A is for....

So here I am in Cambodia now! It's very very hot and humid, I can finally wear most of the t-shirts and skirts I originally packed and throw away all the jumpers and trousers I aquired in China! I'm staying in the centre of Phnom Penh in an OKish guest house, and teaching in an orphanage during the day. It's not exactly what I was expecting - I thought I would be assisting the teachers and keeping the kids entertained during their breaks. But oh no, I AM the teacher! The orphanage is about an hour out of town, there are about 70 kids living there from age 7 to 18. They have 3 classrooms; about 7 or 8 dormitories; a chicken farm; a herd of cows and 2 rice fields. The children are split into 3 age/ability groups and then again into 2 classes. One class goes to the local school in the morning and then has English lessons in the afternoon with us at the orphanage, and the other class does vice versa. I'm not sure exactly how the groups are split - in the morning I have 2 kids, in the afternoon I can have any number between 13 and 21. I have the youngest classes - some of them have a pretty high level of English, some of them can't recognise letters of the alphabet so it's hard to think of things to keep them all occupied! We've been doing 'a or an' for the last few days, although with one boy we are still doing A B C! I found the first couple of days very hard work, but it's getting better.

Music time at the farm

I have another volunteer in the class with me and he plays the guitar so our afternoon class mostly involves singing! That's the only thing that keeps their concentration! One of the more clever boys who sped through the work (and the extra work) I gave him during the lesson came up to me after class today and asked me to give him homework! A lot of them want to learn but it's very hard to explain what we want them to do because of the language barrier. There are several dogs at the school, and just last week they got a tiny puppy from a local village. The kids are very rough with it and love to pick it up and throw it about and put it in the trees. There are also 2 babies who belong to a group of builders who are building a new volunteer house, and the kids are very rough with them as well.

The baby at the farm. I would have taken him but his mum was looking.

Every lunch time we have to confiscate the puppy and the babies at least 3 times! We are planning a lesson for the whole orphanage entitiled 'Puppies don't climb trees and other things to remember when playing with things smaller than yourself'. But on the whole the children are very nice and seem to like us being there! There are 5 of us volunteering at the farm, and about 15 of us in total spread out on projects across PP. Everyone seems nice enough so far! A lot of them are also in the middle of long trips across Asia, it's nice to hear all their stories so far!
I haven't really had time to see much of the city so far, in the evening we tend to go to restaurants near the hotel so we don't have to walk far in the heat! We have the weekend off so we'll hit the sights then!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia