Baatrang Middle School...Week One

Thanks so much for your prayers for the beginning of the school year for us at Baatrang Middle School! Holly, Chris and Dhara feel that the first two days of teaching went well. Their schedule changed a bit from what we originally thought so on Tuesdays they go in the morning and teach a class from 9 to 10, and then another from 10 to 11. They then have a break until 3pm when they teach again from 3 to 4, and from 4 to 5. Although that break is long it is good in that it gives them some time to actually go out and work in the garden. On Wednesdays they teach only in the afternoon - four classes back to back from 1pm to 5pm!

For the first class they gave an evaluation to find out exactly where all of the students are at in their experience and knowledge of agriculture. Some of the students' families have gardens at home and some of the families grow rice through the year. Not many students knew what compost is or what it is used for, and many of the families grown only a few kinds of vegetables which they then sell at the market. All of this is helpful for us to know. Agriculture is not a new thing here in Cambodia as you can probably imagine, but it is our hope that what we have to bring to the table in new ways of doing things (composting, living fences, SRI rice farming, etc.) will enrich the lives of the families in Baatrang village.

A few weeks back Chris and Holly went to the school for a work day. They were told where they could put the vegetable garden and given another area to plant flowers. Fortunately we have a soil testing kit, so they took samples of the soil so that we could see what the quality of the soil is. Unfortunatley, like much of the land around here the soil is of very poor quality. Some of our lessons will be on how to go about improving the quality of the soil - they will be making compost, as well as planting beans and other nitrogen fixing plants to help improve the soil.

They were also able to begin building a fence around the plot of land where the garden will be. With the help of the students this fence will be finished in a few weeks time....its gonna take alot of work to get all of the holes dug for the posts!

Pray for Chris and Holly as they continue to prepare the lessons for the rest of the school year. Continue to pray for great relationships with students and teachers to form. Pray also for good relationships for development between us and the community outside of the school. It is our hope that what is taught at school will be taken home and will improve the lives of entire families!

And pray especially as they teach about God! We have been given the 'go ahead' to teach about God and His involvement in and love for His creation.

We continue to be excited at the opportunities that God is giving us at this school and in this community. Keep us in your prayers!

Om Tuk

So this weekend is Om Tuuk here in Battambang City. Every provincial capital here in Cambodia will have one of these festivals this month, and then there will be a HUGE one in Phnom Penh at the beginning of November.

The biggest part of this festival are the boat races. The winners of the races (grouped by size of boat as well as gender of the rowers) will go to Phnom Penh for a final race. During the Battambang race people from all over the province come to town...at this very moment there are literally HUNDREDS of people on the streets outside our house. And for the Phnom Penh race it is so packed that most foreigners either leave town or just don't leave their houses!

We did venture out yesterday evening and made our way through the crowds and blaring music. It makes it even hard that we are white as everyone stops and stares and wants to come and talk to the boys. We decided by the end of our walk that we should've charged 5000riel per time someone touched Kailen and Aiden (we could've made a couple hundred dollars easy!)

The other fun thing is that our language tutors from Phnom Penh came to visit us this weekend as well. We are so blessed to have relationships with these two young women (we're not sure how many teachers have ever travelled to the province to visit their former students!). It was fun to have them in our home and enjoy a little of Om Tuk madness with them.

Socheata (Julee's teacher - on left) and Chenda (Chris' teacher - next to Kailen). We actually made them walk a really long ways...not on purpose, but it ended up being really long! We are pretty sure they think we're crazy for walking so much that evening!

in the middle of the craziness!

Aiden really enjoyed the boats. You can see two of the teams in river below. Some of the boats are short and some are quite long with 30-40 people rowing. We always say we want to be the one standing in the middle yelling "row, row, row..."