Stories from Pre-K3 and one from 5th Grade

My teacher friends always tell me, " You should keep a quote board or a quote paper. Everyday at the end of the day write down your favorite quotes from your students, because as much as you want to remember them you won't." My students don't speak in English most of the time, and when they do they are telling me about things we are learning in class. For example they might say Mrs. Walker look blue. I will respond oh you're right you see a blue ball. I don't have the privilege of understanding their conversations between one another, or even hearing stories about their weekend. Don't get me wrong some of them still try to talk to me in Khmer. They don't quite understand that I speak a totally different language. I love that they try to tell me things; I just nod my head and smile. I find this communication barrier both a blessing and a burden. It is a blessing because I'm sure there are discussions and fights between my students about who is playing fair or who was playing with the green car first, that because I have no idea that they are saying I can totally ignore. They don't come up to me and tattle tell on their friends because I don't understand. It is a burden one because when I'm asking them to follow directions they don't always listen, and two I do not get to know them as well. Even though there is this communication barrier I still have stories from my days that make me smile and bring me joy. Some of them come from my TA translating my students comments, and some of them are from what I observe of their actions. So here are a few stories. I hope they make you smile!

Story Number 1: We love to sing songs and do actions with our songs. I sing a word and do a action and they repeat it. Well they also started repeating my actions during Read Aloud time. One day when I was reading a book and to turn the pages I was licking my fingers. I started noticing a couple of my students doing the same after I had just done it.

Story Number 2: We are learning about a letter of the alphabet a week. Two weeks ago we were on letter E. We were singing along to a music video about animals specifically elephants because elephant starts with the letter E. The song goes like this, " Elephants, I like Elephants, I like how they swing through the jungle on trees." A little girl voice then comes on and says, " No, thats not an elephant thats a monkey." Its a great video you should you tube the elephant song if you want to watch it. Anyway, it goes through all these animals and and the singer always gets the animals wrong and he ends with a donkey. " Donkey's I like Donkey's I like how the stomp through the jungle with their long trunks." The video has a donkey in the jungle and draws a long elephant trunk onto the donkey. All the kids laugh and giggle at this part. The little girls voice comes on and says, " No, No that's an elephant. " We watched this video a couple of days that week. We also were making our own alphabet of animals. I had one of the ladies that helps out in my classroom draw a picture of an animal starting with each letter and the students got to decorate it. One of my students had the snake and the turtle and they both ended up with paper elephant trunks glued onto their noses. I love it! I hung them up out on our bulletin board in the hall way and I laugh at them every time I walk by. I least I know he is paying attention.

Story Number 3: My teaching assistant told me she had a conversation with one of our students, a little boy. They were talking about school, and they were speaking in Khmer. Vathana asked her, "Ms. Sorphorn do you want to go to my school with me. I have a lot of teachers at my school." I wondered if he knows Ms. Sorphorn is one of his teachers. This same boy loves the color pink. He always wants to use pink crayons and pink markers. They other day he asked Ms. Sorphorn why we didn't buy pink bookshelves to put in our classroom.

I hope those made you laugh, and you got know my class a little bit.

Yesterday and today we had parent teacher conferences. I had about 7 parents come. It is always good to get to know the parents. Gideon had lots of parents show up. Gideon shared a story with me, I would like to share with you about one of his students' conference. Gideon had all of his students lead the conferences. He gave them a list of questions that they could potentially discuss at their conferences, but it was a requirement to choose three of them to discuss. One of his students had decided she was going to discuss her relationship with Jesus. Her parents are Buddhist and Gideon was surprised she wanted to discuss this question with her parents. Gideon has heard this student during devotion time at school describe Jesus as her personal Savior. When she got to the conference with her parents and she came to this question she described Jesus as not God, but as a friend. We do not know what is going on in her heart. It could be that she knows Jesus as her personal Savior, but can not tell her parents what she has decided in fear that it will ruin her relationship with her family, or if she is feeling peer pressure at school to accept Jesus. Gideon told me that after that conference his heart felt heavy. He wants soo much to help this girl know that God will be with her when she decides to tell her family about the Truth she has discovered, or to make sure she has a genuine relationship with God. Please pray for Gideon and for this certain student.

Thank you for all your prayers! We love you and all and are so blessed to have you supporting us!

October Update!

Hey Everyone!

Last weekend Kristy and I skyped with our church family at River of Life! It was an incredible blessing for us to see many of our dear friends! Thanks to everyone at River of Life, who made it possible! I hope that everyone was blessed by our testimony! However, since we haven't updated in awhile, we thought we should catch you up on a few interesting events.

First, School is going well for both Kristy and I! Kristy has been finding all sorts of songs for her kids! From her stories everyday, it seems that they are learning a ton! She is so good with them! However, now I have tons of weird preschool songs stuck in my head! They don't work so well with fifth graders! I actually have been finding time every day just to watch her teach through the door window! She has so much patience! Fifth grade is a blast like always! We did a fun activity for Ancient Rome the other day! I had all the students wad up two pieces of paper,then we acted out many of the Roman wars! It was awesome, and they all did well on the test! We finished our first quarter report cards and sent them out last Friday! This Friday we have parent teacher conferences.

Kristy has been coaching 3rd-5th grade soccer on Thursday's after school. This week is their first match against Hope International School. Check out some pics of her team doing their stuff!







We've been promising Kristy's mom a photo of a Khmer person fishing in the flood waters. Well here is a neighbor boy fishing in a little pond right out side of our gate to our apartment.



We have also seen lots of fresh water crabs now that the flood waters are receding. It seems to be nearing the end of rainy season. Our pond in our driveway is almost completely gone and we are seeing crabs walking around everywhere. They are even in our porch area where we park our moto. We had no idea there was such a thing as a fresh water crab.

I'm sure there is more to share with you all, but it will have to wait for another post. We are so thankful for each of you. Thanks for taking time to read our blogs and be involved in our life here. We miss you all and pray for you all as you pray for us!

Our First Hike in Cambodia

Last Saturday a group of staff went on a hike to a beautiful waterfall 2 hours outside of Phnom Penh. We have been missing the mountains of Colorado and being outside hiking so this was a great opportunity for us to feel a little more outdoorsy. We did have some adventure along our hike. Well at least some of us did. Gideon and two other teachers decided to go exploring when a group of us got a little bit of the path. The rest of us decided to turn back and find the experienced teachers who knew the path while the three decided to keep going to see if they were going the right way. The group that turned back found the right trail and decided to leave arrows on the path for the other three to give them some direction when they finally realized they were not going the right way. Long story short they didn't see the arrows and it took them another 30 minutes of hiking through brush to find the waterfall. I'm sure if Gideon told this story it would sound a bit different filled with sliding down sides of mountains, and jumping from rock to rock, and seeing huge spiders and poisonous snakes. Then he complains about his knees hurting, body aching, and getting too old and he wonders why!

Anyway, we had a great time playing in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, enjoying the mist, and eating our sack lunches. It felt good to get some exercise in the great outdoors! Here are some pictures of our hike!

Thank You for the Crayola!

My mom sent us a package for an anniversary gift and she sent my class much needed crayola markers and crayons. You can not find big markers and crayons here that are good for youngsters to use. The crayola markers that we had in our class were on their last stretch, barely any ink coming out at all. The crayons that we are using, my TA tells me were purchased three years ago. They still work it is just soo much fun to have new things. The kids love them!

This is my morning class. They helped me color a thank you sign for my mom. So Thank You Mom! We use the markers every Friday. They are learning how to write their names. So they trace their names with their choice of marker. I don't let them color with markers because one marker would be gone in one day! That is how much they love to color! I did have to hide the new crayons because they are triangle crayons and they were fighting over them. We will only get to use those on special occasions, and with my kids that need to learn how to hold a crayon properly.

This is my afternoon class! They are a bunch of clowns!