We visited two schools in a village and a floating village. Pahna, who was the headteacher of both schools, picked us up at our hotel and took us to a stationery shop. We bought the school a whiteboard, books to write in, pens, a skipping rope, a waterproof ball (which we thought would be ideal for the floating village school) and two wall maps of the world. We headed for the village.
We stopped to look at the market and tried some banana rice; it has a banana inside the rice and has a banana leaf around the outside. 

We went on for about 5 more minutes and stopped at another place but this time they were selling sticky rice stuffed into bamboo with beans in it. It was really nice and unusual. We turned off the main road and after 10 minutes driving down a bumpy track we arrived at the school. 
The first school had two class rooms. We arrived at their lunch time so the children weren’t there (because they eat at home). We met the teachers and had a look around. The classrooms weren’t like classrooms at the academy. The rooms were made out of wood and they had wooden tables and benches, one wooden whiteboard in each classroom and the teacher had a small wooden table as well. They didn’t have many posters and you have to take off your shoes before entering the classrooms. 
We had lunch with the headteacher (his wife made it). It was rice that she cooked on an open fire and noodles, chicken and pork. Mum has a chilli and cried for the rest of the meal!  
Once the children were back at the school we gave them the books we bought. Unfortunately we didn’t have quite enough so we had to give some of them pens. It was so nice to see them so happy about being given books and pens! Mum, Dad, Fin and I gave a lesson. Mum introduced us and told them a bit about us. Fin then played a game with them where he chucked a ball and said “my name is Fin” and then he would pass it to a child and they would say “my name is …” then he would swap it to something else. After that we taught them the song head, shoulders, knees and toes. I was amazed at how much English they could speak. 
We then went to the floating village. Unfortunately it wasn’t a floating village as it wasn’t the rainy season but it was interesting to see how the houses do “float” when it’s flooded; they are on stilts about 6 metres off the ground made of wood, holding the house up (like scaffolding). We went to the school there and met the children. 
The school was underneath the headteachers sister-in-laws house. We asked the children questions and then they asked us questions like, what’s your favourite colour?, favourite flower?, vegetable?,where do you come from? We gave them the waterproof ball, for them to all share. We also did some arm wrestling and thumb wars (they were very good at them).
We then got a boat along the river to the start of the woods. We swapped a boat that was a lot smaller, so that we could get into the forest. The captain paddled us with a stick and was whistling a little bit as well. He took us round to restaurant/cafe. We had something to eat and watched the sunset then the bigger boat picked us up and took us back to the school. Our mini bus was waiting to pick us up. We then went back to our guesthouse in Siem Reap. 

It was great to see children in a totally different school to mine and made me think how fortunate I am.

Summer