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| A hand washing area, if they washed thier hands, we gave them a new bar of soap |
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| different games being played. Some older teens even showed up |
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| the board game i made, similar to shutes and ladders. if you dont cover your mouth, you go back, if you wash your hands or brush your teeth, you jump ahead. |
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| the people who came to the event at the health center |
Well the 50th project 'went pretty well. I planned it for a month. I wasnt sure who would come, if Id have enough food, or way too much. I did a lot of verbal invites I woke up at 5 am to start cooking all of the vegetables for the enhanced version of rice porriage I was going to make. I also made mashed pumpkin, potato, carrot banana. The students who agreed to help, came over around six to help. It appeared everything was going just fine, we even had a few extra people agree to take some items over to the health center for us on thier moped. We had a table, 3 large pots of food, prizes and games to carry. We tasted the rice porriage and it was terrible. The pot we used, over the fire, along with the smoke from the fire, made the food taste like smoke. We still had 2 other pots of food that were good. We got to the health center one hour before this event was supposed to start, but in typical fashion, (either really late or really early) there were quite a few people standing around waiting. We still had to set up large mats for the games, set up the tables, display the brochures and the people, and children were just staring at us. I ended up setting things up mostly by myself because it was difficult to communicate with the helpers, obviously. There was an area for the kids to watch a health DVD , which takes place in a doctors office, with real people, and muppets who have different illnesses. It seemed the kids were all having fun ! Some of the smaller kids would throw the game pieces around and I had to run around picking them up so I didnt lose them or so they didnt get stolen. Giving out the prizes was nuts. This was suupposed to be for kids who either answered a question right, or won at one of the board games. They instead swarmed me and even some of the mothers did too, taking thier little babies hands and putting them into the prize bag, ugh! I kept having to politely ask them to step back. I guess its no surprise people was free stuff ! We gave away little toothpastes, toothbrushes, soap, stickers/pencils. The food was all gone except the smoke flavored one, and even that was taken eventually by a nurst at the health center. I dont know, maybe he thought he could make it taste better. He's always saying he doesnt eat very well, he's divorced and lives alone. Now that I have these games, I think it will be easy to go out into different villages and just set them up for the kids to play, and use the DVD's. Theres little reason I have to be fluent in the language to teach the kids something. Plus, peace corps cut the budget so now we cannot pay a tutor even if we wanted to. I lost my tutor about 4 months ago, he only had time to meet me in the middle of the day, at the hottest time of day. I had to ride my bike for 20 mintues and truthfully I got lazy, I wanted to nap after lunch. He also became to busy to meet me. I think I learn alot from Osmosis and helping my host sister with her english, because she always says things first in english, and then in Khmer.
Some students I help tutor, and some students from the English school down the road recently wrote letters to my sister Megans' students back in Colorado. Most of them are 17 or 18 years old. We just got the letters back, and the students were SO excited. They read them over and over, commenting on the kids pictures and asking me questions about some words (there was quite a big of Slang ) One kid sent a dollar, another sent coins, some were very interesting. "Who is Khmer, you said Khmers' food is good, my Grandma is a good cook" ( Khmer is the name of the nationality of Cambodian people) They are Khmer. We are American, So cute. Another one asked if this Cambodian student had a computer or not, and then mentioned that he had 4. oops. Most just compared thier schools, food, what they do in thier free time and how the weather is. I know I would have been so excited about writing with kids from another country when i was that age. They just cant imagine how different everything is, yet how similar alot of things are.
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