Hi everyone!

I’m Sokthearin Than, but you can just call me Thearin. I’m a Cambodian; I was born and raised most of my life, except for last year when I was doing my undergraduate studies as a freshman at Grinnell College in Iowa. And please don’t ask me why I end up going to school in the middle of nowhere, aka cornfield because it really is a long story behind this. I don’t really have any specific major in mind yet, but i might major in economics or physics; or I might also double major in both of them.

Most people that I know don’t think that I look Cambodian, since I look a bit light, comparing to other Cambodians. I’m pretty much a pure Cambodian; well maybe one third, since my dad is pure Cambodian and my mom is sort of like a quarter Chinese. So that would make me somehow a Chinese Cambodian, I guess. I have two sisters, one younger and one older (I’m the only son!) We all get along with each other really well.

Time flies by really fast; this is the 5th day of the project already, but I still remember going to pick up everyone from the airport, which was a really fun thing to do because I get to see team members before others could. So as usual, we went to Wat Phnom to have our morning exercises, with Kevin teaching us some tai chi, along with teambuilding exercises, which always get people’s attentions. The morning exercises really help wake everyone up from their insufficient sleeps, and also help us getting to know each other better. After that it was time for breakfast at a restaurant, close to the hotel. Everyone will get to try every dish there, since that will always be the place to have breakfast, since we’re getting free coupons from the hotel.

At 9:00, we headed over to CLA to continue mentoring Bak Touk, Sisowath and CLA students. We had two workshops – a public speaking workshop and a Cambodian media workshop. The students just keep improving, especially the CLA students. Even though the CLA students differ from the high school students in economic and knowledge background, they have become really open; unlike the first few days, when they were still shy to speak out their ideas. Now SEALNet has proved that within a short period of time, we can a difference on the students, and that is really impressive.

It was about 12:00pm, and it was time for lunch. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to join our sealneters because I had to go home and have lunch with my parents. They wanted me to also have more time with them, since I’ve been away from home for the first time for almost a year. So basically I missed the whole lunch with my fellow team members.

After lunch with my family, I went to have the Sealnet T-shirts made for the concerts, but again unfortunately, the T-shirts printing guy said he wasn’t able to do the printing on time. It was a bit late, and there were 70 T-shirts to be printed on. But it’s okay because we can get all the T-shirts done before the second concert and we’ll get to use our awesome Sealnet T-shirts.

2pm, time for all of us to do the first concert preparation. Everyone was assigned different responsibilities. I and Kathleen, along with our mentees, Neary and Muy Ngach, were responsible for setting up the 5 computers at Sisowath high school. Since we already have the computers set up already, we just had to make sure whether or not we needed anything else, such as electric cords, computer desks, and the computer room. We came back to CLA at 5:10, and we had a short evaluation session before heading off to dinner.

7:35pm, arrived at Sorya Restaurant, where we had dinner. It is a nice restaurant with decent food. We ordered 5 dishes for 2 tables, and we only had to pay 43.50 dollars, plus free desserts. We got back to the hotel at around 8:40pm. We watched a short documentary, called “The flute player,” but the DVD wasn’t working well, so we only got to see the first 20 minutes of the whole story. We had a long evaluation session. We were talking more about the concert preparation, with Kelvin and Traslin giving suggestions.

That was pretty much what we did today. Good Night !!

 

 

Thearin