A Pedagog and a Party

For those of you who wait for each new blog post, I apologize: I worked on the following post last week, saved it to finish later when a sleeping child awoke, and then the week got away from me and it never got posted. So, a week later...For the past two and a half months, we've been studying Khmer in a classroom setting, Ryan at the Institute of Foreign Languages, and I at the Khmer School of Language. I'm finally getting around to introducing you to Socheata, my language teacher. She's a student herself - after teaching at KSL in the morning, she studies Geography (to be a teacher) at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in the afternoon. She's young, full of energy and lots of fun. We have a good time together, and she's a good teacher.

Two Wednesdays ago, we had the privilege of being invited to a neighbor's birthday party. The birthday girl turned ONE, and it was quite the party! Lots of people, lots of good food ("Bine-hoy" - rice noodles eaten with fried pork, pineapples, cucumbers, etc., wrapped in lettuce and dipped in a yummy sauce, and delicious skewers of seasoned meat eaten with a spicy "salad"), lots of children's birthday party songs on karaoke, and then, lots of cake. Traditionally, Cambodians didn't celebrate birthdays (we've heard of people that don't really know when they were born, but consider themselves a year older on Khmer New Year), but the birthday thing has certainly caught on in recent years (at least in more well-off circles). It was very fun to hang out with the neighbors gathered there, and to learn to know some of them better.

In photos above, Ree-ZA (in green dress and party hat) checks out her cake after guests feasted, then admired the tower of cakes.