…aka me in Cambodia. Wow. Cambodia was a month that is going to take more than one post to sum up. Before I get into the painful details of what happened near the end of the month, I want to tell you guys about the ministry my team and I got to participate in in Kampong Thom province – my favorite ministry of the Race so far.
We worked with a school called Good Seed International School and each member of my team had different jobs. For example, some of us would help out with ESL (English as a Second Language) classes in the evenings while others of us would help teach preschool/young elementary aged children during the day. I worked with two teachers and helped out in four classes. Both teachers I worked with were from the Philippines, and there were other teachers at this school from all over the world! There was even a teacher from Zimbabwe which was super cool because we spent a month there back at the beginning of the Race.
I helped out with two classes in the morning and two in the afternoon – my students were three and four year olds. Basically, my job was to lead story-time as well as play with the kids during their break time. I ended up staying in all four of my classes just to help the teachers out beyond these times because I loved the kids and teachers so much. Some of the main things we did during class time were sing fun songs that helped the kids learn simple English words, help them learn how to write letters and numbers, and practiced drawing shapes. These kids were all so eager to learn and it was really fun to be able to help them. When it was my turn to lead class, I would usually either tell them a kid-friendly Bible story (like creation or Noah’s Ark) or read them a story that I would find in the school’s library. I soon learned that the kids LOVE learning about different kinds of animals, so I always tried to pick a story that had animals in it. It was really awesome to see how over time (I would read each story for two or three days) the kids would pick up on all the English vocabulary in the story and start being able to identify things themselves! This was especially cool with the creation story, which I read for the first week. After reading it, I would do a lot of identification exercises with the kids so they could learn different words (like ocean, sun, human, etc.) On the playground, there is a mural depicting the creation story. One afternoon, a little girl who I had grown quite close with pulled me over to the mural and pointed out every scene in the creation story and identified them to me in English! It was so heartwarming to see how just a short month spent with these kids impacted their learning and English abilities. I loved them so much.
During break time, it was my job to watch the kids from my class and play with them. This led to a lot of kicking balls around, hopscotch, and kids saying “teacher, look!” as they proudly went down the slide. I loved every minute with these sweet kids, and will miss them every day. One month at Good Seed International School wasn’t enough.
In addition to the ministry itself, I also really liked the town we were located in. It could probably either be classified as a small city or a big town. My team lived right across the street from the local market, where we could get basically anything we needed. However, for time reasons, we opted to eat at the Khmer restaurant on the corner of the street a couple blocks down from us. Every single meal I consumed here was either beef fried rice or LokLak beef (a traditional Khmer food – highly recommend). I thought it was delicious but it’ll definitely be awhile before I choose to eat fried rice again. Also, there was a coffee stand right down the street where we could get Khmer iced coffee (which was basically 32 ounces) for USD 1.50…heavenly.
Our life in Kampong Thom was extremely busy but also simple in the best way. Despite the fact that I have been having some serious health issues (which I will detail in my next blog), I can still confidently say that Cambodia was an incredible month and this ministry was for sure the one I have felt the most passionate about so far. Please keep Good Seed School in your prayers! And enjoy some photos from the month below…
