And in no time at all, the weekend arrived. It seems like only yesterday we got onto the freezing cold bus to Heathrow.
With Saturday completely free, we took time to explore Pursat town on foot. Since it is quite a small remote town, our explorations didn't take us too far and we retired shortly to catch up on rest in the shade. In the evening, we visited the town's 'Sky Bar', which is a rooftop bar overlooking the whole of Pursat (a much more efficient means of exploration). As we enjoyed live music and the surrounding buzz of Lunar New Year preparations, we made friends with the waiting staff and enjoyed some more terrific Cambodian food.
This morning we organised with Sustainable Cambodia (SC) to hang out with their Youth Club at the SC school site. The Youth Club is comprised of around 20 bright students (aged 14-16) who perfectly embody our Charity Partner's sustainable values through crucial and helpful
community work. Today they performed 3 traditional Cambodian dances for us; a test run for their big Rotary Club event coming up next week. They even dressed us up and taught us the dance, but we were sadly nowhere near as graceful as them. This was followed by many games of football, badminton, musical chairs/statues, and some new fun games Romy and I had never played before. They asked if we had any games to suggest and the best we could come up with was the 'red light green light one from Squid Game, minus the killing'. Despite the poor suggestion, we had such a fun time with the Youth Club and are so grateful to meet these inspiring young adults.
The rest of the evening left us time to prepare for the week ahead, including publicity, needs assessments for our visits to two other schools, and interview questions to discover the impact of our garden on its beneficiaries.
All in all, a great start to the (lunar) new year.
Lots of Love,
Toni (and Romy)