One of the larger and more looming requirements to Peace Corps service is passing a language test towards the end of one’s PST. We all study the language of Cambodia, K’mai (or Khmer if you like, but nobody pronounces it like that here) for about four hours a day during training. Peace Corps’ tried and true approach to language learning is fantastic because you get to practice what you have learned with your host family or by buying something at the market only minutes after having learning it. In some ways this is more stressful because you often “forced” to use the language simply by living your daily life around town (buying laundry detergent, food, using transportation), but it typically seems to help people practice and retain vocabulary and grammar.
Peace Corps wants all of its volunteers to learn the language of your host country so that you can be the most effective volunteer you can be. To that end, we all are required to take and score a minimal passing score on a nationally administered speaking and comprehension test. Many trainees want to do well on this as it is one of very few chances to really demonstrate what you have learned in a quantifiable or qualitative way given that Peace Corps seems to be vastly compromised of Type-A personalities.
We all also want to do well because we want to learn the language; we want to be able to communicate in a basic way with our new families and co-workers; we want to make proud and impress our language teachers, who act as big brothers or sisters, cultural “hand-holders” and mentors all at once.
On one of our last hub-site days towards the end of our Pre-Service Training, we were all heading to our hub-site with bags packed for a short but much needed two-night vacation away from our training sites. We also would find out the scores of our final language test taken just a few days before.
Proudly and happily, Kate and I did very well and attribute a great deal of our success to having who I consider to be the best LCF/Language teacher in our group – thanks, Savin! My wife is a rock star at life and stands out as one of the best speakers in our group of sixty. Opening our envelopes and doing better than we hoped on our language test was not only a big boost, but also a huge relief, it was one of the last big obstacles in our way of being sworn in as full-fledged volunteers.
If that wasn’t enough, I finally received a package from my mom that I had been waiting for, for several weeks. Thanks, mom! It’s amazing how a jar of one’s favorite peanut butter, some hard candy and a bag of (still crunchy) double-stuffed Oreos can make the problems of the world fade.
That night the three-fold boost to my morale was complete when we got to our hotel room to find…wait for it…a hot water heater. Some of Cambodia’s better hotels have these little individual hot water heaters built directly into the water line of a shower so it warms the water as it flows. Now, you may have heard me complain a few times about the stifling heat and unrelenting humidity…indeed it feels like I have not been dry since disembarking from the airplane from Bangkok. But, it had been over two months since my last hot shower. All the bucket showers and St. Ives exfoliating scrub cannot make you feel as clean or as human as a hot shower. I really recommend everyone reading this blog to go two months without a hot shower, simply because on day 61 when you take a hot shower you may understand the meaning of life.
As if my super-fun weekend of awesomeness could get any better, the next morning we headed out to a small little getaway town in southern Cambodia that is dotted with cafes, restaurants and shops run by expatriates from various Western countries. Over the next 24 hours I would gorge myself on the damn-near closest thing I will get to BBQ ribs, decent burgers, pancakes (pumpkin spice and with chocolate chips no less!!!) and for my wife, fru-fru frozen drinks.
I am not sure if I ever really understood the term “recharging your batteries” in the same way that I now do. Making small talk with some British pup owners, watching rugby and drinking very cold beer and enjoying the company of some of my closest friends I have made in country was an amazing way to unwind and gear up for the last push of training.
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