Happy Walentine’s Day!

The morning of Thursday, February 14th my fellow teachers and I rolled up to school ready to start the day like any other. We had a little extra love in our hearts because, after all, it was Valentine’s Day (or as our students mispronounce it, Walentine’s Day). We hadn’t, however, prepared anything special for the morning assembly. But that didn’t stop the Thai teachers from forcing us to all stand in front of the entire school while dancing to some contemporary English love song. Twice. 

Then they told us to call students up on stage and ask them questions about the history of Valentine’s Day, which had just been read to them...in Thai. Sadly none of us knew the history of V-Day (Although one of my classes asked me and I made up something I vaguely remembered about Saint Valentine helping people in jail write love letters. Teacher fail.) Instead we asked them the most general questions even semi-related to Valentine’s Day in the simplest English possible. It was torture attempting to get the first student to volunteer to come answer an English question in front of all their peers, but after the first student answered the question correctly, didn’t die, and received candy, then the rest of their little hands shot up eagerly. 

We struggled to come up with questions easy enough for all these kids because there’s this secret agreement going on between the students and ourselves. The agreement: the foreign English teachers will pretend to teach English if the students will pretend to learn it, but really we’re all just playing games all the time. The other teachers and administrators don’t know this secret and have much more faith in the students and our teaching abilities than is accurate. So our impromptu, semi-relevant, simple English questions were as follows: 

• What holiday is today? (the word holiday tripped that student up) 
• On Valentine’s Day, what is your favorite color? (that question was used multiple times and one time a student said purple, we were going for red & pink, but whatever, candy for everyone)
• Valentine’s Day is a day about...? (I asked this question to my 4th grader whom I’d taught that to the day prior, but as he looked at me confused I held up my hands in a heart shape to which he yelled “HEARTS!” I was hoping for love but close enough) 

It was a morning of ridiculousness, and pictures of course, but the rest of the day only got better. We all received Valentine’s and roses throughout the day as well as dozens of stickers smacked onto our chests by tiny children. All in all it was an a-okay V-Day.

Unexpected Education: Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Experience

Hey everyone. Something happened in our world’s recent history that you most likely don’t know about. I certainly didn’t. Many of my travel companions didn’t. My parents who were alive when this history was a present weren’t entirely aware of it. This looming it I’m speaking of is the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970’s. 

Before traveling to Cambodia last week, my friends and I cracked open our Lonely Planets and checked out which cities were big-ticket items in our neighbor to the east. Phnom Penh, the capital city, was of course listed. It claimed to be full of historical museums documenting the Khmer Rouge events that occurred in the city thirty-some years ago. I glanced over the descriptions of the events and skipped right to where to eat & sleep in the city. Some of my travel buddies read up on the Khmer Rouge and even watched a documentary the night before leaving. I opened the wikipedia page but quickly clicked over to Facebook instead, and I passed on watching the documentary as well. Describing me as ignorant doesn’t even scratch the surface. 

Once we got to Phnom Penh, we booked a day of Khmer Rouge historical activities. We went to Tuol Sleng (a former high school turned secret torture center) and The Killing Fields (the actual fields on the outskirts of town where millions were taken to be brutally murdered). Confused? So was I. Let me back up a bit. 

The Khmer Rouge was a Communist Party formed by men in the late 60’s who idolized and lusted after the idea of a completely self-sufficient agricultural society. The KR leaders wanted to purify the existing society and saw anyone who wasn’t on board as a threat to their idyllic future. These alleged “threats” included educated people, industrious people, anyone who associated with foreigners, and, most tragically, any of the listed people’s children. The reasoning behind eliminating these people and their families, children included, was that if anyone was left after the mass extermination they could grow to seek revenge upon the Khmer Rouge. KR leader Pol Pot felt it was better to sacrifice an innocent by accident than to spare an enemy by accident. 

Between the years of 1975-1979, The Khmer Rouge took people from their home villages, interrogated them in places such as Tuol Sleng, aka S-21, accused them of crimes of treason they’d never committed, tortured them until they admitted such fabrications, and then sent them to The Killing Fields where they fell victim to mass execution. The KR felt bullets were too valuable to be wasted on these mass murders, so instead they ordered their soldiers to kill the victims with anything possible--gardening utensils, sheer beatings, palm branches, anything available in the fields. One of the most horrific additions to the death toll was babies. There is a tree among The Killing Fields where Khmer Rouge soldiers would take babies by their feet and smash their heads into the trunk of the tree. 

Gut-wrenching brutalities such as this occurred for four years in near secrecy. At the time, the Khmer Rouge was recognized by the United Nations as a legitimate political party of Cambodia with the simple purpose of re-educating their nation; the UN even gave the KR money to support its efforts. Finally on January 7, 1979 the Vietnamese army ousted the Khmer Rouge and put an end to all genocidal activity. Many KR leaders fled the country in attempts to avoid punishment--and they nearly succeeded. Pol Pot, a main KR leader, died at age 86 on house arrest after living to see his grandchildren born and raised. Another former KR leader with the alias of Duch has since admitted to his hate crimes, but admits to them in such a way as if he were Frankenstein--creating a monster that grew beyond his control. Duch and other former Khmer Rouge leaders are still on trial for their crimes. 

One of the hardest things to hear during an audio tour amongst The Killing Fields was a concluding statement about the reasoning for turning the fields into a museum. The voice through the speakers described the urgency for education on the Khmer Rouge genocide, the need to spread this museum to future generations, because such atrocities have happened and keep happening in our world. He described how no one ever thinks it will happen to their country. Then he listed the previous genocides of humanity’s history: Germany with the Nazis, Russia with Stalin, and...The United States. I had forgotten how our country started. I’d never thought of the discovery of the Americas as a genocide upon the Native Americans. Apparently you never think genocide will happen to your country and occasionally you (or just me) fail to acknowledge that it has already happened. 

Bracelets and a plumeria offered at a mass grave in The Killing Fields

Cambodia was an eye-opening experience for me. In the middle of the audio tour in The Killing Fields, the headset tour guide spoke the word ‘ignorance’ in his accented way which emphasized it as ‘ignore-ance’. Despite ‘ignore’ being the root of the word, and me having a degree in English & Linguistics, I’d never thought of it that way. But that’s exactly what’d I’d been doing with the Khmer Rouge--ignoring it. So please, don’t follow in my footsteps of ignorance, but rather take it upon yourself to read the wikipedia pages you open, listen to your history educators, and go beyond the classroom. You’d be surprised what secrets the world’s been keeping. 

More info: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

http://www.cambodiatribunal.org

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/

The End. (..of my 366 album)

A year ago I started a little project. I set out to take one picture a day for an entire year. The year happened to be a leap year, so my final product would result in 366 photos. On January 30th, 2012 I began this endeavor with a picture of a street near my home in Independence, Oregon where I was living with three friends and worked part time in a daycare. On January 29th, 2013 I took my 366th photo at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia while on vacation from teaching English in Thailand. 

It’s crazy to see how far you can go in just one year. A year ago I had no idea that the following year I would be in Cambodia. It wasn’t even on my radar. In fact, if someone had told me I’d end this photo journey in Cambodia and I was in Southeast Asia because I was a teacher there, I would have outwardly laughed at them and been sure they’d confused me for a more adventurous individual. But that’s where I’ve ended up. 

And in between I documented so many other unpredictable moments: Chelsea and I road-tripped to Idaho to see Kelly Clarkson in concert (shortly before I followed Chels to the other side of the world), I traveled to Scotland & Ireland with my dear friend Wendy, I contracted the stomach flu from my daycare children multiple times, I witnessed three beautiful weddings, I captured the beginning moments of blossoming love, I celebrated life of those passed on as well as life brought into this world, I saw Mumford & Sons in one of the best concerts of my life, I completed two organized races (despite considering myself to not be a runner), I drank & documented more cups of coffee than can be healthy for any one person, I said goodbye to old friends before greeting new ones, I moved home before moving across the globe, I became a teacher...in Thailand, I have traveled more than I ever thought I would, and I’ve experience more unique moments than I could have ever dreamt. And I must admit, I’m not sure I would’ve remembered or cherished all these moments had it not been for this photo a day project. 

With that said, I encourage everyone to pick up a camera (or your iphone-- shout out to the 4s camera as 75% of my photos were taken on it) and discipline yourself into taking one photo a day for an entire year. You’d be surprised at how much life can occur in 365  (or 366) days.  

P.s. while this is the end of my picture journey, it is not the end of this blog. I shall attempt to keep posting about my real Thai world, so no need to panic you faithful few readers.