Catch up

So sorry for the lull!

I mostly post last thing at night, and I haven't slept so well lately so I've been pretty tired in the evenings. Also there hasn't been much to write about.

But today I'm gonna try and summarise things a bit.

Work

We have conducted out first two sessions now.

Here are some photos:

 This a picture of our first session - about half the people we were expecting came, and all of them were monks, which meant we had to change the plan a bit. We also had some technical difficulties, but this week everything feels like a practice run, so we tried to move on from it.  Thankfully, the students were pretty engaged. We ran a quiz covering CVs, Interviews and Job seeking skills, to help refresh them from the last cycle, and pre-empt the things we are planning on covering in more detail during our cycle.

 This is from the first half of our second session, with a new youth group at the same youth centre. The technical difficulties were even worse, so the first half was difficult.

 This is from the group work in the second half (each session is about 2 hours long.)

 The group work went a lot better. We spent Tuesday morning drawing up cards for a desert island survival game we ran. They were very engaged by the game and we felt a lot happier after it.

This is one of the groups presenting back the reasons they had picked the items they had chosen to survive on the island. Some of the logic was interesting, e.g. "We picked a mobile phone to call for help." "There's no signal on a desert island." "Its a high desert island, so there is signal."

 The game was supposed to help them think about soft skills, and they seemed to understand what that meant by the end of the session, and be able to link it to the game, so it made us feel less bad about how the first half went.

The office 

I know this is technically in the same category, but there's other things we do in the office that aren't part of our subteam work.

That being said, my subteam work is still a challenge. I'm still finding it tense at times, and there's only so much work that can be done at one time, which - if you're feeling a bit spare anyway - can make you feel a bit useless.

This is a photo of Connor and Socheat leading our first ACD today. Each counterpart pair has to lead an Active Citizenship Day per week on a different Sustainable Development Goal:

They lead it on SDG 4 - Quality Education. They gave us some stats and had us do some exercises to think about the effects that a lack of education can have, and the other SDGs that 4 links to.

Here are some of the stats:
- 750 million adults are illiterate
- 85% of primary school teachers are qualified, but in sub-Saharan Africa, only 64% are.
- 1 in 4 girls do not have access to education
- Less than half the schools in Sub-Saharan Africa have clean water and electricity
- 57 million children are out of education, and half of those are in Sub Saharan Africa

Home

Things have been a little tough because I haven't been sleeping so well. I mentioned before there seems to be Buddhist festivals of some description going on constantly. Well, these festivals are very loud. They blare out chanting/music at all hours. That's been going on for the last few days.

This is just to show again how big the gaps between the floor boards are. So yeah. No sound blocking. Then, this morning I jolted awake because the music on the neighbouring farm was so loud it hurt my ears. (Future volunteers, bring earplugs) The way they advertise in Cambodia seems to involve loud music over speakers, so I don't know how long it will be going on for...

Anyway, other than that, I do enjoy my host home. Last night it was my host parents' wedding anniversary, so we had about 10 or so extra family members round for dinner and we ate Khmer noodles. And we bad Sprite with ice! Here are some photos:

 This is the food. The flowers are water plants they eat. You basically put some of the veg and white noodles in a bowl, pour on a kind of Thai flavoured soup, and then eat it with chopsticks. I do like it, but I didn't fancy it also for breakfast this morning.

And here's some of the family eating. Channa is on the far left. My host mum is next to her, and then her sister. At the back is the grandmothers, my host dad and his sister.

Here are some other photos from home:

 These are the kind of small things Sa usually puts into my hand.

 This is the grandma tending to the baby, and Sa.

This is the neighbouring farm. They grow cucumbers, watermelon and cabbage (I think).

Other things 

Here are some photos of other stuff vaguely worth mentioning.

 This is the kind of lizard Channa is scared of.

 This is a lady having drinks taped to her motorbike.

 This is a typical shop in Srae thmei. Channa is inside buying rice crackers.

 This is Channa making us some coconut water to drink after work.

 This is where we eat every day. You order a bowl of whatever is in one of these pots and have it with rice. (At this point I have started remembering cereal fondly.)

This is another lunch option at the same place.

 This is the gorgeous puppy at the coffee shop.

And these are the snacks Votey brought back from Phnom Penh!! She and Olivia got back from the hospital and she brought these for us! We're having a day off with some movie time, and all adoring the butter biscuits.


Sorry it's a long one! I'll try not to miss so many days again.