Third and Final Week

On the weekend prior to the last week of teaching, we travelled north to Phnom Penh; a busy and bustling capital city that offers an array of restaurants, bars and cafes; vibrant night markets and much much more! The main reason for visiting Phnom Penh was to meet up with a good friend who is also travelling around Southeast Asia...but not in the most conventional way. James is currently travelling around Asia on his bike; not a motorbike  - a pedal bike! He has cycled his way through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Averaging between 150 - 200km a day in seriously hot conditions, on dusty roads and just his bike for company, it's safe to say he's crazy!!! It was great to see him though and we decided to hire out bikes to cycle around the city with him for the day. Although the traffic here is crazy, it was a really good way to see the sights.  He also managed to convince a cyclo driver to swap bikes for a few minutes.

James also told us many fascinating stories about his adventure, my favourite being how he'd been cycling for 11 hours and he fell asleep on his bike. Luckily he crashed to the side of the road and scraped all one side of his body rather than crashing the other way which could have resulted in a bus or lorry mopping him up!

So back to Hope school we travelled for our last week of teaching. Just to prove I wasn't lying about the conditions, here are some photos of the shower and the facilities at the school.

Our luxury bathroom

Complete with water tank containing rainwater and bugs

The kitchen

The staff room

The shower

Sleeping quarters

The rainy season has just begun here as well which usually consists of a really powerful downpour for an hour or two, then it stops and the sun comes out as if nothing ever happened. If your unfortunate enough to be teaching when the rain comes then you can say bye bye to lessons as it is so loud! You have to shout at the top of your voice to be heard and it's actually too tempting to play outside anyway!

The volunteers and pupils can only wait for it to stop

Stuck in the classroom

So to week 3 of teaching. This week our advanced class learnt about introductions, such as what you might say when you meet up with friends, what you would say in a cafe and what you would say to a doctor etc. Their English was really advancing at this point and they grasped this concept incredibly well! On the last day of teaching, the children made friendship bracelets to send to their pen pals in England and we put some music on my iPod. By the fifth time of listening to Gangnam Style, it was safe to say I was bored to death of this song and every time I tried to play another song, they demanded that I play Gangnam style again! This is something I definitely won't miss!

Susie showing them how to make friendship bracelets

Gangnam Style!

We also gave them pencil cases on the last day

On the final day, we were also presented with a number of letters and drawings from the children to say thank you for teaching us. Obviously Susie was popular among some of the girls but the longer letter written by the youngest girl in the class called Chipu was very nice indeed. She said she wants to be an English teacher like me one day and wished me happiness in my family. You shouldn't have favourites but she definitely became mine.

In the beginner class we worked on their phonics, particularly short vowel sounds and by the end of the week they were able to sound out and read some words like cat and dog. I know this sounds easy but for a class who have had no prior english and read and write in a completely different language, (Khmer) this was a huge achievement! This class were also given their English pen pals and as with the other class, they were overjoyed when they found gifts waiting in their packs. So they wrote thank you letters and drew a picture of themselves or their family for us to send back to England. We were very proud of them so on the last day we had some fun which included a huge water fight!

Susie also had a very busy week. First, her and another volunteer went for a walk around the village with the school coordinator and recruited children for the nursery. When they had to collect some information such as date of birth, the parents had no idea what it was for their children and proceeded to scurry into their houses and find the document with the information on. Crazy! Next day, the nursery began. Susie (nursery manager) organised all the activities for the mornings, such as colouring in, games, songs, musical bumps and even a sports day, which I had to join in with! Yet again, we did long jump, with a little help from myself, shot put and attempted skipping races but this didn't go down too well as I don't think they'd ever seen a skipping rope before.

It's safe to say that these children were very cute and Susie asked many times if we could smuggle some of them back to England with us! I explained to Susie that I don't think their parents would be particularly happy with this arrangement! I had to watch that she wasn't squeezing any of them into our back packs though!

I didn't mention this in Week 2 because I'm fully aware that I can ramble a little bit but once or twice a week we have been visiting the orphanage. As it was our last week and I was split between leaving my guitar as a donation to the school or giving it to a particularly talented guitar player at the orphanage, I went with the second option. So after showing her a few new chords and trying to teach her about 'The Beatles', I said, 'you need to practice everyday and one day you'll be a rockstar!' Although her reply was...'like Justin Bieber?' I let that slip and then she explained that she didn't have a guitar to practice with. My reply was something along the lines of 'yes you do, you're holding it'... It's fair to say this was a really nice moment.

Once again, the ice cream man arrived and once again we bought the children ice creams!

So the week finished and we said our goodbyes. This was not an easy thing to do as we had grown very fond of all the children, the village and the orphanage. We also made some great friends at the school and is was sad to say bye to them as well.

All in all, it has been an amazing experience and I'd like to think we've had a positive influence on the children's lives and the children's education. The children of Hope School have certainly had a positive influence on our lives and education.