Sometimes I find it hard to believe I’ve been teaching in Cambodia for more than 4 months now….the weeks just seem to fly by, even though I’m writing days and dates on the whiteboard every day!
When I got back from Australia we started getting more and more students coming to school – we used to have 3 groups twice a day (kindergarten, my class with Dara and Josef’s class with Sam Ath) but the groups were getting too big so we had to split into 4 groups instead. Whereas I used to have Dara teaching with me, he now teaches the first hour in the new group, so I’m teaching my hour alone……which was intimidating at first but now it feels normal! We’ve focused a lot on getting the kids to speak more and more, and they are all doing really well. Most days are good, some are fantastic and a few are just awful….my morning class is bigger and has more boys than my afternoon class, and needless to say, the afternoon class is much easier to teach!
5 volunteers from Austria arrived at the beginning of July, so things have been quite hectic getting everyone settled in and into the routine here, but everything seems to be working out ok. Except with all the German that gets spoken I feel like I’m back in Austria and can’t participate in the conversation, which is SO frustrating and excluding – but the others are trying to speak more English, so that situation is slowly getting better.
Josef and I will take a short break at the end of July, and probably go down south to the coast for a week to have a break – I’m really looking forward to it, having some time off teaching and just relaxing for awhile. And the rainy season STILL hasn’t hit – it’s crazy, it’s supposed to start in late May/early June and yet we’ve had hardly any rain…for the last month, we’ll have one big storm in the afternoon or evening and then have a week with no rain whatsoever. People here are worried that it will push up the price of rice – because it hasn’t rained, the farmers aren’t growing very much and of course, the less rice there is, the more expensive it is to buy. And people here can’t afford to pay more. So we are all (still) eagerly awaiting the rain, and wondering if it will ever come!
At the moment the plan still is to be home by Christmas – we have to decide in the next few weeks how long we’re going to stay, so we can let the people here know…..so by the next time I write I should have a better idea of my plans! Missing everybody lots! Oh and there are a couple of new pictures (I learnt to ride the motorbike!) in my photo album (on the second page) – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=162317&id=742706461&l=7fb3044d2d.
