No translator!

As arranged we were picked up by Mr. Bounchan, Mr. Kamsai and a cardriver. They were very early so we invited them to have  breakfast with us which they accepted. We were told that there would be a translator but appearantly something had gone wrong for there wasn’t so we had to use our hand and feet.  

At nine we set off for the first school. It was only 15 minutes away.  Many faces with beautiful brown eyes looked curiously out of the windows. Mr. Bounchan showed a licence  with many stamps  on it to the head master. 

Contact with Ging and Dong very useful

With Dong and Ging in Vientiane we had decided that we would  teach the children some English.  Because  there was no translator we had to improvise so we drew a flower on the blackboard and put the word flower under it. We did the same with the words house, man and woman. The children had to say the words after us a few times.  It took a while before they understood this and  when they tried  it this caused a lot of laughter. We gave each child a ballpoint and a sheet of paper we brought and than they  had to draw the things we put on the blackboard.  

Our active teaching will give teachers new ideas.

In the meantime  I held up feltpens and let them say the colours after me. ( Red,blue and yellow). Some of the little ones were a bit afraid of us. They worked very hard and concentrated. Some children drew excactly what we drew on the blackboard but others did it their own way and made beautiful works of art.  After  about 45 minutes we got a sign that we had to finish. You should have seen the faces of the kids when we “told” them that they could keep their ballpoint and one feltpen.! They almost couldn’t believe it.

Big classes, poor buildings, very nice people.

The school was a nice  stone building, built with the help of the foundation and  there was a toilet. At the second school they put all the children in two classrooms so that in the classroom where I was were about sixty children and Wim had about fourty. So there we stood, without any teaching experience in front of an amount of children teachers in Holland would run away from crying  all over. Fortunately we are used to improvising and we both ar not shy so we managed and it even was great to do. That day we visited three scools. The ones that were already finished were very nice but the others were really crap. From the wooden walls many planks were missing and the roofs were bad too. (No lack of fresh air!! ) One school had no real blackboard but only planks painted black.  You almost couldn’t see what was written on it.

Experienced now!

One school was on the riverside and easier to reach by boat. On the way we picked up a teacher with whome I shared my umbrella because it was very hot.

The second day we visited another two schools where we did our little program again. We almost felt experienced now! At ev’ry school we were treated very kind and Mr. Bounchan and Mr. Kamsai are very kind,  gentle people and it was an hounor and pleasure to get aquainted with them.

Helped with uploading pictures.

We helped Khamsay with tips and tricks to use his camera better and helped him to file the pictures on the computer.

He is a very nice man and a quick learner. We al enjoyed to learn together! Big fun!

This is really a step forward for our Foundation, now they can also sent pictures to Holland and archieve the progress of all activities by themselves! Back in Holland Adrie, the chairman in Holland told us he was very happy with all the new things we introduced to teachers, students and the local committee. Ofcourse new volunteers are crucial to repeat and evaluate the learned skills.

Basi

After we did the last lesson we were taken to a room where we got a basi. I cannot express in English how that felt but it was fantastic. All the teachers were there and a few people from the village. One old lady was (we think) the head of the village.  It gave us the feeling of a blanket of wamth, kindness and tenderness was spread over us and twithin an few moments the tears dropped from our eyes.

It were the best two days of our holiday and we were sad that the English lessons on saturday  were cancelled.