In Memory of Corey Goode

On Sunday, July 24th Corey Goode, Project Cambodia’s former director, passed away in a tragic motorbike accident in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he was about to begin teaching at an international school.

Corey was a free-spirit and natural leader. He has left a permanent imprint on his family members, friends, and students and he will always be remembered for his drive to make the world a better place.

Corey’s family and a former CHD volunteer, Lee Anne Steers, started a GoFundMe account in memory of Corey. The Goode family will be traveling to Cambodia in the future and will be donating the money raised to CHD.  All the funds will go towards a volunteer guesthouse in Corey’s honor. Any kind of support helps and is appreciated.

Click Here to Donate

Brief Update

Today marks our fifth week in Cambodia, and we are so excited for what is to come! The students have really opened up to us, and we’ve noticed a lot of the quieter students are starting to answer more questions during class. Outside of teaching, we’ve been able to immerse ourselves in Khmer culture. Last week we attended a traditional memorial service where we were able to eat some traditional Khmer ceremony food, and this weekend we will be attending a Khmer wedding in the village! We’ll be posting a lot of photos and maybe even a video or two soon.

A traditional Cambodian meal served at the memorial service: seafood and pork stew with sugar, sprouts, beans, and chilis as fixings, and bananas and rice cakes for dessert.

Some of our students have started to gift us crowns made out of leaves and flowers.

We recently asked some high school students if they wanted to come by the school in order to practice speaking English, and we’ve received over ten students so far! Here Monique talks to a 17 year old about what it’s like to live in the U.S. In the future we hope to start an English conversation club that meets regularly at CHD.

Week Three Wrap Up!

We can’t believe we’ve already been teaching for three weeks!! We have a lot of exciting things planned for the next few weeks, including a field trip to the ancient temples of Takéo with our students. Stay tuned!

Here are a few photos of our third week in here in Takéo.

Teacher Mo explaining how to create a family tree

Two women in the village selling fresh watermelon

On Fridays we have the students draw something they learned earlier in the week. Here a student flips through a book for inspiration.

Two students posing outside of the schoolhouse

New Teaching Books!

Our team spent the past weekend in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. In addition to picking up our newly extended visas, we were able to pick out some new teaching books for CHD. After weighing the pros and cons of several different options at a bookstore in Phnom Penh, our group decided on a new set of teacher’s books.

We got the chance to try out the new books this week at CHD. The books are teacher’s editions, so they combine the student books as well as a guide to teaching the material. The new books also contain ideas for games and activities to increase student engagement and comprehension.

Although we are working to adapt the lessons to fit our available resources as well as the students’s interests, we have received positive feedback from using the new books so far this week. We have also been able to utilize more technology in the classroom. For example, we can play audio tracks which read dialogue from the books, show images on a iPad, and project a world map for the students.

Our hope is that future volunteers will be able to pick up where we leave off in these new books and continue with the same curriculum. For the time being, we are excited to work with our students and progress through the material.

Our First Week Teaching

It’s been an extremely busy week in Takéo and Po Village! It has taken about a week to get adjusted to the climate, time change, and bike ride, but we are finally starting to get into the groove of things. We were a bit shocked to find out that the first class we teach has over 80 students, and new students arrive almost everyday! As of now there aren’t enough desks and chairs, so some students have to sit on the floor. However more desks and chairs should be arriving soon. The first class can be challenging at times, but we are happy to see CHD growing.

The second and third classes are much calmer than the first class. Most, if not all, of the students attended CHD last year, so they remember the previous GPE volunteers and are excited to have us here! They’ve already gifted us hand-drawn pictures and balloons.

Outside of teaching, we’ve been busy trying to create a larger online presence for CHD. We’ve created a Twitter account for CHD and updated CHD’s Omprakash website. Please check these out and let us know what you think!

This weekend we plan on heading to Phnom Penh to pick up our visas! We are excited and hope to visit some temples and markets while we are there!

Prepping For Our First Week

It’s Saturday afternoon here in Takeo, which mean we have less than two days until we begin teaching! Yesterday we meet up with Sokha, the director of CHD, and he expressed the school’s need for educational posters. A concrete classroom was recently built on CHD’s premises, which will allow more protection from the storms that often come through during the summer months. We’ve been busy drawing and we are excited to put the posters up on the new classroom walls.

Just One More Week!

It’s just one week left until the 2016 team is reunited! We worked hard during the last few months of the school semester to fundraise and plan what we will be doing during our time at CHD, and we cannot be more excited to start teaching. Half of the team (Emilee and Monique) are currently taking in the sights and smells of Southeast Asia, where as the other half (Miranda and Ramon) are hiking up and down the country of Iceland. We’re eager to meet up in Phnom Penh to share the recent memories we’ve made, but we’re even more excited to meet the students we will be spending two months with. Let the countdown begin!