It has been a strange day for me today. There has been an outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease in Cambodia. While this in itself is not serious, tragically, hospitals here mistreated the cases at first, giving children steroids for their symptoms, which is fatal in the case of this virus. As a result 65 children have died in the last month. On Monday, we found 5 confirmed cases of the virus in our school. Yesterday we closed the pre-school as it affects children under 5 most commonly.

However, today, with 5 days left of the school year at Footprints, the government issued a decree, closing all public and private schools until further notice. Our children were sent home immediately. This has been a strange day for me, as I feel like I have had the last few precious days with my class, who I have worked so hard for all year, ripped away from me, and loose ends have not been tied up. not only for my class, but all across the school, and this will have an effect on what I am trying to organise for next year, as assessment data has not been finished etc.

What's more, it was all a reminder of just how backward this country is. Today, they started arresting managers of private schools (i.e. people just like me) for opening their schools today, as the decree was made last night (although no notification was sent to schools until lunch time today). Other schools started sacking their entire staff body as they could not afford to pay them while schools are shut. What is more is that the letter when we received it made no mention of why schools were closing, only that they had changed the last day of term from July 31st to July 18th. And there is no plan for when they might reopen them. As government schools do not start again until mid October, they might not make any more announcements till then, which leaves us stuck.

A very strange day for me all round. While I am trying to see the benefits of not teaching tomorrow (although we still have parent teacher conferences as usual tomorrow afternoon), I cannot help but feel a little sad. I was gearing up to a big final week with my class