Dear Marlen:

I cannot believe we have come to the end of this class, I cannot believe I have made it this far with the prospect of getting an A from this class, and I cannot believe that I have come to enjoy this class so much that I do not want it to end now, but these are all true.

It has been an amazing journey, a journey led by you, one of the most enthusiastic and inspiring teachers I have ever met in my life at this point. I doubt that I will ever be able to find again a class that is so rich in contents, that is so well-rounded that I feel like almost everything in life is covered in this class. This class will always be one of the best classes I have ever attended. I never thought I could gain so much from a single class, and a single class had so much to offer. This is the best thing that took place in my four-month life in America as an exchange student.

I have to admit that I was having a tough time trying to fit into this very American class, I have been trying to embrace the difference and forget about the inferiority that I feel in order to more actively participate in class. All I asked for was understanding, and you gave me exactly that. I remember that once in class when talking about participation, you mentioned about me being an alien among all native speakers, and how difficult it is to come into a completely different context, and you asked the class to put themselves in my shoes. That did give me a lot of motivation, it somehow woke me up from the nightmare in which I thought to myself that I was the worst in class in terms of performance. It was until then that I realized I was doing the best I could considering my foreign status here, but I knew I could do more. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to do so, as I began to feel more comfortable speaking in class and talking to people, we have come to the end of the semester.

There are many elements in this class that I think I have learned and considered to be useful for my living as a person. And I want to talk about two of them here.

The first one is archetypes. By studying the twelve archetypes in the book Awakening the Heroes Within by Pearson, I believe I have come to better understand the reason why a person acts in some way in a specific situation. Moreover, I believe I have come to learn to better control my behavior, to present myself in a better way by learning to identify that archetype currently active in my life. I cannot say that I have been able to find myself just by going through all these archetypes, which is a process that takes time. However, I am certain that I will be able to do so one day, I mean being able to control my archetypes and take the fullest advantage of those archetypes that are positive.

Before this class, I had a vague understanding about the different person one can be under different circumstances and stages of life. Now that I am able to identify with those signs and situations, I understand that we all go through one journey or another in our everyday life, we all have to assume a different role everyday, and that is exactly how we present ourselves with the archetype dominant in our lives at that particular point.

The second one is sexuality. With no intention to cause any offense here, honestly speaking, I used to have an extremely negative opinion about homosexual people, only because I was uninformed and biased. I was acting stupid. I never took time to go back and think about why certain people behave in that way, is it a matter of choice or a matter of nature? Is it even their fault? With all the readings, movies and discussions held in class, I realized that I made a huge mistake, and I hate myself for having always regarded myself as a person with good judgment. My attitude towards homosexual people are now changing, I am killing that childish mindset. All people should have the rights to live and express themselves the way they truly are because you can be truly happy only when you can be your true selves.

One funny thing about sexuality though, I was shocked by the openness in this class when it comes to the issue of sexuality, people just go on and on talking openly about it, which is a complete contrast to Cambodian culture, in which people become timid when it comes to this topic. I found myself being pulled in between talking and not talking, but I now think that sometimes talking gives us more information a lot more than silence does.

That is pretty much everything that I want to let you know, I absolutely enjoyed learning in your class and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you as a professor as well as a person.

The memory of this class will be there to last.

I cannot thank you enough for bringing me this wonderful experience and knowledge.

ENGL 121 will be something that I can take back with me to Cambodia, and share it with my people.

Sincerely,

Narong

No more Joseph Cambell

No more Hazel

No more Ceillie

No more Lefty

No more Marlen

All is left is SILENCE

Coming to this blog and looking back, I have completed 24 blogs and composed 29 poems through which I jumped from trying to get them all done just to get by yet another day to effortlessly completing them with the satisfaction that I never had.

It’s been a long way, and it’s been a flash at the same time, I once wanted the class to end, now I don’t want to see the curtain falling. What an experience it has been, I have grasped many different stuffs from this class including movies, poems, blogs, reading, and most of all, the way I know myself.

I feel bad that the class come to a sad end today, I tried so hard to fit in this very American class, and as I feel that I have begun to feel comfortable and making friends with fellow classmates, it is time to go home…

Two world I belong

Can I still sing the song?

Can I utter it out the same way I used to do?

Can I remain as cool?

Guess I have to take a bite that I can chew!

Time flies, and like a blink of the eye, we are approaching the end of this one and only Spring semester for me in this land of opportunity, as mentioned a number of my previous blogs concerning my journey here completing my exchange program, I have grown along the way, and now that I am coming close to the point of return.

Master of two world is one of the elements of the stage of return for the hero according to the monomyth, although I am still finishing my semester here, I have long been thinking about my return and visualizing what kind of a new person I would like to see myself become when I am finally back to the starting point: Kingdom of Cambodia.

I am investing my best efforts to mast the American world by earning myself as many As as I could possibly do before going back to share what I have learned and encountered with my people in order to become also a master in Cambodia, I wold like to see myself incorporating the differences and similarities, the news and olds of the two worlds so to become a new person, a person that is better and yet retaining the essence of his old self.

For today’s blog, I will attempt to relate the movie “Transamerica” to the monomythic stage that we are going through in class today, and that is: crossing the return threshold.

In the last part of the  movie, Bree, the main character, who has been working two jobs to save up for a surgery to turn himself into a woman after abandoning his wife and son, bursts into tears when she awakes from her surgery on the hospital bed as an entirely new person, or to be a precise, a real woman now. However, it is hard for me to accurately predict what is going through her mind at this point, having gone on this long and painful journey full of rejections, she has come out a new person, and she should be ready to return to her world and live her normal life as a perfectly normal woman, unfortunately, she has this tearful threshold to cross, one final one, before she can go back to her world: she has to suffer the re-loss of her newly-discovered son.

I think to get something out of a journey, we have to get through difficulties when we first start and repeat the same process when we are about to finish it, an easy example would be: it takes hard work to get into a college, and then it takes hard work also to get out of college.

From hell I come out

Relief I feel

Everywhere I turn

Every hidden danger emerges

Stormy

Creepy

Godly

Kindly

Lost in the stormy and creepy night

Saved by the godly and  kindly hand

Our group decided to follow the stage of the monomyth that we went through today: Rescue from without.

There are times in our lives when we find ourselves in the near end of life or ultimate dangers and suddenly a hand reaches out or some kind of supernatural power incredibly rescues u from what would have taken our lives.

Anything can happen and anything goes, life is itself is a great mystery, weird things like Rescue from without takes place every now and then to save the day for anyone of us.

It is hard to explain and every time I start thinking about it, I tell myself to quit the next minute. Some people get the extra hand to help them get through their belly of the whale while some other people, that extra hand just never arrives, and so they die. Is it a matter of pure coincidence? Or really supernatural in play?

Whatever the answer is, I believe the moral of this Rescue from without concept is that we human beings are interdependent, we never know when we will need help from someone, so go out and make friends. Give when you take and take when you give.

I do what I like

You do what you think I like

We do what I like