Rice is nice if there's nothing else to eat

P.T.
5 June (evening)
OK not a song title but a line from a song from way back....

Anyway. if you told me a year ago that I would be here reading story-time books to a bunch of Cambodian kids, I would never have believed you. I'm not entirely sure that I believe it now. The experience so far has been hard to take in. The days seem to take forever. There is so much happening, that when I think back to this morning, it seems like days ago. The crew at ABC's is amazing, especially Tammy and Matt who started and basically run the show. Although, it seems that a lot of the time, they are at their other jobs - earning just enough to keep the school open. I didn't know that people like that still existed.

Today we split up again - Linley with one class, and me in another, with our kids joining in also. The teachers are very happy for us to just show up and basically take over the class. It's good for the kids to speak to native English speakers, so the opportunities are never given up. We read books, played games, did origami, art and other school-type stuff. The first period of each day is story-time, so having a native English speaker to read is valued. The kids are well-disciplined and respectful. For many, this is a chance they might never have got, and they seem to value it. When you enter the class they all stand and recite greetings and questions in unison. "Teacher, how are you today?", "Teacher, did you sleep well?". As long as you come up with some sort of answer, they continue to rattle off questions all in perfect time. I'm not sure how many questions they have, but they all know them very well. Rather cute.

We spent a fair chunk of the day lugging 50kg bags of rice about and bagging it in supermarket bags of 3.5kg lots. Each child gets a bag of rice each month if they have perfect attendance at school - grades don't matter. In all, we bagged up about 500kg in 35deg heat. The shed we packed in had a tin roof and the heat was nearly unbearable. I hate to think how hot it was in there. Anyway, seeing the kids puff out their chests with pride as they took their bag of rice to their families made it all worth while. The pride and dignity that goes with providing a meal or two for your family is something that these kids clearly relish. The rice itself would likely be thrown away if it was NZ, maybe not top quality - but substantially better than an empty plate.

The school is on a mud road and full of huge potholes, spilling over with water from the daily downpours. It is in what you might call a residential community. It's hard to know what is occupied and what isn't - or what even passes for a house. There are countless stalls on the side of the road selling food or junk. Even though nothing ever seems to travel up the school road, there are still several of these stalls in walking distance. Most of them must only sell one or two items a day. Probably bottles of water to the likes of us is the most common sale. Although, at 12.5cents per bottle for water, you need to sell a few to make a living.

By the way, we came here with two huge suitcases full of school supplies, plus other items stuffed into our hand luggage, and three laptops. These were very well received, and if you're one of the people that donated, THANK YOU!!!.

Rice bag production line

How good did it feel to give out the rice

The school road had some fill delivered to fix the potholes.  Yeah that's way better now

Toe-nibbling fish, anyone?

Football during break-time at school