English Bootcamp Day 1

Posted by on Jan 29, 2013 in English Boot Camp 2013 | 0 comments

Day One Blog

A lovely bright sunrise for our 6am wake up call for the first morning of the boot camp. We all met at the local restaurant ‘Mekong Crossing’ for a group breakfast a nice selection of food including lots of fresh fruit shakes all bought out one at a time (Cambodia time…as they call it haha)! We hired bikes from our hotel and started our journey down to the library where we will spend the next 2 weeks. There is a real mix of us who did the boot camp in 2012 and the newbies so lots of different emotions going around. It was a relatively slow start to the morning with all the teachers arriving in dribs and drabs, it was lovely for Sarah, Ange, John and Jan to see familiar faces the teachers were so happy to see them. For the rest of us it was amazing to finally meet the teachers and soak in the atmosphere.

After registration and getting a nice little name tag on everyone, Penny, Ella and Maria took the group for some icebreaker games. For a relatively small space and around 60 teachers we managed to get all the teachers sitting opposite one another ready for speed dating!! This was a great way to get the teachers to interact with each other and get their English speaking rolling….We followed this by playing the ‘truth/lying’ game which involved us getting the teachers into a circle and telling the rest of the group 3 facts about themselves 1 had to be a lie. This created a brilliant atmosphere around the room with a lot of funny lies being told, i.e. having four wives.

Lunchtime soon came around and we all headed off to a local market to eat together. A very interesting selection of food not quite sure what it was we were eating but it was very tasty indeed! I am not a big fan of the meat dishes but the vegetarian dish was delicious.  With it being so hot and humid over here a lot of the Cambodian’s go to get showered/changed at lunch time ready for their afternoon sessions.

The final part of our first day involved us completing an assessment on each of the teachers in order for us to get a deeper understanding of their abilities. Having such a mix of abilities made this very challenging but extremely important in order to make sure they were all in similar group ability classes for the rest of the boot camp.

Back at the hotel absolutely shattered after our first full day but so good to finally be here! Plan of action for tonight involves lesson planning for tomorrow and eating more noodles cannot wait!! Over and out….

 

Chloe

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