I-to-I day 16: Reading

Sunday 6^th March 2011

MP3 track of the day: Paperback Writer – Beatles

Weather: Hot and sweaty

I slept in until 9am. I had yet another cold shower before heading out into the city of Phnom Penh. Today was 'booking reading day' and so I went to the east side of the city to visit my favorite restaurant for lunch. However, as the time was only 10:30am, I stopped off at another restaurant for 'elevenses'. My 'Death by chocolate cake' wasn't that great yesterday and so I made up for it with a chocolate cream cake, a hot chocolate and an orange juice. While I ate and drank I read more about the Pol Pot regime. I'm coming towards the end of the book now; I'm reading about the crumbling of the Democratic Kampuchea (Pol Pot's party name) and, like Hitler, it seems that Pol Pot and the party lost all sense of reality (which you could argue started at the beginning of the regime).

Once I thought that I had outstayed my welcome I moved onto my favorite restaurant for a club sandwich and probably my last vanilla shake. I read more of my book, occasionally looking at the premiership football on TV, before heading back to my guesthouse at 2:30pm.

When I arrived Kim-Lee had all the new volunteers within the restaurant, going through their orientation exercise. As I looked around there were loads of them, around twenty. My group only consisted of eight and I wondered where all these volunteers were going to be situated. I went upstairs, had a shower, before coming back downstairs to find a quite spot within the restaurant to continue reading my book and to lesson plan. As I had no idea what my new text book would cover I decided to produce a 'back up' lesson plan. As a class we hadn't really covered where the accents, on each sentence, should be; the children usually just shout out each sentence with no high, or low, accents. I decided that I would work on this if my new text book didn't arrive. I also wanted to take some class photos; no real education reason, purely a selfish one. I did think however, once I had the photos I would get some printed here in Phnom Penh and hand them out to the children on my last day.

I finished reading, and lesson planning, around 7pm. With not much of the day left I had tea before heading for an early night. I can't believe that I'm starting my last week of teaching!

Toodle Pip!