Electricity: Economics, Infrastructure & Access Exploration

Have you ever wonder about how electricity works and what creates electricity? And How Cambodia have their electricity? That was what we learned in an exploration called “Electricity: Economics, Infrastructure & Access” It might sound so long and complicated, but in an easy way it is about what is electricity and how it works. We were also focusing on electricity in Cambodia. We started the exploration with basic lessons about electricity, like its history, how it works, and we also have fun while experimenting with the Leyden jar which is the bigging of electricity. It was hard at first for me. I didn’t know where to start or what should I work on, but as time goes on my interest started to grow as well as my understanding of it. 

Finally, our first trip came. It wasn’t a far trip, it was just nearby here. We went to the energy lab. We got to know even more about electricity resources around the world as well as in Cambodia. After that, we went to ISPP which is an international school in Phnom Penh to see their Mini solar farm. I personally never know ISPP used solar as their main electricity resource, but they are and it was on their school building rooftops. It was amazing. I was so curious about everything related to solar and it was still on my mind even after the trip. 

After a while of studying different types of electricity resources, we were learning about solar, hydro dams, Thermal, Nuclear power, and more. I was fully into solar. It is a great resource that people should be using because it used sunlight which we will never run out of. In class, we were dividing into a team to work on one of those resources that we were interested in, and just like that Solar was what I was working on. In my team, we were writing an article about solar. The article includes how it works, the advantages and disadvantages, different types of solar energy systems and solar energy in Cambodia. Everything that I was curious about started to become like a solved riddle or an open book. The article helps me to understand more about solar and I got to improve my writing skills which I was not so confident with too. 

Another unforgettable trip came. We got to visit Okra solar mini-grid in Kompong Speu province, Okra solar is a solar company that provides accessible, available & affordable energy to the people living in off-grid areas. Solar mini-grid is one of the different types of solar energy. We also went to interview people who use electricity from solar mini-grid and I got to understand that besides important things for people’s life like food, electricity is their needs. Electricity also parts that help economic growth, with electricity they said that they can earn more than they used to. 

This is a whole new perspective I have toward electricity. I thought that without them we will just need to live in the dark, but now I got to know that electricity is a part of life without them life will be more difficult and nothing could be improved or develop. I learned that we need to save them because they are important, saving electricity for today so then we can have a better tomorrow. When some people have electricity to use, they didn’t know or think about the people out there who are living in the dark with no hopes of improving their life and no hope of getting off from the darkness that they were in. After understanding and learning all of these, I wanted everyone to know about it and to care about it as much as we do.  Now that we got to learn about it, I felt lucky and somehow connected to the people out there, connected because I felt like I got to show people out there that they are not alone, we understanding how they felt and there are always people who wanted to help and are caring about them. This seven weeks exploration was passing by like a dream, I can’t get enough, but at last, I wanted everyone to know that this learning experience didn’t only help me with my education, but it makes me realized how lucky I am to have almost everything I need in life. It teaches me to appreciate everything I have and to help save and take care of everything I have.

 

Literacy

Vietnam is our neighbor country. We are friends a long time ago but I am as a Cambodian I didn’t know much about their history, which makes me feel like there is something that is missing and needed to be known. Thanks to Literacy class this round we were focusing on the Vietnam war and which lead to a book called “Inside out and back again”. The novel is writing by Thanhha Lai who is a Vietnam-born American writer of children’s literature. The books are written as a chapter of poems more than a book chapter of the paragraph. Our main focus is on the Vietnam war, but throughout the learning process, we got to learned many other things and got to improve our skills too. We got to read articles, and looking through some pictures and having a small exhibition of pictures along with captions that were taken during the war. At first I didn’t know anything at all about the Vietnam war,but after I read some I can understand more about and I can make an inference that I have made after reading and learn about Vietnam war is that it was a 20 years long war so there are millions of people who died in the war and not only just because they got shot or fighting, but some people even kill themselves because they just don’t want to live their life in that war. One inference that I have made after reading and learn about Vietnam war is that it was a 20 years long war so there are millions of people who died in the war and not only just because they got shot or fighting,but some people even kill themselves because they just don’t want to live their life in that war. Being in the war made people feel like it is not where they should belong and it wasn’t their home, it wasn’t the place that they used to know. The war did not only made people feel pain physically, but they got the pain in their feeling and metal pain that can’t be cured and will be their forever as their scars. We got to know the feeling of those people and understand more about them from the book more than the article was reading because the book was focusing on a specific perspective of a character named Kim Ha who was just 10 years old during the war. The characters in the books told us a lot about their feeling and we can see deep more to their emotion without them telling it. Another interesting thing about the book was that not only it tells us about the war, but it was also telling us about the setting and how things happen one by one. The book was one way that tells us about the war and the people’s life’s changes. We got to learn about the war and also we got to improve about reading skills, it was more than just reading and understanding, there was something we have to do to get to know the characters and people’s emotions better and it is the tone. We can understand more about the emotion of the characters by the tone that they are using and the words that the author was using to describe things and feelings. Only reading one was not enough we have to compare and contrast the information that we got, so we were reading a lot of articles and compare the information and the feeling that the articles were giving to the readers. We have done a lot of group discussion because it helps us to understand one of another opinions and ideas and because of the group discussion, it makes me feel more confident about my overall knowledge and understanding of the war. The team giving more ideas and opinion which sometimes lead to something we never think of but are connected. Discussion is always needed when we are learning about something. We have to take a lot of notes because the group discussion was like having a debate or trying to persuade people so they believe in your opinion or idea and agree with you and to do that I have to have clear and specific evidence. In this round not only it teaches me about the war and improving my skills, and there is something I can take away from this which is teamwork and the confidence to speak up about my ideas and to bring my voice to the group discussion or the class. This is another progress for me in literacy and I hope to improve and make more progress in the future.