Eyes on the Prize

Call me ambitious, but I plan on finishing the second grade by the end of this year. I don’t plan on going all-out Billy Madison and inserting myself unceremoniously into Khmer classrooms filled with small children all about a fifth of my size, though. No, my approach is much more stealthy and silent. And before you know what’s up, ya girl will be a third grader.

We’re talking Khmer language, of course. Since I’m basically ineffective at my job until I master this language, I’ve been doing intense language study, up to 6 or 7 hours a day. How do I do this, you might ask, since a good half of my day is devoted to being at the health center? Yeah, about that—my health center existence basically can go down two routes at this point: I can sit at the new table and chair set we got and read It Must  Be Something I Ate, a brilliant collection of food essays by Jeffrey Steingarten, and drool myself into oblivion, or I can sit at the new table and chair set we just got and practice my Khmer with the people who are lolling around waiting for the nurses/midwives/pharmacist to show up. As I’m on a tight deadline to graduate to third grade, I’ve taken to doing the latter.

I’ve borrowed the second grade Khmer language textbook that was used by all of my siblings to help me through this quest. Today I brought it out and was painstakingly reading out loud, gathering quite a crowd of Khmer who no doubt thought I was mentally challenged. They were nice about it, though, and a lot of them helped me through the pronunciation, and explained in very slow Khmer what some words meant. After the patients all cleared out after having done what they came here to do, the staff came out as well and helped me read. They laughed at my mispronunciations much more than the patients, but the upside was that one of the nurses is actually not bad at English and was able to do a lot more translating.

As for language lessons, I’ve also upped those to four a week. I used to only go twice a week because I needed a few days to collect enough words and/or phrases I wanted to ask my tutor about. But now, since I’m on a mission to blaze through this textbook, there won’t be any moments where we’re just sitting around shooting the breeze. In fact, since what I’m learning is what all of his English students have already learned a few years ago, they take great interest in the fact that I’m struggling through it and all crowd around to watch me sound out words. One of his students asked me what grade textbook I’m using, and when I said second, he laughed and said, in Khmer, that “grade two is easy like opening a banana.” Apparently that’s a saying here. I like it a lot (and subsequently laughed near-uproariously at it), and might try to make it catch on back in the States too.

Essentially, since I’m pretty much without a job right now, I’m making language learning my full-time job. If there is one thing I’ve always been pretty decent at, it’s cramming shit into my brain—and let’s face it, I’m desperate to do something I’m good at, at this point. Bottom line: I will pwn the shit out of this language, so help me God. Third grade, watch out. I’m coming for you.