Beach time!

Last weekend it was our last weekend in Cambodia, so we decided to grab our chance to leave for one last trip! We decided to head to the South of Cambodia to explore the beaches. 

As a transportation we chose for a night ride with a hotel bus to Sihanoukville (which was good, we slept the whole time!), the capital of the beaches. Most people stay at this place, but I like to go beyond the commercial touristic places so we planned to stay on the island Koh Rong for the weekend. 

A 2,5 hour boat trip brought us to our destination aka paradise! :D We heard from friends that Monkey Island was a good place to stay so we booked our bungalows there. I must admit, it was the best accommodation on the island with the best atmosphere, the best beach bar and our bungalows where located just 20 meters from the ocean. Fantastic! We noticed that a lot of hippies lived there or stayed for a while at least. They smoked weed (which is very illegal in Cambodia, if you are caught you go to jail for at least one year) and did fire acrobatics at night as one big community. They where a good example of people that want to escape from their life at home for a while. 

On Sunday we took the boat back to go ashore at Sihanoukville. By tuk-tuk we went to Ostrich, which was one of the best beaches. We relaxed for the afternoon, I even had a massage at the beach (mmmm... :D)! To end our journey, we experienced a beautiful sunset!

Koh Rong

Monkey Island beach bar

Investments part I

Since I've been here, I started looking around and wondering where the best investments can be made with the money I fund-raised in Belgium. 

To start, they seriously needed new material like notebooks, erasers, pencils, markers and other school material. We also decided to include a cheap 'my clear bag'. This is a plastic school map where they can put all their material and books in. These prevent that their stuff gets wet when they walk to the school during rain periods (which is common during the rain season). Underneath you can see a picture with the end result: a whole tuk-tuk full of stuff for the kids!

Besides school material, I also invested in an extension of their current curriculum. They had a Let's go 1 and Let's go 2 class, but a lot of students are too smart for these classes so they need a new level (which they didn't implement yet). Together with the teachers we decided to buy the Let's go 4 books for the students. They really check out the cheapest way to work with the books, so they only buy one real version of the book. The other part is copied from that original example. By working this way it only costs $1 per book! Besides adding a new curriculum, we also copied the student books for the other classes (Let's Go 1, 2 and Elementary). They have all their books for all the classes for the upcoming year!

              

 

Besides an extension of their educational curriculum, the school also needed reading books. Till now, the kids never read any books so we carefully selected various books to get them reading! And it works! The kids are eager to read the stories by carefully following the words with their finger :)

In the future they want to build a library to boost their reading skills even more, I'm glad we were able to give the first push with the raised money! ;) In total I invested approximately $740 on all the school books, reading books and material. 

Thanks for the financial support to everyone who helped to make this possible!

Reflection moment

During the day I teach at KKO but after my priceless shower moment, Isabel, Owen and I usually go to the center for a nice dinner and drink. If we can, we go to the center by scooter which is the best transportation I must say! :D

Driving around in the traffic with a hot evening breeze is the perfect moment to feel that you’re alive and fulfilled! By living in an unknown city at the other side of the world, you can experience how life is in other places. The contrast with my home in Belgium makes me rethink things and questions. I wanted to write down some of them to remind myself in the future and to make other people think about these things.

Why do we care so much about materialistic things?

At home, materialism is always there. Nice clothes, nice house, nice furniture, nice shoes, nice school material, nice everything. If you compare with what you see here, it makes you realize in what a materialistic world we live in. Here, the children don’t even have toys to play with. They don’t even have separate coloring pencils. They just have 1 set of colors which they share with the whole class without making a fuzz.

Some kids at my school don’t even have 2 outfits. Every day they wear the same old and dirty outfit. I have seen sad things among the poorest children. Some boys have their pants ripped in the middle so you see everything (they don't have underwear). They realize it, and they try to cover it but they don’t have money to buy a new one or to let it repair. The clothes I brought with me were nice. Now that they wash it here, the color is changing and they look awful, but I don’t care anymore because each time I want to say out loud ‘Damn, my nice clothes!’, I just realize that’s it’s just not worth it.

Do we realize how lucky we are that we have the opportunity to travel around the world if we want to?

This questions pops into my mind every single time I teach my sewing and elementary class (see my blog about teaching at KKO, in these classes we talk about other countries, cultures and habits). In their books, they have exercises to talk about the countries they already went to (it’s a western book). Each time the teacher says: “Well, this question is not for you guys because you never went abroad. Let’s ask these questions to Roos and see what she can tell us".

I tell them stories about trips, adventures and stories of all kind to inspire them, which works. But after class I feel bad, very bad. These kids know that they won’t be able to travel and see the world because of their background but still they keep smiling, listening very carefully and asking questions. At home, we always want more or think ‘oh he traveled more, I’m jealous about that’. Now I realize that actually we must be REALLY happy that we are able to go to Germany, France, the Netherlands or other countries nearby your own country. Or even the possibility of going somewhere outside your own village or city is something they can only dream of. During the weekends, they have to stay home to look after their younger siblings or work at the rice fields. They never go out for a party or something like that because it’s too expensive. 

Experiencing the way of life in Cambodia makes me think about life. It makes you a healthier person in a way because you realize how lucky you are and must be when you wake up in a normal bed, you can choose between different outfits and you always have food to eat....