VSO Conference (Beach Beano!)

Last week VSO Cambodia held its annual conference at Sihanoukville, a beach resort. 85 VSO volunteers and staff attended and I had a great time catching up with everyone. The conference was really well organised and the schedule was fun and worthwhile. Unfortunately the weather was mostly terrible, with monsoon conditions, culminating in the road between PP and Sihanoukville being impassable for several days. However, as you can see, we did manage to get to the beach between storms, and I even managed to get sunburnt on our last day.

While I was in Sihanoukville, I gave blood for the first time in my life. One of the volunteers is a doctor there and she arranged a special blood giving session. I had a few problems (couldn't get enough blood out of one arm, so had to get some out of the other; spurting blood afterwards; felt faint; some bruising) but it wasn't too bad.

At the conference, I was elected on to the Volunteers Committee, which looks after the volunteers' interests and liaises with the VSO office. I was quite honoured to be chosen, as there was stiff competition. As a committee member, I will be travelling to Phnom Penh for meetings regularly, which will be good for my social life! The new committee will be responsible for organising next year’s conference. A very high standard was set this year, so I think we will have our work cut out.