Mol goes to Cambodia

I realised recently that it's been a full month since I arrived! Crazy! I don't know if it feels like a long time or a short time. I definitely feel more settled now that we've almost done a full two weeks of sessions - we feel like we know what we're doing. It's hard to know what to write after a day of work because it seems kind of mundane. Because I'm getting used to life here, some the details don't seem that interesting. But some positives of this week is that several of our classes have increased in size. The one we had today is at a High School - last week we had three students and one of them looked really bored the whole time. This week we had 6, who stayed engaged, and enjoyed and learned, which is very encouraging for us. Tomorrow is St David's day, and I've been desperately trying to find welsh cake ingredients so I can bring some Wales to my host family. I showed them the photographs I brought a while back now, and I let them keep...

Today has been a Social day - Socheat and Cheyenne are in charge of organising them. We can't have weekends off because so many of our students are only free then, so we have Wednesday and Thursday. One of those days is for doing nothing much and taking a break, and one of them is for Socials. So today Channa and I left the house at around 9 to get to the office and get tuk tuks to a local pottery. It's a pretty amazing place. From what I could tell, it's a family business. The men do the firing and selling and the women do the moulding of the cups and bowls and jugs and tea pots. They keep their babies with them. The kind of thing I'd have liked to make (highly unrealistic!) Kilns The workshop We got to make some creations of our own. Make is perhaps a strong term! We took turns at sitting at the wheel and having our hands guided by the ladies - and our mistakes corrected by them - until we'd made a shape that was ro...

The last couple of days have been much better. I've felt more like myself, I've been getting the hang of the team dynamic, I've eaten better and our sessions have gone well. Here are some photos of our sessions: We have been teaching about CVs this week. Something that surprised me on this project is that so many Cambodian youth have no idea what a CV is, or what it's for - one of them asked us the other day if they are supposed to write it themselves or if the company they apply to will write one for them. Also, they are supposed to write their CVs in English if they want to get noticed at all, even though a lot of them don't speak English beyond "hello". We do a few different activities with them to help them understand CVs: the content, the format, the details, what's right and wrong. Then hopefully next week at least with the older groups we'll be able to help them write up a draft, in English. There's a baguette shop tha...

Sokmeng and Chealy, Connor, Olivia, Alex Another weird and hard Sunday! Because we haven't had much time off really, it feels like I'm still waiting for the weekend. But again, I did manage to get the Live stream from home. Yay: So here is my tour of the office. The photo you've already seen is from the corner, outside, looking at the whole space. It's essentially a big floor with metal walls. Some of these we unbolt and swing them out on hinges, propping them on poles. We all leave our shoes outside. Each team has a designated space inside:  Entrepreneurship,  Volunteering,  The Team Leaders desk,  The Provincial Officer's office, And finally, Employability's section - my team. There's also this great rocking 'sofa': Then, outside you can see where we keep all of our bikes, and where the road is. This is looking up the side towards the bathroom: My host grandmother and aunt live behind the ...