Phases.

Some people might think that I shouldn’t be counting down, but I like keeping track of things, and this week marks a quarter of our time here complete. This realization fills me with an odd sense of relief; I have made it this far, and can do this again three more times.

Since my first day of kindergarten to college, I’ve always been on the quarter school system. There has always been a sense of relief after finishing your first quarter, and before you know it second quarter is over and then the entire year. Each passing quarter I consider a phase of my academic year: first quarter I’m driven and have a fresh load of energy from the summer, but by the last quarter, I just want to be outside and studies often come later on the list of priorities.

Similar to school, I'm sure somewhere along the line of preparation, someone said that you would go through multiple phases as a student missionary. 

The initial culture sock was expected. The heat, the culture, the fact that I was going to be away from home for nine months; everything was so new and different. I remember coming home from the very first day of school, a day where I only observed, and thinking that I was way in over my head. I remember being near tears as I looked down at my watch; it was already 5 p.m., I wasn’t home yet, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. I also remember the first time I rode my bike home from school. Scared to ride our bikes down the middle of the road like the rest of the Cambodians did, we waited on the side of the road for almost 5 minutes before there were no oncoming cars in either direction. All of these “firsts” contributed to the overwhelming feeling that came with culture shock.

A phase that I didn’t expect to feel was the desire to have chosen a call somewhere else. Five days after landing in Cambodia, we turned around and got back on a plane headed to Bangkok, Thailand. I had always said that I did not want to go to a city to be a student missionary. For some reason I thought Phnom Penh was going to be a little less “city like,” but I was wrong. To say I was jealous of the SMs in Thailand, even in an extremely large city, is a great understatement. The air-conditioned classrooms alone made me envy their location over mine. Honestly, still more than 2 months in, part of me wishes I would’ve taken a call there; though being in Cambodia is building my character and making me a much stronger person.

After the first bit of culture shock and wanting to be somewhere else for the year, I moved into this awkward middle phase. Though it was only a couple weeks ago, I honestly don’t remember how I was feeling. I counted down the days of the week, just like I had been, participated in my first set of parent teacher conferences as the teacher and graded lots of papers. I was going through the motions of being a SM teacher, having hard days here and there, and good days on the others.

A week and a half or two weeks ago, the phase I call the “I don’t want to be here" phase rolled in. I couldn’t sleep, days seemed to take months, and every moment I wasn’t helping a student or talking to someone, I was thinking about being at college, living my normal life, instead of being a SM. It was rough, to say the least. Up until this point, I hadn’t really gotten to the point yet that I seriously missed my friends and family back home. Of course I missed them, but for the last three years, I’ve lived away from home and this didn’t seem too much different. Wanting to be home or in Walla Walla are both very uncharacteristic feelings for me. Yet the deep desire to be back, living my normal life, consumed my every thought. Too much time sitting in my apartment and overthinking life at home contributed to this desire to have everyday life back. For the first time I realized that life back in the states was moving on, and it was moving on without me. I’ve always known that this was going to happen, but that actual feeling was more than anything I had predicted. Coming to terms with these feelings was equally difficult.

I was extremely driven and just as much overwhelmed my first quarter of college. Winter quarter was neither good nor bad. Spring quarter was filled with psych classes from Egbert, struggling to focus long enough to finish my homework, planning for this year, and spontaneous adventures extremely uncharacteristic of me.

My first year of college and my first quarter of my SM experience have a lot of similarities. Just as I made it through my first year of college, with the focused drive of fall quarter and the spontaneous adventures of spring quarter, I have made it through my first quarter as a student missionary. Through all the ups and downs I have reached, in my mind, a big milestone in my time overseas.

First quarter: Complete.

-Alex

Baby Steps.

               September 10^th I stood in front of my classroom. It was a monday and incidentally it was my first day of teaching. Twenty-three mostly bouncy students, from ages 9 to 19…versus me, a 20-year-old student-turned-pretend-teacher. Apprehensive would be close to the correct word to describe my emotions, however I would be more apt to use clueless.

         Attendance went over easiest, even including each one of my awful mispronunciations of my students’ foreign (to me) names. A few would quietly smirk and giggle while most were quite hasty to correct me. I did not mind being corrected. After all, these next nine months were going to be as much of a learning experience for myself as they were going to be for my students.

          Like all of the Christian schools I have attended, after attendance came prayer. “Does anyone have any prayer requests?……silence…..Does anyone know what a prayer request is?.....more silence……Okay…does anyone have anything they would like to pray for….?…..silence yet again. Alright, well…I would really like to pray for my brother today. He lives in America. I miss him and would really like him to have a good day.” Half of the kids still watched me with blank stares, while the other half continued to have their own conversations loudly in Khmer. “Would anyone like to say prayer today?” I figured asking was worth a shot, what else did I have to lose? To no surprise I had zero volunteers, so Alex or I said morning prayer, and I was okay with that.

          Little did I know at the time that 21 out of the 23 students in my ESL classroom are Buddhist with little to no previous education of Jesus, or my God. Originally I had thought that the language barrier was the factor holding the kids back from responding to my questions….but I quickly realized that with most, I would be needing to begin at ground zero…or with the raw fundamentals of what it means to be a Christian.
             Well, we have got to start somewhere. I tried to recall back to when I was first learning about God….shoot, that probably happened while I was in the womb…..so I then tried to recollect some of the first memories I have learning about Jesus Christ. What stuck……? SONGS STUCK! Eh songs.…I knew trying to teach Bible songs on the first day was going to be rough, but after all most beginnings are.

Learning "Jesus Loves Me"

          Singing and dancing and TRYING to teach “Father Abraham” was pretty ridiculous looking I am sure… and just as anticipated was anything but a success. I then tried to come up with a song that included a tad more repetition in hopes that the kids would be able to pick up faster…. OH! “I’ve Got the Joy!” Easy AND repetitive, I figured I had hit the nail on the head. I began to sing….and to my pleasant surprise so did THEY! So quickly the room lit up! The students began to sing along and were even asking to sing on their own. For a while I began to feel pretty good about the level of enthusiasm the class suddenly seemed to have. The energy level was quite the opposite from throughout the last song. I was pleased.....but not for long.
           After a couple of minutes in, I looked over at a couple of my “more behaved” students and noticed the appalled and almost offended look on their faces. They continually whispered back and forth looking completely embarrassed and terrified at the same time. Of course their conversation caught my attention, and while the rest of the classroom continually SCREAMED, “JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY” I walked over to the two whispering and asked what the problem was. “Tee-cha….we cannot tell you……” they replied with blushed cheeks. “Sure you can, what is the problem?” I asked a small bit more concerned this time around.  Still they shook their heads, mortified to say anything more. Finally after a few minutes of continually prodding, a different student who had been shouting “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, joy,” probably began to feel sorry for me. He came up to explain to me that the English pronunciation of “joy” is the same as the pronunciation of the F-word in Khmer. Oh, this all makes so much more sense now.

            Now, unwittingly flaunting my own pair of intensely blushed cheeks, I told the class we would be learning a new song from that point on. SO, with a few....minor.... set backs on the way…we FINALLY landed upon the classic, ever popular, “Jesus Loves Me” the clapping, snapping, more catchy version of the song. Although the first time around none of my students sang along, a couple began trying to get the actions down. Then, of course, the bell rang and I had to laugh over what a fail the entire class period had been.

Today.

               Today is the 24th of October and as I look back, September 10 seems just as embarrassing now as it did then. However, it is not my first day of teaching any more. Today, on the 24th of October, I can stand in front of my twenty-three mostly bouncy students from ages 9 to 19 as a student-turned-pretend-teacher and pronounce..most..of their names perfectly. I can stand here and have my class remind me to say prayer in the morning. On good days, I even get volunteers. I can stand in front and when I ask if they have anything they would like to pray for, I get responses. The kids will shout out TONS of prayer requests, even wanting to include me, their Tee-CHA. I can stand in the front of my classroom and hear the students sing, almost shout, “Jesus Loves Me” and more than not I can see them actually enjoying knowing all of the words and motions. I can stand here and really see growth when I look close enough.
             Although at times, through the hell-hot heat and through screaming kids bouncing off the walls, every day may seem as hectic as the first. Although at times I may feel that as a class we have gotten absolutely nowhere…I have to remember that we, in fact, have. It may have taken baby steps to get to where we now are, but we have made progress....and I could not be happier.

-Amber