Year one finished!

Hello to all friends! I am happy to tell you that .....

I have finished my first year at Rambert!

This is my year group just before lockdown!

This time last year, I was getting ready to leave Cambodia to come to England. I want to thank you all for praying, supporting and witnessing this journey with me. It's a miracle that none of my family and friends would have thought possible.

My dancing has improved so much this year. I have been able to study new styles of movement as well as work on improving my ballet technique. During lockdown I have been playing with creating movement videos. This has helped me to learn how to edit video and it has given me an opportunity to play with my own choreography. This will help a lot for my 2nd year. My biggest challenge this year has been writing and researching for the academic part of my training. I just recieved the result from my teachers. I passed everything and had good feedback. This is something I need to keep working on.

I can't believe that I've been away from the school and my friends for 4 months during lock down. I miss dancing in the studio so much. After school closed in March I finished the rest of the year doing my classes online by myself. The teachers, principle and school staff were so supportive and worked hard to keep us going. Before the Summer break, we had a zoom video call with everyone from school to say good bye, especially to the third year students. The third years made a video of all the fun, beautiful and hard times that they spent together. It was amazing to witness their friendships over the whole three years. It was sad to see them saying goodbye to each other either in person or over Zoom, since there are some that were in different countries or far away from London, but at the same time, I know that it's time for them to follow their dreams. After the video call, I realized that I only have two more years to train at Rambert and it made me want to really focus on learning as much as I can and on building relationships. This year it has hard for me to make friends because there were so many things that I needed to learn. I needed to understand more about myself and be ready to stop holding so much onto my connections in Cambodia, so that I could go out and make new friends.

During my summer break, I have been helping Rachel and her family move back into the house that they left 8 years ago. In the new house there is also a room for me and Rachel let me design it as if it's my room. It was fun to experience and help them move because this is something I have never done before. At my home in Cambodia (Gateway) we did move from the countryside to Phnom Penh, but because there are many children Taka and Christina made sure that the new house was all ready before we arrived. Here in England, I painted my room with colours that I chose and drew a picture of me dancing, on the wall.

After everything started to settle down in the new house, Rachel and her family have let me practice my cooking. I actually know to cook more than I was expecting. I guess you don't know till you give it a try. Here are some pictures of my achievments.

Beef Lok Lak and Fried Chicken with Pepper Sauce

Things I am doing in lockdown

I am now doing school online everyday with Rambert and I have finished my first essay and will submit it this week - yeah!!! I have one more to do. But I am also getting to do some fun things with Rachel's family.

While I am with Rachel's family, we normally go out walking in a wood and up on the hills near their house once a day. There are sheep, cows and horses in the field and i always try to go close to them. Sometimes I talk to them or feed the horses so that I can stroke their body. They are so big! I still can't believe that I can get to see them in person.

One day we went up the hill to play and sing songs together. It was really fun and great to do outside in a big field. I've always wanted to sit on the grass, lay down and look up into the sky like in movies that I watched in Cambodia. When I Iook up to the sky, I am just impressed with how amazing and enormous the earth is.

One day as we were heading back home from a walk, I felt like i needed to go back and pray to God. As I was walking back to the field, the sheep were scared of me and started to walk away. When I saw them walking away, I sat down slowly and took a moment to pray. After I finished praying I started to sing worship songs to God. I started singing a song called Salvation Belongs To Our God. As I was singing three sheep started to walk back towards me and they went quiet. I have never felt that close to them before. They were standing still looking at me and it felt really good, I felt as if they were joining me.

Rachel and her daughters are teaching me to cook and bake. I love cooking and learning how to make food. So far I have made english panckaes and I even baked my own cake. It was carrot cake and I got the recipe from my host family, Kate. It was not as good as her cake but it was ok to eat.

The 10th of April was Good Friday and some of people here in England make Easter gardens every year. We made one and it was a really fun, creative activity. I got to collect flowers and place them where ever i wanted in the garden. Here is a photo of the garden.

Trip to the ocean with my host family

In February I went to a place called Poole, to see the beach with my host family and met some of their family members. The place that we went to was Steve’s ( my host family) hometown. It was really great and I was blessed to go there and relax for a weekend, which not many of my friends get to do.

On the way there Kate ( my host family) taught me the names of English flowers and showed me the ponies farm. The views in the countryside, the old castle and the way English houses used to look is so beautiful. There was one point where we had to get on a ferry to cross the ocean. Just before we got on the ferry, they suggested that I should get out of the car and see the ocean. The moment I got out of the car I could feel the wind , the smell and the sound of the oceany. It just felt amazing. I can’t really describe it. I wish I could. God is so amazing!! His creation is definitely healing for all the challenges and stresses of life.

A picture of Poole beach

After we got there, we decided to walk Fin the dog and as usual, wherever I go to the beach I collect shells and rocks that look beautiful. I was so happy and enjoyed collecting them especially when my host family were encouraging and helped me looking for them.

What a great weekend we had.