Although this was the last trip of 2017, it was not the least. We had been really productive. By the second day on Koh Seh we took our invertebrate identification test and practice our navigation skill underwater and by the next day, we did our first official transect practice survey. The survey starts with two people laying the 100 meters transect line, followed by two people doing the fish survey, then two people doing the substrate survey and two people doing the invertebrate survey. My role was to conduct the fish survey with Venghour. Conducting the survey we established neutral buoyancy and swim by each side of the measuring tape. When the survey starts we would swim really slowly and record any fish that is in the are of 2.5 meters away from the measuring tape on the side we are assigned to. Then we would stop every five meters for our one minute break to make sure we didn’t miss count any fish. Lastly, we would skip five meters for every 20 meters that the survey covered to reduce bias, meaning we did four 20-meter transect surveys. Below is a visual of what the survey looks like.
During the practice survey, I saw many fish species with includes eight-banded butterflyfish, golden trevally, long-beaked coral fish, sergeant fish, cardinal fish, black-spot snapper and wrasses and a remora. At some point of the survey, we eliminate the one-minute breaks to make sure we have enough air for the whole survey. Beside from the practice survey and the invertebrate test, I did a lot of beach clean up which is something I proud of doing.
Offered by the government, an opportunity to represent Cambodia in Beijing, China along with students from other countries was given to me and two other students (Nilroth and Thiny). I was scared and excited about the 8th ASEAN+3 Student Camp & Teacher Workshop for the Gifted in Science at the same time. Excited because this camp is related to science and I hope to gain a lot from it. Scared because one of the facilitator told me that he visited China in January (the month the camp will be held) and it was the coldest country he had been to. I thought to myself, if a New-Yorker think it is cold China, how am I (a girl growing in a tropical country) suppose to survive there? In addition to the stress about the whether, I was put on the spot to rank the five topics offered at the camp; Bridge Model Design and Making, Model Airplane Design and Making, Soccer Robot Operation, Small Rocket Model Design and Making and 3D Print Study. It was tough ranking the topics because they are all so great, but at last I managed to rank it as follow, Small Rocket Model Design, Model Airplane Design and Making, Making and 3D Print Study, Bridge Model Design and Making and Soccer Robot Operation.
When the camp started on the 15th of January I was assigned to the first topic in my ranking list. It was a trill for me to get the topic I wanted most and to meet students from different country that I was kind of already friend with in the short span we met before the opening of the camp. Within the session of my focus I assigned to be in a team with two other students from Malaysia and Sweden. Within our team we were supposed to design a mini rocket after listening to the lecture from the facilitator of the session. In my opinion, I think we make a great team. I was hard for us to understand each other’s accent at first but soon after we talked more among our team w could understand each other perfectly. The only thing we could not get the hang of was pronouncing each other’ name. My team talked about together; we are all talkative people. We discuss beyond what we were asked to. While the other team were building their rockets quietly, my team built our rocket while we discuss what we want to become in the future and our favorite subject in school. By the end of the first day I felt like I know my teammates more than I know myself.
The process of my team building and testing the rocket goes on for day until we finally built the perfect one; the one that launched so high given the air pressure that it was caught on a building roof on its test trail. It was sad to loose our model rocket but at the same time it gave my team even more motivation seeing what we built is capable of. We went back into the classroom and built another model rocket with the exact dimension as the one we lost save it for the day where we had to launch and show it to everyone in our class and calculate the speed of our rocket.
On the last day of the camp, every team did a two to three minute presentation about their project to the judges. Below is a picture of my team before we did our presentation.
From left to right: Amal (from Malaysia), Sythong (from Cambodia), and Lova (from Sweden)
My team was reward bronze medals for our work. It was a sad but also happy memory for me. As a team we accomplished something but at the same time it was the last day we were together; the camp has ended. It went quicker than I thought.
After the camp has ended, we (the other Liger students, our facilitator and I) went to the Western Academy of Beijing (WAB) to present about Liger and the culture of Cambodia and our experience. Then, we spent the next four days exploring around Beijing including, The temple of heaven, Forbidden city, Bei Hoa and most of all tasting the exotic food of China.
