The bus ride out of Phnom Penh to Battambang served as a an educational orientation to Cambodia. We saw thousands of "houses" made of a sheet of corrugated iron, some hessian bags, and some palm fronds. There are small shopfront businesses everywhere. Foundries, mechanics, all sorts of manufacturing, clothing, ornate shrines and lots of food and drink. I have not seen any of the big industrial sites that I saw in Vietnam. Perhaps the giant shoe factories are not to be found in Cambodia.Battambang, like Phnom Penh is one dusty city. Roads are being built, housing is under construction, everything is a work in progress. This year, according to those who have been before, Cambodia, for the first time, decided to do Christmas. There were gaudy decorations, lights, fake snow, tinsel, a few Santas etc. Apparently, every year there is some new western thing that Cambodia hooks onto.
The Teachers' College
Our teaching room has a wooden platform at the front for the teacher to stand on. It has gaps in it and I plan on entertaining the class by either falling off it or through it. Tell me which one you think would be the most hilarious and I will do it. There are wooden desks for two students to share, two electric lights (but no power point) a very old blackboard, a teacher's desk at the front and decorations. The decorations are quite lovely. They are polystyrene bricks carefully cut into shapes of images, arrows, Khmer writing etc. They are all painted in the favourite colours of Cambodia which are sunflower yellow, lollypop pink, and fresh mint green. It must take ages to put together. Our translator told us that the students at the teachers' college decorate the room at the beginning of the year. While we were there the students at the teachers' college did yard duty; they cleaned all the grounds, the street out the front, picked up dead leaves and out of the dusty gardens.
Now for the interactive part of the blog
Our translator is a university lecturer in ESL. We have implored him to tell us if he thinks what we are teaching is
a) too hard
b) too easy
c) irrelevant
d) impossible for the teachers to implement
e) impossible for the teachers to understand
Now you can vote and tell us what you think it our most likely first error.
No smart alecs who say "all of the above".
4 comments:
Definately falling through the floor is funnier, I wish I could take a photo of you falling.....Classic!
a) Too hard
Above comment is Colette by the way....:)
Mum says d)
I had been cleaning out her room and reading old letters that you wrote to me when you were living in Sydney. It's amazing to think how little money we had and yet how interesting and fun our lives were.
For kids these days there will be no recorded history (e.g letters) of their lives, how sad!
I am really glad I kept the letters because I had forgotten a lot of what we did all those years ago.
What an amazing experience you're having, I have been telling everyone about the spider. Paul's French guests said WOW thats brave but yuck! :)
c) Irrelevant
but if you fall off the dias (ensuring limp-falling in best dramatic style - pls take care of bones as I don't want to read about the medical facilities!)the students will remember whatever important point you just made.
Also, 1. Funny, well ummm...the writer is funny; deepfriend tarantulas is not so funny, it's more like: duh, scarey.
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