Children are Children

Yesterday when I left for "work" Mr. Phalley asked me if I would like to go on a tour before going to Northbridge. I of course said. "yes, akun (thank-you). We rode by all the embassy buildings, the important monuments, the king's palace, his son's school, his neighborhood, and the bridge where the tragedy occured during the rain festival where over 300 people lost lives due to overcrowding the bridge. They were crushed. I only heard/understood less than half of what he said but it sights were beautiful.



When I arrived at school, I went quickly to work. I felt like it was a typical work day at home. I finished up three evaluations, met with one teacher for a consultation, and then my favorite part of the day, I taught a lesson in a second grade classroom. I brought the letters from my class to the second grade classroom at Northbridge. In this room are 16 second grade children from all over the world. Some are from Cambodia, two American, Costa Rica, India, Korea, and the teacher is from South Africa. The teaching assistant is from Cambodia.

When I entered, they were finishing a writing assignment of the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They were very excited to tell me all about it. The teacher introduced me and said that I had letters from USA and I would like to share them and that they would be writing back to the children in America. As you can imagine they were very excited. I told the teacher that if she needed to get something done or could use the time, that I was fine. She took me up on my offer and I had the group to myself. I brought the entire group to the carpet and explained again who I was and what we were going to do. The children then took turns telling me their names. I had eight letters and 16 children so it was perfect. I told the children to break into pairs and decide who was going to be the author and who would be the illustrator. They did this quickly. I then told them to return to the table and begin. It was fun to see them all work together and problem solve. They had many questions for me. One in particular was from a boy Erich. He is one of the children from Cambodia from a wealthy family. He asked me if the boy he was writing to from my class was rich or poor? Stunned a little by the question, because that is not typical at home to ask, I replied, actually by American standards, he is poor. Erich replied, I am wealthy and I will bring things for him tomorrow. Withing 40 minutes all the groups had finished, I had collected the letters and the teacher returned. While the children were cleaning up, I asked her about a boy named Raymond in the class. Raymond was clearly autistic. He spoke very little, only repeated phrases and spent the who time "stimming" with his matchbox car. The sweet little girl that was his partner did the work herself with no complaint. The teacher told me that she has no training in special needs and his parents do not recognize autism and that he will learn in due time. I thanked her for allowing me to teach her class and returned to Kate's office. My class is going to really love reading these letters and seeing the pictures.

A friend ask me about health care here. What I have come to understand that if you have money and have a medical issue or are having a baby you fly to Thailand where they have quality hospitals and doctors. If you do not have money there are these clinic all round. You can walk in and pay to see a doctor. I have been walking all around though and I have not seen anyone in any of them .


There are pharmacies on every corner where without prescription you can go in and buy whatever you want. The have antibiotics, pain medicine, anti-depressants, all that you want for a price. Interesting.