A teacher after all

As soon as we hit Kratie we headed for River dolphins. We were guaranteed sightings of the highly endangered dolphins and that was no understatement. 

Taking the moto across the river

What a wicked experience the next day was. We rented a moto (yes,again) and headed over to Koh Trong island (I think). We didn’t see another white person until about midday (and we left about 8am) and that was running a hotel. But spent the morning feeling like celebrities, with everyone greeting us with smiles and hellos. After a couple of hours of cruising around the beautiful island we were yelled at in English as we drove past a group of locals “want to taste?”. Pulling our moto to a hasty holt Spike U-turned us back around to the group. Sitting on the riverfront we spent the next couple of hours drinking rice wine (and spike trying sausages) with a guy who takes tours on the island (one of very very few (if not the only one) fluent English speakers there) and his friends, the lady running the show and various children coming and going (not drinking of course). 

A quick shot I got of the school as we left

As if that wasn’t enough fun he then arranged for us to visit the English school the younger children attend in the afternoon. We attracted quite a crowd of them on their way home from school (younger children go in the morning and high school in the afternoon). So at 1pm we headed to where some of the younger children learn English for an hour or two in the afternoons. We didn’t know what to expect as we pulled in behind our new found friend to the ‘school’. Which was, quite literally, a whiteboard and some old benches under a building. About 25 children crowded onto the benches and a few others hung around at the back.

It was a fully involving, on the spot type situation. Where the teacher had us teach, the teachers asked for us to teach them, I sung  for the class and they sung for me, we practised sounds, sentences, the head of the community came to meet us and thank us and the children and teachers asked many many questions. They all struggled with pronunciation, as they have no one to learn the sounds off and the books the teachers taught from had an incredibly high amount of mistakes. But the children we awesome. They didn’t have much, they wore dirty worn clothes, they had only just got pens and books. But they were sager to learn, interested, alert and passionate. So easy to fall in love with.

It was an amazing experience, something you would never think would really happen.

A hay stack shot for dad