To market to market

LT
Thursday 7 June 10pm
We had another busy day at school today... the classes that have done the beading activity have been showing the others the finished product, so now they all want to do it and we are in demand!  We're also taking the storytime sessions and trying to get a bit creative with it. Peter's "monkey" class today read a book about time and made clocks, in my class we read Brown Bear Brown Bear and then made our own version of the book.  Sometimes it's hard to find appropriate books in the school collection, the ones that are a good level of English tend to be a bit babyish in content.

It's hard to believe tomorrow is our last day at school - it is so easy to become attached to the children, I can only imagine how difficult it is to leave if you have stayed a month or more.  I guess that's why they seem to return over and over.  Yesterday we met Ros and Pete, Australians back for their third (this time a full year and they're renting a house here now) time at ABCs - two more super-committed and enthusiastic volunteers on the ABCs team.  Pete is going to start a range of vocational training topics for the older children to help keep them at school and also provide some useful skills to get them into higher level jobs.  His ideas include computer skills, cooking, woodwork, sewing etc.  The entire operation here is so fluid and seems to grow and evolve constantly.

Caelan and Alyssa are getting more and more confident teaching the craft activities and Katriel basically just joins in with whatever looks fun.  We have been playing some competitive word recognition games and she is always disappointed when the other children win!  She smiles and giggles away with all her friends, the lack of common language no barrier.  Caelan scored big points by joining in with soccer, and Alyssa's hands are often grabbed onto by the younger students.  The ukuleles have been a hit and are usually grabbed at break times and strummed with varying degrees of success around the schoolyard.  Some students have learned a few chords and can play a song or two, assuming they can get their hands on one of the instruments!

School each day starts with hand-washing and teeth-brushing (every child has a named brush at school!) then assembly.  The children line up in 4 lines by height order, littlies at the front. Each person grabs the shoulder of the person in front to get a good spacing.  The national anthem is first, followed by a few exercises.  Then the children sing songs - any child can have a turn standing up the front either singing a song on their own or leading the group in a song.  They love singing and there is no shortage of hands going up wanting a turn up the front.  Apart from the National Anthem, all the songs are in English.  The day finishes with another assembly, shorter this time, just a quick time to pass on any messages, sing the anthem and head home.  The children and teachers all face in the same direction when they sing the anthem, I must remember to find out if this is significant.

Tonight we visited the Night Market, one of the famous attractions in Siem Reap.  It's filled with stalls selling everything from shoes to clothes to sunglasses to jewellery to paintings to every other kind of nick-nack that a tourist might possibly buy.  Every few steps it's "you want buy scarf laideee?"  "Good price for you laideee"  "You want to buy?" It's almost difficult to look at anything that you might be interested in for fear of giving the impression you might be interested!  Then comes the fun part, deciding on the price.  Alyssa and I were hopeless, happy to pay the (grossly inflated) asking price.  Peter was much better, coming away with several 'bargains' - probably still well above what the seller would go down to.  But we all came away with a treasure or two (except Peter who just had the pleasure of knowing he saved us maybe $12 all up!)

The children have all made a point of being adventurous with their food choices - maybe not as adventurous as crickets or frogs, but Cambodian meals at least. Everywhere we go the staff are so friendly, and are happy to chat with us about our trip here, or New Zealand, or perhaps teach us a new phrase or two in Khmer.

Must get to bed, early start again tomorrow.  Luckily (?) the sun rises here about 5am, bright sunshine before 6, so I'm usually awake before the alarm goes.

Photos to come tomorrow!