Happy Leap Day!

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 some of the ones of welsh beaches that I'd brought, which they seemed pleased about. I still don't have flour, and if I do get it (I've arranged to get it in the next day or so), it will be rice flour. So who knows how they'll go. No raising agent and no wheat flour...

Anyway.

Today we had our second Team Meeting and ACD (Active Citizenship Day). Alex and Chealy lead the team meeting and Heng and Tim did their ACD. They chose SDG 15 (Sustainable Development Goal 15), which is called Life on Land. Its about conserving ecosystems, reducing deforestation, reducing desertification, and preserving life on earth - so that's to do with poaching, extinction and use of land for food.

Here are some interesting stats from the day:

• Every year we lose 13 million hectares of forest to deforestation   

• 22% of animals are on the brink of extinction 

• Forests are home to 80% of all terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects 

• Mountain regions provide 60-80% of earth's fresh water

•  12 million hectares of land are lost per year to desertification, where 20 million tons of grain could have been grown

After that we had our session at the high school this afternoon:

Now that we've got the hang of running sessions, and since we got a few more members this week, this group was pretty enjoyable. They like us to speak some english to them so that they can practice, which is nice, as usually we have to watch and ask the Khmer what is being said.
This week we've been teaching about CVs, so in the second to last photo you can see the end of one of the games we have them play - fill in the blanks on a CV template.

Yesterday we had another session and only one person turned up, which can be a bit discouraging. We had changed the time to try for higher attendance.
We had been told that it might be hard to get people at that specific group, so now we're thinking about ways to increase local awareness of the group so that the next cycle can begin at that group with more people.

On the way back today we stopped at Kampong Chnang City at the bakery again. I got something that tasted basically the same as a hot cross bun without the cross, and I was so pleased with it I completely forgot to take a photo.

So here's a picture from the end of the lane to my host home after work today instead:

Liah hi