Life and times in Phnom Penh

Hey all this is a post that will help you to understand the day to day life living in Phnom Penh. A typical Day:This is how my days go from Monday to Friday. I get up at 5:45am then take a finish marking homework, take a shower, get dressed and gulp down a can of UFC coffee. My driver meets me at 6:55 - 7am and off across the city I go to the school. To explain, I live in downtown Phnom Penh the school is in the Toul Kork district which is about 20-25min. away. I usually arrive at school at 7:20am. I change out of my jeans and have just enough time to dash up the six flights of stairs to the teachers room and drop my stuff off. Then dash back down the six flights of stairs across the road to the Primary school (K-3. From 7:30am til 8:20am I teach grade one english. This truely is a test to my non-morning person attitudes, as I have to be happy, energetic and patient. Thank God I love children! Then at 8;20-8:40 there is a breakfast break, so back to the other building up 6 flights of stairs again and into the teachers room. I usually don't have my first meal until lunch, so in this break I talk with the other teachers. Then at 8:40-9:30am I head back down 4 flights of stairs to the second floor where I teach a mixed gr.4-9 class. I really do not enjoy this class as there is such a mixed age group that it does become rather difficult at times. Then up two flights to my 9:40-10:30am class...Grade 10! These guys make me laugh, they are a good bunch of teenagers but alas they are still teenagers and no matter where you are in the world when you are 16 your life is coming to an end at all times. Then from 10:30-11am I return to the teachers room and do some marking, bitching and gossiping with some of the other teachers. At 11am my moto driver picks me up from the school and I will usually go to Lakeside (backpackers district) for lunch. I go to either the Flying elephant or to The lazy Gecko. I know the owners of both places so its a good chill place to eat and have nap time. Luckily part of being shafted with the 7:30am class means that I have a four hour lunch break 10:30am til 2:30pm. Then Samuth (my moto driver) will pick me up and take me back to the school, I try and get back at 2pm so that I can hang out with another one of the teachers a Canadian named Tony for about a half hour. At 2:30-3:20pm I teach the afternoon mixed gr.4-8 class, I like this one though as I only have 6 students and they are all girls. Then at 3:30-4:20pm I teach my afternoon grade tens, in this class I have 5 boys. *sighs* Even though it is my smallest class it is my hardest class out of them all. The reason being is that they are all boys and I am a woman...backwards thinking I know but this is the way that some of these boys have been raised to think. They will out right ignore me, as is normal if you don't want to hear something you just ignore the person saying it. It's normal here... so if I come home and just ignore you when you are talking to me I am sorry but it is something I have had to get used to doing. It really does help walking down the streets of PP trust me. Alrighty back to my days, so at 4:20-5pm I am in the teachers room to be available to any student who may need to speak to me on a problem as well I do some marking in this time. Then at 5pm Samuth picks me up again and takes me back to Angkorchey (my guesthouse) where he waits for me to dash up the 6 flights of stairs, to my room, get changed into my civies. Then I take some of my marking to my little restaurant The Kings Court. Its a rather nice place on riverside with decent food and good prices. I usually arrive at about 5:45pm and work on homework til about 6:45pm. Then I spend until 7:45pm teaching some of the staff conversational english. Then at about 8pm I head off to my local pub, the ginger moneky. Here I have two routines depending on the day, ex.1 I arrive hang out with some friends have a few beers and play pool. ex.2 I arrive and sit with the guard of the Monkey and teach him english, while of course drinking some beer. Then I usually arrive home by 10:30-11:30pm and off to bed. A usual weekend:Wake up at 10am ... shop, chill out all day then party all night. Sundays I go for breakfast with some of my Khmer friends, get a manicure and pedicure then finish the last of my marking. Go to the Monkey and play some pool. So that is a usual week for me, I don't really watch TV anymore and if you want to learn to a good work ethic this is the place to do it! Unfortunatly there are a few draw backs to being here... you need to find ways to de-stress or you will explode. Hence going out and having a few beers every night is not a bad plan, and my pool is getting to be kick ass so every one better watch themselves when I get back. The good thing about teaching adults after school is that I am learning alot of Cambodian. So far I can say, Hello, How are you, I am happy, angry, sad, hungry and tired. I can count easily to 1000, not so easily to infinity. I can ask how much things are, where is the toilet, thank you, I am sorry... Lots is what I am trying to say. Lets see new news, things are going well and I have a good group of people I hang out with now so I am feeling alot better about being here. Last night the Ginger Monkey had a great pub crawl/party called the Amazing Race, I was well wasted last night. It was set up just like the A.R. you get on TV. So you had clues that you had to figure out, challenges at each bar, and a cyclo. It was a blast! I got in my first moto accident, I AM FINE!, it was really minor. My knee though is rather large and funky coloured at the moment. But the way I look at it is... I'm not dead and it was bound to happen. Everyone I know has been in one with in the first few months of their arrival. It's like an initiation and I passed. I am thinking about just not finding an apartment and staying on at the guesthouse I am in, even though I don't have a kitchen it is clean, quiet and extremely safe. I've also become very good friends with the family that runs this place, to the point where I am now called cousin. Basically I've been in a weird way adopted by them. It's nice though, I'll sit and watch Khmer TV with them in the lobby they laugh at me because they know I can't understand so they help me out. The only problem is that sometimes they disapprove of my choices in moto's and will glare at the moto til he leaves quickly, it is rather funny to watch. Anyways I have another big post on disk that I will put up tommorow from school that is entitled Things you need to know, before living/visiting here. Love and Miss you all greatly!!! Jax