I got 11 hours of sleep my first night and woke up refreshed and ready to go. We enjoyed a nice breakfast at the hotel. THey have a large buffet with several different types of food.
There are about 40 students in our first clas. I was surprised that they all seemed very young. We found out the average age was 30 but many of them looked like teenagers or early 20's.
The first couple of hours of instruction went well, but we realized we were going to have to adapt things a bit because of the language barrier. In the morning we taught on writing a behavioral objective. We are also implementing a lot of cooperative learning stratgeties to show them different ways to teach. In the afternoon we did the Knowledge level of Bloom's Taxonomy.
I had to make up a song for the teachers on the water cycle. That was a lot of fun! Lunch was a form of soup with stuff in it that you put on rice. I pretty much ate rice and soy sauce. I couldnt identify the meat!
We ate dinner at a restaurant called KWest. I had another cheeseburger. NOt as good as Java, but still pretty good for a cheeseburger in Cambodia.
We had fun lesson planning in the evening and just laughing and being silly. The heat takes so much out of you so we were all exhausted and goofy. I also got to Skype with my parents for a few minutes so that made my night as well.
2nd day of teaching-
Today was much better. We are more into a groove with teaching. THe students are still having a difficult time grasping the concept of higher order thinking with Bloom's, but they are getting there slowly. Today we did Comprehension and Application. The students are great. They are so fun and they are so eager to learn. All of them have some amazing story that brought them where they are today.
Lunch today consisted of broth and nooodles with boiled pork kidney. Needless to say, I ate rice and soy sauce. I know... I am so boring! :o) We did get fried banana on our break. It was still warm and it was amazing!
For dinner tonight we went to Khmer Siran. It was beautiful. We sat on this terrace caved in by amazing greenery. We sat on the floor. The weather and atmosphere were beautiful. It was an enjoyable evening, even though I was rather uncomfortable sitting on the ground.
We also rode in a tuk-tuk for the first time. That was an experience! It was fun and interesting to see the traffic so close and personal. We went to a park and walked around. There are street vendors every where and people dancing in large groups and the most amazing fountatins I've ever seen. It was memorizing!
After all of that Dr Hardy and I went and got foot massages at the hotel. Things like that are so cheap and so good! It was incredible! They bring us into this nice quiet room and bring hot tea and have relaxing music on. Then they turn on the TV and it was Cops! So we're trying to relax but all we can hear is Cops. Finally we just kept laughing and had them turn it off. It was a nice time of conversation and getting to know her better. She is an amazing person and I really respect/admire her a lot.
Last day of teaching-
This went well. We were not able to get all 6 levels of Bloom's. We missed Evaluation, but what we did get in, went well and the students are understanding now. Hopefully they will be able to take this back and use it!
We were able to bring them pencils, pens, rulers, calculators, tons of posters and shampoo, conditioner and deodorant. It was fun to bless them with all of that stuff! It was also hard to say goodbye to them! They are all amazing!
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