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Trip Start
Jun 22, 2007
1
18
19
Trip End
Aug 20, 2007
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I wasn't completely into it but at least I made it! It's really hard to pay attention in my Cambodian History class because the professor isn't a very good speaker. He pretty much mumbles French-accented information into his "script." Don't get me wrong! He's a great guy to talk to and I think that if he was able to loosen up and improv more, he'd be an awesome teacher. He's a really cool guy though! He studied this village in rural Vietnam that practices this obscure religion that ... I couldn't even find on google :P It's a combination of many world religions, but at the same time they honor (idolize) many modern figures such as Victor Hugo and Antonio Gaudi
Jo, Neil, Sandy, and Me in Class
. He also created a linguistic dictionary for their language! I think it took him 2-3 years of living in their village.My professor for Nation-Building in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge Genocide was a Cambodian refugee that emigrated to the US. She is a professor at UC Berkeley. Her style of teacher was really different than what I'm used to because we did a lot more discussions and students had a lot more direction in the class. I learned a lot in her class about issues that Cambodia (and other war-torn countries) has to deal with in order to rebuild themselves, from culture, infrastructure, religion, and even environment (yes!).
We don't have classes next week so that we have time to study for our finals on Friday. The great thing is the our final for our history class is take home (what a relief!) so I have all week to work on that. On Friday we have two in class essays for the political science class, but I don't think they'll be too bad.
