A Productive Day on the Beach...

I was hardly bored at all today... I guess it'll take one more day of loafing for complete and absolute boredom. I haven't worn a watch all day so I have no idea what time it is (it's dark, I do know that).

First thing this morning I ate a full English breakfast and headed directly to the undeveloped end of the beach (a lot more garbage at that end).I looked at the water for a while and then floated in it for a while. I read some of my new book, which looks at the facts behind Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

I was just starting to wonder why I was the only one down that far on the beach when I got my first visitors. Two brothers, 18 and 10, came walking from the field behind the beach and plopped down right next to me.

I initially thought they wanted money. But either due to lack of English or lack of desire, they never asked. Right away the 10 year old boy wanted to impress me with his English number skills. He repeated them in order a few times over the course of their visit. I was impressed with his pronunciation, with the exception of "seven" which almost sounded like it had been reduced to one syllable.

Early in their visit, the three of us happily wrote letters in the sand. Both brothers seemed to know their CAPITAL letters, but had little knowledge of the lower case alphabet.Eventually, I decided to ask the 10 year old show-off if he knew his colours. This backfired a bit. For whatever reason we entered into a ten minute lesson on the Khmer word for EVERYTHING in visual range. I heard the word for every colour, every body part, and every thing else visible from “sand” to “book” to “hole (or dig)”. The only word that I remember is “book” or "eew you". I remembered this one because it is similar to the Korean word for milk. All I can say is that I'm glad there wasn't a test at the end of his lesson.


After our “conversation” died down, I returned to my book. A minute later, the older brother seemed really intent on something. I figured out that he took some kind of offence to me reading my book. It took me a while before I learned that he really wanted was for me to read aloud. So I did. Apparently I was readind too quickly, so I read word for word, pausing so he could repeat each word after me. It's too bad that what I was reading was filled with big words that were difficult to pronounce. It may have scared him of English forever.

Our Khmer/English lesson was ended abruptly when the older brother noticed rain clouds in the distance. They headed back from where they came, and I headed to the restaurant on the beach where I check my e-mail. It rained hard for well over an hour, at which time I e-mailed a lot of you and told you about this blog. When the rain stopped, I headed back to a new spot near the old one and did a lot of the same activities as before. This time, however, I started building a sand castle.

I was quite far along on my castle building when my activity was punctuated by another set of guests. Again it was two males, although older this time.One spoke English quite well and explained all about the group he was with. He was a teacher at a local organization called LCDI (Leadership something Development Institute). His school exists to teach young Khmers how to speak English so that they can make a living. The boy with him, he explained, had been a gangster but now was studying English.

We chatted for a while, and eventually the teacher called the whole group over who soon gathered around my sand castle. I had to explain what a castle was to the group because the concept was apparently as foreign as snow. At first the teacher thought that it was a temple so I had to explain where castles were located and that their function involved fighting and wars. I think (hope) they understood what a castle was by the end.

My conversation was mostly with the teacher, as the other students were too shy or too weak in English to communicate with a-- gasp-- foreigner. One boy was less shy than the others and actually asked one or two questions. Our conversaion progressed and I soon had a few helpers extending the outer walls as we continued to talk. When it was time for them to go, I was given enthusiastic directions (written in the sand) to their school with a promise to visit before I leave town. I spent some more time diddling around in my spot and swimming in the ocean. I ended up leaving the castle unfinished.

As the sun went down on my first full day at the beach, I sat in a reclining chair under an umbrella with a bowl of curry chicken and rice in front of me. I think I should sleep well tonight.