Well that’s the final week as ‘teacher Nicola’ done! It’s hard to believe how quickly a month has passed, I’ve actually started to feel quite at home in this place, doesn’t feel like I’m living in a hotel room & volunteering, it feels more like home & a job!
I knew the last day was going to be mixed emotions, I’ve really got to know & love the kids despite the language barrier, but my god I was pretty speechless when I left yesterday, I couldn’t have asked for a better last day! Here it is… (pic overload again)
Last class with the nursery kids in the morning, couple of final renditions of head, shoulders, knees & toes & the alphabet song, followed by a mix up of pass the parcel but with a ball, alphabet & counting, & of course stickers for prizes, my god I’m actually surprising myself what I can come up with to entertain kids for a couple of hour! And in the usual style we finish up with colouring in. Im going to miss these gorgeous kids, they put a smile on your face every morning, now who’s going to sing nursery rhymes & cling off every limb when I get back to the office next week?? 🤔
Couple of random pics from back at the school this week…
Down to the school after the nursery & I was just blown away by all of the handmade gifts from everyone, garlands, jewellery, pictures & please look at the bouquet of flowers one of the girls Sophan made, I mean how creative are these kids at this age, they must have spent hours doing all of this, seriously touched by all of it. And teacher Salun gave me a lovely hand stitched flower wall art 😍,(as I said in my Facebook update, please excuse my tropical rain & humidity birds nest!)
I mentioned the farming project plans Bunak has got for the school in a previous post, still a long way to go to get it off the ground but it will be such a great project if he pulls it off, to be able to grow & sell their own fruit, veg, fish, chickens & teach the kids agriculture lessons at the same time will be fantastic. So on Friday it was a privilege to be able to put some more of your donation money to good use – the first fruit tree is now planted in the plot of land they’ve bought (this treck out to the field / swamp is what caused my earlier birds nest!), it’ll be great to follow the progress here.
And in usual style a food update for you, now this one might not be everyone’s cup of tea & I still can’t decide if it’s mine?!? Yes that’s a chicken ant soup you’re looking at, not just 1 or 2 ants but a couple of hundred, the staff cooked this up for my final meal, it actually tasted very good, but those ants take some chewing 😲.
Rounded off the day with a couple of games of bingo with ‘special’ stickers for prizes, I honestly wish you could have seen their faces when I got them out, you would have thought I had just given them all an iPad! A couple of spontaneous rounds of musical statues (no issues with translation for this one, the universal language of music!), obviously with stickers for prizes & then a final rendition of my favourite Banana song 👌🏻. Like I said I couldn’t have asked for a better last day. What’s a great school, great staff & some pretty amazing kids – thank you to all of them for making this such a special & memorable experience! And now almost back to normality, homeward bound in 48hours…
nicola black 