Training Classes, Swollen Legs, Dragon Fruit and White People are Good Luck

Monday began my training classes to getting a TESOL certificate.  Every morning we leave the hotel at 8:20 and take a Tuk Tuk to Pannasastra University of Cambodia.  The school is very small, but not many people take classes or can afford classes there.  One of the surprising things to see is all the monks taking classes.  Apparently some monks are people who had committed minor enough crimes in order to choose "monkhood" over jail time.  And monks get free education.  My class has 20 people, which is a rather large groups (usually they are only 12 people or so).  

Each class we have to present a new type of lesson such as a "Warmer" for the class (something to get them focused on the topic at hand, an "Activity" and a couple different "Choraling" exercises (where the students repeat new words or sentences over and over again).  It's a bit nerve racking as I have never taught a full class before, but I managed.  The first day I got one B and the rest C's (which are Satisfactory).  The second day I got mostly B's and a couple C's (no one has gotten any A's yet, and I have seen people get D's).  Tomorrow we have to present a Transition into a type of Reading exercise with a made up story (mine has to do with being robbed) for Intermediate Level High School boys/girls.  Sounds easier than it is because most of the time there is no textbooks to tell you what subjects you need to teach next, which words they don't know yet, what type of sentences they need to learn and which sentence types do they need to learn.

Grammar.... I hate you.  That is all.

I have never drank so much water in my life than here in Cambodia.  My legs get really swollen after sitting in a hard wooden seat for 7 hours or so.  When I wake up they are fine but after a long day it sucks.  We get an hour and half for lunch so we get to try a lot of local restaurants.  I have tried a Japanese hot pot all you can eat place (very good), a Vietnamese place (also very good) and an Italian pizzeria (good but I would probably only eat there once because pizza has a lot of carbs, but the pizza was similar to New York thin crust pizza I was told).  One place called Happy Burger sells Happy Pizza... Yes, marijuana pizza, so we try to stay away from there.  It's pretty windy here so the humidity isn't too bad, but it hasn't rained real good for awhile, so the air is very bad and my throat is beginning to hurt.

One of the strangest things is the local touching my hair when I pass our trying to get me to touch their babies.  I was told that white people are seen as good luck, so when a local sees a foreigner walking buy they want to get our attention... Easiest way is to use their children.  The children are super cute and most of the time partially naked or riding on a motto.  Sometimes the kids wave back other times they are scared and cry, the parents try to force them to stare at us even when they don't want to.

I ate some dragon fruit and it was pretty good.  Mine was little too ripe so it wasn't as tart as I would have liked but the texture reminded me of a soft potato and the taste is like a kiwi but less sour.  I love how vibrant the outside is and when you peel it its very pink, but once you get to the meat of the fruit its perfectly white with tiny black seeds everywhere.

On Friday we have a test on Grammar and Phonetics but everything is open book so hopefully I do well, but I don't think anyone will Fail unless they don't try or miss classes.  I also go to Angkor Wat on Friday after the test about a 8-10 hour drive (thank god I did long bus rides with the Blue Devils or I would hate my life lol).  On the way there we stop at a place to go to the bathroom and they sell fried tarantula's, snake, and scorpions.  I am going to try them.  My roommate will be my Russian friend.