My Holiday In Cambodia: Communication Breakdown...it's always the same

Living here has provided some fun experiences when it comes to communicating with locals, and that includes my students. For two weeks I've been telling my students, "You may go" when the class session is over. Recently they have been giggling when I say this so I asked them what was so funny and they replied, "You is a word we all know but in Khmer 'say' is the word for a female animal and 'go' is cow, so you've been saying 'you female cow' at the end of nearly every class." I am extremely grateful that they are not upset at my absolute ignorance of their language. I teach nearly one-hundred students who are the most wonderful people I have ever met and had the true pleasure of knowing, some of who you can see below, and they are attempting to tech me some Khmer - it is a challenge but I am slowly learning the language. They are teaching me words like beautiful, so I can say that to my wife, hello and goodbye, so I don't feel awkward when meeting locals, and local slang that roughly translates to cool. There are some days when I leave campus feeling like I learned more than my students and that is what makes this job (and the students) so amazing.

Talking to the tuk-tuk drivers is interesting. We are learning words like "right" and "left" and "stop here" to help navigate the town. Some of the drivers speak English really well and others can barely communicate with us, hence the urgency to learn simple directions. Our building has a driver contracted to us who speaks well and drives a motorcycle, not a scooter, so we arrive at our destinations much quicker than our friends. It is just a matter of time before I buy a moto as they are called here, a Cambodian drivers license costs $35 and there is no test required - along with no test means no true rules of the road, it's like Mad Max at times out there - see the video below.

When I see Khmer written I think it is rather pretty, if not at times beautiful. Since nearly all of my students are Buddhist, and I have those leanings in my personal philosophy on life, I am going to have one of them write out a Buddhist phrase I like a lot in some really nice script and when I travel back to the states next summer, I'll have that tattooed as a band below the dragon on my left leg. I can see how some of the art here could inspire a few more tattoos.