a day in the life

There is no actual typical day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer, but here is a sample of what my days look like currently, on the days that I don't spend afternoons at a local library.  The only funny thing about this day was that it was my birthday when I recorded this.  So, besides the many wonderful facebook messages that I had the opportunity to answer, it was quite the usual day.

6:30 AM 
Chris and I both set our alarms for six-thirty, and they go off about one minute apart. It's pretty terrible, but for some reason, we're both very accustomed to it a year in.  The alarm goes off and we slowly tear ourselves out of sleep.  We both usually roll out of bed with the second alarm, ten minutes later. Even in America, we'd both rather sleep a bit later and forgo eating breakfast at home, and that happens here too.  We quickly get dressed in one of the five outfits we both have, each of us rotating the same 3 or so bottoms - me, a traditional long skirt, him, a pair of slacks he brought from home.  Chris is typically a bit faster than me, and his classes begin more on time than mine, and he heads out by 6:55, and I lock the door behind me at 7:00 AM.


7:05 AM
I'm one of the first to arrive, and I park my bike under a tree to give it shade for my four hours of teaching that lay before me.  I spend a few minutes drinking water from my Camelbak before the other teachers arrive and tease me about my water bottle, which reminds them of a baby's bottle, which they jokingly taunt me with in Khmer.  It's mildly funny, and I try to explain - for the tenth time - how freaking cool Camelbaks are in America.  I'm not believed.

Class begins around 7:20, after we've given the trainees time to sweep out the classrooms, and clean off the desks.  We're reviewing a series of questions with possible answers, and then taking the opportunity to review the grammar rule inherent in each question.

8:00 AM
We take a break and I grab breakfast at a little food stand right outside our school.  I frequent a stand that sells pork and rice- one of my favorite meals in this whole country- and it's one of my favorite varieties, with sliced omelet on top.  The woman who owns the stand has become a friend, and expects me 3-4 days a week around this time. This day, as she normally does, she tosses me some extra pork  and egg when I have some bare rice left, and takes time to explain all about me to the others who stop by for breakfast and toss me funny looks.


8:15-10:15 AM
My assistant school director hands me a fragrant flower from the tree on our grounds, which he knows I love.  I spend the next two hours focusing on building my trainees' listening skills, and do a running dictation exercise with them. (Dictation: a pure listening activity, and running: students run around the room and dictate the story to each other!)

10:15 AM
 My co-teacher decides to cancel our last hour of class, so I head home.

10:30 AM
 One of my favorite parts of the morning: I get to peel off my sampot.  I've been silently sweating underneath the thick fabric for nearly four hours by this point, and the first breeze on my thighs is the best thing ever. Figuratively.

After my shower, I settle down for my brief two hour break before I will begin teaching again at one.

11:00 AM
Chris arrives home and surprises me with flowers and a coca-cola!  It's a fantastic gesture given how hard it is to be romantic in the way we're used to in Cambodia.

I decide to drink my coca-cola out of a cup that comes from a favorite food stand in Ocean City, Maryland, as I've just spent fifteen minutes reading about the devastation Hurricane Sandy is causing in America.  So, in honor of you, Alaska Stand!



12:00 PM
I spend my break planning a fun Halloween lesson for the free English class Chris and I teach twice a week. Because the next day is Halloween, that's our focus.  I find a fun crossword that will work perfectly, and set to work creating a master puzzle, and fifteen marker-drawn editions for our students.



The hour passes far too quickly, and soon it's ready to get dressed and bike to the training center for an afternoon of class.

12:45 PM
I put on my second shirt of the day, and bike to school, where, again, I'm the first to arrive.  We only started teaching class beginning at 1 PM this year, and it's a bit of an adjustment for the teachers, as we used to begin at 2 PM.


1:00 PM
The school director is the next to arrive, and he asks me to teach him English.  He proceeds to begin this by reading from my Methodology textbook. He reads English quite well, but he tells me he has no idea what he's reading.  We hang out until the other teachers begin to arrive.

1:15-4:30 PM
Following a similar pattern from the morning, I teach for a few hours alongside a co-teacher.  This time, we're teaching "English Methodology" and we discuss the pedagogy of teaching listening to lower secondary students.

We follow the same schedule of teaching from the :15 of the hour to the next hour, taking a 15 minute break in between. Classes are two hours each, so today I've taught 4 classes, or a total of 8 hours.

4:35 PM
Our last hour of teaching ends early- we're the only class left learning and it's been a steaming HOT three hours and a half hours.  I have less than an hour until our free community English class begins, so I head to a local mini mart to get some cold water and read a bit.

I run into Chris, who also finished teaching early, and we spend the next forty five minutes drinking cold water (a treat!) and discussing our day, and what's to come in the next year, both here in Cambodia and what we hope happens when we return to America next fall.

5:25 PM
We bike to our evening class, and teach the Halloween lesson.  The students are pretty into it, and my fifteen puzzles aren't enough, so some students share a couple puzzles. 

6:15 PM
Typically class ends at 6:30, but we end early because our family invited us to join them for dinner.  Leaving class is always an adventure, because students tend to have additional questions that we are happy to answer, and because all the other private classes get out at the same time so the streets are clogged with hundreds of kids biking home as well.  We've become experts in dodging slow moving objects, and things that suddenly dart out in the middle of the road. Experts, I tell you.

6:30 PM
On the evenings when we don't teach a class, Chris and I will typically spend the 5-6 hour running, and then goofing around with our host nieces and nephew.  I got to do some of that on this evening too, as they came inside our house to play around for a few minutes before dinner.



More often than not, Chris and I cook for ourselves and eat in our house without our family. About once a week though, our family invites us to dinner or brings us over a giant bowl of whatever they're eating.



Some nights, we'll instead go to dinner at a local restaurant, and invite a friend to join us.  This evening, we had the confluence of all of these things together, as our family made dinner AND a friend came by to eat with us, bringing with her some delicious food.

 Hanging out with our host family is honestly one of the highlights of a typical day.  These goofy kids can make me smile even when I'm dripping in sweat or just had an afternoon from hell, cross-culturally wise.

8:30 PM
We got lucky this night, and squeezed an unexpected Skype call with Chris' mom, stepdad, and brother.  We spend Sunday evenings Skyping my parents and Chris' Uncle John, but it's typically harder to nail down times with these awesome people, so we usually get to see their faces whenever we happen to have down time congruently.  The conversation tonight is fantastic, and we get to catch up on what's happening in our home state of Maryland, and see some of our favorite people.

9:30 PM
It's time to shower for the third time today, and crawl into bed for some interwebbing and general computer fun.  I check emails, start to thank people on facebook for kind messages, and read some huffington post articles and blogs.  I have some work to do for some other projects I'm involved in, but I can't muster the energy after what's been a long but rewarding day.

10:30-11:00 PM
Somewhere in this vicinity, I begin to nod off, and put the computer away, settling in for night of sleeping made comfortable by the fan that blows on us throughout.  We can't cuddle really, but Chris and I give each a quick kiss before heading to sleep, ready to get up and sweat do it all over again tomorrow!