A Special Welcome

So, back in November, Sr Carmen (one of the Salesian Sisters on the Provincial Council) paid a visit to Cambodia from Italy. While most of the students at our school are Buddhist, a couple weeks were spent preparing for the welcome of Sr. Carmen. The girls learned welcome songs, prepared special dances, and decorated colorful signs. Of course, all of this meant time cut from class. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I wondered if I would have enough material to fill up a class period. Now I find that there is never enough time to cover what I would like too in class. However, even though I lost class time during the weeks leading up to Sr. Carmen's arrival, and even though most of the girls probably didn't really understand the significance of her visit, I had a lot of fun the actual day of her visit.
Here is a picture of some of my students lined-up waiting for Sr. Carmen to arrive.
Here, the students are taking a break, resting in the shade after running through the program for what felt like the 100th time : )
While most of my students are 18-22 years old, they are often adorned with large plastic or sparkly hair-clips and Hello Kity can be found everywhere. So, it shouldn't have been surprising to see them pull out pink pom-poms to dance to one of the Welcome Songs! : )
Here are the teachers being silly with a few of the students.Central to cambodian culture is Khmer dance. The Cambodians have a unique classical dance style, which originates from the 7th century; the placement of the hands and arms is very important, and each gesture has a particular meaning (such as flower, love, etc.). There is a small group of students that are absolutely fantastic dancers, and they prepared a special dance for Sr. Carmen. One of them has been teaching me a few movements, and while I can't compare to the students I'm starting to pick it up!

Christine's students also performed a dance, in which she was included! She got a number of delighted comments when she made her appearance in Khmer clothes!

The day before Sr. Carmen arrived, a new volunteer Andreea also arrived. She is from Montreal, but has been traveling around the world for the past year (well, through Africa and S.E. Asia anyway). She had most recently come from nepal where she climbed Mt. Everst. The students were all fascinated with her short hair (every single one of my studenst has long hair).

This is a group of Christine's students with one of the Sisters who also teachers at her school.

Not only is Christine teaching English, but she is also teaching recorder to 5th grade students. Below, she is with a few of her students who she was teaching songs to for a special Christmas performance.