goodbye cambodia, and thanks for being so good to me.

Alas, another month has come to an end. On Thursday morning I rode my bike one last time to the Youth Development Center, where I’ve been teaching English nearly every day for the last two weeks. As I peddled I took notice of all the people on the side of the road – children were playing, a woman was cutting a large block of ice, a group of men were shooting pool – and my heart was filled with such joy.

The sky was flawless – bright blue with big friendly clouds. The surrounding green trees made a perfect contrast of color. My iPod was turned to Vampire Weekend, and I couldn’t help but think it was the perfect soundtrack to my life at that moment.

I pulled up to the Youth Center and took note of the cows across the street. Sometimes the cows are right up in front of the Youth Center, and I like to imagine what would happen if cows wandered across college campuses in the United States. Because the Youth Center is pretty much like college.

Nearly every morning for the last two weeks Mel and I have taught a dozen or so college-aged students about culture. We used a manual that my team wrote (slash borrowed from Wikipedia) earlier this month. Our class was called “Effortless English,” but really our students weren’t able to understand as much as we thought they would. So it was pretty difficult to explain ideas such as high culture verses popular culture, individualist culture verses collectivist culture, saving face, etcetera etcetera.

It was difficult also because we only knew Western examples of the ideas we were trying to convey, and our students weren’t familiar with any of them. They had never heard of Britney Spears, Harry Potter or the movie Titanic. I was shocked. In my experience, Titanic is one of the most universal things in the world, up there with Coca Cola.

(At one point Melanie even sang her own rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” to see if they would recognize it. Instead they all stared at her with blank faces.)

But teaching English, or culture, or whatever, was good for me. It challenged me, and I found it extremely rewarding whenever I could see the material click in a student’s mind. It almost felt like a high. The best part was we used a lot of Christian examples, such as the Biblical story “The Woman at the Well” to explain difference in cultures (Jesus was a Jew, the woman was a Samaritan – Jesus was a man, the woman was, well, a woman. And so on and so forth)

A couple of my teammates were even able to share the entire gospel story in their classes – the students willingly stayed after to hear what Jesus is all about.

So Thursday was my last day teaching, and I was more sad than I thought I would be. Sometimes I don’t realize how attached I am to something until it’s over and done with. One of my students hugged me repeatedly at the end of class, and I’m pretty sure at one point she teared up. Most of the other students came up to me with their hands pressed together in traditional Cambodian greeting and thanked me for teaching them. Then they wished me health, safe travels and a husband (did I ever tell you about the time when a group of large African ladies boisterously declared in the good Lord’s name a husband for me?) 

On Thursday night we came together with the five ladies who run the Youth Development Center for one last hoorah. We ate the Cambodian equivalence of a hamburger – I’m not entirely sure what kind of meat it was. Also it was served on sandwich bread. Still, it was pretty good.

They gave us Cambodian t-shirts; we gave them scarves. They talked about how much we have helped them; we talked about how much they inspire us. Some tears were shed. At the end of the night we held hands in a circle and prayed. When we left it was dark outside. My team hopped on our bicycles, dropped them off at the rental store and walked home.