Mol goes to Cambodia

This morning Channa and I had a little photo shoot with our host family. Usually at the end of a cycle counterpart pairs have photos taken with their host families which are then given, framed, to the host family. We obviously don't get to do that now because of timings, so we got up a bit earlier this morning and took some photos:   After that Channa and I cycled off to the office for the last day of work. We needed to finish as much of the end of cycle paperwork as possible today - 3 and a half weeks early. This involved writing a handover report for each subteam so that the next cycle knows where to pick up. For Employability subteam Connor took that job on, and then Boray and Heng translated it. Zaynab, Tey and I, as the M and E subcommittee, had to write the debrief report which sums up our achievements this cycle. Writing it in a day was only achieved because we actually haven't done a lot of the surveys of various partners and stakeholders, so we...

Today we've spent time together all day. It's honestly been one of the best days so far. Now that we are all adjusting to the idea of leaving early, we're thinking about the things we're looking forward to getting home to (food, hot drinks, pets, family - just some examples). It is hard thinking about going back. We've found out we are booked to be flying out on Friday evening and will be back early Saturday morning - Mum has agreed to pick me up, which is kind. None of us quite know what we're going to walk into. We know we'll have to keep away from a lot of the people we'd be looking forward to seeing. We have been advised to self isolate for at least two weeks on arrival into the country, because of our international travel. It's strange thinking about not seeing each other every day as well. A lot of the good moments of today have been tinged with sadness because we know we have so little time left. This morning we all cycled down to the ri...

So it's happening - I'll be home by the end of the week, in all likelihood. VSO are trying to book flights for us Friday or Saturday. I ended the post this morning saying we'd found out that we were having all of our sessions cancelled. Because we had no more work to do on that front for the foreseeable future, our TL told us to get onto our 'leaving paperwork'. This includes our personal reference and case study, where we reflect on what we've learned and how we've grown, as well as what we've achieved. We also need to prepare handover documents for the next cycle so that new subteams know where to start and what we've covered. We also need to find a way of getting any remaining review resources to our students. The mood in the office was not the best. We all had a kind of sense of impending doom, and paperwork isn't particularly fun when you have a feeling that things are ending early. Zaynab, Tey and I also needed to get our debrief repo...

Hello friends and family. I have been unsure what to post for the last few days, and I haven't been taking many photos - I always want to keep things on here interesting, even though I'm aware that most people just want to know if I'm ok. So that being said, I thought I'd chat about two of the things that are most on the team's mind just now. It's so hot!  I knew it would be, but unless you have a fan directly on you, just sitting down makes you sweat. This is a pretty normal forecast on my weather app, but this screenshot as you can see is from Saturday. Cycling anywhere is hot. Especially cycling for lunch, because it's about 36-38°C between 11 and 3. There is zero air con here, so we're all grateful for the fans in the office. And a tuk tuk ride works well to blow some of the sweat away. We all agree that over the last couple of weeks its gotten warmer. Each morning we have been doing something called High, Low, Hero - we all sit in a ...

Zaynab and Sokmeng were leading the ACD (Active Citizenship Day) today and they chose to focus on Sustainable Development Goal 2 - Zero Hunger. We started with some group exercises about the reasons why there is hunger in the world - conflict, climate change, poverty, pests, etc. Goal 2 is about ending hunger and malnutrition, ensuring people have reliable, sustainable access to food, improving agriculture and maintaining genetic diversity in crops. Here are some statistics from a matching exercise we did at the beginning: The goal also aims to improve the productivity of small scale agriculture - putting first those that are furthest behind, to boost the economy from the bottom up. Zaynab and Sokmeng presenting  After learning some more about the goals and the ways that we can solve them, we split into groups again and were assigned different areas to study, and then present back after about 15-20 minutes. This is the poster that my group and I made about Af...

Channa and I had a pretty relaxed morning - I actually managed to stay asleep until 8ish this morning, which was lovely. I played with my host brother and I washed my clothes. At about 1.15 we got to the office for the social today.  It was basically a barbecue and some party games, with a Hawaiian theme. Cheyenne and Socheat are in charge of Socials, so Cheyenne did most of the organisation and a few different people made decorations. We borrowed the smaller barbecue from Zaynab and Sokmeng's host home and finally got it lit and hot enough to start cooking the food at around 2pm:   Connor, Alex and Heng while we tried to get the coals to light The food  After we had all eaten we taught the Khmer some traditional UK party games - it's much easier to explain musical chairs than rounders!   Musical chairs Musical statues  After that we had cake:   Cheyenne, Alex and Olivia   Tim, Alex, Liv and Cheyenne ...

Today again it's been almost two weeks since our last full day off. Last week our days off were spent on MPR, but today we had zero plans. Yes, last week we did spend one of our days off at the pool, essentially doing nothing, but there's something psychologically relaxing about having a full day with nothing planned. I didn't get up any later than usual - the light through the gaps in the wall woke me at 7 ish and then Channa called me to eat breakfast about half an hour later. But after that we spent the morning resting and reading and taking our time. We met some others for lunch at Host homes 5/6, which are a shop with houses behind. Cheyenne and Boray live in 6 and Heng and Tim, Connor and Socheat live in 5. They weren't all there but it was a relaxed meal. Our host homes are only supposed to provide us with two meals a day, so we paid for the food and Boray and Chealy cooked for about 7 of us. We spent some time at Host home 3, which is where Sokmeng and Z...