It was Khmer New Year on Saturday, and it'll be holiday till... at least today (Monday). Some will be back to work tomorrow, Tuesday but most should be back on Wednesday. Since it was holiday and no one was working, I decided to help out Ben, a pHD student from Stanford University on his project on Arsenic, together with Caleb and Jenny. We went to take some water samples from the well nests Ben made in the field at a village nearby. Each well nest has like 3-4 well tubes ranging from 2 - 15m deep, and we were to take samples from each well.
Caleb, Ben, Jenny (Left to right)
Ben's project will help people to understand why Arsenic is behaving the way it is here, hopefully. I saw he made a profile map of Arsenic concentration and it's pretty interesting! And I just discovered Google Earth..
Anyway, after working under the sun for like 5 hours on Saturday, I thought that wasn't too bad until today when we went to the field again. It was so hot that even though we only worked for like less than 3 hours in the field, it felt like a whole day, and I was soaked..in sweat. It was 35C. I was quite glad that I remembered my sunglasses.
Basically no one, really, was working in the field. After learning our lesson on Saturday, we made sure we brought lots of water with us so we don't get dehydrated. Poor Jenny, she felt sick on Saturday which I think was probably due to the heat and dehydration.
Today was the worst I've experienced, in terms of heat. It was REALLY hot. I must've lost more water in a day than I've ever had today. Even though I keep drinking water, I still feel kind of dehydrated. It doesn't help that I've been having diarrhoea...
Shall write more about the games I played during Khmer New Year next time.
