So I celebrated my 23rd birthday in style; we had a cake and everything. My students and my coteacher bought me a cake and got me presents. They sang happy birthday, and afterward, we had a food fight with the cake icing. It was very exciting. I put some of the icing in one of the boy’s hair, and then all the girls thought that was an excellent idea. So they all started putting icing in the boys’ hair. At first the boys were upset; they spend way more time on their hair then the girls do. But they made the best of it and used the icing as styling gel. They came up with some pretty fantastic hairdos. It was awesome. My gifts included stuffed animals, towels, shampoo and children’s books. Definitely one of the best birthdays I’ve had. Then they went home and went to bed, because the 12th graders had to get up early for the final semester exam the next day.

About the exam: in America, they would all fail. It’s not because they are unintelligent, but because they cheat. There is no problem with students copying each other’s work, talking about questions, yelling answers across the room. None. Officially, they aren’t supposed to. But in reality, I’m the only one who cares. The only thing most of the other teachers do is take away some of their cheat sheets. I, being a mean teacher, made them give me all their non test materials, stay seated (sometimes they stand up to get a better look at their classmates paper) and keep the talking to a minimum. By the end of the three day exam process, students dreaded seeing me. Oh well. Grading the tests was a trip. They had to write about funerals in Cambodia. Most either didn’t write anything or copied from a book. There were some rather unfortunate misspellings. The main one was leaving the ‘r’ out of the word ‘shirt’. In Cambodia, people wear white shirts to funerals.

Also, there was hail. This was a huge deal. It started raining really hard during one of the exams. I heard a loud noise on the roof. I thought it sounded like hail, and then remembered I was in Southeast Asia. Probably just a coconut. Then one of students informed me that ice was indeed falling from the sky. We all went outside. The male teachers all ran out and grabbed ice so I could see there was ice in Cambodia too. They were exceedingly proud of themselves, as though they had created the hail themselves. One of them was drunk. He kept remarking about how cold the tiny ice chip in his hand was. I noted that it is ice, and by definition cold. This fact was lost on him. Anyway, they hail was tiny and didn’t do any damage. So it made me happy.

This keyboard is very difficult to use, thus I apologize for any typos. And my hands are tired. But I love and miss you all!