Christmas Day

Christmas Day was just another day in the ‘Bode, as many of us have started calling it. Since, however, “just another day” is very different from those experienced back in the world, I thought I would try and describe what normality is over here.

My alarm clock went off at 6:05. I cannot remember why I had set it to 6:05, it seemed like a good idea at the time to give me those extra five minutes of sleep. I sat up, scratched my head, and threw the sheets and blankets off of me. It was cold, and by cold I mean 20 degrees Celsius. I crawled around on the bed, fixing the covers and making sure the mosquito net was tucked under the mattress at all the right places. I then crawled under and out of it, and my feet hit the tile floor. I quickly walked to the bathroom, and used the ladle (“bowie”) to bring up water from the reservoir. I cupped my hands, and brought the cool water to face in order to wash it. When I was done, I toweled off and began to dress. Before I took any clothes off of my rack, I went and got my mosquito bat. When I shook my clothes vigorously, three mosquitoes flew out from my shirts. I killed them with the bat, and their tiny burned corpses smelled of burning hair. While I dressed, I turned on my stove in order to boil some water. When I had finished packing for school, I took the boiled water and poured into a cup that was filled with oatmeal. Expensive, Australian made oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast of late, and I buy it at the supermarket in Siem Reap. While eating the oatmeal, I turned on the radio and listened to the Australian news. Mary Shapiro is going to be the new head of the SEC, and Rudd government is defending an unpopular environmental policy. At around 7:00, the school bell rang. I turned off the radio, picked up my bag, and headed out the door.

The school is across the street from my house, so the walk only takes a couple of minutes. The students in blue and white uniforms passed me on bicycles as I walked along, and dismounted as they entered the big blue steel gate that marks the entrance to the school. I walked through the gate, and walked along the straight path that leads to the main office building. A smiling young man separated from his friends and approached me. “Hello Teacher! How are you today” he said. “I’m fine thanks, student,” I responded. “How are you?” “Yes,” he replied in the midst of a fit of giggling. He then went off to join his friends. Confused, I simply walked on.

When I got to the main office building, the students were lining up in rows around the flagpole in front of the building. I went into the office, put down my bag, and went outside to watch the students conduct the flag ceremony. The assistant school director was already outside in front of the students, and he called them all to attention. After shouting some orders, two students prepared to raise the flag. The assistant school director began singing the Cambodian national anthem very enthusiastically. “Som punté bada,” he sang very loudly, and indicated with his fists that the students should pick up where he had left off. The students chanted the rest of the words in such a mumbled and apathetic manner that I chuckled to myself. I laugh every morning at this spectacle, and it is a highlight of my day.

I waited for my co-teacher, who came along a few minutes later. We walked to the class together after he arrived, and talked about some of the things that would happen in class that day. We waited for a few minutes outside the classroom until the students had cleaned the classroom, and then we went inside. The students rose from their seats, and remained standing until we told them that they could sit down. After taking a minute to unpack my notes and books, I went to the board and wrote out the agenda for the day. I then wrote the date on the board. “Today is Thursday December 25th, 2008.” I thought about telling the class that today was Christmas, but I decided not to.

The lesson proceeded smoothly. We did some reading, went over a few vocabulary words, stressed pronunciation, and drilled the past progressive. At around 8:50, we let the students out for a break. I went to the library and talked for a few minutes with the other teachers, who were asking me what Christmas was. They had seen something about it on the television or radio, and I explained that it was a religious holiday that was about as big a deal as Pchum Ben. They understood the analogy well enough. At around 9:05, I went over to the second class. The chapter that this class was discussing had to do with advertising, and I had brought some ads from American magazines to show them was an advertisement was.

My co-teacher and I started off the lesson in the regular manner that we always do, but around 10:00 something rather unusual happened. Two other teachers appeared in the doorway of the classroom and beckoned my co-teacher to go with them. Without hesitation, Mr. Nou turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, I am busy. Can you teach the class?” He did not give me a chance to answer, as he left with the other teachers a few seconds later. Standing in the middle of the class, I turned to the students and asked them to wait for a few moments. I went outside, and noticed that none of the other classrooms had teachers in them. The students were filing out of them, and were walking towards the shed where they park their bicycles. I went back inside the class, and proceeded to teach for the rest of the time remaining. I had the students look at the advertisements I brought in groups, and helped them figure out what their purpose was. When this was concluded, I packed up my things and dismissed the students.

As I walking out of the school, I noticed that all of the teachers were playing soccer. I learned later that the reason why all of the teachers had left their classes was because the school director had left early that day. With no boss around, they decided to abandon their classes in order to go play soccer. I sighed while I watched the teachers kick the ball around. “À la Cambodgien,” I said to myself.

I walked home in a few minutes, and upon entering my room I started boiling water for a cup of tea. I swept and cleaned my room for a little while until my host mother told me that it was time for lunch. The meal was fish soup with rice. With a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left, I ate the meal in silence with the rest of the family. I poured a helpful of chili sauce on my bowl at one point so the dish could have some flavor. After lunch, the women cleared the dishes and I began reading a copy of the New Yorker that had been sent to my by mail. You, the reader, might think that my manners are poor for not helping the women in their tasks of cooking and cleaning, but I assure you that this is not the case. I have tried many times to help cook, clean the dishes, or some other part of the women’s housework in the kitchen, but my attempts were met with firm rebuttals. I have been shooed out of the kitchen more times than I would like to admit, and I have reluctantly accepted their custom of keeping men out of their designated chores.

After reading for a while, the father of the table came to the table with a large bowl of roasted crickets. The bugs, which are about as big as your little finger, have a taste that resembles popcorn. Altogether they are not all that bad, but I cannot eat them without thinking about what they are. I watched the father as he ate an entire bowl of the little monsters.

The rest of the day was mildly uneventful. I walked over the pagoda and chatted with the monks for a little while, stopped off in a little café to have a glass of iced coffee, and went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. The only hint that indicated that it was Christmas came from something I saw on the television later that evening. On one of the variety shows, there was a singing and dancing troupe that evoked the Christmas spirit as best as a Cambodian person can. Men, dressed in white suits and red vests, and women, in red and white corset-like outfits, were holding poms poms and dancing. They were also singing about something called “crissmah.”

That was how I spent Christmas this year. It is very hard to make a big deal about it when your in the middle of rural southeast Asia, and I’ve tried not to think about it. C’est la vie.