MPR

Sorry! - once again I have left a long gap between posts.

Its been a fairly tiring and full-on week so far. The first two days of the week were very long work days - this week on Wednesday and today we had our MPR (Mid Placement Review). Both Connor and Heng from our Employability subteam are on the MPR committee, which meant Monday and Tuesday they were very busy organising it. Connor was also not feeling very well, so Zaynab, Boray and I had to be very organised and focused to make sure everything happened for our third week of sessions.
On top of all that, on Monday I think we had got a bit complacent, so the session did not run as smoothly as we would have liked. At the time this felt very difficult, but it just meant that we worked all the harder on Tuesday. Tuesday's session was better, but it was still difficult due to some misbehaving students. So by the end of the day I was quite drained.

The other thing we did those two days is cook lunch for ourselves. At the start of our time in community we ate at a 'restaurant', but the food didn't change much day to day so we stopped going there. After that, I had a period where I struggled with Khmer food, so I started eating bread for lunch (we always eat breakfast and dinner at home). Last week, Alex, Tim and I especially ate a lot of white bread, and we all knew it wasn't going to do us much good. So this week we bought fresh vegetables and cooked them ourselves for lunch, which was both cheap and satisfying.

So here are some photos from Monday and Tuesday:

 Alex cooking 

 Just a couple of photos of Alex and Tim to demonstrate the cooking set up. The gas can was fun to work.

 Alex and Tim at lunch on Monday

 Our session on Monday - CV writing

 This part was very positive (monks here aren't monks for life, if you're wondering why they'd come to an Employability Session)

The problem was that we couldn't tear them away from this activity to do another one, even after we'd allowed them an extra half an hour - a bit stressful when you then only have 20 minutes left for several activities and some teaching

 Lunch on Tuesday 

 Tim and Zaynab at lunch

 'Scran'

Our Session on Tuesday- more about CVs but at a more basic level, as this group is new to VSO

Wednesday is supposed to be our full day off, but since this week we had MPR, at 7.45 we cycled up to the pagoda, where we had a venue booked for our Review day.

Connor and Heng have worked very hard on MPR. The aim of the day is to think about all we've done so far, what we have to do in the future, what we can work on, etc.
This involved lots of different activities they had thought up, that related to our whole team work, sub team work, life in our host homes, life in our counterpart pairs, and our personal development. (Chealy was also on MPR subcommittee. She was sick about half way through the day and had to go home.)

Here are some photos:

 This is our 'Work/Activities' reflection journey session (in a kind of rough L-R around the table, Cheyenne, Connor, Boray, Chealy, Channa, Sokmeng (Tey hidden behind her), Tim and Zaynab)

 The finished article - basically we drew out the road through community from the rice fields at the bottom to the office to the pagoda at the top. The first half had all of the things we'd already drawn onto it, and then we annotated it with post its about positives and negatives/improvements. 

 Later on in another part of the day we did the second half, to show what we still have to do and the ways that will help us to achieve those things 

 Chealy, Heng and Connor presenting to us in our 'MPR venue' 

 Our host home review activity. We went around in small groups and wrote on each of these papers. The black ink is mostly my writing - Chealy and Alex, Channa and I did this one together 

Evie and Moch, our TLs, looking pleased with themselves for winning the counterpart quiz. Channa and I came third out of 8 pairs, so I'm not stressed

 The budget for the day stretched to some excellent snacks!

After the day had ended we cycled back down the hill to the office and had a couple of games of mafia. At the end of that, Chealy went to the clinic because she was still feeling pretty bad. It wasn't certain that she would stay over night until around 9pm, when Channa and I were phoned by the TLs. They said that instead of Alex going to the clinic to stay and support Chealy, Channa would go - having someone who speaks Khmer is more helpful - and I would go and stay with Alex. So I stayed the night with her, which was really nice - we had some good chats.


Which brings us to today. Today would have been a social day anyway, but it's as part of MPR so Connor and Heng organised it instead of Cheyenne and Socheat. We essentially spent the entire day at a swimming pool in Kampong Chhnang. It was bliss. We arrived at 10.30 and we left at 4.30.

We had so much fun. Several of the Khmer didn't swim until the afternoon because they were worried about being cold and they often don't know how to swim. But around 6-8 of us spent at least 4 hours in the water. They have a restaurant on site so we didn't have to leave or change for lunch. It was a whole day of relaxing and fun and no work at all.

Here are some photos:

 The pool restaurant. Pool itself is behind me.

Alex pasting on the suncream -  the first of us to show signs of sunburn 

 Pool dog. Lovely, but definitely a no to touching her

 We spent a lot of the afternoon swimming session playin tag, which was hilarious 

 Morning antics - top to bottom, Zaynab; Alex and Heng; Me, Connor and Tim. This took a few attempts

 LR - Me, Moch, Tey, Tim, Alex, Zaynab

 Top row - Alex, Heng and Tey

Bottom - Me, Connor and Tim, Zaynab

 We spent a lot time throwing each other during the afternoon

These two pictures are part of one of the times we threw Heng and he managed to pose mid throw

 Khmer people love a good hand pose in photos

It was such a nice day! We had a lot of fun and it was the first day in a while I haven't felt really hot! I'd love to do it again.

Unfortunately most of us UK volunteers did get sunburned at least a bit. I wore shorts in the pool so my legs were a bit shocked by the sun exposure. Even though I applied suncream multiple times. I'm hoping it'll  fade quite quickly. It doesn't seem too bad. I'm grateful for my aftersun!


After the pool, we had been told about a temporary market in Kampong Chnang, so we stopped there for about an hour:

 Connor and the fake raybans

 Tey, Connor and me contemplating some purchases 

 $6 for some straighteners, Liv?

 The roundabout/square in Kampong Chhnang that the market was around the edge of

 I bought some dried fruit - kiwi, dates and something Khmer - three boxes for 10,000 riel/$2.50. The kiwi is very nice

By the end of our time at the market I was so tired! I hadn't drunk enough at the pool, I'd had a late night with Alex and swimming is tiring. But it's a good kind of tired, where you know you've had a good day.

Tomorrow we're supposed to have the morning off to make up for Wednesday, but in my subteam we feel that we can't afford to just squeeze our work into one morning (since on Saturday we will have another Active Citizenship Day and Team Meeting), so we're going in at 10 anyway. But I am going to have a long sleep, wash all my clothes and then go into the office, ready to start work on next week's sessions.

Sorry again for leaving it so late! It's a long one, so congratulations if you make it to the end.