My Cambodia Experience. My Memories.

This is my first time visiting Cambodia and doing service learning trip overseas. It was totally a freshman experience for me!

Before we depart for Cambodia, there was actually a briefing, which told us about the itineraries and also apart from this , we were also told where we will be living . Instead of the hotel, we would be staying in the homestay for the first two days. The way i imagined the homestay was that , its like , there is just a floor for us to place our sleeping bags on and also put our baggage , nothing else , just a empty space , but my imagination was totally the other way round of the actual fact. When i entered the homestay, there was a thin mattress with pillows and blanket laid for us, there's even mosquito netting to prevent the mosquitoes, it was as if like a sleepover at my friend's house, thin mattress, blanket and the pillow. I felt grateful because the villagers were very nice to provide us with the mattresses , pillows and blankets , i was able to learn more about the way of life the Cambodians have, it was a total different experience in Singapore.

From this trip , other than the way of life i also learned a lot of values. One of them was teamwork. When we were doing our main activity the building of well , we needed a lot of teamwork. At first, we needed to collect sand for the mixture of the cement , the job of collecting sands was only done by the male at first since the pails of sand was rather heavy, but in order to work more efficiently , we build a human chain so that we would be able to pass the pail to the pouring point more easily and in a faster manner, instead of the people collecting the sand to walk back and forth from the collecting point to the pouring point. Without teamwork, we wouldn't be able to finish the work so fast and efficiently.

Secondly, i also understand that water is really very precious. Although in Singapore we say that water is precious all the time , we don't really bother taking actions in conserving it. After looking at the Cambodia kids running towards the rubbish bin where we throw all the bottles of water we drank, picking up a few bottles which are still half-filled , they took it , i don't know where they brought the water to but i think they finished it. After looking at this scene, i really feel that water is precious. We the students from Singapore just threw away the half-filled water , but the kids just took it , even though we drank it , they just took it. This shows that even that little amount of water mattered to them, which told me in my mind that i must conserve water and also not be wasteful of water. Also, not to be wasteful about food too! Not to be wasteful about everything!

Lastly, i feel that even though the Cambodian's live in poverty, they lead a simple life and is happy this way. They don't have much complications to settle, unlike our buzzing city life. Thus, to round up this experience , i think i have learn a lot of things , like for example , values , way of life , more knowledge on Cambodia. Teamwork can be applied during group work , the way of life can allow us to know how to adapt in surviving in rural areas. This experience really allowed me to learn a lot of things, which i would be able to apply them in my life. I would really miss this trip and the memories.

- ` berniselauyeeling 2e3 ;