1) I finally made it down to my training village to visit my training host family and go to a wedding. One of our peace corps training staff married the training host sister of another k3, so many of our training language teachers and other khmer staff were at the wedding. It was a lot of fun to spend some time with them outside of the office or training setting.
2) I completed my last big project at site. A workshop on preventing gender based violence (the morning was on domestic violence and the afternoon was on sexual violence). I had a team come out from Battambang to conduct the workshop and a couple of the peace corps guys to help facilitate (given that it was a co-ed workshop on some very sensitive topics). The kids were great and handled the issues with a lot of maturity. We had some heated debates but, while it may sound odd, I felt that was a success. The fact that both my male and female students felt comfortable enough to be honest about their opinions and beliefs was huge.
3) A bunch of us were able to join in the engagement party for one of our fellow PCVs in her fiance's home village.
4) I celebrated my 24th birthday with a few friends in Siem Reap which will probably end up being my last visit there.
5) We had our COS (close of service) conference in Phnom Penh which was relatively painless, though most of us aren't used to spending an entire day outside of a hammock anymore, let alone 3... It gave us a last chance to spend time all together.
6)Since then I have just been hanging out at site, trying to get time in with my host family, the nurses at the health center, and my students.
We are super excited to have you home for a short time, but I'm sure it will be hard to leave all of your friends and new family behind. You've done great things!!!
ReplyDeleteI love you,
Mom