Schools and food

We had a half day today and then a session, so I was only in the office for about 45 minutes total, and completely forgot to take photos. Tomorrow - Sunday, unfortunately, again - I have to work in the office and at a Youth Group, so I will try and take photos. And hopefully catch the live stream of the morning service in the evening after work.

I said that at some point I would try and put some photos of some Cambodian schools up, so here are some:

This one is the school near my house.

 Or rather, some cows at the school near my house.

 But just past the school is the lane which leads to my host home. It's a primary school. All the kids shout hello when we go past to the office in the morning.


These photos are of Hun Sen high school, where we had our session today.

 There's a lot of open space, as you can see.

 The buildings are long and rectangular, sometimes with two stories of classrooms. They're positioned around the outside of the space usually.

 The main road is one side of a rectangle, where the entrance is, and then the buildings form the other sides of the rectangle.

 These photos show our session at Hun Sen today. Heng and Zaynab are sitting down showing the (only) three attendees some information about soft skills. Boray is behind Zaynab.

 Connor is sitting on the right in this one. You can see one of the rectangular class buildings in the background.

 This is the survival game we play to demonstrate soft skills. It's been pretty successful when we've used it in sessions, and the students have been quite good at linking it back to the soft skills they use when they play. (Heng and I spent a long time drawing all the cards out the other day, so it's nice to see it work well)




And now, food.

Last night, I genuinely dreamed about steak. Specifically one that I had in a restaurant with Haf in London. It was good then and it was so good in my dream.

The last few days I have been struggling to eat at mealtimes. I don't know why - today I was a lot better - but yesterday when I was eating rice it was like my throat was refusing to swallow. The thing is that I truly eat rice or noodles for every meal. This morning I had bread for breakfast, but I think that's maybe the 3rd time since I arrived that I haven't had rice or noodles for some part of a meal. And its started to become challenging. I think about cereal a lot. And cheese.

And I am not a fussy person with food, usually. So it's been very strange to be so off my appetite.

I am glad to be a bit better today. I had rice and vegetables at lunch time and it wasn't a mental struggle to eat it in the way it was last night, so that's progress.

This all sounds very ungrateful - I am very aware of that. But it makes me think of the Americans I met who are here for two years - two years of rice and noodles! For three meals a day!

This is something I ate for dinner - my host mum brought it back from a festival this evening - its coconut and sugar mixed with rice, and it's one of the best things I've eaten here.

And this is some of what we bought today when we stopped at the bakery in Kampong Chhnang again after our session.

Pray for me tomorrow - the Sundays are the hardest.