Career Day

Cynthia arranged a Career day for the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students.  This fulfilled several goals.  The students were exposed to jobs that they might possibly want in the future.  They got to see three great Cambodian role models.  And it hopefully impressed upon them the importance of learning English which will open up many job opportunities for them in their future.  The man to Laum's right is from a Crisis Center that helps victims of trafficking, abuse, and violence.  Although, they were given a time limit of 15-20 minutes.  He spoke for 40 minutes which was way too long for a group of teenagers, and it made us run way overtime.  Cynthia stood in front of him at one point and pointed to her watch, but he ignored her and continued blabbing away.  Clearly, he was not used to speaking in front of young people.  The next man is Dr. Chan, one of the doctors who has helped me in the past.  On the end, is Mr. Bean.  He's an old friend of Laum; they grew up in Battambang together.  Now, he works as a tuk-tuk driver and trainer of drivers in Siem Reap, particularly at Angkor Wat.  He makes a very good living doing that.  He was the best speaker because he was funny, and the kids thought he was cool because he has tattoos and earrings.  I could tell that he is used to entertaining foreigners and knows how to use humor cleverly.  Afterwards, he confessed that he was so nervous to speak in front of such a large group, and his heart was pounding the whole time. 

The students were well behaved and some of the girls asked questions.  Bean made a joke and asked why none of the boys asked a question.  The truth is that they tend to be lazy and less motivated than the girls, but I didn't say that.  I just did the Indian head roll instead.