Closing Remarks and Reflection

As I'm sitting in the airport in Korea and reflecting back on my time in Cambodia, I'm feeling a lot of different emotions. I feel like I've been in Cambodia for so long, but at the same time everything still feels so new. When I think back to my first week, how I knew so little about its amazing people and history and how things as simple as buying food at the market and getting into town seemed so novel to me, I smile as I realize how much I've learned in the last month. I've decided to make a list of these things (in no particular order):

- How to communicate with people that don't speak English

- How to ride a moto (motorcycle), ride on the back of a moto, and drive in a country with little to no traffic laws (in traffic too!)

- How people don't walk from place to place in the city - they drive their moto instead

- How if you walk in the city, you will be harassed by tuk tuk drivers trying to give you a ride

- That tuk tuks are the main taxi service - basically a moto with a small carriage hatched on the back

- That tuk tuk drivers are some of the more educated people (most speak some English)

- To negotiate the price of a tuk tuk before getting in (I learned that lesson the hard way)

- Directions to Liger from Phnom Penh and (roughly) how to get around the city

- How to make toast in a frying pan on an induction stove (and how an induction stove works!)

- How to say thank you, thank you very much, egg, chicken egg, duck egg, and raw egg in Khmer and a little bit about Khmer names

- What fair market prices are for eggs, chicken, pork, fruit, and vegetables

- That 4000 riel is equal to 1 dollar and that U.S. dollars are used more than riels 

- That Cambodian children love running up to foreigners and saying “hello” in English while waving

- How good Khmer food is (and how to make a few dishes!)

- That Khmer people eat rice and variations of meat and vegetables for pretty much every meal of the day

- How you don't need to buy mangoes from the market when you have mango trees outside your apartment :)

- How pepper is grown (and how spicy Kampot pepper is!)

- History of the Khmer Empire and information about the temples in Siem Reap

- Recent history of Cambodia and information about its modern day government

- How greatly Cambodia has suffered from the actions of other countries and the Khmer Rouge

- How corrupt the government is, how rich the rich are, and how poor the poor are

- How it is disrespectful for Khmer children to show that they know more than their parents

- How young Khmer people must ask older members of their family before making even the simplest of decisions

- What people are willing to do in order to get themselves or their children an education

- How motivated to learn kids are when education is seen as a privilege and not a right

- How welcoming the ex-Pat community is in Phnom Penh

- How to teach programming to middle school students

- More information about coding in python

- How to give good instructions for assignments 

- How the kids do much better with oral instructions rather than written instructions because their listening and speaking skills are much better than their reading skills from speaking English 24-7  

- The names of the 17 students in our class and a handful of students outside of our class

- The names of the education staff and stories about their lives

- That the kids really enjoy American pop music (and signing it)

- That there are a huge amount of people that don’t know how to swim in Cambodia and die from drowning

- How supportive and welcoming of a community that Liger is

- How the kids at Liger see each other more as brothers and sisters than as classmates

- How good the kids are at working together and asking each other for help

To say the least, my time at Liger has been an incredible learning experience for me. Many of the things above I’ve learned just by living in Cambodia for a month and travelling around the country, and I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to do so. But, other lessons above I’ve learned from incredible people whom I’ve had the great fortune to meet, including ex-Pats in Phnom Penh, our tour guide in Siem Reap, and of course, the kids and staff at Liger. I think I’m more grateful to have met them than to have been able to see the country, because I know that the people are what I’m going to remember most about Cambodia. Never before have I felt so fulfilled to share my knowledge with other people. The kids have a curiosity and a motivation about them that just made me want to keep sharing stories from my life, facts I’ve accumulated over the years, and my opinions about the world. They would ask questions like “How is the U.S. different than Cambodia?” and “How are the people different?” that are tough to answer and would really make me think. When some of the kids asked those questions, I would give shorter, wittier answers like “well, you definitely don’t see entire families of 3 or 4 driving around on motos”, but then for the more thoughtful kids, I tried to come up with meaningful answers that would help them on their quest to broaden their perspective of the world, which challenged me to think deep.

The kids also show an appreciation that makes my heart melt. Even just for regular, everyday things like helping them throw a Frisbee, shoot a basket, or clear the dishes for lunch, they would always say a grateful “thank you”. And when I went on after school trips with them to go ice skating, see the bats at Wat Phnom, and bike riding on Silk Island, the kids were so happy that we could come along and made sure that we had a great time on the trip. One of my favorite memories was when I offered to let the girl sitting next to me on the bus trip back from Silk Island, Samady, sleep on my lap. She had drifted off to sleep in an uncomfortable position, and when I offered for her to sleep on my lap, she very shyly laid her head down and drifted into a deep sleep. She thanked me so much when we got back to Liger, and after that, I felt like we shared a connection when I would see her around school. She was so shy and cute, and it made me really happy to get her out of her shell.

The kids especially showed their appreciation on my final day at Liger, when they sang a song for me, showered me with gifts including a picture frame of the class, two handmade bracelets (one of them has orange liger stamps that they 3D printed), one handmade keychain, and handwritten cards. Two of the students, Ketya and Ratanak, even surprised me during the all school assembly on Friday when they presented a multiplayer game that they had coded in scratch, and they had me come up to the front of the room to play the game and told me to press the space bar to shoot the soccer ball. When I pressed the spacebar, my name and then a slide with a letter thanking me for everything and a picture of me that they found on Google appeared on the screen. The other teachers were saying that this is the first time they’ve seen Ketya and Ratanak do something like that, and how even they teared up. A couple of the other kids have emailed me scratch projects where they coded up a thank you letter. I feel bittersweet happiness thinking about it because I’m going to miss seeing their smiling faces so much.