The wedding we saw the preparations for last night must have started at about 5 this morning! Luckily my room doesn’t have a window, so I wasn’t awoken with a rude shock to traditional Khmer music blaring along the length of the street like others were! It sounded pleasantly muffled from my room – one of the good things about no window!
The students don’t have proper school on Saturdays at most of the CCFs, but they do a sports/fun activities day instead, with some groups playing games in the classroom and some going downstairs to play basketball.
This morning we were with combination of kids we’d met in the morning classes, the littlies and some of the slightly older kids. They were all very cuddly today and one of the girls we’d seen every day came up and told me “I love you”. Awwwww 🙂
We started off teaching the kids a version of leader ball and tunnel ball, which they enjoyed, but the teacher said they usually play a form of dodge, using a rolled up piece of paper as the ball. Thank goodness it’s only paper, not a real ball, as they sometimes throw it really hard!!
We joined the rest of our group for lunch at the Star Restaurant today, rather than staying at the CCF, since most of the groups were situated at CCF5 and didn’t want to put too much pressure on their food services. Again, they provided a really tasty meal, this time consisting of seafood salad, steamed fish and seaweed and pork rib soup (which was really nice, even if it sounds weird).
After lunch we went back to join another class for afternoon activities, which included games of dodge, basketball and a new game we hadn’t seen before called ‘hide the paper’, where the teacher hid laminated cards around the classroom for the students to find, giving clues occasionally. We also played a game of 4 on 4 basketball in the yard, which made me appreciate how much these kids walk around barefoot, because I left my shoes upstairs and was suffering on the hot concrete! The girls were really good at basketball! I’m really not, so unfortunately my team lost this game, but I did manage to land a few baskets when we were taking turns to shoot.
Today brought home to me even more what a difference there is between our worlds of schooling. I’m not sure our kids would see the fun that could be had with a simple piece of paper or two, or take a basketball game so seriously when it’s not on a proper court with lines drawn out and wearing team bibs, or even shoes! These kids really value every single opportunity they’ve been offered – not that ours don’t appreciate what they have, but that things we think of as so small are so important.
sign on the waterfront
The evening brought increasing humidity and even a few spatters of rain! We had a couple of hours at the hotel before heading out to the river cruise dinner we had planned, so a couple of us walked the kids to Lucky supermarket and then had some quality pool time. Unfortunately my hotel room was having some issues, so I was talking to the front office instead of swimming. It was all soon sorted out though, and off we drove to the riverfront to board our boat.
Our cruise boat
The cruise was lovely – dinner started with baby octopus and prawns on skewers, then graduated to the ubiquitous (but very tasty) curry and rice, and then there was more delicious tropical fruit for dessert, made even tastier by being out on the water.
Seafood onna stick! Party time!
It was pretty dark on the water, but the twinkling lights of PP on the shoreline made it seem very different from the Phnom Penh we have come to know – it seemed a city of fluorescence rather than the raw humanity we’ve seen.
Skyline
Two Weeks Away 