Last Sunday, Cambodians took to the polls, participating in their national election. The weekdays around election day were declared public holidays so that voters could return to their homelands to vote. As a result, construction at Wat Mon Thyean halted for five days. Although progress has been slow this week, the workers completed compaction of the ground stone and much of the rebar installation.

Despite the election, the school support committee (SSC) convened twice this week for training. Although part of this week's training focused on technical areas, the SSC also learned a skill for making communication with SCC more efficient, particularly for issues that arise at the construction site -- how to operate a mobile phone. Members of the SSC, all of whom are in their 60's and 70's practiced dialing, answering, and holding a phone to their ear. For three of the members, it was their first time holding a phone.

SCC and the SSC also made a trip to a neighboring primary school built in 2005. They took note of cracks in the building's floors and brainstormed ideas to present to the contractor for preventing the same problems at their new school building.

Workers install ground slab rebar:

Workers cut rebar:

Jay teaches a school support committee member to use a mobile phone:

The WMT SSC visits a neighboring school built in 2005, to learn from their issues related to quality of construction: