Pedro leads an activity in one of three classrooms at Rady's free English school outside Siem Reap, Cambodia. I came here to volunteer as an English teacher. I found the organization through the website Help Exchange. Rady receives foreign volunteers who stay at his home and teach at his school throughout the year. Since the nearby Angkor Wat complex receives millions of foreign visitors a year, local Cambodians who learn to speak English confidently will have job opportunities in the huge tourism industry as they grow up.
Children gather around Pedro's laptop to view a fun English music video from the internet. The students' ages in the classroom ranged from 2 years old to 28. Most were probably in the 5-13 age range. During the class, chickens wandered through the open doors of the bamboo and thatch classrooms and pecked at the dirt floor.
The school is free for everyone and classes in the mornings and evenings were divided by age and skill level. The orphans that Rady takes care of all attend the school every day and were some of the best students in class as they have constant contact with foreigners sharing their home.
Practicing the alphabet...
Here's Rady, director of the school, feeding the fish in his pond, which he is farming.
A future student of the school...
A view of the simple but effective classrooms with dry erase boards...
Wood arrives for the new library in a trailer pulled by a motor scooter. Rady and some others built the library in something like five days. They will have a collection of books in English for the village's children and maybe even some computers in the future.
Inside the new library...
With a gift of a few hundred dollars, Pedro financed the new library and a local official even came to inaugurate the building and give a certificate of appreciation to Pedro for his generosity.
Two of my students
Another one of my students who lived just a short walk down this road
This was the path to the school, where there was always standing water. The school was surrounded by wet rice paddies and several homes.
Pedro walking in the water
Singing songs
Younger siblings looking on...
Rady had a couple rickshaws that attach to the back of scooters. He and his driver would take us to town and sometimes to school.
After a couple more volunteers showed up from Germany, I started teaching a more advanced evening English class to some novice monks at the Educational Center for Human Potential Development in a monastery in Siem Reap.
