Big Orange Backpack

Today was my first day of school, but it's only half over. I figured I would write now, so that many of you could read this before going to sleep.
My first two classes were really different. The first was level two, with six students (four girls and two boys). One of the boys is a Baptist missionary here, and I told him I'd very much like to see a Baptist service here after he told me that they do indeed sing and clap like they do in the South. I think he was disapointed when I told him that even though I was white and American, I was not Christian.
We did some cute little icebreaker games, and they went well, and we then went over some vocabulary, and that went perfectly according to time. It went really well, and I was really pleased.
The second class was level 6, much more advanced than my first class. They were all late as well, and the only trickled in, so it was hard to either play an icebreaker game or start to review the vocabulary. We only played one icebreaker, and got into the vocabulary. It was really hard to explain concepts to them (like 'get in trouble' or 'bicker'). There were five students there today, two boys, one of whom seemed like he was forced to be there, and barely paid attention, let alone said anything. The other boy was nice and tried, and there was also a girl who was painfully shy. Then there were two other girls who knew each other from a previous class at the school, and their English was amazing. One of them, the older of the two, was telling me how far away she lived: next to the Killing Fields, which is a solid 40 minutes away. They asked me what I thought of it after I told them I had been there, and I tried to explain it in relation to how I feel at Holocaust museums. But they didn't know about the Holocaust so I had to explain that... I mentioned S-21 (Teul Sleng), the genocide museum which was a torture prison in Khmer Rouge time. The older girl again asked me if I had been there, and I told her I had not, it was a hard place to visit, and I wanted to be ready to see the awful things there. She told me that her father died there. It was a really intense moment. He was taken from the villages and taken to S-21 where he spent three months before they brought him to the Killing Fields and killed him. I was at a loss for words and explained that I studied genocide in school back home, and that I had always admired Cambodia and Cambodians for moving past the genocide. The other of the two girls simply stated "We're just numb." It was really difficult to get back to the vocabulary after that, but we finished it and talked a bit before the end of class. They both went really well I think, but very differently.