St John Youth in Cambodia

I think it’s fair to say that we have hit the ground running in Cambodia! We’ve had a fantastic week so far and are really looking forward to tomorrow’s lessons at our next placement to end our first week. We’re enjoying a bit of a quiet afternoon this afternoon as the team are in need of a bit of down time after a very busy few days.

The first few classes have been very successful. The first centre was a great place to find our bearings and put the lessons we have prepared to the test. The first lessons with the staff were great as we had a decent amount of time (45 mins per topic) were able to go into a good level of detail and test out each of the full versions of the lesson. The staff had very good English and Dimong, along with Tom and Jean, have been helping us out with key Khmer words for each lesson as well as some good tips on making our lesson content culturally relevant.

Tuesday afternoon we had 1.5 hours with the staff and then two 1 hour classes back to back with the kids from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Wednesday was a full day with classes from 10:30 to 12noon and about 2:30pm to about 4pm with the staff and then 3 back to back classes with the students from 5:30pm to 8:30pm with the kids at the second campus for SK.

The lessons with the students were slightly shorter – 1 hour per class. Each of these classes had four of our six topics – Nutrition, Food Hygiene, Basic Hygiene and Oral Hygiene – so each topic had about a 15min ‘overview’. This model has turned out to be almost the perfect level of detail for the kids and all four topics have been a big hit – especially Liz and Rob’s hand washing song!! (We have a video which we’ll have to show you)... The kids at the first centre also had great English so this has made the adjustment to teaching in a non-english speaking environment a lot easier.

We had 4 hours this morning with some staff and students at our next placement teaching first aid and oral hygiene which went very well and we’re looking forward to heading back there tomorrow morning to do another 4 hours of teaching in the other topics – basic hygiene, food hygiene and safety, nutrition, as well as possibly a recap of the first aid and oral hygiene topics.

Tom, Dimong and Jean have been looking after us really well and Jo has been calling in every now and then to check up on us while she is looking after the group of nurses from QLD. I think it’s fair to say that apart from being a bit knackered today everyone is traveling very well and on the whole thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Siem Reap is a fantastic city and we’re all looking forward to having some time this weekend to explore the sights.

Michael and the team