Tuesday 29th May

Neil came over for a brief visit. It was good to catch up with him.

Here we are at Hugh's bar next door (Hugh in the background)

Thursday 24th May

Well Mo and Yanna really helped get the Dictionary campaign off the ground and we are now up to 38 dictionaries which means we have enough to cover the scholarship class. Special thanks also to Hugh next door for offering to match his guests and to Steve who bought ten.

We took a few dictionaries down to the school the other day to see how the kids react to them.We split the younger scholarship class into six groups and gave them words to look up. We made it a race to see who could find the words fastest.


After a short tutorial, the children all seemed to get the hang of it.



I think they found it fun, and when we finished the exercise, they wouldn't close the dictionaries.


Here is Yanna explaining how to look up a word

Wednesday 16th May

Yesterday Thy and I did some home visits with the Scholarship Class. It was good to show some of their parents how their child is progressing. I interviewed each child briefly so there parents could see them demonstrate their understanding of English

We got some excellent feedback including that the children would like more homework, but that very few of them have dictionaries. We think it would be difficult to set reading exercises as homework without a dictionary.

So I'm going to put a flier together asking visitors passing through Kampot to buy a English-Khmer dictionary for a child. The cost is $2 each and already my neighbour has offered to purchase one for every one purchased by his guests. So hopefully before long we can get a dictionary to every child who needs one.

Here are some photos from the home visits.

Monday 14 May

Today is a holiday for the King's birthday. I think tomorow is a holiday too, but Thy and I plan to do some home visits in the morning.

Yesterday we had a party for Ms. Chenda who is leaving the school to continue her nursing studies in another province. Mr Recka's wife cooked us some food which we took out to my deck. The meal was delicious and we enjoyed a few beers together then we went to Karaoke. It was good to get all the teachers together for a social event.

Saturday 12th May

Here are a few more pictures of the boat trip.



This is the old bridge. It's actually made up of three different bridges joined together as different parts of it were blown up at different times.

Friday 11th May

Yesterday I went on a boat trip with the staff from the Little Garden Bar. You can see the new bridge in the backround. I think it opened today (It was open temporarily over Khmer New Year, but has been closed the past few weeks as they put the finishing touches on it.)


These larger ships import sugar cane (I think) from Thailand


A significant Chinese community live in this area



We head down river towards the sea





Here's some pictures of the Little Garden Bar staff, and the boatman



This is Mr Thy's younger brother. He works as a waiter at Little Garden Bar.




And here's me

Monday 7th May

On Saturday and Sunday we gave our first computer and internet classes to the Chumkriel children. We had a good turn out even though they cycle quite far to get here, but Cambodian children are not lazy I am told. I think there is going to be a lot of interest in this from the children and the logistics of making sure everyone gets an opportunity to come to the classes are proving tricky. My original thinking was to have 2 classes at the weekends but it is now looking like there will be enough demand for a class every day.

We have three computers in the office so I think at most we can take six children per class. We anticipate that around 80 children will want to come regualrly.



The children are very keen and learn the basics of navigating the computer quickly however I will need to develop a sylabus as the course moves forward.



Most of the children have never seen a computer before so the first steps are familiarisation and making it fun.

Sunday 6th May

This morning we started doing the home visits again. Darra, Phon and I visited some families in the Chumkriel area. All the parents had a lot to say and I think we got a positive message across, as well as receiving some constructive feedback.



We talked about our new computer and internet classes that we are starting up. The first one was yesterday.



It is important for the school to keep parents informed of their children's progress and to hear their concerns and aspirations for their children. At the moment we are a bit worried about some of the children having to cycle home a long way in the dark, especially now that the rains are starting. We will talk to more parents about this, but one idea is to help buy bike lights for some of them.