I just wanted to let ya'll know that I did have my share of Christmas greetings this year. I have included some here for your viewing pleasure.

I received a gift that was possibly from all the people in one class, which was a wind-up musical thing that had a ferris wheel type thing with tiny bears that spun around and flowers and wishes of good luck.

My host brother gave me a stuffed, pink hippo which I have now named Alfred.

I got various pieces of candy and gum from random students.

A card from a student: On the front "Congratulations" Inside "To: My good teacher and sister. In happy winter Solstice day, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year 2009. I wish you alway get happiness, good health, successful, properity in your whole family."

Text from a student 11pm Christmas Eve: "Good evening teach.were u sleeping?if u are not yet please prepare to recieve my wishes.all ur dreams come true.more healthier and more beautiful."

Texts from co-teachers: "Hi! Happy marry christmas! I wish u meet good luck, good health and successful of all working."

"HI! Merry Chrismas and Happy New Year 2009 i wish the god gets u n family a success, healthy, wealthy, happiness, Lucks...n may god bring u a real full love.especially wish u get more n more beautiful.Be enjoy your day."

Ok, it is now time for funny stuff.

Writing from students.

At the end of a letter asking me to excuse two students who had to work on a project: “Please teacher apology us by giving us a permission in spite of there are some thing wrong with our writing. Thank you!”

From essays about pastoralists, or people who raise animals for a living.

Interesting Vocabulary: “And we can use the shit for fertilizer.”

Confused vocabulary (two points if you know what word he meant to use): “Most people in Cambodia like to pet the animals such as pig, cow, duck and buffalo...In contrast, among of people are still petting these two kind of animals. I think, people should pet the livestock because it can improve economics and help in job.”

And now....drum roll please....The Cheesecake Saga.

In honor of the fake International Cake Day several MCC staff had a small get together. Christa decided to make cheesecake. I fully supported that idea, and played my usual role of sometime helper (a.k.a. tag-along).

So the first step was obviously to get ingredients for the cake. Not as easy as you might think in a country with a large suspicion of dairy. After visiting a couple of the usual ex-pat-ish grocery stores we got directions to a third and headed off in full confidence for Pencil, which we had been to once before and so felt confident that we would recognize it when we saw it. Once we the upper northern limits of the city we thought we might have past it somehow. After calling several people we realized we were on the wrong street entirely. But on our backtrack route we found the other grocery store, which did have cream cheese, so all was saved.

Once back at the office we proceeded to make the cheesecake. I peeled some mangos for the topping: one ripe, the other was more mouth-puckeringly unripe. While I was calmly using the very dull knife to fling mango peel everywhere except the trash can strategically placed beneath my hands, Christa set about to mix the cream cheese. She was very excited by the discovery of a mixer in the cupboard, so she stuck that in the bowl with the somewhat softened cream cheese and then went to plug it in.

That was the point when I laughed harder than ever before, as the mixer immediately turned on high speed, flung itself out of the bowl and began jumping all over the floor, all the while spraying cream cheese bits all over the floor and walls. Christa had the presence of mind to quickly unplug the rogue mixer, which was good, because I was lying on the floor completely incapacitated by tears. Five minutes later, when we were finally able to move again, Christa calmly picked up all the cream cheese chunks off the floor and supposedly scraped off the dirty parts before returning them to the bowl and continuing with the process.

That was the end of the major mishaps, but the only other hurdle in the cake process was getting both it and ourselves to the Talstra's house. Christa decided we should drive instead of take a motodupe. Which meant that I held the cheesecake wrapped in a towel while she searched for a helmet she could steal that didn't have a face guard that would blind her in the dark. She was moderately successful and managed to keep the shield up while on the paved road, but once we hit the bumpy dirt roads it fell down every other second.

Deciding that this was not a sustainable state of affairs, I spent the time when I wasn't flying off over the unseen bumps to hold the shield up with my “free” hand, and mostly just prayed that the cheesecake wouldn't also be jarred from my tenuous grip. But once we arrived safely the cheesecake, as well as all the other cakes tasted delicious. The only step that remained was the recounting of the story to everybody else, involving more crying on my part.

Ok, so my blog is now far beyond overdue, but I'm not feeling super guilty because I don't think people read it. Now whether that is a cause or an effect of my laziness is a point that is open for debate.

Teaching is going ok, though recent tests I gave did not score as well as could be hoped for. Also, I detest grading workbooks and have thought about suspending homework altogether so I wouldn't have to grade them. Better keep the day job, I'm not so sure about this teaching thing in the long run. Maybe if I actually understood what I was teaching and didn't cringe from any student questions. Some of my classes do keep me going though, with a level of personality that I appreciate, even if it does get us off track sometimes.

The other big news is that I am changing host families. My previous family had to move out of the city for pragmatic reasons, so in a few days I will be moving in with a different family. They live a little bit further away, but still conveniently close to the MCC office.

My moto driving skills are slowly improving, but I still get mocked about that subject and probably always will given that I made such reputation for myself early on. My language skills are also improving, hopefully I will get more chance to practice when I move in with my new family.

I am enjoying celebrating the Advent season by attending an Anglican church and going to various concerts. I'm also trying to help plan the MCC Christmas Party, so we'll see how that goes.

I will hopefully post again before Christmas, but knowing me...it might not happen. But I wish a very Merry Christmas to anyone happening to read this.

So admittedly I am not the best about keeping an updated blog. I guess part of me is stuck between living my everyday life, which is somewhat boring, and all the new and different things about living in a foreign country. And...the other part of me is pretty lazy.

So in the past few weeks I have been continuing to teach, when there isn't a holiday, which so far seems 50/50. I've learned a few more of my students names and been assigning very regular homework, much to their chagrin. Of course that leaves me with a pile of grading which I still have to go back and finish after this week-long holiday. Hopefully by this point I will be able to better know what their ability levels are and whether they are understanding anything I'm saying.

Over the long weekend a while back Christa and I headed out to Prey Veng in an effort to relax and ward off onsetting culture shock. We went for a bike ride in the afternoon and luckily didn't get rained on. I also got to go out moto riding with Scott and practice driving on unpaved, muddy roads. Quite a different experience than driving in Phnom Penh traffic.

This past weekend Christa, Amy and I headed up to the provincial town of Koh Kong. It is a pretty small town, but we were able to get out on motodupes to see some very nice waterfalls and beach.

Since then I have been back in Phnom Penh but have apparently come down with some kind of bug which prevented me from getting to see the boat races at the beginning of the week, but hopefully I'll get to see some later.

Ok, so I recognize that my last post was somewhat of a disgrace. So now I will tell you a little more general stuff, but also tell a coupe stories of the past week, which will probably provide a better idea of life here.
I did start teaching course material to my second year students, both the pre-intermediate and the intermediate levels. That went pretty well, as far as I can tell, but I don't really have any way to judge myself at this point. I also did first-day introductions with the year one students on Tuesday and Thursday. I think they got short shrift because I was slightly burned out on that by then. Hopefully I'll be able to do better next week (which is really only one day of lessons for each class because of holidays and an upcoming teacher meeting).

So now to stories, because that's better. The first one is actually from the week before, but important. So when we were walking back from lunch at the on-campus restaurant we saw a few boys in a circle yelling and pointing at something. Assuming it is a creature of some kind we make a small detour to get around and noticed a small snake. At that point however, one of the boys throws a rock at it, with surprisingly good aim, given how small the snake was. The snake's reaction to that was to sit up and form a small hood around his head. In turn, our response to that was to significantly increase the size of our detour around the snake. We did stop a safe distance away and thus were able to witness when the boys judged it wisest to kill it with their shoes. Luckily no one died except the snake. Later in that same day my wildlife encounters expanded to included the killing of a sizable scorpion in the classroom by one of my students.

On my first day of teaching my intermediate students I was attempting to teach about grammar that I didn't understand. I had two columns and was trying to get the students to classify different types of verbs. My advice to others is to consider what students suggest as answers before writing them on the board. Because then you will avoid having a student raise their hand to say “Teacher, those aren't verbs, they're adjectives.”

The staff bathroom near the English office has one key that we all use at various times. So one afternoon, a fellow teacher comes back and tells us that there is a snake in the bathroom. We were surprised and somewhat entertained by his casual attitude, explaining that it was very small. When we pondered what to do, his suggestion was: “I think we leave it there - that is its habitat.”

My last class of the week was in a different room that had no air conditioning. Fortunately the electricity was working so we were able to have the fans going full blast. This led to a unique discovery about the interaction of ceiling fans and skirts. My skirt was mid-length and fully lined, but in certain parts of the room it decided it wanted to be a parachute instead of a normal skirt. The students of course found it very entertaining, but I found it more challenging to teach class with one hand always occupied by counteracting the prevailing winds.

Teaching idioms is also a endeavor that leads to unique situations such as students raising their hands to say “Teacher, can you explain 'messing around' again?”