SREYPICH CHAN'S CAMBODIAN UPDATE

Hello Sue and members of the Rotary Club of Port Phillip
I hope you have a wonderful day and stay healthy!
I’m excited to update you on the activities I have done this month. I have experienced both good and a few bad things this month, but I would like to share only three with you.

So let's start with my education at the university. This term I can get a lot of experience from my three subjects, especially the Business Planning class. I’m not only learning from the teacher or book but also from this class. This allows us to practice in a real situation, as all the team members need to find the type of business and then create a business plan. My team and I are working hard to make a business plan for the presentation as we decided to produce a local cashew nut product in Siem Reap. Through this experience, we not only learn how to do the presentation but I also understand that running a business to be successful is not that easy. My team and I need to discuss more than 5 times to create just one business plan as we need to understand clearly about our target customers, competitors, financial plan, factory (Machine, staff, and raw materials), and most importantly, market growth. However, working hard pays off. During the presentation day, my team and I did well because all of my team members were well prepared and understood their part clearly. Moreover, our teachers are also interested in our product. He also encourages us to run this business in real life and he will invest and support our business.

I’m glad that I have Bopha, Vanna, Rina, and Careling to be my team as they are very active in the project. I like to work as a team because we can exchange knowledge, ideas, and skills with each other.   Back to my Chinese class, it was such an interesting and funny class for me. I get up very early to join the Chinese three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). I am not a morning person because Chinese class can change my habits to get up early in the morning to prepare myself for class. So, it pushes me to get up early even though I have no class in the morning. Anyway, Chinese class was very interesting like I mentioned before because I can learn new Chinese words and grammar. Every session, the teacher always allows us to practice Chinese through reviewing the lesson, reading, and quizzing as well. I agree that it is very hard to learn Chinese but I think everything is possible, so hopefully in the next two to five years I hopefully can speak Chinese 🤣. By the way, I don't promise to get a good score but I will study hard both in Chinese and university studies classes to get better results as much as I can.

   

In addition, I had an opportunity to host a guest to visit family who participated in the Family Support program. Our guests are from Japan and they come to visit Cambodia as members of Rotary International District 2660, Japan. It was a very wonderful time for me to build my communication skills through this activity. During that day, we came to visit Grandma Chien's house and when we told them about the family background, some of them were so shocked and emotional to know that the 75-year-old lady living alone in a very small house does everything by herself. More than this, she doesn't have enough clean water to use for her daily life. Can you imagine? An old grandma spends her whole life alone without kids and husband. She cooks and has breakfast and lunch alone every day. When we went to visit her she was very happy to see us as she had only us to come to visit and give her some supplies once per month. Every day her life is dependent on our support only because she is very old, so she can’t work to earn an income. On the bus back to Seim Reap city, our team asked the guests about their reflections after joining this activity. They feel very sorry to see Grandma Chien living alone without anyone to take care of her. Moreover, it also motivates them to continue as they got inspiration from Grandma Chien who has no one to stay with her but she continues as much as she can. For me, every time I saw Grandma Chien I always reflected on my grandparents in my hometown. They are so lonely because everyone in my family including me, is too busy to focus on study and work to get a better future but sometimes we forget to spend time with them. Anyway, I am very happy that I can have an opportunity to host our guest to join the Family Support program and have a good memory together. I hope I can have the opportunity to host guests again and again in the future.

    

Last but not least, today is my weakness day, and I am so excited to join the monthly sports activities and spend valuable time with CRST students. The first thing that we usually do is have a delicious snack together and then we start to warm up before going to the next agenda. Today, the sports team brought three new team-building games for us. Unfortunately, my team lost in the first game 🤣. Therefore, we are not giving up on just the first game. However, we are not giving up as we still have two more games to compete. The second game is jumping from one side to the other side and the third game is passing the ball. Lucky me, my team is very strong and has potential, so we have won these two games easily. As a winning group, we get a lot of candy and snacks. After playing the game, we started to play football and volleyball. To be honest, playing football and volleyball is my favorite because I am too scared of the ball. I'm afraid that the ball will hit my face and hurt but I am a person who likes to cheer up all the players, so I can spend two hours just cheering on the football pitch 🤣. Through this activity, I can say that all the students enjoyed playing games, football, and volleyball very much. It is the best time for us to release stress from work and study, at the same time we can do exercise for our bodies as well. I like monthly sports activities so much even though I'm scared of the ball but I really enjoyed playing the game and cheering up with all of them. It was a wonderful time for me and I believe that other students enjoyed this activity like me.

    

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