further afield to their real destination.
Steve’s been in this part of the world and has enough of an interest in the history, culture, and architecture of the region that he can usually contribute a historical fact or personal account about anything that comes up in conversation. Admirably, though, it doesn’t come across as some others’ stories do: showing off or trying to prove how they were here when it was rougher and even less “discovered.” Instead, he manages to contribute interesting tid-bits but doesn’t sound like he’s trying to trump you. He’s also been great about going through his own personal archives that he’s accumulated over the years to help me with material for my “Iconic Phnom Penh” articles, even though he can usually just tell me everything in them from memory.
After the last two books that I read and in a city with a certain demographic that makes you think that they’re here simply because nothing will be expected of them while they’re here, I can really appreciate a Fulbright recipient who plays solitaire for a lot of the time he’s at the office but who can talk intelligently and in depth about many of the issues I’m curious about.
By the time I got to class, the power was out. Irrelevantly, it was great to see my students and I was ready to go, though my lessons weren’t particularly exciting for me or for them, I don’t think.
During class, I decided that today would be “America Day.” I feel that, because the curriculum is so solid, I haven’t really been able to focus on the cross-cultural aspect of my classes as much as I’d like to or thought I would. I’ve been wanting to do a class on the US and to have a class when my students are free to ask questions for a while, and I didn’t want to risk another flat, somewhat monotonous class for the second day in a row.
In the evening, Bryan had invited me to come over to his apartment for a small ice cream going away party since he’s leaving with his fiancé at the end of the week to travel and then go back home to Indiana. It’s hard to believe that the three months that he was taking over for Somaly is already over, and I’ll miss having him and someone my age around. But it put to rest some of my feeling that I had in Laos that I was really missing a social component of my life in Phnom Penh. It was just nice to get together with a different crowd and to have a scheduled activity for my evening to look forward to.
This morning, I selected my America photos that I would share with my class from iphoto. I often look through recent pictures of family and friends, but it was strange and great to flip through some images going further back and the seemingly exotic images of summers at Block Island or street scenes in New York.
I also found myself amused by which photos I felt compelled to include and exclude. College football games made it big time in the cut. They combined American college life and school spirit, a uniquely American tradition, and interesting visuals. Skiing pictures were another set that I was attracted to. Snow, sports, and good views - it’s hard to go wrong.
I included amusing things I didn’t expect to, like a photo of Elena “doing a jump” on her snowboard from when Christine, Elena, and I staged some sweet looking photos in Tremblant last year during our learning-to-snowboard day. The jump was just much more interesting to share with the class than a regular skiing picture. It wasn’t even until I got to class that I realized that the picture was from Canada anyway, not the United States. Pictures from places like Mexico, France, and Israel, however, did not slip by so easily. Middlebury’s Feb graduation, when all of the graduates ski down the Snow Bowl in caps and gowns, got a shout out in my class, even though it’s a small slice of America. It turns out it was a good move, because, excluding the cookies shaped and frosted into typically New York items (i.e.: taxis and bagels), this was the biggest hit of the day.
Any pictures with beer were out. After all, I am their teacher. Similarly and especially in a society like this, pretty much all pictures that included guys and girls together with arms around each other (which were a lot) were out. I didn’t need any rumors swirling. My alcohol-holding flip-flops were out. Classic parts of American college life, like Beirut, couldn’t be elaborated on, no matter how integral they are to American college life today. It was surprisingly difficult to get a good picture of Halloween costumes from school to show. I’m just going to say it, after being here for eight months, few of my girl friends were wearing enough for me to be comfortable showing them. Marisa in a cow outfit made it in, though.
Perhaps the weirdest thing, though, was that I didn’t explicitly showing my house, something I would normally consider so integral to a presentation on my home and my life in America. I secretly slipped it in and showed it in the context of the rest of the street without saying that it was my house because I was too self-conscious about monetary differences between my house and the houses my students come from. Interiors were also off limits for the same reason and because my students don’t need to see too much of the personal life of their teacher. My house and its surroundings, however, were presented as my “hometown” of course, in accordance with Cambodian custom. Block Island became my Dad’s “hometown,” and there was nothing weird for my students about thinking of me traveling to a familiar house on a regular basis. To them, it wasn’t a beach house but, understandably, the place where my family had come from and would obviously go back to regularly, just as they travel to their hometowns to see their family’s during every school break.
In a city whose occupants were mostly wiped out thirty years ago, it’s actually difficult to find anyone who considers themselves from Phnom Penh. Everyone lives here but still holds an extremely strong attachment to their hometown, or at least this generation and their parents, who have been the ones to directly move, do.
When I arrived at school today (much earlier than yesterday so that I’d have more time to catch up), the power was still out. Somaly, who had her baby and was back in the office today, greeted me when I came in. It’s been three months since I’ve seen her, and we caught up a bit. But the most pressing news was that we have a new schedule for electricity. We will now have power Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. It’s not the university cutting back. It’s the hot season, and Cambodia doesn’t have enough electricity, so the power company announced the schedule. The university must be far from any UN, embassy, or CPP (the prime minister’s party) offices or residences to have gotten stuck with the number of cuts that we did.
To be honest, everyone thought it was a little ridiculous, but it wasn’t a big deal. When Somaly told me, Nary recounted when she was in New York for the 2003 blackout, and I all of a sudden realized how big a deal that seemed and how paralyzed the region seemed without electricity for 24 hours. Here I was hearing that there would be no electricity for part of the day everyday until told otherwise, and it really didn’t seem quite as significant. I do wonder what people in businesses that rely on computers will do. It only affects us in relation to the listening component of our courses, which require tape players. Although, as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that tomorrow is normally the day when I do my English video with my 202 class, which I guess will no longer be happening.
On the way to school this morning and at one of the main intersections near my house, I noticed that the traffic light was out. I noticed it only because I thought how traffic was really differing little than how it normally would. Although it would spell chaos in the US, where we wouldn’t know who was to go when, in a city where many intersections that probably should have lights don’t and where lots of people use their own interpretations of the lights anyway, motorbikes and cars were flowing as smoothly as anywhere else. Everyone would gather until a certain mass decided that it was time to push through. Little did I know that this will probably be a common experience of the next month or two of the hot, dry season.