Tepthida Restaurant on a Friday afternoon before the dinner hour

People own businesses for many reasons. Ely owns Tepthida Khmer because she has a vision. Her restaurant has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with soul. I surmised that when I met her last year and thanked her for donating a book to the school. She hadn’t known the book would land in my classroom and I’m sure she didn’t know that I teach an elective about Cambodia at the high school, and when I met up with her today she didn’t seem to remember me.

It didn’t matter. I talked to her about my class project and I experienced what I often experience when talking to Khmer adults; assent and silence. I still admit I don’t know what that means. When I’m interested in something or excited, I’m exuberant. But when faced with silence and assent, well, I just begin talking more.

The Khmer adults I know sometimes seem suspicious of me. Perhaps a study should be undertaken of two opposite cultures; Jews and Khmer. I continued talking.

And then Ely opened up. She explained her vision for her restaurant; healthy, carefully prepared traditional food, the sharing of a culture, an introduction to Cambodian cuisine, a tranquil atmosphere, the commencement of dialog and the unspoken vision of healing from a tragic past.

And so we agreed to work together on a small, and unusual experience and project for 33 high school students.

Artwork at Tepthida

In class, we did an exercise in mindfulness and this involved a discussion about anger and what to do with it. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests you breathe that anger in and out until it is transformed into something else. I look at the prolific works of Holocaust painter Samuel Bak and see anger transformed, but externally on the canvas. I like the idea of breathing stress and anger in and out, but I also like expressing myself with my hands and see how the two of those things do not go together.

Last Sunday, at the forum for Cambodian genocide, I watched grown men whose pain had not been transformed by breathing or by American success, trying to grasp how Khamboly Dy, a young man and scholar of Cambodia could understand what had happened before he was born. He was also asked if he spoke Khmer well, because oral language, memory, and the resultant storytelling are crucial to Cambodian history.  How can a survivor  trust a young man who speaks English so well, who didn’t live during that time, and whose knowledge is based on study and scholarship? What can you do other than express your pain in the form of a 10 minute question?

In the last two weeks, I have had two guest speakers in my classroom. One is a man named Samoueth who told his story which included cannibalism and horror upon horror. The other speaker, told of the loss of more than half of his family including his mother and father. I told my students they had given each man a gift by listening.

I’m unsure how a survivor of unspeakable cruelty heals; but my best guess is through breathing and telling his story.

Young scholar Khamboly Dy (wearing tie) at Cambodia Genocide Forum, the paintings of Bou Meng are in the background

The story is this: I went to Phnom Penh in July, felt frustrated with the teacher training, and opened my mouth only to hear these words come out: “You know what would be great? If you (Chamroeun) came to the US and worked with me in my classroom for a couple of months.”  And no sooner had that come out of my mouth, then I invited a second person to come and work with me. Perhaps I was hoping for a reality check from Youk Chhang when I asked him permission to allow his two DC-CAM staffers to come to work with me, but all I got from him was an enthusiastic “When?”

And the when is Wednesday, right in the middle of January.

Chamrouen at the training this summer. She will arrive in Boston on Wednesday!

Thank goodness for Phala! I immediately enlisted her help in my harebrained scheme and she has stepped right in. She is providing housing for both Rasy and Chamrouen, picking them up at the airport and providing for their smooth integration into life in Lowell.

And what will they be doing here? The plan is that they will be working with me in my classroom next semester when I begin teaching my elective Cambodia:Culture and Conflict. They will be observing me teach, learning about methods of genocide education, and also teaching their own lessons. In addition, Rasy and Chamrouen will be my Cambodia experts in residence. It should be a fantastic experience for my students and for me.

Mushroom foraging has become a popular hobby in the US where mushroom clubs are mushrooming like crazy appealing to foodies and natural food lovers alike. According to the San Francisco Tribune, South East Asians are lovers of  mushroom foragers in the United States and unfortunately they also account for about half of the mushroom poisonings reported each year. It seems that a common and safe SE Asian mushroom (paddy-straw) is almost identical to the ‘Death Cap’ mushroom, which I would suppose is appropriately named. Since the death cap mushroom does not exist in SE Asia, foragers are often fooled into thinking the deadly mushroom is safe. The mushrooms the women were collecting were NOT death caps, and although I was not about to eat them, I am almost certain they were safe.

After a bit of conversation with the women, they realized I was the teacher who had visited Wat Bhuddabhavana with my students. They invited me to the Wat and although I demurred, they insisted I come and have some water. Cleo and I walked down the hill, spoke briefly to a monk, got some water and went back to our walk.

I  stopped to sit in the sun while Cleo lounged contentedly nearby.  I read a bit, and took some pictures of the turtles sunning.

A favorite place for turtles and teachers

The pond where Cleo and I sat to get some sun

As we walked back to the car, I looked high and low for mushrooms and all I could find was this tree stump with some beginnings of fungi growing.

Can you see the small mushrooms growing?

The dog days of summer turn into the goat days of summer on the John Sloane farm!

I have found myself wracking my brain trying to think of something about which to blog.  But there is little happening on the teacher’s journey front.

I am soon to write my blog post about cell phone use, but I am still in the research phase; looking for different points of view about the use or banishment of cell phones in the classroom.

But I did have a journey to Cape Cod yesterday, where I caught up with old teacher friends. Brenda Sloane, retired LHS teacher, invited a group of us to her farm in Falmouth. There we did the things teachers do; we talked, we walked, we swam, and we ate.

Old friends from Lowell High School. Only two of us still work there.

1) Teachers get to think about, talk about, and teach about big ideas with students who challenge us.

She kept me on my toes!

2) Teachers get to travel for free.

In Alabama on a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 2006

3) We get to have our pictures taken with possible future presidents.

If Barack Obama hadn't already done it, I'm pretty sure Artur Davis, Congressman from Alabama, would be the first Black President

4) We make real human connections with people who we might not have had the chance to meet if they or their children weren’t in our classrooms.

Adaliz and her Mom, spring open house 2009

5) We get to go to the prom every year!

...and our students love to have their pictures taken with us...

6) We don’t have to sit at our desks all day.

Nothing like a walk in the woods with a monk to relieve our cynicism

7) We are able to be there while our kids grow up.

Mia and Emma a few years back; school vacation week

8 ) Our students often become our teachers.

He taught me a thing or two!

9) And sometimes they become our lifelong friends.

Jeff and Vannak: skydiving 2008

10) We have generous amounts of vacation time where we get to refuel and rejuvenate so we can come back into the classroom and express our humanity.

...The End...

Suspicious baby

The sleeping baby in the photo above belongs to a shopkeeper in the Russian market in Phnom Penh. Last year, I had gone to the Russian market with Dany, Thida, and Sophea Mot (the famous MOT sisters) and Kim Cheng (aka, KC). The girls took me to their favorite shopkeeper and jewelry seller so I could buy some necklaces for my children. The shopkeeper was very nice, the girls had a good time in the little stall, and I purchased two necklaces with the first letters of my childrens’ names in Khmer. I had kept the woman’s card and planned to return there this year so I could purchase some more silver jewelry. I went to the market on a Sunday, but alas, I had left the card in my hotel room. Still, I thought I could find the shop if I searched the market for a corner stall (I remembered the corner) and the initial necklaces which most shops don’t seem to have. I was almost finished shopping when I came upon the necklaces in a corner shop.

I went up the shopkeeper and said I was looking for the necklaces. I told her I had bought some last year when I was shopping with the Mot sisters and KC. Of course she remembered me! (Who wouldn’t?) I asked her if she remembered KC and she said, “Oh yes, wasn’t she very thin?” Now, I love KC, and she is small, but well,  she is not very thin! But honestly, if you are guessing about a Cambodian girl and you guess very thin, that will usually work.  At this point, I was becoming very suspicious. I asked her again about the sisters, and she assured me she knew the sisters and she knew KC. I said, “Hmmm, I remember your being bigger.” And then she showed me the baby. Last year, she was pregnant with that little duplicitous dumpling of a child. Of course, I said to myself, a baby would explain the bigger woman I remember. After all, it was about a thousand degrees in the market, I had been wandering through the maze of stalls for way too long and I just wanted to buy a bracelet or two,.

I knew that this was very fishy, but I didn’t want to know. I picked out a couple of bracelets; she gave me the price and they were the same price I paid last year for the bracelets at another stall. I bought two. Then I asked her if I could take a picture of her and a picture of the baby to show the Mot sisters and KC.

The shopkeeper who "remembered" me from last year!

I left with a strange feeling about the whole exchange. I went back to my hotel and searched for the card. Of course, the card from last year did not match the shop from this year. This lady is a perfect stranger to me, the Mot sisters, and KC. I was a sucker.  I certainly overpaid both last year and this year. Not only did this innocent looking woman make me feel bad about my purchase this year, she made me feel bad about my purchase of two silver bracelets in Siem Reap over a year ago.

In the orchid garden...with pots

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