GLOW is underway

hey guys!! i got back from vacation earlier this week. i have photos up on my picasa if anyone is interested. its been a while since i last wrote. but, back to being busy, which is great. being idle here makes me really depressed.

anyway, the purpose of me writing was to let you all know that our CAMP GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) was approved and we will receive funding very soon. It came at a very appropriate time too. strange how things happen...but earlier in class, my 12th grade class was learning about human rights. and there was this section on women's right and the chapter opened up the subject by talking about husbands beating their wives. well, one of my female students said that if her husband beats her, she would tolerate it because she is a wife and he is the husband. I was speechless...all i could say was "no way. don't let your husband hit you" and then asked the boys in the class if they will hit their wives and they all said 'no'. it was rough to hear my student say such things. i got teary. damn. damn. i dunno. the state of female equality is non existent. damn. listening to her speak in her broken english about how its okay for a husband to hit a wife. not cool. not cool.

bye. diana

the sound of relief...

so its raining today. i've never adored the sound of rain as much as i do today... or rather for the remainder of time i am in cambodia. today is cool with a lot of moisture in the air. its not cold, its just right. the sun isn't beating down on the house or my skin either...

anyway, here are some recent photos from site. a few of the photos are of my home and the others are from the wedding i attended last week. a teacher from my school got married...

also, i will be going on vacation in a couple of weeks for about a month. i will be checking out the north of the cambodia, visiting my training family in takeo, and visiting laos and vietnam. i'll be sure to take photos. enjoy these for now...

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This is at the end of the wedding. We are wearing traditional khmer wedding attire. The colors are usually very vibrant. The sampots are made out of silk. Depending on the quality of the silk, a dress can cost anywhere between 25-65 USD. Yes, that's a lot of money.


These two girls are my students. They are younger, so I suppose they are wearing modern dresses. Very prom like.


This is my favorite wedding food. Small, fried egg rolls except with more meat. Yum! Tasty! Another good thing about this dish is how easy they are picked up with chopsticks and popped into your mouth. A khmer wedding is similar to a chinese one. The food is reminiscent of chinese food, but not exactly. People are sitting together at tables and 6-8 courses are served depending on who is throwing the wedding party. Sadly, there is no wedding cake. Also, there is no wedding registry, so people give money. I usually give $10, which is a lot for a meal.


Normally, weddings out in the villages, you will see little children picking up empty beer and soda cans that are thrown on the ground. At this particular wedding, there was this one table full of drunk khmer men who were egging on a little boy (probably 10 years old) to drink glasses of beer for the empty cans. It made me sick to my stomach. Its not cool. Totally not cool.


I was sitting at this table with a few of the other female teachers. This photo is similar to the other photo I posted last month. The expressionless, vacant faces of the female teachers almost leads me to believe how "not" fun weddings are. The tables are usually separated by sex.


This is the bride. She is probably 24 years old. I almost didn't recognize her with the makeup and accessories.


This is my brother in law, Vuthy. He is picking mangoes from one of the several trees around our house.


This is my sister, Rathmoney. She is around 40 years old. She is holding up some freshly picked, unripe mangoes. Khmer people like eating unripe mango with salt and chili. The sour, salty and spicy combination is tasty, but I prefer sweet mangoes.


Another photo of them picking mangoes. At the end of the bamboo stick, there is a small basket to catch the mango. One must be careful not to touch the sap that comes from the branch and freshly picked mango because you could develop a rash.

Camp GLOW underway!

Hello. My secondary project this summer will be a girls camp, where girls in the 10-11th grade will learn about gender issues, female empowerment, careers and the benefits of higher education. Today, my co-teacher and I were able to get all the signatures, stamps and ok's from the necessary departments in our district and province for the go ahead! YES! SUCCESS! Keiko (pcv from Kompong Chhnang) and I will now work on securing the venue and writing the proposal for a small grant. YAY! This is a good start to our project and we are making good time.

Today was a good day. Oh, I also ate 4 mangoes today and they all came from the trees surrounding the house. Jealous? Tomorrow, I will try to eat 5.

BTW, here's a link to an interesting article on the peace corps--

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/03/peace-corps.html

Here are a few shots of my lazy dog, Lucy. She is suppose to be a guard dog...

How may I help you...?

i taught a mini geography lesson to my two of my english classes friday. it was suppose to be a fun activity and it sorta was. since the majority of my students think north america and france are the same country (yes i realize what i wrote), i wanted to introduce the world to them in 50 mins. i used photos of different places of different countries from national geographic and cut them up into puzzle pieces. the class split into small groups and started to rearrange the pieces into a whole photo. Meanwhile, i taped a giant map of world onto the white board. once the groups completed the puzzle, they tried to find the places on the map. i had them find cambodia first ; )

the goal of my lesson was simply to make it fun and interactive, so that to inspire and offer them new knowledge. they said they enjoyed it and it did look like they enjoyed putting the puzzles together by the faces they made. but at the end, i asked them if they like the lesson. one of my students said that its not so important they know about other parts of the world because mostly everyone in the class cannot afford to travel and see the places...literally at that moment my heart skipped a beat... i know that one student who voiced his opinion isn't the voice of all the students....but its just really sad and pathetic. they have no hope or aspiration to pull themselves out of a situation. and mind you, this boy is in my best, most advanced class out of the entire school.

unfortunately, i was teaching alone that day. if my co teacher was there, he would've backed me up. i dunno...teaching is not getting any easier. i'm not gonna give up on this topic. i'm planning a geography class for the summer.

***UPDATE: Several weeks ago, i helped out some of students with essays for study abroad scholarships. One of my students was selected to move on to the next phase, which is an exam in PP. If he passes the tests, he will move on to the interview/presentation phase. CROSS YOUR FINGERS! This is great news, but there are a few more hurdles!

anyway, here are some random photos of my site: my room, school, students....

Cambodian flag

My house. See the car to the right? Also, my family is sittle underneath the house.

This is the main part of the house. Everyone sleeps on the floor. At night, they put up the mosquito nets and lay out the thin mattresses. 9 other people live here.

I have my own room with an actual bed. I don't have an actual mattress, only a thin camping type pad. It works. its not the most comfortable, but i bet i have a super straight spine now. the size of the room and the low ceilings make my room extremely hot. my host family has also provided a fan for me. my site has 24-hour electricity.

This is the high school where i teach. it is fairly new building, however, we don't have electricity or clean running water. electricity is available, but teachers must pay for it. so, the fans and the lights at the school are non operational.

This is one of my top students. Her name is Ravin. She is looking up the location on a world map.

This is an area where various vendors sell food. Food stalls...see all the trash on the ground...? Unless it is a big tourist attraction, pretty much all over the country is littered with trash.

These are some of my students in my advanced speaking club. On this particular day, I had them choose photos of places they liked and had them speak on it. Not many students showed up....

saturdays in cambodia

hi. i am usually at site on saturdays. but this past saturday, i visited a mango farm with a few other pcvs in kandal province. here are some photos. lots of fun!!! and yummy food....i didn't get to take photos of all the food i ate, but whatever...its hot in cambodia.

perfect start to the morning: a hot bowl of meat balls and 'fun' (white fat noodles)
...reminds me of home

edible flower

eating sugarcane

julie and dave

who knew bananas grew upside down???

BATS!

who's fobbier? me or james?

mangoes anyone? sovachana our peace corps friend

yup, those are mangoes!

taking a swig of fresh coconut water

mango farmer and great host

funny finger picture

muslim family doing some fishing on the bassac river

funny bug

saffron robes, soccer games and khmer weddings...

HELLO FAMILY & FRIENDS!!!

it's february already! cambodia is warming up and mangoes will be in season soon! okay, quick update and photos!

life at site couldn't be better. maybe its the high level of endorphins in my system from playing volleyball with the girls team or simply that i've come to terms with learning to accept life in cambodia and have begun to learn how to be happy here.

so this past month, i've been playing with the vball girls team 2 hours everyday. while, i am enjoying practicing with the girls (and enjoying NOT teaching english), its not as strenuous as i would like. i'm 28 now and the girls i play with are 10-13 years my junior and i hustle a lot more than they do! practicing with the girls just makes me think back to the glory days of the wilson vball team and how much discipline i had as an athlete (snickers). the girls aren't horrible players, but some of the girls just stand there and watch the ball drop, never taking a step forward or back or to the side. when this happens, i just shake my head and make faces. students just don't show much of a competitive nature...sigh...

mid-januaury, our school hosted the mountain of rice festival to raise money. it was a lot of fun. the community bands together and donates sacks of rice and money to the school...monks came to the school to give their inspirational buddhist speeches and the community reciprocates by giving food to the monks. in all honesty, i don't understand nor will i probably ever understand khmer festivals cuz yea, i just don't. anyway, it was fun and i got to watch some of students perform little skits at school. good times and afterwards, there was a party for the teachers--male teachers really and of course drinking was involved. and of course, i was invited and i did go. i drank palm wine with the male teachers until it got too dark! i was able to hang...pretty amazing considering i don't drink. it was a lot of fun.

and finally, i went to my first khmer wedding this past week. it was fun, but the fun started after when most of the guests left the reception and the drinking started again with the male teachers at school, which i was also invited to. again, i was able to somewhat hang, but didn't drink to much beer. you know, drinking with khmer men really can't compare to drinking with people at home. khmer men drink their beer with ice...and they get pretty drunk, pretty quick. its quite funny. if i, diana f. wong, can drink with khmer men, that means they can't drink for beans! anyway enough about that....oh the gender topic again, still bugs. this is more of an observation...but khmer girls get all dressed up to go a wedding...they do their hair, face the whole package. they probably spend 2+ hours getting ready, but they dont' stay long. they stay at the reception for like an hour to eat and then go home...they don't have any fun! they don't dance, they don't socialize! they sit all together and eat in silence... i mean, you people at home, must think i'm going crazy and find it funny that i'm complaining about being reserved and shy, but c'mon. girls here take shyness and passiveness to another level! and the men here have no game! no game! seriously!

finally, i've rambled on for far too long. photos:

unhusked rice

my host sister, rathmoney

monk

my co-teacher, mengsea, giving rice to the monks

monks

pisey, my 11th grade student

kasy, another 11 grade student

random student enjoying the skits

kandieng high school girls soccer team

my school director, mr. phay leng, with some of my vball girls

girls in action (yellow is kandieng hs)

a few of the female teachers at my school,
not smiling much at the wedding

my director's sister in law, she's 20 studying in pp

my director and his family at the wedding...dig my outfit?

enjoy the spinach and pumpkin soup

Happy 2010!!

hi. i hope everyone is enjoying the holidays. i am in phnom penh now and will be spending the glorious evening with some pcv's in town...i hope everyone is well.

just a quick update about work...site is good. i am working pretty much 7 days a week, but i am enjoying it. hopefully, i will start playing volleyball with the girls team next week. teaching english is difficult...really difficult. my co-teacher is fantastic and my director is great. he invited me to have dinner at his house and meet his family for xmas and i gladly accepted. it was a nice evening and so very thoughtful of him. ummm....my family is really nice and they treat me well. for breakfast, i normally eat noodles or bon chayu (this egg omelet with bean sprouts) with an iced coffee at this shack next door... i pay .75 cents for it...i eat lunch at home if i am hungry and my family always cooks dinner for me.

well, here are some photos. hopefully i will have more after new years. enjoy!

giant wooden carving, Battambang Provincial town

Alleyway in Bttb again

(l to r) mira, me, christian and jaNise

Fish drying out in the sun, Battambang Provincial town

BBQ, Battambang Provincial town

Giant Guava, given to me by an old grandpa from school