Better yet? {fmf}

Five Minute Friday link up time! 

This week the word is BETTER.

"Are you better?"

Soon after we got married I felt like my husband was lying to me. He was sick with a cold. At one point I asked him if he was better. He said yes. So the next day when he was still obviously sick I felt betrayed.

 "Hey, I thought you said you were better?"

It turned out he thought I was asking if he was better as in, not as bad as before. In his native language, Khmer there is a word "more good"/ "gooder". But I actually wanted to ask if he was completely healed already. We speak English and most of the time I forget he only learnt it as an adult.

We kept laughing about that misunderstanding and referring to it over the next few years. Little did we know it would feature in our conversations even more as in our 5th year of marriage he developed a chronic illness. The first 2 years he was debilitated and mostly not diagnosed. But these days we know how to live with it. We are enjoying out a new normal as we celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary.

He is never going to be completely sick-free until the Final Healing, but some days are not as bad than others. Better but not better.

Out with baby days

Our younger toddler is growing up! First proper toothbrush today, and yesterday her first moto helmet. Her "words"are starting to sound more like words now. Just this morning she said "door", and this week some of her new words include spoon, ball, more, sit, cheese.
She already can say mummy and daddy words, as well as two and three in both languages and"chicken" and "cooked rice"in Khmer thanks to a recent visit from her Cambodian grandma!
She can also say poo, wee, fish and please.

raising bilingual kids

"Ask Grandma if she wants to come in." I said to my toddler today as his Khmer Grandma stood outside the front door.

He turned to her and did just what I asked in Khmer! I was surprised and impressed.

He speaks to me in English so it's hard for me to know what his Khmer is like.

He often goes on church trips and outings where everyone else is Khmer, so that's when he gets to hear a lot of Khmer, when I'm not there.

Just in that moment today it was nice to see that he understood me in English, and he knew to speak Khmer to Grandma, and he knew how to say it in Khmer.

So far it feels like it's just kind of happened , our kids are being exposed to two languages. But recently I've been chatting to a friend in a similar family situation and feeling like we need to make an effort to make sure the kids have some Khmer language exposure at this point in their lives.

We're raising Khmer kids in Cambodia with the one Khmer parent, so it should be easy, right?

English is so important to Cambodians so many people know it, even some toddlers at church seem to know English and speak it with their parents.  Apart from the government schools it seems like most schools are in English. My friend has been searching high and low all over town to find a school with a Khmer program.

It seems like reading to and singing to our kids comes naturally to many parents from English speaking countries, but its not such a big thing for Cambodians.

There are less books and less literacy around to start with, unlike where I come from most people can read and write and it's really important to us. We've been reading books to our kids since they were babies, some other expats gave me their old board books they had for their kids. We have made an effort to seek out some Khmer kids books, and we read those too. But in volume its never going to compare to all the amazing kids books in English.

And singing- so many songs in English to sing with and for kids. Including the alphabet song- so long before you actually start reading you already know the alphabet. There is an alphabet sort-of song ish in Khmer, our toddler has been learning it too, but it doesn't seem to have the same place in the culture.

I've been asking around and searching for Khmer kids songs, I haven't really come up with that much. A friend has offered to teach us some she translated from English, so that will be fun! And another friend directed us to some songs made by a project to teach health, they are also fun and easy to listen to. But so far I haven't found anything like our nursery rhymes.

Language learning

Sunday morning show pile!

"I'm beautiful!" the toddler sometimes yells out when he gets out of the bath. If he were speaking Khmer it would make more sense as the word for "clean" and "beautiful" are the same.

He is learning to speak both languages, and sometimes we see that he is learning the right context for each. Before the baby was born I remember he saw Soeun riding up on the moto. He turned to me and said "Daddy!" then turned to his Cambodian grandma and said "Ba!"

The other day he fell of his bike and started laughing, but then it turned into loud cries. THe day after Grandma was remembering this and talking about what happened (in Khmer of course). He then turned to me and told the story in English, and acted his crying/laughing out.

Cooking/language exchange

Last week some girls from church came over to cook pizza, the week before we did cake. After making pancakes in English group they wanted to learn some other western food. Its been a great way to get to know them, and to learn new words and use my Khmer language, and for them to practice English too.

New daily discipline

I've been trying to find a Khmer TV show to watch regularly to help my language skills. About a week ago I asked a Khmer friend what she watches. She told me she likes a Korean TV show thats on 5 nights a week, dubbed in Khmer. The Khmer name translates into English as "You're my heart" ) or it could be "I'm your heart".

I asked around and it turns out even my friends who don't have TV know this show. So I've started trying to watch it each evening. When I see my friend (about twice a week) she asks me questions about it. So it's working well, lots of listening practice, and then it becomes speaking practice when I talk to people about it.

Plus its fun and it give me more of a connection to people's lives. I was thinking I would be watching a Khmer TV show, made in Cambodia, in Khmer language, rather than a dubbed one (learn more about language and culture of Cambodia). But this Korean show seems really popular with Khmer people so seems like a good choice for now.

I just got back from spending a night in the province with a family. The idea is that it's good for my khmer language, as I have to hear it and speak it all the time there (as opposed to when I'm in the city living with an English speaker and going to English classes). And over the years these visit have been good for that, but its also hard as I'm tired pretty much the whole time I'm there. I always feel a bit gross after the long bus ride, and I don't really sleep well there. I'm not used to the beds, also they get up really early. They sell breakfast food on the street. This means they need to get up around 3.30am to start cooking so they can be set up in time for when people want to buy breakfast. I think it mostly happens from 5.30am onwards.

I usually sleep in their one bedroom, while everyone else sleeps in big room where everything happens. But this time the bedroom had students in it, so I slept in the big room with everyone. That meant there was a big pot of rice porridge being cooked near my head at 3.30am!

I'm trying to start watching more Khmer TV. I'm looking for a TV series/drama that I can get interested in and watch regularly. i did that in 2008, but once that series ended I stopped watching.

Kimsoeun has had a headache all day.

Helping English teachers

Once a week I spend the morning at a primary school. I'm there to help the teachers with their English. Before class starts they read the Bible. We go around the circle and read a few verses each. I try to listen and read the chapter ahead of time, otherwise it takes me forever to read (actually even if i read it beforehand it still takes me ages). This week I thought we were doing Luke 23, so thats what I prepared for, but it turned out to be Luke 22. oops!


The first thing I see when I get to school is lots of little helmets and shoes (and some big ones).

I help some Christian English teachers. They are Khmer, but need to teach maths and English to Khmer kindergarten children.

So although I don't actually teach the kids i do get to practice my upside reading skills as I imagine a primary school teacher would have to do.


On Saturday about 10 of us had lunch at one teachers house. We made a duck dish with a particular mix of herbs and spices called groeung (I'll explain it on my food blog one day).



It was yummy! And lots of fun. I've been getting to know this group over the last year and a half, and started praying weekly with one of them. They are all around my age and can speak English (as well as Khmer of course) so they are easy and fun to hang out with.

What does MSG taste like in English?

Salt tastes salty.
Sugar tastes sweet.
Chili tastes hot/spicy.
MSG tastes.........?

English students asked me this question when we were making papaya salad. In Khmer there is a word for the taste of MSG, but I told them I didn't know a word in English, maybe we don't have one. They found it strange I didn't know the word. To help me remember it they got me to eat MSG straight out of the packet. Perhaps if I tasted it the word would come to me. No word came! They still kept asking me though.

HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT

"Diarrhea!"

That was the first thing one of the students said to me when they got to school the other morning, I didn't even get a "hello, how are you?".

The day before a group of us had been making and eating papaya salad in English Fellowship group (we had been learning food words, and cooking together was a chance to put it into practice).

This particular student ate heaps of salad, and they told me that this always causes them to get diarrhea. I was laughing as they said this. Why were they eating so much if they knew they were going to get sick?

Making papaya salad in class is one of the few high points of the last little while. Mostly I have been feeling really hot and tired. This hot season is unusually hot and unusually long.

It has been hard to go to bed at night knowing it will probably be a sleepless one.
It has been hard to get up in the morning, yet another sleepy hot day.

Last night we slept on the living room floor, night before with wet sheets around us. Lots of power cuts- which means the fan doesn't work!

Usually the heat starts in late March and I think its usually cooler by now. This year it started to get hot in late Feb.

Katherine wants to know if others in Cambodia think this hot season has been longer and hotter than usual, cos i reckon it has, and i've talked to others who say the same but not sure if we say that every year when we are hot and grumpy and then forget what it was like? it started in late feb, instead of march this year, and at school they can now use a/c in AM, used to only use in in PM

Some replies to that were:

YES YES YES YES ... here in Siem Reap it has not gone below 33 on my digital thermometer ... and that's even at 1am ... I can't ever remember it being this hot for this long ...

38 in our lounge and really bad electrical surges mean the air con's not working properly. Both the girls have woken up during this evening drenched with sweat and crying cos they're too hot.


Woke up 6 or 7 times the night before last drenched in sweat and ended up keeping the fan on for the rest of the night, which I've rarely done in the past. Had to tecah Sunday School yesterday with sweat dripping off my nose and down my legs and that's when we put the fans on, which we never need to do normally.

8.17 pm, its 34.8 celcius in my livingroom right now. Hot hot hot

More hearts and other figures of speech

There is a Khmer pop song around these days with a line "two hearts", I'm told it means unfaithful. I thought that was interesting as in Hebrew "two hearts/minds" means you are telling a lie. While in English being in 2 minds about something means you haven't decided yet. And two faced in English means you are a hypocrite.

A heavy heart in Khmer means you are persevering, while a light heart means you aren't standing your ground. Maybe like a feather in the wind, it is light so it gets blown around easily, while a heavy rock will stand firm.

If a room is messy, in English we may call it a pig sty (sp?) as pigs are known for being messy. In Khmer they say a "pig's nest". Yes , nest as in what birds live in, it is not what they call pig's houses, but they think of nests as chaotic and messy. So to emphasise the point they say call a messy room a "messy dwelling of a messy animal" .

Language teaching and learning

This week in English Fellowship and in my Khmer class we did the same activity. One person looks at a picture and describes it (using only the language that the class is learning). While the other has to try to understand and draw it, without looking at the picture.

I did attended a workshop recently about "Home Assignment". We learnt a memory pairs game that we cold use to present Cambodia/mission to our home churches. I made a version of it for English Fellowship and they loved it! Soeun and I also made a version to play at home.
Its like the card game you might call "memory". Only instead of using a pack of cards you make up question and answer cards, and to win you need to match the right answer with the question. It can be funny, on Saturday we had "Who was the prophet that rebuked "King David?"The first time we got that question, the answer that turned up was "Pol Pot".

Hearts 2

A Chinese friend shared this with me after reading the previous one on Khmer hearts:

In Chinese, if you have no heart means you are careless;
if your heart is small means you are careful;
if your heart is black in colour means you curse someone;
if your heart is open means you are very happy.

How rude!

“ When you’re ready to go out for dinner come to our room,” I said to my mum.

My husband Kimsoeun and both our mums were on holiday together. As my mum only speaks English and my mother-in-law only speaks Cambodia it was an interesting experience for them to be sharing a guesthouse room for the week. And it meant I had to say everything twice.

“When you’re ready to go out for dinner come to our room.” I said to my mother-in-law in Cambodian.

She had a funny look on her face. I guess she didn’t understand me, so I tried again. She still had a funny look, so I tried to say the same thing in a different way. It’s so hard to learn a new language! Maybe I wasn’t pronouncing something correctly, or my words were totally out of order.

I gave up and went back to the room I was sharing with my Kimsoeun; I guess she’d figure it out.

That night as we were eating Kimsoeun explained to me that he had just explained to his mum that I didn’t mean to offend her, it’s just the way we talk in English. Huh? How had I offended her? And I didn’t even talk to her in English.

It turns out that I was being really rude when I said “our room”. I should have said “my room”. I did make a language mistake, but it wasn’t to do with my pronunciation or grammar. If I had been talking to someone younger it would have been fine. It’s not something I would have guessed at all.

I was glad that Kimsoeun was able to explain to me that I had offended her and why, other wise I would not have known. And I was also glad that he could explain to her that I wasn’t intending to be rude.

I wonder how many other times I have offended people and not been aware. If there is no friend around to explain it must be so easy to come across in the wrong way and not even know about it. It highlights how important love and humility are in cross-cultural relating.

Graduation

Bible School Graduation was held recently. It was great to see old friends who came for the day. I also enjoyed singing. One of the songs we sang is picture below. I went over in my language sessions in the week leading up to graduation so I was able to sing all of the words!



In English we call it "Because he lives".In Khmer its called "God sent his Son". One of the words in it I learnt from an advert on TV for MSG. Ajinomoto MSG claims to "dissolve easily", that word for dissolve/ melt is what happens to fear (in the song).

Our news

This year we started going to a new church. Soeun has already begun helping with music and preaching. Its nice to go somewhere together and fairly close to our home. I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of Khmer I can understand. Although maybe I shouldn't be surprised as the main thing I've been doing is studying the language! And there is still so much I don't understand. I've been writing about it under the topic of church on our other blog if you want to know more.

I have started helping some Khmer people teach English. Khmer teachers, Khmer kids, but all in English- they are amazing! My role is to help the teachers with their English and with class activities. My only training and experience in English language teaching is with adults, so I'm finding it challenging to think of learning activities for kids. Five year olds are quite different to adults! I'm blogging about it on the other blog under Bilingual school.

So I have been getting to know lots of new people which is both exciting and exhausting. It has been hard as I have had a cold on and off all for about a month. I keep thinking I'm better but then I get sick again. Very frustrating!

Second semester at the Bible school is beginning this week, so the students are back after a week holiday and Soeun is back teaching again. He was marking papers most of last week- one of his least favourite parts of the job. 

This semester Teacher Soeun is teaching two subjects: Intro to Preaching and Observation (as in observing the Bible)

Oh, and the project evaluation is underway!

Oops, What did I say?

“My mother in law hired a bus.” I said this (in Khmer) to a Cambodian friend and her face suddenly changed. She looked something like horrified, I had never seen her make that expression before. I was confused.

Lucky for us, Soeun overheard. He began laughing! Now both I and my friend were confused. We looked at him and waited for him to stop laughing so he could explain.

It turns out I pronounced the word for “hire” incorrectly. Instead of saying “hire” (something like “jool”), I said “chol”. I had actually told my friend that my mother in law had been run over and killed by a bus!

(more language learning fun: Khmer Karaoke and the plethora of pronouns )

A day of language study

Yesterday I spent the morning reading out load by myself. I read some bits of the Khmer Bible, and some simple Bible stories in Khmer.

At lunch I ate with the students, then Soeun's small group came to our house for their small group time.

I sat and listened as Soeun led a conversation about some small group matters. I was excited to find I could follow the conversation. I usually eat with students and try to listen to what they are talking about. The structured conversation was much easier to understand.

In the afternoon I read out loud to my language tutor, similar stuff that I read in the morning.

Understand a little already, easy to learn a bit more

Recently I’ve been watching a cooking show on TV (on CTN, Saturdays, 10.30-11am, its actually an Ajinomoto (MSG) promo). Its a fun way to practise my listening skills and learn a bit more.

Before they cook something they go through all the ingredients: show it on the screen, say the name of it and also have the name written on the screen. Lots of the basic ingredients I can already understand and read the names of (esp when there are visuals!). The ones I don’t know I try to learn during the course of the show.

As I watch and listen I try to understand what they are saying as they are doing it. I have already done some cooking with Soeun, and with my language helpers. So watching and listening is helping to reinforce cooking words and learn new words too. As well as ingredients words, other common words are things like boil, fry, put, mix, stir.

Want to read more about language learning? Prilz wrote on her blog (click here) about what she does with her language helper, and Suzanne wrote a piece about language learning here.

"Korean" Class

Well, actually it was Khmer language class but there were lots of Koreans in it! Also Malaysian, American, Singaporean, Hong Kongian (sp?), Vietnamese, Canadian, Japanese, Indonesian, and Swiss people were my classmates in the 9 months that I studied at a university in Phnom Penh.
Here you can see the group I studied with for the first term.

And here is the faithful remnant, well, those of us who are still here anyway. We recently had lunch together at a Chinese restaurant. I was excited because the food you can see us eating here was the same food that I ate when I lived in China. Most Chinese food I’ve eaten outside China is different to the food to I ate in China. I guess the owner or chef is from North China.

It was also fun to show off my husband; oh I mean introduce them to Kimsoeun. As we are all learning Khmer he is the expert!

And this photo is from our second day of class. Our teacher (kru) is writing the first few letters of the alphabet on the board. To the left you can see a poster with the whole alphabet on it.

If you want to have a look at all the letters and vowels click here and scroll down a bit.