PP Day 7 & 8

Monday ended up being a very quiet day as I was very kindly told to go back to bed and get over my malaise. Thank you so much to all the staff who helped pick up the slack from this slacker! For those at home who’ve been concerned: thanks for the thoughts. Much better at this end of the day, and raring to go for tomorrow.

Tuk-tuk ride – we’re very close to the action!

The only real experience to add to the blog today was taking a tuk-tuk to the Star Restaurant to meet up with the rest of the group. It was quite an interesting experience, with the various aromas of the street (some good and some really bad – not great for the sick kids we had with us!) and being at very close quarters with the street.

Today’s (Tuesday’s) breakfast was still a little light on, not wanting to strain the newly repaired relationship with my innards too quickly! It was raining heavily this morning, too, that heavy tropical rain that doesn’t do a lot too cool, but increases the humidity exponentially. It gave us a new perspective on PP, showing just how muddy it would get in the monsoon season. No wonder CFF5 was doing drainage work! It was quite cool by the evening though.

Muddy pathways at CCF5

We had a little more time at the hotel this morning as the staff needed to prepare for the teacher seminar at lunchtime. Luckily for the rest of us, J had put a LOT of work into it, so each other staff member prepared one section. Since I haven’t worked with younger kids before this week, I reserved myself to occasional interjections about applying the info we were discussing to older/more advanced students, and showing the staff a few of the ipad apps we’d found useful this week.

Back at CCF2, we were in charge of our afternoon class for an hour while S went to a meeting. We covered the page in the textbook we’d been requested to, and did some fun activities to consolidate these phrases and vocab with the kids: taking a photo of the students miming doing their favourite after school activity and their least favourite, and writing sentences about them.

Then it was computer time, when the kids were supposed to be working on Khan Academy. Unfortunately none of the computers were able to access the Internet, which caused some consternation, so we ended up reading stories to some of the kids and directing them to play the games on Children’s Encarta which they were able to access.

This is the “cute” post, according to the kids, who commandeered my camera

As we were waiting for our bus, the gorgeous group of littlies we sometimes work with in the morning came back from their afternoon stint at school. There were hugs and cuddles all round, and we certainly felt that this was a group that were appreciating our presence.

Some of the gorgeous girls with me at CCF2

After the evening activities learning dance or helping with the food distribution at CCF5, we trundled off to Romdeng restaurant, another restaurant associated with the Friends one we went to the other day. This place was just as good, offering up Khmer fusion dishes, like red tree ants and beef stirfry, coconut milk and lime smoothie (very tasty, I can assure you!) and the delicious beef, ginger and capsicum stirfry I had. Everyone really enjoyed their meal.

Yum!

I took the opportunity to visit the recycled/repurposed items shop upstairs, which sold the same sorts of things as the Friends shop did. This time I was feeling much better so I splurged on a couple of nice things for people back at home.

The trip seems to be rushing past now. We only have one full day of teaching at our centres, plus a half/three quarter day on Thursday before a bit of last minute sightseeing and shopping on Friday as we head out to the airport. It seemed like a long journey to have come on, with so many new experiences, but it also seems to have gone very quickly.