If you're not smiling, you're doing it wrong

Travelling isn't all about the beautiful scenery, it's about the people you meet and the things you learn. While backpacking around a small part of Asia by myself I realized I wanted to work with kids. After some time searching for a place that didn't make me pay thousands of dollars to volunteer for a few weeks I heard from a friend about Smiling Hearts School in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It sounded perfect! It was free to volunteer-although it didn't offer any accomodation or food, which was fine because I could easily find a dorm with AC for 5USD per night. I decided to tell them I would teach english for two weeks and possibly add on another one. When I got to the school I was welcomed in with open arms by the director Aly and even a few students. She assigned me a grade 3 class which had kids aged 9-15 and I was a little nervous to start but excited to meet them! Each day I would go to the school and teach 9am-11am and then the others teachers and myself would get lunch together and be back at the school for our next class whihc was 3pm-5pm. Both classes had the class clown, the trouble maker, the ones who just smile and nod when you ask a question, but they all had such different amazing personalities. Although lesson planning was not my favourite thing to do, I decided to add on another week to volunteering. These kids taught me so many things and every day I would get tons of smiles from each student, not just in my class but throughout the school. In the last week I went to a country school with two of my afternoon students and helped there from 5pm-6pm. All these kids didn't have to pay to go to these schools but were so eager to learn; they all knew that english was the way out of poverty. Although these kids didn't have much they would find joy in everything they did, I grew so attached to these children and am trying to figure out when I can go back. Sometimes all these kids needed were a little attention and a smile. In the afternoon I had a student that seemed very shy towards me, she wouldn't smile and even when the class would play games she wouldn't join in. I tried and tried with her every day just to get her to smile; after doing this for the majority of the time, by the last day she wouldn't let go of me, she was sad to see me leave. I told her that her smile is beautiful and I want her to show it off everyday. When saying goodbye to these kids her smile was glowing and although it was tough saying goodbye, I couldn't help but smile back.