“If you could spend one day with anyone in the world, who would it be and why? What would you do?”
This was the prompt for the speaking test my teammate Aly and I gave to our English students this week. Personally, if I were to answer this question I would choose C.S. Lewis. What a cool person to spend a day with, right? As Aly and I sat down to listen to each of our students answer this question, we expected to hear about local celebrities or maybe a historical figure. As it turns out, just one of our students wanted to spend the day with someone famous. The rest would spend it with family.
We heard story after story about mothers and fathers who are always working and never get a chance to take a break, who never even smile. We heard about grandparents who had passed away or siblings who had moved. Our students wanted to spend quality time with them, get to know them, say things to them that they haven’t had a chance to, thank them for everything. I was so struck as to how these young adults valued and appreciated their family members, even in the hypothetical scenario we asked them to describe. Their sense of gratitude was incredible.
As teachers, we got a taste of this gratitude on our last day of class on Wednesday. The upper level classes had exams on Thursday and Friday so Wednesday we had class parties. In level 8, after playing games and eating some Cambodian snacks, Aly and I were presented with framed photos signed by our students plus purple scarves (our favorite color!). In level 9, our class insisted on taking Ana and me out to dinner and karaoke, paying for everything for us. It was so fun to hang out with our students in a more casual environment where they actually are quite talkative! We spent only seven days in class with these students and they honored us so much by giving us gifts and taking us out to dinner. I can only hope our teaching skills measured up!
Please consider making one last donation to my account as I still need about $2000 and my deadline has already passed. Any amount helps! Spreading the word also helps! And prayer definitely helps!
