And it's Tuesday

Today started out overcast. I woke up around 6 and worked on downloading some pictures and read through some emails.  I had my bakery bread this morning with strawberry jam and a mango yogurt. It was simple, yet delicious.

 

 Class entailed classroom management.  In regard to the content, we soon learned some of cultural-based concepts in regard to discipline, bribery, and cheating.  Are you curious what this entails? Well, it is common to physically abuse but not verbally abuse students.  Teachers often strike unruly students with rulers, open-hand to the face.  If you have ever been introduced to the' three-strike rule,' it is practice in many parts of SE Asia.  This is when a student is either given 3 strikes (warnings) before discipline intervenes OR students can start with 3 strikes and loses one for each negative action they do before disciple is acted upon.  We were told that a teacher once made a child stand in from of the window face the playground during recess, holding a sign that read, "I'm an idiot."

When it came to the area of cheating, I learned that this is a common practice in the region as well.  There is a lot of pressure for students to reach high academic achievement.  Even smart students cheat due to the pressure.  This may be a result of a family investing in one child to become successful.  As a result the student typically cheats on exams. An example, a student had his father below the classroom window.  The father would throw rocks through the open window with answers to the students questions, the student was caught. Other students try writing answers on water bottle labels, the inside of shoes, and on watch bands.  Coffee shops are known to print several note pages on small squares of paper for students.  To deter the issue, many streets are shut down during testing time to avoid people from cheating.

Bribery can involve students pooling together a collection of money and placing a envelope of money on the table, "so teacher, what about that test for tomorrow?"  Others may go up to a teacher and stroke their leg after class and ask for a better grade.  Unfortunately, in Cambodia, due to the cheating and bribery, the passing exam standards for medical schools are set at 50%, typically only 25% percent of students meet this.  These med students usually don't make it to pass the medical exams are typically don't pass the final exams.  In addition, the standards for academic achievements are lowered for these upcoming med professionals due to a lack of doctors in Cambodia.

The remainder of our class day was focused on grammar - aka word labeling (wahoo..) with word classes and parts of speech.  The class ended with dialogue formatting for new language learners, which was quite fascinating.  It has been a very productive first 2 days of class, feels like I have had a week of class. I am loving that I can learn culture with teaching, fascinating and relevant.

For lunch today I had Khmer noodles with fried egg, 6,000 Riel ($1.50).  This was an interesting dish.  It was bland, yet unique.  I choose to spice mine up with chili paste.  The spice was nice, but wow was it salty!  After class, I ventured around Phnom Penh with some friends.  We ended up eating at a corner restaurant tonight.  While we were waiting we casually watched a Khmer soap opera, when we looked up later the owner had changed the channel to Mr. Bean.  We are guessing this was to please us Westerners, as this is what we all watch.  A nice gesture none-the-less. For my supper I had a cold bottle of water with chicken vegetable rice, $2.50, and $1 for my 15-20 minute tuk tuk ride back to Marady.

 

On a side note, I keep noticing that several people park their cars randomly around the university - security guys hang out around the streets and casually push cars around as they please.  I am not really sure why, but it is kinda fun to watch on my breaks.

For those of you that have been reading my blog, I have been reading all of the comments through my email.  I will answer questions and provided feedback via email or through the next days blog.  I am working on adding pictures to the food page, if you are interested.