Our last day in Cambodia. .
Today, Luci and I volunteered at the Ecole Primaire Chey outside of Siem Reip. The guesthouse where we are staying, Seven Candles Guesthouse, is owned by a Cambodian woman and affiliated with her educational foundation The Ponheary Ly Foundation (read her story here: theplf.org). We learned how difficult it is to get many poor students to go to school, most must stay and help their parents at home. For those that do go to school, we learned a little bit about their day. Luci and I taught two classes how to make paper bag puppets and then we handed out backpacks to students who could not afford them. The children are like children everywhere and who doesn't like making puppets? At the end, being a boy proved to be universal as the boys tried to make hats out of the puppets just like my students do. It was a real joy to go and work with these students even if it was only for a couple of hours and I loved watching Luci interact with the students.
Tomorrow we are off to Sumatra, Indonesia in search of orangutans!