Same Same But Different

I suppose that I am due for an update, aren't I? The truth is that there is nothing really to report. The flood water has gone down enough for everyone to get to the classroom buildings, and classes have started. Mr. Nou and I are again meeting ten minutes before the start of every class to discuss what we are going to teach, and the students are learning in the same steady pace. Yesterday in 11B we discussed transportation in Cambodia: pickup-taxi, motorbike, airplane, remork, horse, bicycle, elephant, water buffalo, that sort of thing. I had the students compose a brief essay that answered the questions,"If you could visit any place in Cambodia, where would you go? How would you get there? What would you do there." A student named Sohpaul asked me if he could get to Battambang by lion. I told him this could only happen if the lion was of the flying kind. Sure enough, his essay began, "I would like to visit Battambang to visit friends. I would get there by riding a flying lion." Genius.

The monsoon rains are coming at night now, which means the rainy season will end soon. The rice has grown very high recently with all the rain, and I'm sure some farmers will have a good harvest. The main road down to the national highway has been washed out in some places, making the journey down there more arduous than before. A taxi ride to go anywhere now is similar to that of a bean being shaken around in a tin can, and guess who's the bean? The mere thought of it renders me immobile. Besides, I just received a giant collection of George Bernard Shaw plays from the floating library in Phnom Penh, and I would rather just plow through those.

Life continues on. I continue to teach and work in the school garden on Saturdays and Thursdays. I have a small project there which I will write about once I have a more complete story. I often wonder how people in America are doing at this time of year, but then I have to remind myself that they are more than likely having busy American lives doing who knows what. They cannot probably imagine that this life is far more interesting and exotic than their own. Exotic, yes, but interesting? You have to understand that when the bizarre becomes familiar, it ceases to be bizarre. For example, I am looking forward to enjoying the start of water festival in a few weeks. Surely you have a three day carnival to celebrate the changing direction of a major river in your country, don't you? But then again, your country has infrastructure. That must be terribly exciting to move around in! Trains, buses, mass transit systems, roads not clogged with cows or goats, what a wonderful image.

But then, who exactly is looking at whom?