Friday evening. Such a nice part of the week. I love it here in the school but there is a certain feeling of achievement when it gets to Friday evening and the teaching is done till Monday. This week was a good one. We started it off by saying goodbye to two volunteers and then welcoming two new ones into the family. I have to admire the set-up of the school in this regard, the turnaround of teachers is so high it's an amazing thing to be able to foster learning and progress regardless. One consequence of the new volunteers was that I had to give away one class to the new volunteers. I gave up the preschool class even though I love their little souls and all the crazy noise they make. Without really thinking about it I found myself this morning in the middle of the class singing along to 'Bingo' and doing all the exaggerated gestures. Cecile, the head teacher of the pre-school class, was laughing and asked if I missed the little faces. I really miss them.
I had a hair cut this week. I've went the last three months without so much as blow drying my hair so when a student of the upstairs hair and beauty class asked if I wanted my hair done I thought 'why not?' I had to laugh at myself. I've refused point blank in the past to get my hair cut at hairdressing academies back in Ireland and Holland but here I was in rural Cambodia, where I don't speak the local language, getting my gruaig cut by students. I needn't have worried though, the cut turned out fine and my hair is much happier and healthier. It was the crimping that didn't suit me. Actually, the cut turned out so good in fact that Cecile, who I mentioned above, had her hair cut today as well. I think I'll stop by more often.
Fridays at the school are not ordinary Fridays. Here they are Creative Fridays where we try to think outside the box for our lessons. This can either lift a volunteers heart or strike fear into the body of those who relaxed a little too much on a Thursday evening. This week I had it sorted. After a tough week of introducing the family members to ABC beginners by use of 'The Monkey Family' my creative Friday task was building a house for them. It's possible that I was a teeny bit more excited than the class was, having spent a good four hours preparing for a one hour class. I pre-prepared a lot of the materials, the vine floor, the banana wallpaper, the bamboo walls and the 'timber' roof. Let's be honest here, all the students had to do was color all the bits and pieces and glue a few things together. In the end I was happy and they were happy, so a big win-win all round.
So now it's Friday evening and I'm relaxing with two other volunteers watching a movie. I said in my last post that we were challenged with the all night blaring of music from a local funeral. Well, this week we had the 7 day memorial from last weeks funeral and also two more funerals starting today. Not to make fun of another cultures customs but it's quite interesting trying to steer classes with three different loudspeakers blaring music and speeches all day. Not to mention trying to sleep at night. Why all the funerals? The temperature dropped quite suddenly the last week. I know it's quite common at home in Europe for elderly and infirm people to pass away with extremes of weather but here the temperature 'dropped' to about 20 degrees. It's almost unthinkable for me to hear people died because of the 'cold' at 20 degrees. It's really strange. This means that music blares all night when the person dies for three days, then again after 7 days, 30 days, 100 days and 300 days and then every year after that. Basically music just blares all the time, day and night, in Cambodia. A nice idea. In theory.
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