"This day was a mile long."

I apologize for the lapse in scintillating blog posts. Perhaps it is our new schedule, the increase in workload, or that things are becoming more normal and less exciting to report. Two and a half weeks ago, after collecting some baseline math data, my fellow teacher/planner/scheduler/idea-hatcher Jess and I realized that our students, while incredibly bright, have a lot of holes in their math skills. We devised a three-week Numeracy Bootcamp to get them up to speed, and have been carrying it out for the past two weeks. One of the major reasons for our students' faulty math foundations is that the curriculum at their former government schools simply did not expose them to certain math skills and strategies. The second reason is that they have all been taught for the past three to five years in one way, and one way only -- drill and repeat. Our students are all coming from schools where the teacher writes content on the chalkboard, everyone copies it down into their notebooks and then they set about memorizing the notes to recite back the following day. Our kids have never been encouraged to think outside the box, question, inquire, experiment, make mistakes, get creative, problem-solve, etc. We have to practice and support their development of these new skills, or in some cases "relearn" them, before they can begin to absorb pertinent content in the way we are teaching it. Two weeks of bootcamp following a solid month of "Camp Liger" was a bit of a rude awakening, but our students have risen to the challenge and we have done everything we can to make sure that they are having fun.

Each week so far we have identified four major numeracy skills that our students need to work on. For example, last week Jess taught the part-whole relationship/fractions, Jeff taught word problems and Jo did standard and non-standard units of measurement. We took a lot of data the first week and this past week we did more facilitated teaching. However, as I said, we are trying to make it fun. We also have three straight hours in the morning and two straight hours after lunch, all with the same twelve students, so there is a lot of time to play games and take breaks as well. I have happily introduced my groups to "Around the World" and "Heads Up, Seven Up," two games that most of my peers will remember from elementary school. Below is a video of one of my favorite and most exuberant students playing "Around the World," trying desperately to beat his opponent. Some kids were so intent on being the first one to answer that they were clutching their hearts, falling to the ground when they lost, bursting into hysterical laughter and dripping sweat down their temples. I swear that they were all having fun, and Nica, JoJo and I were dying laughing watching them tweak out.

This week, I focused on number patterns and oral language, and one of my activities involved showing the kids four different YouTube videos of number songs. The one that I can't get out of my head depicts three male cartoon characters (one with an afro), dancing under a disco ball as they count down from 20. It's pretty awesome. Then, I asked the students to create their own number songs. The only constraints were that their songs had to have lyrics, props (visuals) and dance moves. Below is a video of one group making a number song to the tune of Marc Anthony's "Rain Over Me." Other kids changed the words to B-I-N-G-O (Liger's morning meeting constant) into: "There was a teacher who loved to count and this is what she sai-aid: five-ten-fifteen-twenty, five-ten-fifteen-twenty, five-ten-fifteen-twenty and she loved teaching num-bers." Most of our kids are still at the stage where they lean on what is known and comfortable and don't want to take too many risks for fear of being "wrong," but they are making progress. I can't wait to give them a song-writing challenge six months from now and see how much they've grown.

Other than bootcamp, Jeff and I have spent a lot of evenings and weekends taking the bike around town and into the city, and are starting to feel more comfortable and knowledgeable about Phnom Penh. On the 15th, our dear volunteer-intern, Clara, who is a former student of Robert's from the Western Academy of Beijing, departed for her second year at Cambridge (no big deal) after working as an instrumental part of our team for six weeks. The overseas staff threw her a surprise dinner at a gorgeous, quite fancy restaurant, where we dined on Khmer cuisine (duck curry...yum) at a table next to a beautiful, fish-filled pool. The next night the entire Liger staff, from the cleaning staff to the kitchen staff to the house parents, went out to a local restaurant to celebrate Trevor's successful visit. Robert, Dom and some of the other admin staff stayed behind with the kids. When the students heard that Robert and Dom would be acting as "House Daddy" for the night, Puthea, the little guy that I posted about earlier, exclaimed something to the effect of: "How the hell can I stay with Dom all night, he only speaks English?!" Both nights were examples of Liger's dedication to and sincere appreciation for its staff.

Meanwhile, rainy season has arrived. We flew into this country expecting constant rain, and when it didn't come, outside of a few hasty showers, the rain relocated to the back burner of our minds. Well, it recently exploded to the forefront in the form of streets so flooded kids are swimming, torrential downpours lasting four hours and dark, ominous clouds that swallow up blue skies in minutes. Sometimes the rain is an excuse to have another beer, like last night when we stayed at one of our favorite bars from 4pm-8pm, but other times it is a pain in the ass. A wet helmet has become the norm, and we have started carrying both of our raincoats in the moto at all times.

With a little less than three weeks until I leave Cambodia for LA and Caitlin and Tyler's wedding, I am starting to get excited, but also nervous about what the jet-lagged, emotional experience will amount to. Lucky for me, Caitlin and Tyler are coming back with me after the wedding to begin their Southeast Asian honeymoon.

I leave you with a photo (care of Nica) of two of my favs, Puthea and Niron.