It's been a long time since I did my last blog (4 weeks!) so I thought I'd better do another one. I did try to do it 2 weeks ago, and last week but I was ill both times and ended up just going to sleep!
Since my last update we have started teaching English at Magna, and we are both really enjoying it! We are teaching 3 classes- one is of very little kids (age 2-6) and the other two classes are of mixed ages, anywhere from 8 up to 14 years old! Our first lesson with the really little ones was interesting- as you would expect they have a very short attention span, and they were more than a little bit excited at the prospect of new teachers so they ran around for the whole "lesson" and definitely didn't learn any English! And when I say "ran" I mean that literally, at one point 3 of them were running in circles around the room, and none of them sat still for a minute, unless it was to do something they weren't supposed to!
After the first attempt at teaching them we got much better at containing them and their excitement, and have been doing lots of making things and colouring in since then. We make colouring sheets up ourselves with pictures and then teach them how to say the thing they're colouring in English, which seems to work well.
The other classes have slightly more discipline but are still lots of fun to teach. It is just as much of a challenge but in a different way- we don't speak that much Khmer and most of them definitely don't speak much English, so we have plenty of miming and pictures. Another interesting element to our teaching is the fact that we have no curriculum so we have to decide what we think the most important words are for them to know and then work out how to teach them it. It's good though, I like it.
However. Over the past couple of weeks I haven't been teaching at all really, as I went down with dengue fever! It's a tropical illness that you get from a certain type of mosquito bite (during the day) and is a bit like bad flu, with a very high temperature, painful eyes and joints, nausea, headache, the list goes on. After 5 days of it I spoke to the Magna doctor and was sent to bed for the rest of the week, on the condition that if I wasn't better in 2 days time I would go see the doctors in the clinic in Phnom Penh. 3 days later I went to the clinic (because I'm a disobedient patient like that!) and they did a blood test and discovered that I had dengue fever, and said that it should be going soon as by that stage I had had it for 8 days. Unfortunately, things don't always do what they are supposed to, and when I went back for a blood test the next day my white blood cell and platelet counts had dropped further (an indication of dengue) meaning that I wasn't getting better yet. Bernie (our country representative for Cambodia) had made the first appointment for me at the clinic and came along to look after me, and said then that I could come stay with her for a few days until I was feeling better, which was great! Just staying with her made me feel so much better- to be cool in air conditioning, not having to sleep on the floor, eating delicious western food and having access to a tv and internet was amazing! I felt better than I had been just because I was staying there!
One of the good things to come out of having dengue (there aren't many!) was that everyone here was so lovely and so many people did things to look after me when I was ill- from the Magna doctors who did a free blood test and put it through as urgent, to Bernie who looked after me amazingly, to the Ma's in the Group Home who would bring me hot, sweet milk to drink when I was feeling too sick to eat! It was lovely to know that I have so many people looking out for me, and the same with messages from home.
While I was staying at Bernie's flat it was King Sihanouk's (the previous king) birthday and a national holiday in Cambodia. Each evening of the long weekend there was a firework display over the river in celebration of this, and we could see it from her flat, so even though we weren't around for 5th November we still did very well on the fireworks front!
On Monday of this week, my blood test showed that my platelets and WBC were back to normal, and I was declaring to be "in recovery" by the SOS Clinic's doctors, but warned that I would feel very tired and worn out for a while and should make sure I got plenty of rest. Naturally I took this to mean that it was time to get back to work! I started back at some of the things we've been doing on Wednesday, with filing at the hospital, and went to work on Thursday and Friday too, but only a half day of each day. I'm glad to say though, this weekend I am feeling much better and I'm looking forward to being back full time from Monday!
Today we went to church in the morning and returned to find the playground (more like a lake at the moment!) very full of water, and a very large puddle in the middle of our bedroom floor!! With a distinctly soggy mattress in the middle of the puddle. So now, for the first time in 4 weeks of being at Magna, we have a bed! Yay! But unfortunately we don't have a mattress currently as it's a bit waterlogged.... well, you can't have everything! It was pretty good timing for our room to flood actually- yesterday I had a big tidy up and took everything out of my suitcase and put it on the shelves, so everything was off the floor.
This week is the Water Festival in Cambodia, a national holiday which we get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off to celebrate it! We were planning on staying in Phnom Penh for the celebrations but due to the flooding in the provinces the government have cancelled the PP celebrations and used the money to provide aid for the people affected by the floods. So instead we are intend to go on holiday to Siem Reap for 4 days, to catch up with Katie and Gabby and to see a different part of the country- I'm looking forward to it, even if it's not very organised at the moment!
This week we've had a bit more of a taste of Cambodian snacks- we've had deep fried banana (seriously yummy!) and BBQ Corn on the Cob to add to the delicious coconut dumplings that we'd tried before. And now we need to go buy some fruit (hopefully some bananas) so I'll finish this update here! Hope you are all sok sabye!
No comments:
Post a Comment