Week 9: The tourist season comes to an end

The tourist season at the Red House seems to have come to an end for now so this weekend Tom and I are enjoying the chance to finally recharge our batteries. We waved my family off from CLC on Tuesday at the end of their very successful visit to Cambodia. We had a great time showing them around and getting them to join in with some of our classes. I got my 12-year old brother Harry to stand at the front of my class of youngest students who then stuck body part post-its all over him which was very entertaining. We also took them to see the view from the pagoda, jump in the reservoir and gave George and Harry the full Red House experience as they stayed with us there for 2 nights which was great :) I reckon Tom and I should get part-time jobs as tour guides in Chamcar Bie because whenever we show people around they seem to really enjoy it. Or perhaps it would be more fair if I put that down to how awesome it is here! In fact, while wondering what to do with our advanced teacher training class (which will now be renamed as the Youth Group class) we came with the idea, or more truthfully my Mum came up with the idea, of getting them to plan a tour of the village and make brochures to advertise it. Quite a number of Youth Group members we've met have said that they want to be tour guides when they finish school so they were quite interested in the activity.

I had quite a fun few lessons with my youngest student class at the beginning of the week. I found some magazines and cut out some arms, legs, heads and bodies so they could make Misfits on Monday to wrap up the topic of 'the body'. Then on Tuesday I taught them how to make origami paper hats and introduced the next topic 'clothes'. Unfortunately the hat lesson got a bit chaotic towards the end as I was giving them each a sticker to stick on their hats. I ended up nearly drowning in my students as they clambered over each other to try and get one more sticker. Our middle class has also been studying 'the body' although at a higher level so we started teaching them illnesses on Thursday.

I reckon my Mum enjoyed helping Tom out during one of his less advanced teacher training classes (now renamed as just the Teacher Training class) when he was teaching them how to understand recipe instructions and how to write a recipe. I don't think many of the women here look at recipes when they cook as the instructions are just passed on by word of mouth. This made it a little difficult for them to grasp the concept but with my Mum and Tom's help most of them understood eventually.

One of the highlights of my week though, was at the end of my Coconut Project class on Wednesday when two or three of the girls came up to the board and wrote down a few words that they had learnt to spell outside class. They were quite random words like 'dare' but nevertheless it was great to see them being confident enough to come to the front of the class and show everyone else what they had learnt because they were so extremely shy when I first started teaching them. One of the words was 'crazy' which was quite funny because it's one of Sara and Reat's favourite words. They can spend the whole hour from 3 to 4pm (when I hang out at the Coconut Project with them) saying 'Sara you crazy!', 'No! Reat you crazy! Teacher, you say "Reat you crazy"!' I always enjoy their silly joking and there's no doubt they like to hang around with me as they even came up to see me at the Red House on Wednesday and Thursday after lunch and stayed until I went to the Coconut Project with them at 3pm. Skoout na! (Very crazy!)

Valerie and PJ (or PP as all the Coconut Project people call him now) finally managed to find something else to do besides the monotonous job of scraping paint off the UNESCO buildings and went to help the DWC volunteers to build a house for some Family Dream village members who had finally managed to save up enough money to afford a better house. The DWC group have also nearly finished our outhouse kitchen (left) although the rest will be done by some of the villagers as the DWC group are leaving tomorrow. Val and PJ leave next weekend and it turns out that Fred, the engineer volunteer who was going to come to live with us, has been placed in Takeo (the nextdoor province) instead of in Kep province. We also thought that Elizabeth, another volunteer, was supposed to have arrived by now but she's not here yet so it looks like it'll be just Tom and me again in the Red House in a week's time.

Last night at the Riel bar we met a man called Stefan who owns the Botanica guesthouse in Kep. Tom mentioned that he's planning to set up a basketball court and train up a team in Chamcar Bie and by the end of the evening Tom had a contact for someone who would lay down some concrete and do some welding as well as Stefan's offer as an assistant coach. He even offered to help continue the coaching after we leave which would obviously be fantastic. Speaking of basketball, Tom and I went down to an orphanage down the road (in Kep city) yesterday where they have a basketball hoop. No more than 5 minutes after he'd started playing, most of the orphanage kids were on the court playing with him while I played games with a group of them with a beachball. They all asked us to come back again so we'll definately rock up again next weekend!

So Tom's basketball plans are progressing nicely. I've decided to try harder to put more time into my yoga because when Elizabeth comes I'm going to hopefully help her to set up yoga classes in the village. Another up and coming sporting event is the annual Kep Half-Marathon, 10K Run and 10K Bike Ride in February 2009. This is a fund raising event to raise money to support Bridges Across Borders' projects in Chamcar Bie. The aim is to sustainably provide improvements to the quality of life of the villagers, particularly in terms of their health and education. For example, if you decided to do the Bike Ride, locally supplied bikes are provided and, at the end of the ride, all the bikes are donated to the villagers so more people have transport to get to school. This is important because some people live too far away from school to be able to get there by foot. If you're living in Singapore and are interested in participating, here is a fact sheet from last year's run (sorry, haven't got anything about the 2009 event yet):

http://www.babsea.org/Images/docs/Kep_Event_2008_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Tom and I are hoping to join in so maybe we'll see you there!