For the past 2 months I've had the absolute pleasure of working with the Novice students at Wat Mano. But not only did I get to spend some quality time with the Novices every day, I also got very well acquainted with a few new friends whose names are Fluffy and Tommy.

Fluffy and Tommy were characters (a cat and a dog) in the story that we made up to start teaching the students to read. Fluffy spent lots of time running up and down trees and in and out of Temples, while Tommy preferred sleeping on the bed and eating rats.  The Novices really took well to the story, and watching their progress as they started to actually be able to read was an absolute delight. What we then decided to do was have each student create a story book, so they could remember Fluffy and Tommy forever ! I guess more importantly though, so they could continue to practice their reading outside of school, and have something that they can be proud to say they made. So, we wrote up the individual pages and every day the students got to illustrate a different page, reading it and then drawing something according to what was written on that page. 

After a couple weeks we were finished. The students hadn't seen their stories all together yet, so we put them all together and gave each student their own little creation. It was so lovely to see them open up their books, pointing to each others drawings, reading the pages from way back, and really just to see them look so proud of what they had done. 

Like I said, it was such a pleasure to work with these Novices, and the two months I spent here will be remembered always, along with Tommy and Fluffy !

Caitlin (Volunteer)