A fun day with students

June 18 is a public holiday to observe the birthday of the King's Mother and I would have return to Siem Reap since the school was closed. However, some students asked me to stay a bit longer, so I borrowed the librarian's motorcycle to ride to school and use the library as our meeting place. 15 students from grade 4 and 6 showed up that day.

The night before I was thinking what I could do with them so that it is meaningful, educational and fun for them too and I was tended to running a session on the endangered animals in Preah Vihear, which are the giant ibis, Asian elephant and gibbon among others. I asked Gemini for some fun activities to teach them some facts about these unique animals and link it to environmental protection. But in the end, I changed to something that would let me see their aspirations since I was told that villagers don’t value education because they think they will end up working in the farm even if they finish school. There were also some examples of students going to universities in the capital city, yet still returned to be farmers. So, students drop out of school at young age to work in the farm or elsewhere. I wanted to know what these kids think about their future and perhaps give them some encouragement to be different.

I arrived at the school a few minutes late as I went to the market to get some snacks for them and also got myself a chicken rice breakfast. I didn’t really have proper breakfast in the past 2 days and I wanted to make sure I had enough energy to do things with them. Several kids were already there, but some others came later, so while waiting I let them read story books from the library since one of the suggestions from our group discussion was to have more time given to them to read books in the library session. Many like ghost stories! 👻👻👻 To make it a bit challenging I asked them to retell the stories and what they learned from them. Chanheng, the girl who gave me the first letter volunteered but the rest was very shy and did not come up to the board. After a bit of encouragement, another girl, also her friend told the second story. After that, I asked the class what they liked about the way they told the stories and what they thought could be improved. They were also able to draw out lessons learned from those short stories. They were so smart! The first story was about a ghost and Chanheng learned about the braveness of one of the characters that helped the village chased away the ghost. The second story was about 3 different mangoes (small, green and ripe) and the story teller learned the métaphore of human uniqueness.

They then had a break with some snacks I brought and did a circle of self introduction since all students were there by now and not everyone knew everyone as there were 15 of them from two different grades. We stood in circle and introduced ourselves: names, history of the names, how to best remember them and what each individual likes.

The last session of the morning was the core and I named it “My Dream, My Future!”. I asked how they felt when they think about their future, what careers they thought were the best, then drew and/or wrote on a piece of paper about who they wanna see themselves in the next 20 years. The session went longer than planned and we didn’t finish till about 12pm, an hour later than their usual school hour. But thankfully they were into it and it was very interesting to see and hear what were in their little minds. I could only draw a stick person but they were so talented and everyone could draw beautifully. Each of us took turn sharing about our dream including myself. Since I couldn’t draw, I asked AI to help me with that and managed to come up with an image to show them on my phone.

After the session, we headed to Yinglak’s house. She cooked us rice and prepared marinated rice field crabs before coming to school. Her name sounds like the name of the sister of a former Thai PM, Yingluck. That was how I remember her name. I told them that but they did not know who the person was, so I showed them pictures from the internet. I asked her to ask the person who named her about its history. It is interesting to find out when I get to go back again.

After realising that we only had the crabs, I stopped by a food stall and got us two more dishes and asked the kids to go get enough eggs for all of us from the nearby house. I thought her mom at least would be there at home and got us some food ready as I did ask her to get her parents’ permission for us to go to her house. Back at home in Phnom Penh, if my niece or nephew bring friends, the adults would prepared food beforehand or get stuff the kids want if they want to cook themselves. But poor Yinglak, she did prepare things herself (other kids helped her as well catching those crabs earlier in the morning before class) as much as she could. It was heartbreaking for me to see that no oil to fry the eggs, no soy sauce to eat with the eggs, so I gave them money to go get whatever they want including some fruits and drinks while I helped prepare the green papaya as they wanted to have papaya salad.. It was surprising that only Yinglak knew how to cook, the rest did not. So they seemed to have fun cracking eggs 😂. It was a late lunch at around 1:11pm but I hope they enjoyed it as it was their first time doing something like that together.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell the story of the watermelon. I bought 3 and a bunch of banana from the market and put them in the motorbike front basket while busy in the library. Around 11am a boy told me that the cows were eating our watermelons, so I went to have a look. They had eaten 1.5 of them already, so I could rescue only one and gave the other half to them.

I wish I had prepared better and got all the food ready for them but this was my first time so if I get to go back again, I promise to do better. I hope the kids had enough to eat after all.

I am so happy to see those smiles in our group photos. There is so much potential in these kids and I hope they will continue to work hard and one day achieve their dreams and see the world. ❤️Baca lagi