"I like!" We do too!

Yesterday we painted the mural at Rahab's House. I have to admit, when we drove into the school and I saw the size of the wall, it seemed a bit daunting! All the children were in class, but we were given a tour and it is an amazing place. The school's motto is to help disadvantaged children in Cambodia and they have approximately 200 students attending. As is normal with our team, we attacked the wall with enthusiasm and gusto - 2 coats of primer and in the heat it dried very quickly. Sean then instructed us to paint "ribbons" of colour - buttercream yellow, orange, turquoise, green...what an amazing display of life and beauty. We are so fortunate to have a group of talented people - musically and artistically. As the colours and plan began to unfold, enthusiasm increased.

The stairwells in the school are open and the children, in between classes would come out and watch and practice their English. "Hello, what is your name? Are you married? Where are you from?" They laughed and waved and excited at this unusual turn of events - a group of crazy Westerners, singing in their school yard and painting. We started to sing "Amazing Grace" and the children all stopped to listen. One of the teachers brought out his class and we sang "Jesus loves me" and then they sang a song in Khmer for us, much to our delight!

When the children came out for break, we let them paint - some were very shy and some were eager to take a roller or paint brush and attack the wall. For some, I am sure they have never done anything like this and it helped to make the project theirs. We also stenciled flowers, dragon-flies, birds, and fish onto the wall, which the children will paint in today.

Jo Ann, Kaylie and I went out with the English teacher to buy lunch - certainly an adventure for us! We were appreciative that he was with us - we would have ended up buying something we didn't want otherwise! We went to a small restaurant with an outside stand and ordered stir fried vegetables and rice. Then we went in search of fruit and bread (bread for the western stomachs that needed a break from Asian food) and found bananas and baguettes. The bread is a bit different - fairly hard on the outside and they don't use salt, but certainly filled the need!

After lunch the classes came out one by one and we rolled paint onto the children's hands so that they could put their hand print on the wall. We were so organized - stations set up of crowd control, painting and washing. The children were so excited that it could have been absolute chaos. How precious to watch them come out after school and run to find their hand print on the wall. Such a small thing for us, but it was such a source of excitement for them. They kept saying how pretty the wall looked and "I like." We liked too!

Sheri