Well, I'm still missing several students in this pic, but here's most of my most challenging class! Paine (one of my favorites) sneaked out early and Srey Kong was absent that day because she was at the hospital getting an infection checked (she's about 8 and has AIDS). Sometimes it was hard teaching these kids, disciplining them or reading their sweet little notes to me.. and then realizing that a bunch of them are HIV positive. What impresses me though, is that at this orphanage, they don't segregate the kids, and the other students get educated about the disease. Most of them are very healthy and happy (and smart!), but it is sad to wonder how much time time they'll have.
On a nice note, I'm happy about 2/3rds of the class passed their English exams! This was crazy because there are 2 sections for grade 2 (it's like a total of 50 kids), and the other teacher is Cambodian. Sooo, he had a bit of an unfair advantage over me. But, his English really isn't that great. The text books the school uses are from Singapore, and the grade 2 book was way more advanced than they could handle (it dealt with the concept of time, "time to work" "free time" wasting time" "time out") so we learned the days of the week, how to tell time, some words for how we tell time, and then I tossed the book. From there I used a TPR (total physical response) method I learned from my beginning Spanish class, and the kids really had fun learning. Learning was a lot more fun too when I finally figured out the words "quiet" and "stop" in Khmer... and how to discipline them effectively and in love. Sometimes at for lunch break some of them would come over to play in my yard and eat fruit or blow bubbles. I will really miss a lot of these kids.
Here are some pics of next year's teacher Maria playing with the most valuable thing I packed -- a giant bubble wand! Pray that there will be more English speaking teachers to help out next year, I know Maria is a little overwhelmed with the class load. Just do your best Maria!
Oh, and the older girl in the pic is Gee (she's maybe 10 or 11) and is one of the few orphans that is hearing/speech impared. God has truly blessed her, because in spite of her abandonment and challenges, she is one of the happiest and friendliest kids I met. Because she has these learning challenges, she lives at the AIDS clinic where she can get more attention/help learning (Gee studies outside the orphanage at a special school for deaf/dumb students).
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