An eventful month! Here's a snapshot:
Sept. 28th: I moved into my new house, which was a God thing because the woman that lived there previously was moving down to Phnom Penh the same day that I arrived in Battambang and her organization gave me first dibs on the house! It is a little house just the right size for me. The landlord lives in a house behind mine, so we share the same gate and it feels safer having them on the same property. It took me a few days to get everything clean like I wanted before I started putting things away, but now it is starting to feel like home.
Sept. 28th: I moved into my new house, which was a God thing because the woman that lived there previously was moving down to Phnom Penh the same day that I arrived in Battambang and her organization gave me first dibs on the house! It is a little house just the right size for me. The landlord lives in a house behind mine, so we share the same gate and it feels safer having them on the same property. It took me a few days to get everything clean like I wanted before I started putting things away, but now it is starting to feel like home.
Oct 1st: Opening day at Battrang Middle School. We left early in the morning to attend the opening ceremony at the middle school. They had a ceremony around the flag pole and then the students with good grades from last year received gifts. After the ceremony we met with the staff from the school to talk about the agriculture class. The first day of classes was the 5th, but our class didn't start until the 13th. We wanted to give them time to get organized.
Oct 7th: Chris and I headed to the middle school while David was in Sisophon for the men's regional church meeting. We bought four big posts and placed them in the ground at the four corners of the land for the garden. The beginning of our garden! Some students helped, but most stood in the shade and watched us. =)
Oct 9th: Met briefly with a short-term team from the States. They came to visit different ministries and they also went out with Sharon to learn more about the HIV/AIDS homecare project. David and Doris shared about the moringa business with the group and Chris and I shared about the education project in Battrang. Afterwards, they prayed for us and it was such a blessing!
Oct 13th: First day of teaching at Battrang! For the first class we introduced ourselves and did a fun evaluation to learn more about the kids. There are 4 teachers, Chris, me, Dara (our translator), and a teacher assistant from the school. We stood in each corner of the room and when Dara read a question, we held up colored sheets of paper with answers on them and told the students to go to the corner with the answer that applied to them. Some of the questions were, "Does you family have a vegetable garden?" "What is compost" "Where do you get your drinking water?" etc. So, we learned a little about their situations as well as their knowledge about some agricultural things. At the end we took them out to the garden area and showed them "our" garden and talked about how we need to work together to take care of it. It was a good first day and we did the same thing the next day on Wednesday.
We teach every Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday, we leave around 7:30am and our classes are at 9am, 10am, 3pm and 4pm, which leaves a large break in the middle for working on projects in the garden. We usually eat in Sisophon at the same restaurant and then pick up supplies in town if we need them. After the last class we head back to Battambang. It takes about an hour and 15min to drive out to the village from Battambang, so we don't get home until after dark (6:30pm). Wednesday, we leave Battambang at 11:30am and our classes are back to back at 1pm, 2pm, 3pm and 4pm. We have figured out that we really only have about 45 min with each class, so we have to keep things moving since we do some teaching in the class and then some work in the garden with each class. We have four 7th grade classes, two 8th grade classes, and two 9th grade classes. The first day, most of our 10am class didn't show up because they had already gone home for lunch. =) I am still learning the classroom etiquette in Cambodia. When the teacher enters the classroom, all the students stand up until the teachers tells them to sit down. When students raise their hands to answer a question, they stand up and recite a short, polite phrase to the teacher before giving their answer and they don't sit down until they are told. Students here learn by memorization, so thinking for themselves is usually not encouraged.
Most of October!: Working on schedule, lesson ideas, lesson plans, etc. with Chris and at home on my computer.
Oct 20th: 2nd week of teaching, this time we introduced family vegetable gardens and then took the students outside to work on digging holes and laying the posts for the fence.
Oct 24th: Women's regional retreat at Jerusalem church. A Khmer lady shared a message from the word and Sharon shared about Hepatitis A and B.
Oct 26th: Met with CAMA teammates. We usually share about our different ministries, look at schedules for the coming month and then pray for each other.
Oct 27th: Class canceled because Chris sick. Turns out later that he had dengue fever.
Oct. 28th: Went out to school with Dara and Roeth, a girl that works with the HIV/AIDS homecare and who came since Chris was sick. Taught about preparing the soil for a family vegetable garden. Continued work on fence and weeded garden area.
Oct 30th: David and Doris helped me prepare moringa products for Chab Dai fair in Phnom Penh on November 5th. I will go down to sell moringa powder, moringa powder in capsules, moringa seed oil, moringa seeds, and t-shirts with the Moringa for Health logo on them. Sombok will go as well to help with the table since the Chab Dai meeting will be attended by half Khmer and half foreigners.
Doris and I went out to the moringa orchard to see how guys were doing who removed the grass from the moringa beds. The moringa trees in the orchard were not growing very well, so we decided to try removing the grass from the raised beds in case the grass was stealing nutrients from the moringa trees. The grass looked nice and it kept the weeds down, but may have been causing problems for the trees. Because of the raining season, there is also lots of water in the soil, so hopefully now that it is getting near the end of the rains the soil will dry out some and the trees will grow better. We also propped up some papayas tree that fell over and picked okra and cowpeas.
Oct. 1-3: The Water Festival is well under way in Phnom Penh, with some crazy millions of people gathering in the capital to watch the boat races. Even the King sits down by the river in his little throne thing to watch the races. I personally have not seen the boat races yet, and don't really have any desire to be in crowds of millions of people. I do leave for Phnom Penh Wednesday the 4th to go down for the fair, hopefully after the crowds have already left!
