Hello Dr. Carol and the members of Rotary Melbourne,

I trust you are doing well. 

Thanks for adding me to the Newsletter last month.🤩 I would like to share my activities in August with you, so I hope that I bring you some excitement after you read this.

I am now in the last week of my final exam and one subject is completed. That's the class of the Politics and Economics of Major Regional Powers, and I got an A from it.  Therefore, I still need to complete the other 3 subjects, so my Human Rights class requires me to write a final paper talking about the importance of media, the Universal Periodic Review process, and analyze the situation of CICL (Children In Conflict with the Law) in Cambodia. However, I am not quite sure what the Economic Development Class and the Political Economy class would do for the final exam. I just know that I will do the group representation talking about the conflict of Borey Keila in Phnom Penh where the government asked the locals living in the slum to move to different places, but this case caused violence and dissatisfaction among people. It was solved by the government now, yet the professor proposed this again to let us give input if we were the government and needed to solve such an issue. It is not easy to come up with ideas for the project for this.  I have a tough time doing research and managing to complete it; however, I will do my best to manage my time for the satisfied results. 

I have just come to the end of the TDSO class which is the English class for our CRST students. I just want to recall that I was in level III of those 3 classes.  Last week, the TDSO team collaborated with the CRST Education team to conduct the graduation event at their campus. I was impressed with their team's preparation of the speeches which showed the progress of our classes. There were speeches from the teachers, TDSO Executive Director, CRST Executive Director, and Education Manager to express their thoughts and congratulate everybody for the success. 4 CRST students came to deliver their meaningful messages with thanks to the teachers. Even though I didn't talk that evening, I felt excited to be able to get an A+ from this class.  From my point of view, I can see my improvement as I feel I have better confidence and much progress. I look forward to joining the new course which will be focused on the speaking base. 

Early this week, I went to Phnom Penh with Molika and Rida, the ambassadors traveling to the U.S. soon in October. Barang is another person who will be going with us as the ambassador, but he is now staying in Phnom Penh working at an international organization. I was a bit nervous as it was my first time interviewing to get the Visitors International Stay Admission or VISA. You know, I needed to prepare to talk about the purpose of going to the U.S., the States where I am going, and so on. Because we worked with Brad in Phnom Penh, he and his team helped to coordinate this work. Luckily, I completed it successfully, and I will receive the VISA this Friday too. After that, we went to a Museum in Phnom Penh that showcases the revolution of money from the start of the Funan era until now. Interestingly, Cambodia used coins before the Angkor Empire for trading with many well-known empires, but they didn't use coins for trading in the Angkor era. They don't know exactly why they didn't use it during that time, so it was complicated to exchange products without money. We also went to Wat Phnom, and this is the place where the name of Phnom Penh started. Phnom is the mountain in Khmer word, and Penh is the name of an old lady who gathered the villagers to build a hill (mountain) to keep the statue found at the Mekong River. It was a happy day for me! 

It made my day for the Village Street Library (VSL) in the Phnom Krom area. We started our first installation day with the first VSL there. It was raining in the morning, so I didn't expect that there would be many students. When arriving there, we started to install the VSL and take photos. Of course, we have our student ambassador of our VSL as we cannot run this project in the village without any contribution from the community. Our VSL ambassador's name is Sophanit, and he is very helpful. We installed the VSL in front of his house, and after that, we went to a field which is not far from there. The environment was nice because there was a mountain there surrounded by floating houses. We then played a game to remember everyone's name. While starting to read the books, we were divided into different groups. When finishing the reading, the students came to the front to do the reflections. They were excited to read the books, and we also gave some study materials to them as well. In the afternoon, we went to the rice field to have lunch, and we enjoyed playing some games with our RACSR members after that. 

Before Pchum Ben Day arrives in early October, I have a plan with my old classmates to share some experiences with students studying in grades 12, 11, or 10 at Sasar Sdam High School where I used to study. The reason I want to run this sharing is because I found that most rural students don't know their goals or where to go after finishing grade 12. Mostly, they get stuck. Seeing that, I am planning to invite around 10 old classmates, with different majors, to different universities to share with them. We will share about the preparation before going to universities, the good things and problems of the majors we are studying, and the job opportunities. I want to share with them to learn how to set goals, the importance of helping society, and empower them to love education. I have invited 5 old friends already, and they are happy to join during the break of the Pchum Ben Day (National Holiday). Also, I have discussed this with the deputy director of Sasarsdam High School about this, and he is okay with my suggestion. I will drop the survey to see how many students are interested in this, and then I can finalize it. It might take the whole morning or a day to share these with the students. If there are more than 20 students interested in this, I will surely make it happen. 

I would like to share some photos with you as well. Thanks for reading my email. ♥️♥️ Wishing you best of luck all the time, and have a nice day!!