Me and my mum went to Cambodia and worked with the Green Gecko' kids for a service trip. My first impression of the kids there were AMAZING. They were very friendly when we ate with them at lunch and nobody was shy as we just talked about what we liked, where we came from and normal conversations like that. But the thing was, I didn't expect them to know English that well, I thought they only knew how to speak Cambodian.
On the second day, we spent more time with the Gecko's including building a car park, farming, building fences, etc. After lunch, we went to visit the tiger club (which is younger siblings of the kids in Green Gecko), and did different activities with them, I did face painting and they really appreciated it.
The third day for me was the most challenging, since I'm not really good at cycling. We had to cycle through really bumpy roads, forest trails, and roads which had heavy traffic to get to the beautiful temple Angkor Wat. It was my first time cycling through these different types of roads as I usually just cycle on sidewalks. During the forest trail, the roads were really sandy and my bike got stuck 2 times. The first I just scraped my knee, but on the second time, I landed on top of the bike and the handle stabbed my stomach which was really really painful. After that, I was really wobbly on my bike and when I heard I have another 6km to bike, I felt like giving up. In the end, the road was really nice but had heavy traffic and I was really afraid I would be hit by a car and always ended up cycling in the middle of the road because all the bikes were near the side of the road. When I finally reached the destination and returned my bike, I was really proud of myself for cycling for around 30km. The bad thing now is that I have a sore bottom from the bike's seat.
This was the first service trip I went to and I learned a lot about the Cambodia culture and how's life living there. Before I went, I always thought Cambodia as a very poor place without electricity and hot water, but now I realised that how many stories you hear about a place, it's always better and different when you really go there and see it. It was a wonderful experience and I'll probably go again next year.
I heard this was a great trip and it sounds like you learned a lot about Cambodia, but I am also curious about what you learned about yourself.
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