Day Two: Into The Deep End

Yesterday the medical clinic was closed since Dr. Sokunthea doesn't work there Fridays and was off in Phnom Penh for an ultrasound class, so I went to the school.  At 4 o'clock, one of the Cambodian teachers asked if I'd like to teach her class.  I had intended to teach just the one hour class and be done.  But as I am starting to realize, intentions are frequently a pointless endeavor in Cambodia.

I had arrived early in the afternoon so I first spent some time chatting with the staff, one of whom decided to put me to work by handing me a stack of about fifty test papers to mark and correct.  This ate up time VERY quickly.  While I was reviewing them, several staff members sat with me and scrutinized each of my corrections to try and pick up more English themselves.  The task given to the students was to list the letters of the alphabet up to "O" (no idea why they didn't go to "Z") and follow each letter with a word that started with that letter.  Some were pretty amazing with perfect spelling and often better handwriting than my own (though that is not that difficult).  Some had a mixture of English and Khmer letters.  And some were just random lines and dots.  The misspellings resulted in some funny moments.  "Ice cream" was a very popular choice.  But one of them had slightly misspelled it - "Lice cream".  As I marked it and laughed, the staff gave me puzzled looks.  So I drew a louse on a piece of paper.  One of the staff pointed and said, "Yes, spider!".  I shook my head.  "Lice".  I pointed to my head and started scratching. "LICE", I repeated.  They chuckled a little, but most likely just because I probably looked ridiculous scratching my head.  But after a few seconds one of them let out a big "AHHH" of recognition.  He turned around and excitedly explained to the others in Khmer which caused them all to double over in laughter.  Apparently, irony translates rather well.  

The first class was made up of about 15 older students, pretty similar in age and it seemed like their English was decent across the board.  The Cambodian English teacher (I really need to learn the staff names) handed me a lesson book which all the kids had, and showed me where they were.  So off we went.  The lesson covered possessives (***'s vs ***s') and articles ("a" vs "an" vs "some").  I diverged a few times during the hour when I found that they were missing some basic understanding about things like vowels and consonants that, as I mentioned previously were critical to understanding some parts of the lesson ("a" vs "an").  I also diverged a few times to work on pronunciation.  "V", "F", "R" and "TH"sounds appear to be particularly problematic for them.  On the plus side, they seemed to take tremendous delight in echoing me while I chanted "vuh vuh vuh, fuh fuh fuh, ruh ruh ruh".  Fun with phonetics.  

The second class was filled with about 60 kids.  That is not a typo.  This class was filled with 4-8 yr olds who streamed in almost endlessly and seemingly out of nowhere because they weren't even on the school grounds just 10 minutes earlier.  These kids were in Cambodian school during most of the day, but they don't learn English there so they come here after their regular school.  We started with numbers first for which they were pretty good.  They knew the game of BINGO so we played that (note to self: with a class size of 60, earplugs are recommended).  Then we did giant flashcards with photos of various animals.  They had clearly gone over these before because they at least knew the general sounds of the animal names.  But again, the same pronunciation issues came up so I worked on emphasizing certain sounds that they likely don't encounter in Khmer.  During this class, I discovered that the kids would learn a lot faster if I could compare an English word to a Khmer word.  For example they had initially had trouble with raccoon which came out sounding like wack or wahco.  So then it occurred to me that raccoon sounds a lot like one of the few phrases I know in Khmer - au kuhn, which means thank you.  When it finally dawned on them that I was saying something to them in Khmer, they caught on really quickly and the result sounded *much* better.  I suppose this means I should learn some more Khmer words.

As a side note, a total of about thirty students introduced themselves to me yesterday.  I tried my best to remember their names, but it's hopeless as I realized something.  Not a single one of them had the same name.  I *thought* I had a repeat name when one student introduced himself as what sounded to me like Savong.  "Ah! Savong! Like the school!", I said.  But he and several of his buddies all shook their heads in unison, so I had them spell it for me. "S-A-V-O-R-N".  Sigh.  From what I've seen, Cambodian names are pretty unique.  I have yet to come across the equivalent of John or David. I'd like to be able to address them individually, but I don't think that's likely to happen.  Maybe I can find a stack of "Hello. My name is..." labels and have them all write their names on it and stick it on their shirts.  Kidding...hmm, maybe that's not such a bad idea actually.  

The third class was a very mixed group.  They seemed to range from 13 all the way up into the 20's.  They also had the most difficult grammar lesson.  I tried, but I don't think more than one or two students, if even that, really understood it.  For sure, the younger ones were completely lost from the very first minute.  More to the point, I wondered how relevant it was and whether we were putting the cart before the horse.  Should I be trying to explain what a present continuous form of a verb is when their vocabulary and pronunciation still need a lot of work?   Maybe this is fine, I don't know.  Comments from those of you with experience in this?  

On the medical front, I also picked up my first patient yesterday.  One of the older students (20-something) heard that I was a doctor so he came over just before my third class to ask me about a skin rash.  His English was really quite good.  Good enough that I was able to get a short history from him before the class began.  Very itchy bumpy rash present for a week with no remission.  First appeared on his right forearm.  But now present on various parts of his trunk and legs.   I only looked at the rash on his right arm.  It was raised with some coalescence.  It didn't look red but his skin was pretty dark and the lighting in the classroom was poor.  No pustules or ulcers.  No fevers, no loss of appetite, no pain, no GI changes.  Never had this before in his life.  Nobody else around him has it.  The next class was starting so I told him to come see me in the clinic on Monday so I can get a better look, but I thought I'd throw this out there for you medical people.  I know you're dying to give me a differential so let's hear it, eh?  I'm going to try to figure out a way to get a tissue sample on Monday and try out the microscope.