We have arrived!

We have arrived safe and sound in Cambodia! The flights were long and tiring (but we did get to sit upstairs on the plane from Heathrow to Bangkok!) We were met at Phnom Penh airport by our rep from Projects Abroad, Sithar, and came to the hotel. We had some time to shower and unpack before lunch. We then had our induction talks before having a couple of hours to catch some sleep as we didn't really sleep on the flight. After this we got to explore the local area before heading to a lovely restaurant for our welcome dinner. We all tried some local Cambodian dishes with lots of us having the 'fish amok' - it was all very tasty! Then back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Today was our placement induction day. We will be teaching English to high school students, we visited the school on Silk Island and met the principal to discuss what we will be doing. In he morning's we will be teaching and in the afternoon we will be doing some renovation at the school including laying a concrete path and repainting classrooms. We started to plan our first lessons over lunchtime. In the afternoon we went to a silk farm and learnt how silk is made before coming back across the river to do some shopping in the central market...lots of elephant trousers were bought!

Dinner this evening was at the 'Titanic' restaurant before coming back to continue planning our lessons ready to teach to our first classes tomorrow.

Things we've treasured so far:

Learning about our renovation project and visiting the market

Falling asleep the second our heads touched our pillows

The fish amok  and all the nice food especially ice cream in both resturants 

Finally seeing the beautiful buildings and culture

Planning and Prep Weekend 3

Saturday:
We all arrived at 9:30am on the Saturday morning. Putting up the ridge tents was done first, with much difficulty! We gathered round and decided to play rounders, then manhunt and then sardines in the woods. Elevensies was next, we ate cakes and fruit and drank squash. We then learnt about hygiene through an experiment with LOTS of glitter to see how far germs spread.  We learnt to "properly" wash our hands before tucking into our packed lunches. We then got ready to go to the climbing wall, then we climbed up 3 walls each, ranging in difficulty. Exhausted but filled with adrenaline, we returned to our muddy field, half of us collected wood and broke it up, while the other half began to collate the scrapbook.
Then we struggled to make fires for our dinners, in the end Danni "the expert" had to take over. Once our fires were lit, we cooked some very, very nice fajitas. Then we made our beds and after made chocolate bananas on the embers. 
Afterwards, we joined the Scouts' campfire, which we had booked! We sung many songs with the Scouts, then Charlotte got up and lead a few songs herself. The Scouts then left, we toasted marshmallows on the burning hot fire. 
Finally, we got ready for bed and went to sleep. 

Sunday:

During the night there had been a massive thunderstorm with lightening that lit up our tents, which was very different to the scorching temperatures from the day before! As soon as we woke up we began to get ready by changing and packing all of our bags and bedrolls. Before breakfast there was a bit of time to go into the woods, so we played sardines. The leaders cooked us a delicious breakfast of eggy bread and baked beans, which was much appreciated after sleeping in the tents! We then finished packing all of our things, before heading off to our activity for the day, which was crate stacking. Some of us went up in pairs and some of us went up alone. The best technique seemed to be ‘pretending to be a tree’, which meant a few people managed to make a particularly high stack! We then went to the shop to buy badges. Whilst we were cooking lunch on the fires, we all put down the tents and completely tidied up our area. We had cheese burgers and barbequed vegetables for lunch followed by cakes, biscuits and fruit. We quickly washed up all of the pots we had been using before the parents meeting, and then we finally headed home after another great weekend.