Work in progress.

Back here I promised to take some before and after photos of work in progress in the classroom, and I did. These were taken the next day. The finished product photos were taken today (10/9) and you'll find them on a later post.

Looking straight ahead as you walk in the door.

The rest of the room. Notice the wide open windows. We are not allowed to have A/C on unless the children are in the classroom. Fans help a bit, and if there's a breeze that's good too (although sometimes both create more problems than they solve by blowing things around) but it was a long hot week.

Mr Dy's corner

Classroom library is just about done.

The overflow of the classroom library.

Something to think about ...

Tonight, as I was enjoying some Facebook time and catching up on blogs that I follow, I was delighted by this post. Please take a moment to read her post before you continue reading this one.

As I read Kara's reflections, it prompted me to think about the children I will be teaching this year. Each child who will come into my class this year is unique. He or she will bring his or her own special qualities, gifts, and needs. Each one has been placed in my classroom for a reason. I do not know what that reason is, but I do know that God will show me during the course of the year.

Teaching is a privilege and a huge responsibility. It was said today, that in Cambodian culture teachers are seen as just as important to children as parents, and at times even seen as "second parents". What a trust is placed on us.

As I start this year, I pray that God will lead me to know how He wants me to meet the individual needs of the children in my care. I pray that I will be open to His leading and guidance. I pray that I will be sensitive to their needs. I pray all this knowing that as I endeavour to lead and teach the children I will also be learning. I learn so much from the children in my care. I thank God for the privilege of serving Him and them in this way.

I also thank Him for those who pray for me! This is not a job I can tackle in my own strength. No way! It is His task, and I seek His strength, enabling, and patience to do the very best job that I can do, in His strength. I pray too that they will see Him in me.

First day back ... for teachers

I've been back in Cambodia for just over a week, and today was the first official day back at school for teachers. It was great to be back. There were lots of new faces, especially among the secondary staff, and it's looking like being a great year.

We all met in the hall, and it was time for the round of introductions, then a break to meet individual, then time for some sharing by the principal about the history and establishment of the school.

After that it was off to the classrooms! I did get most of my furniture moved one day last week, and had started unpacking stuff, but then managed to get sick, so it had pretty much stalled at the stage of the photos below.

 

Today, with the capable help of my trusty assistant Choundy (Mr Dy), much more progress was made. All the boxes are emptied, and quite a bit of stuff got put away. In between there was much sharing of information with new colleagues and a little planning going on. I'll take some before and after shots tomorrow, and let's hope it looks a lot more like a classroom by the end of the day tomorrow.

 

Now it's almost time for bed, since I havea meeting with my fellow 4th grade teacher tomorrow morning to finalise our lists of school supplies to be ordered before the whole of school meeting in the hall at 9am. Looking forward to another fun day of getting ready, and to meeting all my new students next week!

The Box - the end of the story

A quick update on the story of "The Box".

As I mentioned in my last post, I needed to empty the box once it was moved to see just how much damage had been done, to rectify what I could, and then repack. So that's what I did. The first stage was to completely empty the container, identifying as we did boxes which were ant infested or likely to need repacking due to mould or moisture. Unfortunately we found a heap of ants had found their way into the box (no doubt trying to escape the damp weather we had over the last two years) so there was quite a bit of cleaning and repacking to do as well as mould to be cleaned away.

Most of the stuff stacked on a tarp to air.

Another view of the same stuff.

The rest of the stuff.

 We covered both heaps of stuff with tarps overnight as the whole job took about three days. Too much stuff to deal with all the ants and mould and stuff in just one day. Before closing the box overnight we also painted with endrust the metal strip down the centre of the box on the floor, and then sprayed it thoroughly with indoor/outdoor insect spray. The next morning it was opened up to air thoroughly before we started packing. The next step was to hang a number of objects from the sides. This served a dual purpose of saving floor space and also creating some air space around the inside of the container.

Yes, I'll have a bed to sleep on when I eventually return down under!

 After that it was sort, put shelves in, fill the shelves, pack, clean, sort and put more stuff away.

Somethings have to be accessible, like the file cabinet. Note the mattresses now suspended from the ceiling as well. Hopefully this will both provide some insulation and allow air to more around them.

What remained about the time I took the photo above. Covered it up and finished the job the next day.

Done! The guardians of "The Box". The gentleman in this photo did a huge amount of work in helping me move, unpack and repack the box (along with another very helpful gent).

So it is now to be hoped that I will have little need to trouble "The Box" apart from occasionally filing of paperwork. I certainly don't intend getting anything else out of it. A huge thanks to those who helped me, and to the wonderful couple who just happen to have space on their block of land to safely house the shipping container. God is good!

When a holiday is not a holiday ...

... when the shipping container full of your Aussie household goods (and precious books) is going mouldy and has to be relocated, emptied, cleaned, bug sprayed, and then repacked! Doesn't sound like much of a holiday to me either, but that's what I'm up to this week. Last week I did a little sorting, and Monday I did a bit more, but today was the big day.

I arose at the most unreasonable hour of six o'clock this morning. Yes, I know many people rise at that time or earlier every day, but I'm on holidays and besides which it was freezing cold. How do I know, because when I went out to the car at about 6.30am there was a layer of ice on it. I actually had to pour water over the windscreen several times to get it clear. Brrrrr! That dealt with I was on my way.

On arrival I moved a few things out, and a few move down from higher positions then closed it up again. Here's the story in pictures.

The box. Note how we've had to dig out the front right corner so we could open the doors.

Rear view after the box next door has been moved. See how the base is almost buried.

The very excellent crane that did the job.

Digging out the corners to get the points where the chains are fixed onto the shipping container.

Checking the chains with slight tension just before the lift.

Off the ground!

Repositioning

In the new location. Notice the bare ground where the containers had been resting.
With the drought broken, they had sunk into the ground quite a way.

Getting the big stumps in place to hold it off the ground. With air able to circulate more freely and any run off able to get away we're hoping that mould growth will be a thing of the past.

Done!

Once it was moved, the next job was to empty it and find out just how much damage there was. Actually, it was surprisingly little, although we did find a few redbacks and quite a number of ants nesting inside some of the boxes. Some cardboard boxes need to be replaced, and there's quite a bit of mould on some of the furniture but all in all, considering I was anticipating a 6 months absence when I first packed stuff up it's in pretty good shape.

Tomorrow is going to be another big day, with the cleaning, sorting and repacking needing to be finished by 2.45pm so I can get on with my AustSwim supervised experience. I guess there's no doubt that I won't be bored tomorrow!

Tales of Traffic

One of the pleasures of being back in Australia is driving a car.

In Cambodia, I ride a moto, rain or shine, that's just how I get about (unless I happen to walk, or very occasionally I take a tuk-tuk). Now since I'm rarely going any great distance, and with the number of cars, vans, trucks, and buses in Cambodia increasing at a very rapid rate, my moto is actually a pretty efficient way to get around. $2 fuel will get me through most weeks and sometimes even a fortnight. If it's raining, well, I just pull out my rain poncho and go anyway (occasionally I'll delay a journey if time isn't an issue and there's a high likelihood of the rain passing fairly quickly). On a hot day, it can be rather pleasant to go for a ride, since moto riding has a way of creating a cooling breeze. Cold weather - well, what's that. There were a few mornings a year or so ago when I was grateful for a light jacket on my morning trip across town but that's about it.

Now I'm back in Australia temporarily, and it's very definitely winter here. Take tomorrow for example: the forecast is for a minimum of 5 degrees Celsius, and a maximum of 17 degrees. Riding a motorbike in that sort of weather would be really chilling experience. I'm very grateful for access to a car while I'm here.

The other big difference between my Cambodian travel and my Australian travel is the distances. Today I covered about 500km. I went from Coffs Harbour, New South Wales to Toowoomba, Queensland via Brisbane. Alas, I needed fuel and got lost trying to find a service station when I got off the motorway. Never mind, I eventually found one before I ran out, and got back on the highway.

Now I'm not sure how the population of the greater Brisbane area compares with Phnom Penh, but there are plenty of cars. Sadly some had an accident this afternoon, and I didn't find out until it was too late to take an alternative route, so I was caught in a very orderly traffic jam. Why do I say it was very orderly? Well there were no motos driving down between the cars and on both sides of the cars, to start with. Not only that, the cars/trucks/buses all stayed in the correct number of lanes of traffic (2). Yes, there are definitely some things I like about Australian traffic.

Eventually we passed the scene of the accident, and here was another difference. There was no crowd of people hanging around. The fire brigade and police were there. The fire brigade seemed to be keeping things safe, and the police were doing their best to keep the traffic moving around the scene. I suspect the ambulance had already come and gone, and that there were other police trying to piece together what had actually happened before they cleared the scene and opened the road up to traffic again.

Once past the accident, the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, and I thank God for a safe journey on a sunny day. Oh, that's right. The sunset was awesome! Couldn't stop to take a photo but it was beautiful, although the hour before it set was painful as I was pretty much travelling directly into it! Oh well, life's like that.

Finishing the year

Ooops! It's almost a month since I last posted, and school has definitely finished.

So what did we get up to during the last two weeks of school.

We worked hard and played hard.

Mathematics assessment. We did a big mathematics test of the semester's work over two days, with interesting results. Many of the children did very well on the first half of the test, which was mainly computation involving word problems. The second half was not so well done, and showed me a weakness in the program. It was one that I was vaguely aware of, but it didn't really sink in until we did this assessment. We need to do my ongoing review. I've got a strategy in mind for this next year, and it will be interesting to see how it works. Part of the problem is that mathematics has a language all of its own, and when you don't use language regularly you tend to forget it.

End of year concert. The rehearsal was a marathon effort, but the children did really well. Then the concert in the evening was to a packed hall. We had over 400 seats and they were all filled, and the children sat on the floor at the front of the hall. The performance went well, and children and parents all seemed to enjoy the evening. My class sang two songs. The first was "Charlie Chaplin Went to France" which they sang as a round, complete with movements. The second was an Australian song, "Sun-a-rise" which they sang beautifully in unison. Well done grade 4K.

Reading assessment. Yes, I managed to complete running records for all of my students, including the three I know are not returning. I used RAZ-Kids for this, and it was great. With the aid of a good external speaker on the computer I was able to hear even the most softly spoken of my students clearly. RAZ-Kids running records are great because you can go back and listen again to be sure you record correctly the type of error that students are making.

Field trip. Despite major changes at my favourite bookstore, I was still able to take most of the students there to choose their end of year reading book for the summer. I bought a few extra books for those students who were not able to go, so they still got to choose from a selection of books.

Biography posters. The children did a great job on their biography posters, discovering along the way a little of what it took for people to come up with amazingly useful inventions. They also discovered that some inventors invented or contributed to the invention of many items.

The last day of school was a fun day. The children helped clear out the classroom, taking everything off the walls (in case of painting), and packing all their belongings in their bags to take home. For Khmer class they enjoyed reading the new Khmer books Dy and I purchased some weeks ago. After recess was the fun of choosing "Go For Green" and "Homework" rewards, and receiving their books and gifts from the teacher. They even had time to start reading their "new" books.

After lunch, we had one final treat, in the form of an ice cream and donut party, then it was time to say good-bye. Sadly it truly was good-bye for three of my students. One is returning to Australia, after two years in Cambodia, another is returning to Canada, and the third is moving to Siem Reap. I will miss seeing them all next year, and hope they do well in their new situations.

After the children had gone, and the goodbyes were over I returned to the classroom to finish packing everything up ready for the long summer break. I eventually finished, and with a little help from some of the guys was able to have everything stored and moved to the necessary positions by 6.30pm. It was worth staying a little longer so I didn't have to go back on Monday. Hopefully everything will still be there when I start setting up next school year.