Outdoor Leadership

Have you ever known that you can find your way back home by using your watch? Honestly, I did not. Have you ever known that there are hornbills and pine tree in Cambodia? I did not, and it amazed me when I know it. It all comes in one in Outdoor Leadership exploration. Base on the name, we explore thing outdoor with leadership. During these seven weeks, we observe nature, learn about caring and loving nature, emergency first aid and living with nature. We went to two trips. The first trip was in Kirirom and that was the time I realized that Cambodia has hornbills and pine trees. We trekked for hours to reach our goal, heaven cliff and it is the cliff of heaven. After we arrived there, we did a lot of activities. One of my favorites is roasting marshmallows. It’s hard to get the good taste of marshmallow because you need to pass the hot fire and stay for a while to wait for it until it is brown and that’s when it is a perfectly roasted marshmallow. After three weeks, we went on the second trip to Mondulkiri. We camp near the valley and we spend two days on trucking to discover the hidden waterfall in the forest. The water was cold and there are a lot of wild guppies swimming around. I also saw one fish that looks like a gecko. I don’t know why, but it swims and then pause. I really want to get it into my palm, but I’m afraid that it would be poison or something. However, I finally got it into my palm since it did not move that fast and also because I really love fishes. It was a memorable moment. We trekked back. In total, I think we trekked more than 20 km in both days. I was tired but at the same time it worth it. I found out a thing that I’ve never known, I also realized that I love trekking so much now.

STEM Round 4

In this round, we focus on motion and force. We are learning thing that we don’t really think about. One of my highlights is making a balloon-powered car. I teamed up with one of my classmates in order to make it. We built it with one bottle, two sticks, 4 water bottle caps, 1 or 2 straw, 1 balloon, glue gun, and a scissor. Here are steps by steps to make a balloon-powered car:

  1. First, lay the water down. Make a hole on the side of your water bottle, it should be big enough for a straw to go through.
  2. Then make another hole in the middle of the bottom of your water bottle, it also should be big enough for a straw to go through.
  3. Now leave that bottle with two holes away, then cut one plastic straw into two. *Make sure that those straw is going to be shorter than your sticks.
  4. Put the straws into each stick.
  5. Now glue the water bottle caps on the end of the sticks. Apply the same thing to the other three edges of the sticks.
  6. After, attach the two straw to the body of your car (water bottle) by using a glue gun. *Make sure that they are equal because you don’t want your car to be askew and end up with going in the wrong direction from what you want*
  7. Now put the balloon through the top hole to the bottom hole on the body of your car.
  8. Then glue the balloon to the end of the straw. * Make sure that you can blow through the straw to the balloon.
  9. Finally, test your balloon powered car. Now you have a balloon powered car.

 

With the help of a balloon powered car, it was really helpful for us to understand the content.

Math Round 4

We learned three textbooks at the same time because of our facilitator, Sam thinks that they all have the same lesson, but they get more advance at each level. Those three textbooks are 5B, 6A, and 6B. One of the lessons this round is angle. I don’t think I’m good at angle anyway.  In addition, I was on a trip the whole week, while my other classmates learn about angle. On 1st April, I came up to class and there’s a practice exercise on the board. I paused because I don’t know how to solve that problem. Later my friend asked me if I want some help. With my friend help, I could solve it. This was the first time that I was not able to solve a math problem in math class. The reason was that I don’t know the secret of angle, and I want to tell you so then you would able to solve angle problems. The secret is, a triangle has three angles and the sum of those three angles equal to 180 degrees and quadrilateral has four angles and the sum of those four angles equal to 360 degrees. Later I could solve angle problems easily when I know those secret.

Indigenous Community

My round 3 exploration is indigenous community. In Cambodia, there are at least 19 groups of different indigenous people all over in Cambodia. Some of them such as Pnong, and Kreung. However, the other indigenous groups, not many of Cambodians know that they exist. After my facilitator, Bunthan saw this problem, he created an exploration which is indigenous community to promote and to raise everyone’s awareness that they actually exist. The two indigenous groups that we were focusing on are Stieng in Krate and Kui in Preh Vihear. There are 16 of us and we were divided into two groups, which are video group with 7 members and 9 members of the book group. By the end of our exploration, we expected to create 7 videos about Stieng and one book about Kui. I am one of the book members.

We went to Krate and Preah Vihear to collect all of the information about their community. During the trip, I’ve noticed that they were just like us, accept their daily life and their langue. For Stieng, I think they are no longer an indigenous group anymore because of their daily life, clothes, langue, and tradition is time by time turn into typical Cambodians. However, Kui people still speak their langue and follow their belief with the big population.

When we back from the trip, we were trying to write a book and editing our video. After we finished our book, we think we should come back to the community to verify the things that need to be changed. We’ve print our first version of the book along the trip. We finally, made a lot of changes. Hopefully, we can print our second version book soon and hand it out to different places to promote Cambodia indigenous groups.

STEM Round 3

In the 3rd round, we are learning by doing experiments. Our facilitator, Da planed out the week like this, on Monday is the day that we start the new lesson, we also can list down some questions for Tuesday. On Tuesday we discuss our question that we have listed down. On Thursday we experiment to know more about the topics. On Friday we celebrate our knowledge, which is a quiz of the week. One of my favorite experiment is the black snake experiment. This experiment explained everything even though I was on trips for the rest of the week. We need 5 gram of banking soda, 20 gram of sugar, a bowl of sand, lighter fluid, lighter, bowl, and aluminate wrap. Here is the instruction:

  1. First, add 5 gram of banking soda to 20 gram.
  2. Then mix the banking soda and sugar until they mixed well.
  3. Wrap the bowl with aluminate wrap
  4. Place sand in the bowl
  5. Then pour lighter fluid into the bowl sand until the whole bowl of sand wet well.
  6. Put the mixture of soda and sugar in the middle of the sand bowl
  7. Light up the sand
  8. Let the black snake continue it journey

*note: If you want to extinguish the light, pour some water in.

I think it is marvelous and well explain the whole idea of the lesson. Hopefully, we can do more experiment like this.

 

English Literacy Round 3

On the third round of our English literacy class, we focused on identity as our theme. I also learned about who I am. Well, everyone would love to know about themselves, so do I. On the second week of our round, we were writing poetry about where we are from. To me, writing poetry is a great idea. Below is I am from poetry written by me. Basically, it explains where I am from and what defines who I am.

I am from

I am from my favorite person and my first love

With the hair oil, I can see the sunshine

I am from the chalk & marker on the board

In a box with big monsters

But I had my mom and dad at that time

I am from my grama morning bread and coffee

That wakes me up all day long

From the scorched rice and spicy fish sauce

The taste tamarind

With the smell of fresh rice but crunchy

Also from the sweat eyes because of Koku

I am from the white blood cell

From my doctor grandpa’s magic

 

I am from the bike

From the fail and get up

Break my knee and tare my clothes apart

I am from the sparkling rainbow living thing in a jar

Once I can’t breath

The legs up the sky and face in the water

I am from the boss of the boss team

Also the fight for the right club

Blood on white clothes

No need any opinion because I did it just for the right

I am from “ Can I try”

And “ I get it ”

The pen chewer

That’s what I call myself

 

I am from the lion and the tiger scholar

The greatest academy of all

I am from the change agent group

That is cleaning and training to be the glossy diamond

I am from the theatre

The mirror actress

But the opportunity sucker

I am from the write, recite and express club

I am from the I-can-do-it

And I’ll-try mindset

 

I am from the root of a tree

The hero and heroine  that I haven’t seen

I am from the small eye

White skin, and the little meow meow blood

But I am the lion and I’ll roar

By Reaksmey Date 16th January 2018

 

Technology/multimedia Round 3

Coding! I have never dreamed of learning it. It used to always gives me a headache. I didn’t need to code to get that stressfulness, only looking at all of the letter and number on other people screen able to make my brain explode. Recently, I started to like coding since I have entered the Python programming world. Python, that what we learned in technology/multimedia class. We learned string,  boolean, and loop on the 3rd round. In my free time, I would choose to code because I really like it now. In my calendar, there would at least 30 minutes of coding exist every day. I think that Coder is smarter than coding.

Khmer Literacy Round 3

Grammar is always important in every language, I think. However, in Khmer, we don’t focus on grammar much in speaking. Some sentence does not need any to be adjective or possesive pronounce. Such as that book is me. I know it sounds odd, but it would make sense if we speak Khmer. But still, it’s important to keep the grammar right in writing. In Khmer class this round we were focusing on grammar. I was assigned to do research on the adjective. Adjective is the conflict one because, in Khmer, there are two types of adjective, which are regular adjective and limitation adjective. Limitation divided into five which are demonstrative adjective, indefinite adjective, possesive adjective, interrogative adjective, and quantitative adjective. Moreover quantitative adjective divided into two which are ordinal adjective and cardinal adjective. To be clear click this to learn more about Khmer adjective.

Math Round 3

On the first week of the round, we moved to the next level, which is 5 B. The first lesson that we learned was decimal. Similar to fraction, it’s always amazing and makes my day so stress out. There are so many math works such as multiplying, subtraction, division and adding. Multiplying is always make me so confusing and I made a lot of mistake such as 6 * 8 = 56. Plus, with decimal, it made my brain explode. This mistake always keeps my class so crowded because of hearing me and my teammates laughing. To them it is funny. However, to me, it is a headache and stressful. I meant I am fine to do the multiple. However, when it came to the checking point, I’ve used the most of my eraser. Hopefully, I can get better with multiplying.

Traditional Food

 

In the second round of the year, my exploration was traditional food. As the name of this exploration, we were doing research on the different type of Khmer traditional food, how do food interact with humans, and story behind those foods. The goals of this exploration are to have knowledge of Khmer traditional food and one website that contains documentary film, photo essay, and journalism writing.

  • Group photo at Cuisine Wat Damnak

To reach our goal, we went to different restaurants in Siem Reap to seek out different Khmer cuisine in this tourism province. The restaurants that we went to are Mahob, Cuisine Watdomnak, and the Sugar Palm.

  • Khmer rice noodle maker is sitting on the wood, so the noodle would press out from the noodle press machine.

One of our traditional food is Khmer rice noodle. This food is so common for Cambodians, but I’ve never seen how’s it made. Until this four days trip, I can know clearly of each process to make Khmer rice noodle.

My teammates and I started interviewing, filming and taking photos to get all the sources that we need to create each of our products. During the trip, we met some problems such as losing some footages and interviewing problems.   

With all the hard work, We’ve done all of our products and have it post into our blog.