After nearly a week in Stoung, a village about 50 km north of Kampong Cham, we have arrived in Siem Reap. The hometown of Angkor Wat has a much different feel to it than anywhere we have been thus far—in the course of a day we have gone from being the only foreigners in town to being among the million+ tourists who pass through Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat each year.
We had a very productive and insightful week in Stoung. As we mentioned before, we had the chance to be the first ambassadors of Western culture ever to have visited the town. Our arrival was met with apprehension by the students there, who didn’t know how to react to foreigners; however, they soon warmed to our presence and were as excited to spend time with us, learning about our culture, as we were excited to learn about their lifestyles. The teaching aspect of our project surpassed our expectations, with the local students (through the help of our translators) asking many questions about our culture, education system, and how Cambodia compares to the US.
For the hands-on projects, we arranged for the re-tiling of one nursery school classroom and re-surfaced another classroom floor with a new layer of cement, smoothing the surface and filling in all the holes that had previously existed. After mixing all the cement for the floors manually, we now have a much greater appreciation for the trucks that do all the hard work for us in the US! Additionally, we re-painted the wooden shutters and doors of all three school buildings, as well as the (previously rust-covered) front gate to the schoolyard. The girls all worked very hard and we are so proud of the work they have done and their consistently positive attitudes and insightful thoughts on Cambodia.
Tomorrow we are off to visit Beng Melea, a temple about 90 minutes outside of Siem Reap which has yet to see any restoration work—this will be a fantastic pre-cursor to Angkor Wat and the other most popular temples in the Angkor Archeological Park, as we will get to see what they looked like when they were first “re-discovered” by Henri Mahout in the mid-19th century.
We continue to enjoy ourselves and our time in Cambodia immensely—we are developing the details of our Yale presentation this week and look forward to sharing it with you next weekend!
Painted doors and tiled floors,
Jenn & Nate
Lauren shows off one of the posters she made as a visual aid to her classes on American culture
Local students show their excitement for our visit!
Helping hands hard at work repainting the exterior doors of the school
The finished product!
Kasya, Nate, Katie, and Izzy share lunch together in a local home
Sarah hard at work prepping the classroom floor for a smooth new layer of cement
Natalie and Katie use their muscles to mix cement by hand as they re-surface the floor
Nursery school students in their newly tiled classroom
Sophia, Izzy, Deanna, Sarah, Kasya, Natalie, and Lauren ready to begin work on the front gate to the schoolyard
Sophia and Kate peek out from behind the freshly-painted gate
