Pottery

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 roughly what we'd planned.

Here are some photos:

 Evie, our TL

 Zaynab

 Liv has actually done this before as a hobby so she pretty much made hers on her own

 Alex

 Connor

Connor and Channa (and a cute baby in the background)

Tim

Cheyenne

Tim kindly sent me these photos - I'm realising I don't feature in many photos on this blog! 

The nearest pot here is the 'mug' I made - we've been told they'll shrink during the firing 

Only Heng out of the Khmer made a pot - the pottery wasn't novel to them and they found it pricey. It was $5 to make the pot, and apparently you can do it cheaper in other places. But from a UK perspective, it's a pretty good price! 

The pottery will add some decoration and colour and send them all to us, or someone will pick them up when they're ready.

This was the other option for how to spend our time - making things with moulds:

 L-R: Boray, Heng, a guy from the pottery, Chealy and Tey

 I made a little gecko, because I love them. It was another $2 to have it painted and fired, but I didn't mind.

 Cheyenne, Sokmeng and Tey

After that we went into Kampong Chnang for lunch and this is what Alex, Liv and I had! -

It's just nice at this point to have a meal that doesn't include rice or noodles.

We went then to the bank and then we went back to the office. Some people went home, but some of us played some card games - Dutch Blitz, the Mind, Jungle speed. I'm so glad I packed these things!


At about 4.45 Channa and I went home and I've spent a lot of this evening with the baby:

 She's so cute! She was trying to chew my fingers here.

And now I'm going to get an early night, ready to work tomorrow.

Retrei Susdei!