Look Through My Lens | Coming of Age

In literacy this year, we started things off by doing a chapter about coming of age. I wrote my coming of age story about my glasses and how I evolve from loving them to hating them, then later on in my life, I just had to accept it. This was a touchy topic to write about, personally, because it was a struggle I had to go through and I’ve always kept it a secret. I think now is a good time to release the story out there for the world to see, and not just keep it to myself, so if you want to read the entire paper, you can do so by clicking this link here

The Liger Marine Research Team | LMRT Trip 1

As you might’ve seen in my other posts, I’ve been talking quite a bit about the Liger Marine Research Team, in short, LMRT. The LMRT is a group of eight students from the Liger Leadership Academy that will be doing research on the marine biology in Cambodia, more specifically, Koh Seh. Koh Seh is an island off the coast of Kep, Cambodia. 

Ariel view of the island

We had our first trip to the island on the 28th of September, 2017. The purpose of that trip was to get us all certified as open water divers. I took the SSI Open Diver course in my summer so I was ready to get in the water and practice the skills. We consisted of about one dive per day (excluding the “pool sessions”). It was weird staying underwater for that long. I had to get up at 6 AM and get ready for my “classes” that take place underwater at around 7 in the morning. It was also very scary to practice all those skills and stay underwater for a long period of time. The scariest and hardest skills I had to practice were, taking off my buoyancy compensator (BC) underwater and putting it back on, and performing an ascend when I’m out of air; my instructor would come behind my BC and turn off my tanks. I then, have to give her the “out of air” sign and ascend to the surface, inflate my BC with my own mouth; usually, I would use the built-in system in the BC to inflate itself but since I’m out of air, I have to inflate it myself. I got a chance to go to an island nearby to dive at around six meters depth with HUGE corals and other organisms. The morning following the day I got certified, I went diving with my buddy, Nilroth. We went seahorse hunting, and no, we weren’t catching them. We spotted a seahorse, living with a lot of seagrasses. 

 

That was one of the best weeks of my life, filled with mixed emotions. It was one of the scariest, the weirdest, the most dangerous, the most tiring, and one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in my life.

Resourceful Week

 Our first week back from our summer break was called the “Resourceful Week.” Our facilitators led activities that they think that will be useful for us like, learning about growth mindset, making professional Skype calls, navigating around the city, etc. I was put in a team of four and we had three hours to complete three missions that were given to us by Jeff, a learning facilitator. We had to go to a tailor and try to get 60 football belts in four different colors for under a certain amount of money. The second mission was to go find raw chickpeas, which is really uncommon in Cambodia. The last mission was to go get books from a company somewhere in Phnom Penh. It was very nerve-racking for me to navigate around the city because it is something I’ve never done before. The overall week was really fun and I think the facilitators did an awesome job in picking activities for us that helped us with different important skills we need.