PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Community Healthcare & Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Amarah Norris
This blog marks the end of our first week in Cambodia! We started Monday morning off with meeting our team leaders Dayvy and Thomas, who gave us a crash course in the Khmer language. They and our l
lovely translators were very patient with us and our Khmer is coming along. The staff at Jasmine Lodge cooked us lunch and we had a brief history lesson on Cambodia before heading off to dinner where we were able to see some locals performing some traditional dancing. We have also been to visit the Angkor Wat Hospital for Children and the Landmine Museum which have both given us a confronting insight of some of the issues Cambodia is dealing with.
Before starting our placement we were able to squeeze in 'The Flight of the Gibbon', which is 4 zip-lines through the jungle, including one from the highest point! It was such a nerve-racking (and sweaty) experience, I think most of us got a few butterflies throughout the course but it was so good and something we'd do again in a heartbeat given the opportunity.
Starting our placement was something I don't think we could have truly prepared for, even though we'd already done a bit of planning, especially for those of us who have never done anything like this before. The physios had challenges trying to get their patients to take their recommendations into consideration but they have a lot more ideas for improvements, which will be interesting to see how they unfold. The teachers taught health promotion to adults and English to the children, which turned out to be a bigger job than we expected but now that we know what we're dealing with, we're excited to get back to the classroom on Monday!
'Til next week,
Amarah
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