Plan Your Future

No this post is not about my future plans... that is a topic for a later post, although fellow K6s have been talking about the "countdown" which I am trying to avoid for a number of reasons but mainly because I still have so much that I want to get done in the time that is quickly flying by...

So instead let me tell about the cool opportunities that I have had recently. Back in September, I asked the school director and my tutor if they thought that students knew about the options available to them post-high school and told them about a workshop called "Plan Your Future" (PYF) lead by a team of college students from the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) who had created what they deemed the Career Advising Service (CAS) Team (they also presented at our Camp GLOW last May). I applied for the team to come do the PYF workshop and it was all set to go for last Saturday. There was a slight hitch in the plans when last week I went to confirm everything with the school director and he told me that I needed to go to Siem Reap and the provincial office of education by myself to get permission for the workshop that was going to be put on in 3 days time. So I dropped everything and biked the 60+km round-trip for a meeting with a very important person and one signature. Needless to say I was nervous and showed up in my most sopheap (appropriate/polite) Khmer-style attire and rehearse what I was going to say over and over again, only to arrive and find a middle-aged man with a sense of humor and bright smile who was more than happy to sign the letter I had brought. Unnecessary worry, sweating the small stuff. And then of course the day of, everything ran smoothly and the students (sixty-two 11th and 12th graders) learned a lot and had fun.

gallery walk of work and college major options based on a career cluster survey

playing the board game "Life" Khmer-style!

The group :)

At my health center the past 2 weeks, Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) have been bringing in people from their respectively villages for diabetes testing. Each VHV and village was assigned a day and I helped the TB specialist, Om Phanna, with interpreting the blood glucose level results on the little machine that the health center was given by the OD. The instructions which were, as a lot of technologies I see in the health centers, in English and thus not helpful to the staff who don't read English besides the pharmaceutical bottles. I hope to do sessions on "Managing Your Diabetes" once the health center identifies those individuals in each village.

Om Phanna testing a patient

I also helped out last week with check-ups for children sponsored through an INGOs elementary school program with the head midwife (also my site-mate, Emily's host mom) Ee Chaat and my health center director Boo Phally.

 

And the last PYF type experience that I have had recently had to do with my younger host brother's wedding. Aleak and I have the same birthday (January 20th).

Aleak - the groom

I joke with my host mom that we are twins (koan plooah)... but 3 years apart. Last year he got engaged to his girlfriend or sweetheart (songsah) of 2 years, Phallika (I actually didn't know her name until I got the wedding invitation because my host mom and her now mother-in-law didn't know it either!). After consulting the stars (or something like that) the elders in the families decided on 11.11.2013 as an auspicious date for the 2-day wedding festivities to begin. So on Sunday my extended family loaded up the car (after a lot of confusion and indecision may I add) and headed to the bride's house where we would stay for 2 nights. When we arrived at 7:30pm the music was pumping and the wedding tent was already set up and I was already exhausted. We, like a lot of other relatives and wedding party members, staked out areas of the house to sleep on the floor and called it a night... well sort of... the music blasted all night and I got little sleep as the bridesgroomsmen (?) kept turning on the lights and talking every 2 hours or so. When it was time to get up at 4am I was a zombie. The next 3 hours involved a lot of sitting around, waiting, and getting dolled up. Make-up and hair and I looked like a zombie bride.

4am... zombie bride...

The wedding processional began at 7am and lasted 30 minutes. A 50 meter walk to the bride's house with fruit offerings.

Ming Sean (my aunt) and Hing (cousin)

the bride and bridesmaids acceptance the fruit offerings

Then we went to some random house for another extended photo shoot with the wedding party.

the wedding party in someone's garden...

After an extended nap time, we had dinner and then a dance party Khmer-style and I fell asleep to the blaring music for the 2nd night in a row. We got to sleep in to 5:10am the next day before prep began for the greeting of the 360 plus guests who arrived for the luncheon.

Ee Roth (aunt) getting help with her dress from the cousins

Ong (sister) and me

It was a very fun, exhausting, and photo happy 2-days and it was a relief to get home almost 45 hours later and have a long dreamless sleep. Congrats to the bride and groom!

I had a recent request for a post on my daily schedule... although it varies greatly, expect an attempt in the coming weeks. Here's to the future!