As part of our school year here at SCAO we threw a Christmas Celebration for the students just to treat them and have a bit of fun. The party started at 11.30 on Friday morning and went on until 6.30 the same evening. I have to give ourselves a good pat on the back; it was epic. We had a good schedule of events starting off with the obligatory speeches, giving out some food and snacks, dancing, games, more dancing, a singing competition and then even more dancing. I have no idea where the kids got their energy from. They danced from almost noon to 6.30 and we had to shut the music off, they didn't want to go home. But the best part of the day for the whole school was the singing competition. You couldn't pay an Irish child to get up in front of their whole school to sing a song but these kids signed up with such enthusiasm it made me dizzy. We told them a week in advance about the competition and they had to sign up with their names and a particular song. We then divided them into four different categories, X-Factor style of course, 7-11, 11-14, 14+ and duets and they sang their hearts out. Us as volunteers were given different categories to judge. I had the 11-14 group, much to my relief because the 7-11 group had about 10 different versions of BINGO and Twinkle-Twinkle to go through. It was amazing and the whole contest lasted at least 2 1/2 hours. We also had a little Xmas present for them, we gave each student toothbrushes and toothpaste. And then apart from that we just went crazy dancing. At one point I saw two of our tiny pre school students doing all the actions to the 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' song. I couldn't believe it because they wouldn't do it for us in class. Little feckers. All in all an absolutely fantastic day for everyone.
The pic below is of the preschoolers before we opened the gates for the Xmas party. Too cute.
The day before the Christmas celebration we were scheduled to give our students an exam. I had two classes to make tests for and even though it cost me an extra two hours in prep work I made two versions of my exams. I'm such an asshole. I made them appear to look the same but slightly different. I did it to see the panic in their eyes when they couldn't copy from their neighbor. It was brilliant. Overall they went well but there were some surprising observations. There are two girls in my class, one extremely chatty and one quiet. The chatty one I expected to pass with flying colors but her grammar was awful. The quiet one I thought had a pretty low level of English but her grammar exam was graded at 100%. Just goes to show that there isn't one way to gauge intelligence of a language. I will be rethinking my approach for the next round of exams in January..
Other notable items from this week:
- Myself and Sophie went to the next village over to see the Buddhist centre of Cambodia. We ate street food we should have died from. Was a good day.
- We had an origami class from the monks. Took an hour and a half for me to learn to make a swan.
- A preschooler peed on the Buddhist altar in the school.
- Another preschooler peed on the floor. A volunteer walked in it.
- Our resident 2 year old peed on the bathroom floor. His dad walked in it.
- We ate another volunteers chocolate that was sent over from his grandad. In fairness, he left it in the fridge with no note on it.
- I spent an hour hand washing clothes only for them to stink of the local water. Couldn't wear any of them.
Right now I'm having a really nice coffee in Battambang in the north west of Cambodia. I've a week off due to New Years and myself and another volunteer headed out of the village for a couple days but this will have to written about in a couple of days. But safe to say I'm loving this city a whole lot more than Phnom Penh.
By the way, rice wine is evil and pretty sure it would be more at home in the tank of motorbike than in a human body. Never again.
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