Kampong Thom: First Glance

Joe here, yesterday after a long bus ride, we arrived in the city of Kampong Thom. It is a few hours north of the capital,  but a slow few hours because there is a large difference in infrastructure here versus the US. Kampong Thom has a rural feel, with little to no commercial shops or food chains. There is a large central market where you can buy anything from baked goods to dried fish and spices. You can even buy fried crickets and spiders to eat! Maybe we will try some ;-).

There is also visible countryside just beyond the border of the town. The countryside is a lot like central Wisconsin except substitute the corn fields with rice paddies and pine trees with palm trees. We are here in Kampong Thom while our mentoring professor, Deb, attends Teachers Across Borders (TAB). Deborah is the only teacher from the United States, the rest are Australian and they are very funny and charming. We volunteered to help in anyway we can, and today we edited and corrected English exams from last years national English exam while Deb taught about the environment and global climate change. Deb has other topics lined up for lectures later this week like genetics and human sexual biology, hubba hubba!

In the afternoon Joel and Breana visited a local impoverished school while Kelsey and I taught students how to use the Internet and google as a tool. It seems pretty intuitive, but only because we have had computer access for most of our lives. Try explaining what the Internet is to a person who is using a computer for maybe the 5th or 6th time! Tomorrow we are going to create Gmail accounts for them, we are excited to blow some minds! That's all for now, over and out.

- JW, KP, JS and BM