After over 2 years since we initially contacted Chase and Teach Them To Fish, we finally got to see the school!  We traveled about 2 hours from our hotel in Siem Reap to get to the school site.  The last 9 km of the journey was on the dirt road that the government had graded in the last few years.  Chase said it looked so different from all the jungle that had covered the whole area when he first visited the site in 2016. 

Seeing the school in person was amazing.  We were greeted by students, teachers, parents, and government and military officials.  We arrived a little late and felt a little rushed to start taking pictures with the local politicians.  We were not naïve and not surprised that many people would want use the school for their own clout. While we didn’t mind taking photos with officials that we didn’t even exchange greetings with, we still would have liked to have had formal introductions.  All that really mattered though, was that the children had new, safe school to learn in.

The old school was just yards away and getting to compare the two structures within eye sight of each other, really showed the massive improvement that the kids have received.  The old school is a two-room wooden building that was built by the community.  We are very glad we could contribute a five-room professionally constructed building along with two toilets and a storage room.

We only brought one translator and he was occupied with Chase talking to the contractors after the ceremony, so we didn’t get to spend much time interacting with the kids besides a few photos and smiles.  There were a couple moments that really stood out to us though.  The first was when Kevin was using the drone that Chase brought to take aerial footage of the school, a young boy seemed really interested and was brave enough to walk up to Kevin to get a closer look.  This may have been the first time he had seen a drone and it was really cool to see his inquisitive nature.  Maybe we sparked an interest in engineering for the young fella!  The second was after the ceremony had commenced and cleanup was going on.  It started to rain and I was getting soaked while helping stack chairs.  I came inside and dragged a little mud into one of the classrooms.  One of the girls came over with a mop and happily cleaned up after me.  While I felt bad for being oblivious and dirtying up the place, it was heartwarming seeing the girl have care and respect for the building.  She gave us a good feeling that this school will be well taken care of by her, her classmates and hopefully generations to come.