A most amazing day!

I've had one of the most memorable days. To start, we took a field trip to the Angkor Butterfly Centre this morning with 22 kids. :) This was our transportation:

For 40 mins. Nothing beats a Cambodian style school bus.

The Butterfly Centre was pretty amazing. There were butterflies everywhere, duh. The gardens were lush and green and there were so many different flowers in bloom. The centre had a room of all the caterpillars they're raising and huts full of beautiful cocoons. The kids had a blast running around and trying to catch the butterflies. :P When they got tired of that they all gathered in a little pavilion and started singing Khmer and English songs at the top of their voices: The ABC's, If You're Happy and You Know It, etc. 

My afternoon class went really well considering I didn't really plan anything. We were doing maths so I had each of them come up with 10 sums and 10 subtraction questions and then trade with a neighbour and answer the equations they'd come up with. I was surprised by some of the equations using numbers over 50 and even 100's (although it was 100-100.) These kids are brighter than we give them credit for. One boy took longer than the rest so he didn't have anyone to trade with when he finished writing his equations. I told him to do his own. Later, when I was looking over them I was blown away by what he'd done. In many of his problems he'd put the larger number second (eg. 8-9), but he still answered the equation. In the case of 8-9, he put 1, which isn't exactly true, it's -1, but that's not a concept they're even aware of. But he was still able to say what the difference was between the two numbers. I thought it was brilliant, even if it was wrong.

This evening I met up with a Cambodian friend and she took me too the most amazing thing I've seen. Every evening, on the side of the road, 100's of vendors set up their wares. There's a small pond with paddle boats, a stage, a Ferris Wheel, a fair atmosphere and not another Westerner in sight. Most of the vendors were selling clothes, shoes and jewelry. There was food for sale and a few fruit stalls. I bought a shirt, toothpaste, toothbrush, juice and a kilo of JACKFRUIT (I've finally bought jackfruti!!) for $5.25 (USD). It was amazing. As the sun set each vendor turned on a small light; I'm sure the electricity was leached from the nearby powerlines. After wandering around we headed back into town to meet some of her friends and headed to dinner at the food stalls. When I'd left my guesthouse the power had been out. On our way back into town you could tell who had their own generator and who didn't. Hotels, the supper markets and larger stores had power but the small restaurants and shops didn't. Many of the smaller establishments had candles set up. The city was at half luminescence. As we were leaving dinner the entire city lost power. Everything, everywhere, no electricity. It was magical. A metropolis without power. What a thought. It only last a few minutes but.....wow....it was wow. What a day!