MY WONDERFUL ACTIVITY IN APRIL

Hello Sue and member of the Rotary Club of Port Phillip.  I hope you are doing well and staying healthy!

I am excited to share with you about my activities in April. This month, I have the opportunity to join in many special activities, I hope you are happy to read them.
Firstly, I will talk about my education at University and TDSO class. I have not done the midterm exam yet but our teacher will conduct a midterm exam after the Khmer New Year festival. To be honest, the cost accounting subject is very hard for me because it requires me to understand and be clear about the subject and cash flow. However, my English is still limited and some questions are really hard to understand. That's why it's hard for me. Anyway, my friend and I plan to have a sharing class before our midterm exam. By the way, I really enjoyed with Marketing subjects because our professors always pick up new and viral examples to show because that is very helpful to all the students and easy to understand. Besides that, the TDSO class was very amazing and I was really happy to attend this class. Sadly, our teacher will stop teaching our class and start his new journey. We have a lot of memories with him. We spent two years together and he was always patient with us even though sometimes we made him unhappy. On the last day of our class, some students were emotional because we were really surprised that he would leave us very soon. He keeps it a secret until the last day. Anyway, we are happy to see him in a better place and succeed in the new journey. So, after Khmer New Years we will move to another class and study with the new teacher. I hope I learn something new and develop our abilities.

In addition, last March 2025 I also joined with CS (Community Service) activity. We built the new house for Mrs. Nang Ny’s family that is also in the Family Support program as well. We always deliver food supplies for her family every month and she asks for help from us to build the new house for her because she has some conflict with her neighbors about land. On 23rd March, our NGO decided to build a new house for her. 

We leave our campus by Tuk Tuk and have breakfast at 7 o’clock. I will respond by cooking food for our members. During that day, we cooked grilled chicken and sour soup. We have lunch together at 12:00 pm and take a break for maybe one hour. After lunch, the cooking team needs to prepare and count all the cooking materials to make sure we don’t miss anything. When I finished my work at the cook team, I also helped to build with other members as well. We spend a whole day to build the house, and I really appreciate to all our CRST members that they put all the heart to build beautiful houses for Mrs. Nang Ny. She and her daughter were emotional. She said thank you so much to all the sponsors that supported her family for a long time ago. I am really happy to be part of helping back to my community's growth and development as much as I can. We hope we can build a new house for another poor family in our society.

Last but not least, this month Cambodia has a big festival that we call the Khmer New Year festival. During this festival, we have a big holiday to celebrate with our family and friends. The purpose of the Khmer New Year celebration, also known as Choul Chnam Thmey, goes beyond just marking the beginning of a new year in the traditional Cambodian calendar. Cambodians use this time to reflect on the past year, express gratitude for blessings, and ask for forgiveness from elders in our family. I’m back to my hometown on the 11th afternoon and arrived there at 5 pm. I was really excited to see my family, especially my parents because this year they came back from Thailand to visit us. So, we can spend time together during this festival. Yesterday, we prepared fruit, flowers, and other offerings to honor the new angel believed to bring blessings for the new year, especially on Moha Songkran (the first day of Khmer New Year). Besides that, my aunt also taught me to make the flowers by ourselves because she wants to create good memories together. However, we have a tradition of watering parents and elders with scented water, which is a symbol of respect, gratitude, and a plea for blessings. And today our family also did it for my grandparents as well. It's a way to show reverence to elders, wish them good health, and seek their forgiveness for anything that makes them unhappy with us. This act is believed to bring good luck, and prosperity for the coming year.