I’m headed into my 3rd week here in Cambodia, and
it’s been a surprisingly easy transition.
Even my boss sent me a message just the other saying, “I’m really
impressed by how easily you’ve jumped in and transitioned here in Cambodia!” (Okay, I’ll stop bragging now…hehe).
As you know, I started work on day #2 and it’s been a fully
positive experience so far. It’s quite
interesting actually because giving private in-home/office English lessons to
super elite and corporate clients wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my next
job. In the States I taught an entirely
different demographic of students, so to be honest, this really is pretty near
the LAST type of teaching position I would have pictured myself doing. But, with all that said, I’m really enjoying
it! I get to travel all over the city
and visit places/meet people that I never would have otherwise. And, not to make all my other teacher friends
jealous, but the prep time is seriously minimal, which is a HUGE deal because
the planning that goes into most classes is typically very extensive and time
consuming. If you’re a teacher, you know
EXACTLY what I’m talking about!
I have also been very lucky with transportation too because
the first few classes my Mr. Spy Boss-Man came and picked me up at my hotel and
dropped me back off when I was finished (just to ease me into the transition so
I wouldn’t quit, I’m sure). Then a few
days into it, I was instructed to go up to any tuk tuk driver for a ride and
then call my Mr. Spy Boss-Man on the phone and hand the phone over to the tuk
tuk driver so he could give him directions to where I needed to go since Mr. (Australian)
Spy Boss-Man speaks fluent Khmer. And
what do you know? Random tuk tuk driver
understands the directions perfectly (which happens, well, NOT so frequently
here it turns out… usually the drivers will say, ‘yes! Yes! I know where that
is’, and then you’ll be driving around the city for who knows how long because
they’ll never actually admit that they don’t know where to go, which I actually
enjoy because it’s a very comical adventure, although it really pisses people
off that have been here for a longer period of time and I’m sure after a while
I’d get irritated too), and then my driver takes me home when I’m finished J But, like I mentioned, I’ve been really lucky
because I happened to find (completely by chance!) the best tuk tuk driver on
earth – I’m not biased of course! – and lined it up so that he drives me to my
different work locations everyday. And since
I use the same driver, he now knows the addresses of every location I go to. So when he takes me home at night, I just
tell him what time I need to be picked up the next day to go to work and then I
just give him a short description of where I need to go (“the BIG house” or “the
Korean restaurant” or “the hotel”…), and then he takes me and picks me up at
the designated time, and I have yet to get lost even once with Sarim, my amazing
tuk tuk driver! Of course, if he’s ever
sick in the future I might have problems because I don’t even know exactly
where the locations are that I work at because I just rely on him to get me
there.
Besides that, I have a whole range of different level
students, which is a nice mix, from very beginning level to advanced, and an
age span from 8 years old to 50 years old.
It’s very entertaining J I think once the beginning of the year rolls
around I’ll do this on the side and work at a regular school full-time, but for
now I’m enjoying every minute of it!
