On the bus

Ugly orange leather seats stick to our bare skin. 14 of us are crammed into this tiny hot bus like some awkward Cambodian family vacation. We are setting off for a bumpy eight hour ride to the beautiful Siem Reap. We all groan and pass out the cheap beer, "Bring it on!"

Just a few days ago I started my week in a Cambodian sports bar watching American football, it's hard to believe only four days have brought me to this bus. These days have been packed. We have four weeks to learn what people spend four years learning, how to be a teacher. Coming here I ignorantly believed this would be easy. I love kids and I already speak English, so how hard could it be? Then my teacher came into the room and wrote "Grammar" on the board. Ugh! I slumped down in my seat making my displeasure obvious. "Grammar does not have to be difficult or boring." The teacher explained before preceding to teach it in a way that was both difficult and boring. 

These grueling classroom days have taught me that teaching anything is simply providing four conditions: motivation, practice, guidance, and exposure. But english itself is a bitch of a language. I'm not sure why I find learning another language so intimidating when my first language is one of the most difficult ones. "I go store" makes sense to me! But I've grown to love english. Since we do not have a tonal language, we can do a lot with our words based on intonation and emphasis. Just by hearing someone speak, we can tell a lot about how they are feeling, what they prioritize, how they think. Asian languages are known for not showing emotions, that's because their language doesn't allow for it much. 

As we sat there learning about moduls, auxiliaries and gerunds, I grew frustrated. How come I don't know this stuff? That's when our teacher reminded us that we do know this stuff. Everything we need to know about grammar we aqurie by 8 years old. We learn how to speak correctly subconsciously, now we are simply learning how to label what we already know. And that's true with our students. I do not have to teach them anything new, I'm simply teaching them new sounds for the world they already know.

This place is a crazy combination of old and new, rich and poor. The temples are magnificent and the beer is cheap. I'm fascinated by all of it, the cultural differences, phonetics, learning conditions. I don't know what is coming for me here, but I'm in love with Asia, and I'm right where I'm supposed to be. 

Hopefully I can find a few more minutes to catch you up more soon, but for now I'm a little emotionally scarred from slamming into a dog in the middle of the road. 

-Carrie