In college, noise complaints were the bane of every party's existence. One noise complaint and campus police would come investigate. Warning lights would be flashed on an off. Red solo cups abandoned recklessly by the underaged. Pyramid formations suddenly became rectangles or a zigzag. Glass bottles hidden in old laundry. The only thing you couldn't hide were the 50 people packed in a 2 person dorm room.

These days I find myself wishing I could pick up a phone and call those police. Actual noise laws have the following benefits:

Stops the neighbors from singing offkey karaoke at 6am.May stop your host sister's 6am alarm from going off at 5am.Preventing surround sound weddings (4 simultaneously in a circle around your house).No more need to worry that walking past the speakers will burst your eardrums.Funeral music from three doors down will not make you want to rip your hair out.No more groups of drunk men banging on a drum and singing in chorus at 3 AM. (outside your house)The Wat outside will not be blasting dance music into your room until midnight on Monday and Tuesday nights (my bedtime is around 8pm).Right now, I'm sitting in my room with my earplugs in. The difference between now and before the earplugs is that now it sounds like someone closed a door on the crazy rager going on next to me, but it's not enough to keep my bed from shaking.

Some interesting things happened to me today...Apparently today and tomorrow are very good days to get married. Weddings in Cambodia are typically 2-3 day affairs where they blast music ALL day to let everyone know what’s up. So, this morning, and by morning I mean 4am when the stars are still fully visible in the sky, 3 weddings started up. They were each in a different direction from my house so in effect I had weddings in surround sound.Puppies do not like Khmer wedding music. At about the same time the music started the 3 puppies at my house started howling like mad. They made their sad puppy cries all morning starting at 4am. My mom thought it was because they were too infested with lice. Which leads to the next interesting thing...Spraying puppies with RAID. I was standing outside my house and I saw my mom poking at a puppy. I squat down for a better view and she begins to explain to me how the puppies have too much lice and she decided to deal with it by spraying the puppy with Raid. In this country, dogs are not really pets. You may have one that you feed the leftover rice to and these are the puppies of that dog. So, there are pretty much no vet services, no flea control, no doggy baths, etc. The puppy that was sprayed with Raid had handfuls of dead dog lice falling out of its fur. Before the pesticide spray the dog was white and black. Now it was white, black, with brown spots. Unfortunately, I think the Raid had some negative neurological side effects which should be expected when you spray a 5kg puppy and if you know how to read the label. But, my host parents do not because the label is written in Thai. By this afternoon the puppy had stopped having the shakes and seemed to be lice free.Lately my Health Center keeps being invaded by chickens. I always thought that they were the neighbors chickens. One thing I learned in Cambodia is that chickens are not smart. For example, chickens will wander into rooms in the health center, forget how they got there, and get stuck in the room unable to find the door. This poses a problem when you are constantly trying to herd them out. This morning I asked the pharmacist where these chickens were coming from. Turns out they are the Health Center Director’s chickens and he’s raising them at the Health Center.One of the three weddings is the wedding of the Health Center’s receptionist. I’m pretty friendly with the receptionist since she’s one most available to answer my general questions, she understands when I speak, we spend a lot of time waiting for patients together, and we’re about the same age. This wedding is also the reason I am not taking any vacation days for New Years. This morning I was chatting with the pharmacist again. Turns out the receptionist is getting remarried. As in, she got married 2 years ago, divorced, found a new guy, and is getting married again. When I heard this two thoughts popped into my head. The first was, “Oh, that’s what my host mom was trying to tell me this morning.” The second was, “Wow, that’s fast.” According to my host mom, her first wedding was arranged and they did not love each other. Also, the groom had to pay 3000 bucks as the bride price. This second wedding, the groom is not as handsome and he only paid 2000 bucks.

Recently, I was talking to someone and they asked me "Who got used to the other first? You or your host family?" (not exact wording). I replied, " I think we're still getting used to each other." It was weird because part of me was hesitant to admit that. I've been here for almost a year and a half and I should be use to it by now, right? I should just understand how everything works and be one with the culture. Part of our bi-annual report to Peace Corps includes a question that asks us to self-rate ourselves on how integrated we are. I think the options are: Not integrated, Somewhat integrated, Integrated, and very integrated. I think most people are not really sure what that means. I think maybe you can tell the difference between someone that is NOT integrated at all and someone that is VERY integrated, but other than that it's a totally subjective measurement. And yet, I feel guilty admitting that, after 1.5 years, I am not an expert on Khmer language and culture.

I still do strange American things that make my host family raise their eyebrows at me and they still do weird Cambodian things that I then blog about. For example, today I was sitting in my room on the comp and I smelled/heard someone spray painting something. It was really close to my window, which I thought was strange because it wouldn't be somewhere you could put a bike or car or something. So, I looked out my window and my host brother was spray painting his jeans black. I guess that's the secret to keeping your black jeans from fading in the Cambodian sun. A few hours later I went to a Health Center meeting that was supposed to start at 1:30pm. At around 3 pm one of the commune chiefs shows up. At about 3:30 pm, 3 village health volunteers stroll in yelling really loudly about why they were late in the middle of the meeting. They saw nothing wrong with it and the only person that did anything about it was my midwife. She 'shushed' them really loudly from the other side of the room.

I've learned a lot in the last 1.5 years, but certainly not an entire culture.

So, my official COS date is August 3rd!!! Thatmeans that August 3rd is the first day that I am ‘allowed’ to goback home to America and the last date of my service here in Cambodia. My exactplans for what follows August 3rd is up in the air, but I hope toend up in India or Nepal somewhere around there. A lot of this is dependent onother factors like med school interviews, potential jobs (if that’s at allpossible), and friends/family. But, it’s good to finally know a date.

Recently, I was on facebook and one of my friends had postedon her status “I’m not a feminist, but...” What followed was an article aboutwomen in the work world and how in some cases they are making more money thanmen. This is a very general summary of the article and should not be taken asevidence of anything. What struck me was not the article, but the fact that myfriend felt that she needed to prefaceposting it with “I’m not a feminist”. My response to her was “‘You’re not afeminist? What does that mean?”Until maybe my Junior year of college I had no idea that theterm “feminist” had negative connotations. To me, feminism is defined by eachperson. I think that if you generally believe in the ability of women to makechoices for themselves then you are a feminist. You don’t have to believe thatall women need to work or that women shouldn’t wear bras. You just need tobelieve in women. You just need to believe that a woman can make the choice toraise kids or run for president and that they have the ability to do either orboth. It really does not seem like a radical idea to me. When I first heardthat people were scared to be associated with the word feminist my firstreaction was “Why?”

Why are people afraid to be a feminist? Coming to a Cambodiahas brought feminism to another level for me. The wall between male and female genderroles here is so solid that it might as well be made of steel. Every day I seewomen come into the health center with their children. They finally found timeoutside of harvesting rice, cooking, cleaning, and any other work that needs tobe done to bring their child to the health center. Very rarely do men come withtheir children or wives to the health center. In my host family, the boys getto go play soccer, school, see Siem Reap, but the girls stay at home. They goto school and they study, but they need to make the rice first. Every morningall the women in my host family pick up a broom to sweep and every night theydo all the dishes. I don’t think I have ever seen one of the boys do theirdishes and I’m not sure they know how. I’ve seen families where the eldest songot to go to school and becomes a nurse, the youngest son gets to go to SiemReap for high school, but the middle daughter stopped going to school aftergrade 8 and stays at home to cook. These gender roles don’t just force peopleinto certain jobs or livelihoods, but they affect behavior. Generalizing aboutgirls in Cambodia, I would say that a lot of them are scared. They never getpermission to leave the house or stay out past dark so they rationalize it intoa fear. This fear self-perpetuates and keeps them at home and in turn createsparents afraid to let their daughters out of the house. If you lived in Cambodia, would you be afeminist?

Maybe the term feminism is too limiting. Maybe part of thereason why people don’t want to associate with it is because it neglects menand some people picture “man haters” when they hear the term. Maybe I should call it anti-gender rolism to appeal to the masses. I guess sometimes people use "gender eqaulity" or anti "gender disparity", but what does that really mean? Mutualunderstanding between men and women, good communication, is crucial tosubverting gender roles. Women alone may be able to start change, but to haveworldwide sustainable change the other 50% of the population also needs to buyin. Men are also trapped by gender roles, “oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as those theyoppress” , trapped in the cycle perpetuated by those in power (Frye 1983). Ifeveryone feels oppressed by oppression then why don’t we stop? Because thoseoppressing still have an advantage they don’t want to give up. Over the courseof a number of months I did a big project involving a girls club. As a largepart of my work I ended up having many formal and casual conversations withpeople in my community about the girls club, gender, and related topics.Eventually I realized that many Cambodians, especially men, either don’tconsciously see the gender roles in their society or they don’t see it as aproblem.

I had a number of people ask me why I only had a girls cluband not also a boys club. To me it was obvious and it was also obvious to thetwo male PCVs I worked with. With limited time and funds why would I choose tocreate a boys club when all of Cambodia is pretty much a boys club? However, toCambodians it wasn’t so obvious. The purpose of the club was to teach girls theskills they would not learn at school: self-confidence, team work, leadership,career seeking, project planning, advocacy, anatomy, sexual health, etc. Manyof these skills are taught to boys.

“Women and disabled individuals are encouraged to apply” wasa statement printed at the bottom of a job advertisement. Someone reading thatin America might not think much about it. It’s a pretty standard statement thatwe see a lot. Someone in Cambodia once told me that he had no hope of gettingthe job because they would hire women first. Interestingly, he did not includedisabled people in his lament. I asked him how many women and how many disabledpeople he saw working at this company. His answer was 2 and 0. Out of the 6staff members 2 were women. He ended upmaking it to the final round of hiring and they chose another man over him. Oneday I asked someone why are there no female english teachers at our school. Hisanswer was because the female teachers all get chosen to work at NGOs or schoolin Siem Reap (which are larger and pay more). He felt there was unfairselection because they mostly got to work there. I don’t think he realized thatof all the men that graduate every year only a handful of women do and thathandful probably had to be first intheir class for their entire lives in order to work in Siem Reap.

Hearing people that think that these gender roles are a wayof life and that nothing needs to be changed is almost more frustrating thanseeing the gender roles themselves. Women are too scared to change, men don’tthink there’s anything wrong with it, and nobody communicates with each other. Sowhen someone says “I’m not a feminist” I ask “Why not?” What are you scared of?

Helen Pu

Peace Corps

P.O. Box 93205

Siem Reap, Cambodia

US EMBASSY PEACE CORPS CAMBODIA

The old one still works, but this is faster.

Water Festival is a three day holiday at the beginning ofNovember. Usually, Cambodian hold boat races very similar to the dragonboatraces we have in other countries. This year I decided to stay home for theholiday since I had just gotten back from China. My host family had big plansto go visit the “Cambodian Cultural Village” which is just outside of Siem Reapcity.

Recently, my host father had bought a new used car. It was aToyota Camry (typical for Cambodia) and he did not know how to drive. Over thepast month he’s learned how to drive and taught my host brother how to drivetoo. I still remember the first time he took the car out for a test drive andthe car never made it back that day. Turns out, my dad drove it into a waterfilled ditch. For our trip to the cultural village my teenage host brotherdrove. It was 5 of us in the car including my host mom who kept telling him toturn down the radio. The rest of my host family, aunts, uncles, cousins, wentin a big SUV that they apparently have on lease.

Things were going well. We left the house around 2pm andwanted to arrive around 3pm. This is pretty good timing for Cambodia. Half-wayto the village we had to stop in Pouk market to buy roast chicken for thepicnic dinner later. In order to save time, our car picked up my hostgrandfather and drove him to the dentist in Pouk. I think they expected thevisit to take a few minutes, but it took almost an hour. All of us sat in theopen waiting room reading dentist chair catalogues and watching a Chinese soapopera that was dubbed in khmer.

When we finally got to the “Cambodian Cultural Village” noneof the adults wanted to go in. They were all outraged that the “village” raisedthe price from 4 dollars to 5 dollars because of the holiday (this is the pricefor Cambodians). Then my host mom kept saying how we arrived too late andthere’s not enough time to see everything. We spent about another 30 min in theparking lot discussing this matter. Then we all got in the car and made a pit stopat a Wat. Everyone in my car was just confused at this point and not sure whywe were stopping here, but I took some pictures of my little cousins and we allwaited for something to happen. Somehow there was a signal for everyone to getback in the cars and so we did.

The next stop was Road 60, a carnival type place outside ofSiem Reap City. It was built as a joint venture between Cambodians and a Koreancompany so you’ll see a lot of Cambodians and bus loads of Korean tourists.I’ve been here many a time, but this was definitely the lamest trip yet. We gotthere and sat down to eat dinner. This was a pretty good dinner. Lots ofroasted meat and rice which I enjoy. Typically, after you eat we go ride on the“roller coasters” which consists of a rusty ferris wheel and a big wheel thingthat goes back and forth, similar to those pirate ship rides in America. Thistime we went shopping. Road 60 is a long road that has vendors on both sides.People will drive through on their motos and just stop on the side if they seesomething they want to buy. I ended up following a bunch of teenagers aroundand all they bought were stuffed animals to give as birthday presents for anupcoming bday party we were all invited to. The kids had been talking about theferris wheel for days because it’s the scariest ride they will ever be on (andthe logistics of riding a large rusted wheel in Cambodia is pretty scary), butthe teenagers would have none of it. By the time they had finished buyingstuffed animals it was time to get back in the cars and go home.

When we finally arrived home I was exhausted from doingnothing and all I wanted was to go to bed. My host sister really wanted me tostay up until midnight to go to the Wat. I’m really glad I didn’t because thenext day I asked her, “ Was the Wat fun last night?” She replied, “No, I wastoo tired.”

In between China and crashing into an ox cart I spent a wonderful weekend at this nice hotel called the sofitel because Kurt's grandparents were in town! I was pretty nervous about it even in China, but it was a wonderful weekend in the end. To start off, I biked there and the weather was pretty nice for the ride. It felt really good to not be trapped in some plane, train, bus or taxi. Felt good to flex my muscles again. I showed up at the hotel and asked where I could park my bike, but the security guard, good naturedly, told me I had gone in the EXIT and that I had to leave the driveway and go about 50 meters down the road to the Entrance. I was shocked. Never before I had I experienced such enforcement of rules in Cambodia. This is a country where driving down the road on the wrong side of the highway is perfectly acceptable. This is the country where you can dry your rice on both sides of the road, turning it into a single lane, and not even feel bad about yourself. This is the country where you ride your moto and hold your helmet instead of wearing it and no one thinks that's strange or oddly flaunting the law. So, I begrudgingly turned around, got plenty of oil on the back of my right leg which happens all the time, and went searching for the entrance.

Once I made it in the IN part of the driveway things went smoothly. I took a shower in the nicest shower I've seen in a long long time. The shower was actually enclosed in glass versus being completely open and always getting the toilet paper wet. And then I met Kurt's grandparents. And everything was good. Normally, I get really nervous meeting people that are older than me, whether they're 5 years older or 20 years, but I felt really at ease and I really enjoyed meeting them. Also, the breakfast buffet and the bacon helped my nerves a lot. The sofitel also had a huge pool and it smelled really nice all the time. Also, a PS2. Yes, I still kick ass at Capcom vs. Marvel.

One day, Kurt and I went with his grandparents to see Banteay Srei. I was so so grateful that his grandparents paid to have us driven there. Originally, I had planned on biking there, but it was a lot harder to find and a lot farther away than I thought. Also, while beautiful, the temple itself is fairly small and so I don't think it's worth a bike ride unless you do a picnic lunch or something after.

Oh, and it was halloween that weekend too! I was a werepanda, half panda half human. Kurt was a rice farmer. Then halfway through the night it just got too hot to wear my panda hat so I put it on my belt and became a panda hunter and kurt was just kurt.

It's always interesting to stay in such a nice place because my house 30 km away is a totally different world. I had the same feeling when I walked into the US Embassy a few months ago. There are all these small recreations of the western affluent world in Cambodia and really it doesn't seem fair, but at the same time luxury is something I've, personally, wanted my entire life. If you polled most rural Cambodians, I bet a lot of them would tell you that they want the giant 3 or 4 story house. They want a car. They want a job that pays a lot of money. They want the new tv. They want all these things too and they probably want it more than middle class Americans or the people that already have them. They want it more because they can't have it. To them it's always a dream.

That's the way it was growing up. Having an apartment of my own in Manhattan. Being able to take taxi cabs instead of the subway. Having nice clothes, a respectable high paying job. It's all part of a dream that a lot of people have and that's not a bad thing. It's just ironic that the people that have this dream and that eventually attain it might be the ones least concerned with helping others. You spend your whole life struggling and trying to reach something. To get there you have to devote 100% of yourself and once you get there you try as hard as you can to forget how much you had to struggle in the past. It's a new life now. It's hard to keep in mind how many people probably had to be self-less in order to help you make it. Parents, friends, anonymous scholarship donors, not so anonymous scholarship donors, library volunteers, free tutoring, free music lessons after school, art programs. I worked hard to make it to college and graduate and I have the potential to have a luxurious life style, but I didn't do it alone. It took a lot of people that wanted to help others to help me make it here even if they didn't realize they were helping me. It seems odd to me now, how badly I wanted something that I don't really need. And yea, honestly, part of me still wants it. Especially food wise. I would still love to just be able to walk into any restaurant and order anything I want off the menu. But, I think I'm more willing to be flexible now. It's not an all or nothing. As long as I can keep others in mind and actively work toward helping them then I think, once in a while, I can indulge in something for me.

Sort of reminds me of something I studied for a small bit in college. I think for a class, Maine Social Research, we read an article about a woman on welfare and the article was attached with comments. The comments were just filled with people saying how this woman on welfare shouldn't own a dog. Pretty much blaming her continued poverty on the dog. But, I would ask others how long could you live a sparse lifestyle with ONLY the things you need for survival? People blame the poor for owning tvs or buying a new couch, but it's hard to live life when all you do is work, eat, and sleep. What's the point of living if you can't even have a dog? We're people, not robots.

Before I get to a post about my wonderful weekend, I want topost about what happened to me yesterday afternoon. Yesterday, I left Siem ReapCity on my bike around 3pm and things progressed as usual. I even stopped byTravis’ site to pick up his passport. There were no rain clouds in sight. Itwas just me, the asphalt, and the sky. The road was almost completely empty andI was really picking up the pace when I noticed that somehow my brake wire wasout of place and my back brake was not working. No big deal. I stop, move thewire back in place, and keep going thinking that a major accident was justavoided. Wrong. About ten minutes later and only 5km away from site I look upand BAM I crash straight on into some inanimate object. I crash so hard thatthe object and I keep going a few feet before we both stop and then I fallreally hard on my right side.

Apparently, I had not been watching the road well enough andI crashed into a parked ox cart. This thing is pretty big. It’s made to hook upto two cows or oxen and it already had a pile of hay on it size of me. At firstI just lay their sort of dazed and then my right leg started hurting a lot. Ipicked myself up and just cursed my own stupidity. For a few seconds I thoughtI could just get back up on my bike and keep going. I’m a pretty small personwith a very small and light bike. I didn’t even think I dented the cart whichis made from heavy wood. Apparently, I broke it in two separate locations. Onefrom the force of direct impact and the other from inadvertently pushing thecart a few feet when it’s ‘brake’ was still in place. I also slowly realizedthat my right thigh was pretty swollen and I would never make it the 5k back tosite. At that time I was just really alone and sort of just stood their cryingand in pain. The farmer came back and obviously he was angry, but he wasactually the one that called someone to come pick me up. I learned later thatmy host dad had passed me on the highway, but at that point I was sitting onthe ground and he thought I was just trying to fix my bike or take a break. Hedidn’t want to stop because he was a man and I was a female and somehow that’sinappropriate. It was sort of crazy how even though it was hard for me to walkonly women could help me and no males ever even came close to touching me theentire time.

The entire time this was happening I was thinking twothings. The first was that my leg really really hurts but it’s not broken. Thesecond was I want to settle things now with the cart. It’s broken and it’s goingto be hard for him to get it home. He needs it to work everyday. It was totally my fault. The first things Isaid to the farmer was “Í’m Sorry. Howmuch will it cost to fix it?” I might have been the one crying hysterically andin pain, but in the long run he might be the one that suffers. Instead oftalking about it he calls someone he knows to come get me (though I later heard he might have been afraid of a fine since he had the "larger vehicle" illegally parked on the road). The moto man showsup and he says “Oh! Helen!” I’m still not sure who it was but he takes my bagsand I get on the moto and we go straight to the health center. I get off themoto limping, but someone got there before me. It was an old grandma and shewas bleeding from somewhere. She had just been in a moto accident and wasclearly very hurt. Watching her try to walk up to the Health Center just reallymade me realize how lucky I am. Even in a moment where I feel so broken andvulnerable, I can still see that I am the privileged and lucky one. Even whenI’m in Cambodia, hurt and confused there are still people all around me thatare worse off. People, literally,standing in front of me. And at that moment I felt bad. I felt so bad that Iwas taking attention away from this woman that clearly needed more help thanme.

I see a lot of people come here, to Cambodia, and they get alot of attention. It’s wonderful when your class looks up to you and adores youeven though you may be a subpar english teacher. It’s wonderful when you cangive away new bookbags and toys and everyone loves you. But do they ever feelbad that all this glitz and glamor is taking away from what really matters? They’recovering everything up with temporary smiles when the real problems are standingright in front of them.

Anyway, the breakfast lady escorted me home with some pills (antibiotics for mybruises) and passed me off to my host mother who washed my legs for me. Theywere covered in motor oil from my bike. My aunt showed me a giant scar on herbelly to tell me that she got over something much worse than what I have now.My grandmother sat with me to give me a pep talk about how I have to keepstruggling to finish my two years here. Then I got the opportunity to call my 24/7 oncall personal nurse named Joanne. Who was wonderful as always. After that I called my awesome boyfriend whois always there for me. In the middle of that call, I got visited by my Khmertutor’s wife, her 4 year old son, and another girl. They brought me desert. Atnight my host mom iced my leg until I fell asleep. This morning the 8thgrader I live with bought me breakfast and set it up in my room for me. I usedmy medical knowledge to clean and bandage up some scratches with antibioticcream. My host mom heated leaves over a candle and pressed them to my bruise tokeep it from swelling. She even made this delicious lemongrass chicken soupthat I love.

I am just so lucky. Lucky it wasn’t worse. Lucky people carefor me. Lucky I went to school. Lucky I have resources. Lucky that the worst oftimes are still not that bad. The same accident could have happened to someoneelse and maybe they would have gotten an infection. Or no one had a moto to gopick them up. Or they had to go to work the next day and their leg may neverheal. My life is cushioned so that when I fall, I land on a soft mattress. Whenothers fall, it’s a different story.

When I started this blog I said that it’s about my life. Overthe course of this past year I’ve come to realize more and more how much of ourlives is taken up with realizing and observing things. Then we process theseobservations. We start thinking aboutthem and, in this case, you start thinking about things that are wrong or couldbe improved. Maybe we start complaining. Me writing this blog talking about allthe problems in the world is a method of complaint. A complaint is a method ofmaking a problem known. It’s the first step in reaching a solution, but I thinkthat, more and more these days, no one is moving onto step two. Everyone issuddenly waking up and realizing all the problems in the world, but will weever reach any solutions? Complaining is easy, but, sometimes, fixing things isso damn hard.

So, I went to training in Takeo in mid Septembe and rightafter that I went to Kep. Kep is a province in the south with a nice beach. Istayed there for a while because my province was flooded for a long time. ThenI went straight to Phnom Penh for a few events. The first major event was apool party!!! I had forgotten how much fun it is to play in a pool. Then we hada CHE meeting to talk about the future of our program. It was actually reallyproductive and hopefully a stepping stone to really improving the healtheducation program here in Cambodia. The next morning we had an all volunteertraining session and in the afternoon the new k5 volunteers officially sworein. The minute it ended I swooped in on the snacks and had myself a freepre-dinner. Some pictures were taken,though right now I’m not sure whose camera they’re on. (I’m going to teachenglish class in about an hour and it just took me three tries to get the right“they’re”) After swear in was the swear in party. Unfortunately, I had to catcha 6am bus the next morning. Fortunately, my messed up sleep cycle somehow mademe more alert when I finally did get back to site.

I spent about a week back at site and then I had to run offagain! This time to CHINA. Yes, I amtraveling a lot. Oddly enough a lot of it was for work and this is only mysecond time out of the country. The first time was a measly 3 days in Thailand.I went to Thailand in July. In September my Health Center director asked mewhen I was going to go to Thailand...

My two weeks in China was awesome. The first week was spentin beijing and it was exhausting. Eileen and I spent pretty much everydaywalking about 8-10 hours a day. Beijing just has so much to see and so muchshopping to do. We went to the Forbidden Palace, the Temple of Heaven, lots ofdifferent shopping places, saw a movie in a REAL movie theatre, ate lots offood (including at least 3 stops at Nathan’s), and on our last day we went tothe Great Wall of China. And yes, it was great.

Growing up, I’ve seen a ton of pictures of the wall andpeople on the wall. It always just seemed like a large pile of stones to me.But, in real life, it’s epic. A super long stone wall on TOP of a mountainrange. When was the last time your ancestors built a wall on TOP of a mountainrange? We went on the one smogless day in Beijing and it was beautiful. Blueskies, perfect fall weather, trees changing color, an endless sea of mountains.The climb was a bit strenuous for someone used to completely flat land, but Idid manage to pass a 2 year old, a woman with stiletto heel boots, a monk, anold grandma, and perhaps some other small children. If you use a stepmasteryou’re golden.

At the top of one of the forts, Eileen and I sat down to anice PB&J picnic lunch. PB&J never tasted so good. If you ever go Irecommend that you pack food and expect to use up all your energy trekking upand along the wall. Then you can take the easy way down via gondola ride or atoboggan. The toboggan, though life-risking, would have been epic. If it werenot for a pink hoodie wearing scaredy cat that kept stopping every time she hita curve. There were, literally, people with blow horns yelling at her to keepgoing and don’t stop.

After Beijing we headed to Shanghai by bullet train, sortof. We were trying to save money so we took the second fastest train in Chinawhich got us there in about 7 hours. The bullet train takes 5. I think if youlook up the distance you will be impressed, but right now I am without theinternet. The train was quite comfy and along the way I got to be interrogatedby two chinese ladies. The ladies were heading somewhere I can no longerremember and they were very curious about Eileen and I. At first they thought Iwas a dark southerner that was Eileen’s translator. This is partly because ofmy awesome authentic Chinese accent. Most people did mistake me for Chinese,which is a welcome change from always being Japanese in Cambodia. The ladiesand I talked, not always willingly, for the entire train ride. Oddly enough,I’ve had the exact same conversation many times in Cambodia. We went throughthe usual; how old are you, do you have a husband, what do you do, how muchmoney do you make, what did you study, what is better America or China, the oldwhite skin versus tan debate, is stuff more expensive in China or america, areyou Chinese?, is this brand of makeupgood (that’s a new one), etc. Near the end they ended up giving me lots of freefood which I greatly appreciated.

Shanghai and Beijing were very different from each other. We tookthe subway and public bus in both places, so we got to wander around a lot andsee a lot of different places and people that aren’t on the tourist map. That’sa euphemism to say that, sometimes, we got lost. But, the general feeling I gotfrom Beijing was that it was trying to be perfect in many ways. The temples,attractions were all beautiful and perfectly kept. The people were all welldressed. The subways were clean. Even the not touristy places were sort oftouristy. However, underneath it all you could sort of tell that it was all anact. People dressed well and spoke clearly but when it came to your stop on thesubway you are ready to kill everyone else so you can get out in time. Beijingjust seemed a little too unreal.

You get to Shanghai and things are a little grittier. Youget to feel the rhythm of the city. People dress like they live there, not likethey’re supermodels. Honestly, I even think the food tastes better there, maybea little more dirt helps the seasonings. Or maybe my uncle’s wallet also helped.People got on and off the train like civilized individuals. I couldn’t listenin on conversations anymore because so many accents and dialects were mixed in.You could tell when the guy next to you just got off the train from thecountryside. People brought their kids and baby carriages onto publictransportation, something that I would never do in Beijing. Shanghai is abeautiful city. The lights and architecture. But other than that it’s notfilled with attractions like Beijing. It’s a place where you have to do alittle more digging.

So, Eileen and I went to the Shanghai Science and TechnologyMuseum and had a blast. It would have been even more awesome if we wereactually 10 years old instead of just acting like it. We tried to look for apropoganda poster museum but it was closed cause they lost power for somereason. We went to the top of the Radisson hotel to get a beautiful, and free,panoramic view of the city.

Halfway through the week we hopped on a train to Hangzhouwhich is about 3 hrs away on the slow train. Hangzhou was a bit more difficultto navigate upon arrival since no nice subway system exists, yet. But wemanaged to get to the place we were staying at and the 2 day trip was so worthit. Hangzhou is famous for its dragon well tea and its giant West Lake. Thearea is beautiful. It even smells beautiful. Walking along the lake, drinkingsome tea. Climbing up a mountain, which ironically was infested with denguemosquitoes, to get a gorgeous view. It was a really nice nature retreat and thecouple whose apartment we stayed in were super nice and I definitely want to goback to see more of the town.

We spent our last two days back in Shanghai. Our second tolast day we saw an acrobatics show and it was amazing. It wasn’t flashy or fullof lights. No animals were used. It was just pure skill. Half the time I wasworried that someone would die. Ok, so this one act involved a seasaw and aplatform. Basically, two guys would jump off the platform and land on one endof the seasaw. Then the other end would flip up and fling a small asian girlreally really high up in the air. The amazing part is that the girl somehow iscaught on the top of say three people already standing on top of each other.and she lands perfectly...almost. So the really awesome part of this show isthat people make mistakes. And when the performers make a mistake they do itagain until they get it right. Originally, the girl was going be flipped onto a humanladder of I can’t even remember how many people. Something goes wrong and she plummetsto the ground, but, thankfully, she has professional spotters on the ground and they break her fall. But for about 3 seconds she was just falling and no oneknew what would happen. After the spotters got her back on her feet she wentstraight back around and did the same trick again. This time executing itperfectly. The entire show there were no nets. I only saw them use safety wiresa handful of times when the girls were being flipped so high no spotter couldever hope to catch her.

It’s fascinating how lack of perfection is really what makesthis show good. It makes it all the more real, more human. There seems to be somuch more at risk. Other shows I’ve seen in America need to set things on fire,force elephants to stand on one leg (which must be painful), or have all kindsof smoke and mirrors. This show simply shows you that there is inherent risk. Therearen’t five million invisible hi-tech safe guards behind the scenes. Part of meeven wonders if they make mistakes on purpose once in a while.

One of the last segments of the show was a giant metalglobe. It’s lower half can fit about 3 motorcycles in a triangle formationcomfortably. They fit about 8motorcycles going around in ridiculous highspeed circles. Then there was the ribbon dance? It’s not agymnastics ribbon dance. It’s one where there’s a long piece of cloth attachedto the ceiling and two performers can wrap themselves in it so they can dotricks in the air. It’s much more eloquent and beautiful than I can explain.

My last day in Shanghai I ate raw fish. It was awesome. Myuncle and aunt took Eileen and I out to a japanese restaurant. I haven’ttouched japanese food in about a year because I really don’t want to riskeating raw fish in Cambodia. Normally, I eat cooked food and I get sick. The food wasdelicious. I was so stuffed by the end I only really needed to eat one mealthat day, but I ended up getting pizza in the airport. Also, free airplanemeal! I love airplane meals. Mostly because you never know what you’re going toget and also it’s very cutely and neatly organized. Part of why I also lovebento boxes. Food in well-organized compartments just makes me want to eat!!!

Now I’m back at site and trying to get back into the swingof things. Teaching and getting projects off the ground. Halloween weekend I’llbe heading into Siem Reap though to meet Kurt’s grandparents! I’ll be biking inat 6am tomorrow. Hopefully, arrive by 7:30am, but I haven’t biked in a whileand 30k is a long way on a painful bike seat.

Camp GLOW is over!!! Technically. I taught my last English class and Girls Leadership Class of the summer on the 5th! The next day I headed into Siem Reap to begin prepping for the camp. Over the next two days we made to do lists galore, the boys (Kurt and Travis) went shopping, the health educators (Theary and Somary) arrived, we had a meeting with everyone (Synoeun and Chenda the facilitators too), and we tried to sleep.

Then on Thursday, the 8th, the girls arrived. It was a crazy crazy day. I didn’t know where I was going, the health educators didn’t know where the building was yet, Kurt and Travis had to go buy things, girls had to put their stuff in a room since they arrived too early for check-in. Running around trying to make sure no one was lost on the first day. And then things really started. We did ground rules, get to know each other, general beginning a camp stuff. Then Theary and Somary took over for a couple hours for some women’s health education lessons. Some health topics that were covered over the four days were menstruation, a woman’s body, STIs, birth control methods, and power and relationships. The first day was long and hard for everyone. We didn’t quite get enough snacks so everyone was hungry too, but it was ok because the market was so close. A lot of my girls bought enough snacks to give them cavities in all their teeth.

The next day we really hit our stride. The schedule was a great balance of work and ‘play’. A lot of trust building activities, leadership activities, and health sessions mixed together with snack breaks and meals. The energy sustained itself the whole day and I mean the whole day. I was getting up at 5:30am to run exercise sessions at 6 and we didn’t finish until 8 or 9 at night. Then after the sessions were done we had a staff meeting to help improve the next day. Definitely the longest workdays I’ve had in a long time. It must have been so tough for the health educators and facilitators that had to run the sessions, but they seemed to really love the positive feedback they were getting from all the girls. The hardest part for me was just trying to be alert and aware at all times. I needed to sort of monitor everyone to see who needed help, prepare for the future, relay the educators/facilitators needs to Kurt and Travis and the other way around, keep track of how the girls were doing, make sure we didn’t lose anyone because they decided to stop and trade SIM cards in the middle of the night.

We started working on “how to do community health education” on Saturday. The girls were all super enthusiastic about going back to teach what they learned. SUPER enthusiastic. My girls wanted to go back and have a meeting on Monday and then teach in 8 days. Which is almost impossible for even me to pull off. But, their eagerness is a really great sign that they value what they learned and that they think it’s important for others to learn it too.

Sunday was a bit rushed. The girls needed more time to prepare for presentations and then their presentations went overtime. This is all sort of expected considering it’s the first time a lot of them are teaching. Then we had lunch and the closing ceremony. Certificates were given out and lots of pictures were taken. Then it was a mad dash to the guesthouse to pack and organize all the girls and jump in the van and then head back to town. We got back around 4 and I unpacked and slept for a long long time. The next day we had our first planning meeting and set up our plan for September. I managed to convince them to wait until the end of October. Then the next day I left to go to training in Takeo.

Now, I’m in the guesthouse in Takeo after a day of talking about funerals and weddings and practicing khmer dances. I actual improved my dance technique a lot and learned a couple new ones. Come wedding season this year I will be fully prepared.

I guess it’s about time for an update. Mostly same old same old. HC in the morning, classes in the afternoon. Things have been a bit crazier since Camp GLOW is coming up Sept. 8. We’ve had so many last minute cancellations and I’ve been chasing down parents signatures (not literally…yet). Here are some snippets from my life:

Today there was a kid at the HC and his mom was forcefeeding him coca cola. Apparently he drank motor oil and the coke is supposed to make him throw up…

Today my host mom held a bucket up to me and asked “Do you dare to eat this?” I looked in and there were these two snake/eel like things. In Chinese it’s called huang san. And I’m like “yea” Cause I’ve had it before. And she was like “wow you’ll eat anything.”

A few days ago, I had my HC director sign my vacation form cause I’m going to China in October. He asked me “ Oh, in September you’re going to Thailand right?” I replied, “No I went in July and came back already…”

Today, I taught my English class “All My Loving”. We’re on a song learning binge right now. Part of it is they have to fill in the blanks, first with guesses (sort of like mad libs), then by listening carefully to me sing (no speakers for my ipod). Unfortunately, sometimes we hear what we want to hear. So, one of the lines was “Kissing the __lips__ that I’m Missing”. For the longest time they could not get the word lips so I tried everything. First I asked them what do we usually kiss. They said “cheek” and “forehead”. Then I said what do we use to kiss? They ALL replied “Nose”. Eventually I just had to tell them that we kiss with our lips because lip to lip kissing is something they’ve only seen on tv. I think some of them thought it was a dirty song.

Today, the mosquitoes were attacking as usual at lunch, but my mom decided to do something about it. She said something about hitting the mosquitoes and I thought “Brilliant! She’s getting the mosquito racket.” She comes back with a can of raid and proceeds to spray under the table and over my legs with it. Aiming at the flying dexterous mosquitoes. I end up eating less than usual because I’m eager to go wash all the poison off my legs. Later she comes with the racket. Unfortunately, She drove the mosquitoes away already with the poison on my legs.

During girl’s leadership class today I found out one of my students went to Siem Reap City. I asked, “Is she coming back tomorrow?” They replied, “No, she’s not coming back until the 20th. They sent her to work at a carwash so she can pay the tuition for her English classes next year.” I was very sad.

I've devoted a lot of time to my Girls' Class. Starting wayyy back before even April when we began writing the grant for the Camp GLOW(Girls Leading our World) in September. I've spent so much time with these girls that they still understand me when I completely butcher words in khmer and they no longer retain any resemblance to the actual spoken language. I've worried and sweat and I'm pretty sure my back is broken from all the hours I've spent hunched over a computer or a desk working on grants, logistics, lesson planning, evaluating, and translating. And hearing about this one girl possibly not being able to come because she has to work at a car wash?! It just makes me really want to cry. Life is so so hard for them. Just living is hard. Yesterday I wrote an email to my friends complaining about how hungry I was and how having giardia was horrible and I could barely do any work for the past week. Well I'm also super lucky to have PC pay for a nice home for me. Have a host mom that cares enough to make me three meals a day. Have a medical officer that gives me the right drugs, in the right doses, and holds my hand as I act like a total baby. I have an awesome boyfriend that will just talk to me on the phone when I feel bad and I have the freedom to go to a foriegn country and be a volunteer there. If I were a typical person from my village I would be suffering from giardia for two unbearable weeks. Google it. It's pretty bad and I'm sure you couldn't even imagine it. I would be hungry ALL the time. I would have to get up before dawn to go into the rice fields whether its a blazing 100 degrees or whether its monsooning. When I got home I would have to take care of my younger siblings and make the rice and cook the dinner. Then hopefully I'll have enough light to study and do my homework. In a few hours I'll be hungry again, but I can't eat cause there's no food left and I have giardia.If I'm lucky, my parents will let me take 3 hours from the middle of my day to bike down an impassable mud road in order to go to the free classes that strange foriegn lady teaches. Unfortunately, tomorrow I may be sent to Siem Reap or Thailand to work in a garment factory/ car wash/ gas station/ live in servant at someone's home.

Because everyone likes numbers:

36 hours it has rained in the last 3 days. I am not talking about drizzle. Full on monsoon rain.

2 packets of instant noodles I had for dinner last night. My host mom cooked it for me as a nutritious meal with veggies.

15+/- 3 girls in my girls' health and leadership club

5 more days until I get to see NANDINI AND NGA in Thailand. EPIC.

.5 more days until Kurt bikes the 30 k to my site so that my host mom will cook us a more delicious than usual lunch.

4 episodes of Band of Brothers I intend to watch today

2 days spent trying to teach kids in my English class how to play pictionary like cut throat americans. Fail.

70 cents is the cost of GPRS internet on my iphone per day. Luckily, I get it free upgrade to 3G and perhaps not so legally tether it to my comp.

2 dogs that like to chase me every morning on my run.

1 set of sheets I haven't washed in a month because It's really hard to find a dry place around here.

1 time my host mom woke me up in the middle of the night (2am) because she was scared our (concrete) house would fall down due to hurricane like winds. She then made me evacuate to the small wooden shack in front of my (concrete) house.

8-10 hours is my average nights sleep.

3 nights is how long I can go with 6hrs of sleep a night before I collapse and become completely useless as a human being. Remember that time when I used to get up for crew/yoga, go to class, study, and then go party at night? Those days are clearly over.

1 year is about how long I've been here and potentially about how long I have left!

So, funny anecdote. This summer I've been super busy cause I started teaching summer classes. Basically, I go to work as usual in the mornings but on top of that I teach 2-3 hours a day four times a week. I would teach more than that, but I also make the curriculum, write out all the lesson plans, and have to work to translate them into khmer. This takes about every ounce of free time I have, not to mention trying to juggle 2 and soon maybe 3 conferences we are currently planning. But anyway, one of my classes is English usage and one is a girls' empowerment class/ health class. This past week a few students were missing because grade 9 was doing testing. So I decided I'd just do some typical health lessons, nothing too fancy. One of the most common illnesses in Camobodia is diarrhea. A lot of babies actually dies from it because they become dehydrated and also sometimes there's a cholera outbreak. So we were doing the lesson, having a lot of fun talking about eating poop. For those of you that don't know, most cases of diarrhea here are from eating poop or something call the oral-fecal cycle. Someone has diarrhea and doesn't wash they're hands or they poop and flys touch it. Here, the cows poop everywhere too so it's impossible to not have poop in your food from flys and other bugs. Usually it doesnt make a difference, especially if you have a fully developed immune system and a full complement of good bacteria in your intestines combating bad bacteria. However, sometimes its not enough or you're a tiny baby with a tiny immune system. Then you get diarrhea and let me tell you folks, it's not fun to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Yes, that happens... a lot. anyway, this lesson was going as usual until one student raises her hand and asks me a question I had never imagined hearing. The question was, " What if a dog eats poop and then I want to eat the dog. Will I get diarrhea because the dog ate poop?" My answer: "No, you should be fine as long as you cook the dog well. If we cook our food well it will kill all the bad bacteria." Typical day in Cambodia or any other dog eating country. Trust me, after you meet the dogs here you'll want to eat them too.

Things people hold in their hands while driving a moto or riding a bike:

-knives (yes, more than one)

-a saw

-a small hand axe

-a baby

-the hand of someone on a parallel moto, bike, and/or tuk tuk

-their moto helmet

Today, a drunk school director (from another school) attended my English class. He was recently in a moto accident and his wife wanted him to stop drinking to prevent future accidents. You draw your own conclusions.He said he is too busy to study English normally because of work. I think he's too busy because of all the stitches he's getting at the health center.

I had a dream that I had hair on my legs. I know unreal, right?

I have a mosquito racket, it's shaped like a tennis raquet, and it electrocutes mosquitoes. I kill at least 5 mosquitoes a day. And yet there are still more every time I come back.

I'm teaching myself about economics through some textbooks I finagled from Asia Foundation. Don't worry, if I figure this stuff out maybe some Cambodian students can eventually benefit. But, I've gone through chapter 1 and so far it just seems like a bunch of jargon used to talk about a bunch of theoretical graphs that use fake data that doesn't seem to really explain much about the world that I didn't already know, but maybe the "how to get actual useful data" part is coming soon. Of course, I decided to start with macro so maybe its my fault and really i just want to understand what people are talking about. I don't think these tools will particularly change how I analyze the world but it'll go far in helping me understand all the talking going on by people that make policy decisions.

I have noticed the amount of redundancy between fields and the subtle differences in definitions or practice. For example, there's something called the "Other-things-equal" assumption which most scientists just call holding things constant...I don't really understand the name either since the other factors are not equal. They are just constant. Do we really need to name this assumption a misleading name? Really I don't think it needs a name at all.

I think syntax and wording is the most frustrating aspect of any science because we insist on using an inexact system to explain things in exact terms. I think the field of learning and memory in neuroscience is a prime example of how syntax and wording holds the field back. Depending on the researcher, the definition of working memory changes. Depending on the researcher, the term working memory may never even be used, but instead is replaced by a number of other terms. This is a result of scientists trying to use words to define, what is currently, an abstract concept. The problem with this is that you then have to use an inexact term to conduct stringent experiments and assign specific cause and effects and exact facts to this term.The intrinsic vagueness in the term then creates debate when trying to explain the results. And then if you crossover fields you get the same concepts with different terms and slightly different interpretations. Even the "scientific method" was different in the Economics book. Typically, in a science class you learn that you ask a question first. That is usually step one in the scientific method. Apparently in economics you make observations and you jump straight to the hypothesis. Sort of skips the whole scientific curiosity/inquiry part of things.

I've noticed that lately I think about things much more critically than before. And yet I think I'm also much more of an idealist/optimist than before. I'm not sure how this paradox came about, but I definitely believe in an ideal and I believe the ideal can happen. At the same time, I think it's important to constantly assess and change in order to reach this ideal. A realistic optimist. Hopefully, someone that gets things done.

So, the UNICEF well that was outside my Health Center, which I'm pretty sure is less than a decade old, broke. It was a nice handpump well, meaning that it broke your back everytime you wanted any water.Now, a health center with no water is sort of a problem. Things are not very clean when you have no water. So today I show up at work and the whole pump part of the structure has been removed. Instead, they built one of those bucket/pulley systems out of a few logs. It looked like it came out of a movie. I actually haven't seen that in Cambodia yet. But, the actual well wasn't built yet. Instead they brought in about 6 giant meter high concrete rings that would presumably be put under ground for the well. Except, they had 4 extra rings and the well was already well above ground. Plus, there's a large broken PCV pipe in the middle of it that used to be attached to the pump. I looked into the well this morning and there was a practically naked guy standing in about a meter deep and handing buckets of dirt to a guy above him. I didn't realize this was how people dug wells...I don't think it's how people are supposed to dig wells. They hit water pretty soon, mostly cause its the middle of rainy season and water is everywhere. I'm pretty sure that in a few months this well is gonna dry up. Really, all they needed to do was fix the pump since UNICEF had built a deep well that regularly got water during dry season.

My town has a chronic water problem since none of our wells are dry season wells. Most people, including me, get all their bathing and cooking water from the pond. I drink filtered rain water, but other people drink straight from the pond. For some reason people keep building shallow wells when it clearly doesn't work and sometimes they build deep wells but during rainy season so they have no idea if they'll get water during dry season. Usually they don't. Plus, just building deep wells could lead to arsenic poisoning which is typically a problem nearer rivers. So much time and money could be saved if they just hired an expert one time to do an assessment. Just once, get someone that actually knows what they're doing to do the job they've been trained to do.

On a lighter note, crabs keep their crab babies near their gills. I found that out today.Though I'm not entirely convinced they were crab babies and not just crab parasites.Also, crabs come in purple!

I live with this really cute 3 year old and she's really getting good at talking.I think living with kids has really made me interested in Child Development. I only studied it a bit in college. Compared to how long behavior change and knowledge learning takes in adults, children are geniuses. Every one of them is a genius. I've compared coming to Cambodia to being a kid again, but everytime I see a baby trying to figure out the world I am just amazed. They have to figure out our spoken language, our physical gestures, our arbitrary societal

rules, and they do it with such speed and cuteness. I think I would go into pediatrics just for the chance to see this in action all the time, though maybe pediatric neurology. I just hate saying that because it seems so elite and specialist and I know general practice is where the need is. I'm sure a small population of well-off Americans desperately need pediatric neurologists and those that are not well-off probably have

bigger concerns like malnutrition, which may eventually lead to a need for a neurologist they will never be able to afford.

1. A few days ago I was running (for exercise) and I saw a water buffalo make a break for freedom. Water buffaloes are pretty massive. This farmer was leading two waterbuffalo down a slight incline and one of the water buffalo used its massive inertia to break free. Up until then I don't think I've ever seen a grown water buffalo do more than walk slowly. But this guy sprinted across the field. He made it about 500 meters before he stopped. Either he thought he had gone far enough or he got tired. I think the latter is likely since they don't move much on a regular basis. A sedentary lifestyle will not get you very far.

2. Today, this child was the last patient of the day. The kid was clearly malnourished and the entire time he was passed out, being held by his mom. He was sleeping, but the kind of sleep where you can tell he's tired cause he probably hasn't eaten much in a while. On his head was a large rash that ranged from his ear lobe to the top of his shaved head. There was scabbing where he had scratched and also some kind of crust that the mom may have applied as a traditional cure. I saw her waiting to get meds so I try to chit chat a litte. Always awkward. Typical conversation questions here are things that you would never ask in America, sometimes it's actually illegal. So I asked, what village are you from, what's wrong with your kid? I still remember how awkward it was the first time I had to ask those questions. It just seems sort of wrong to make chit chat when there's a starving child in front of you and no one seems to be doing anything about it. The midwife comes out and asks her how she got here. She rode on the back of a vehicle. By vehicle I mean an engine attached to a metal cart, literally. She begged them for a free ride and they let her off at the Wat. Then she walked to the HC carrying her kid. To get back she has to beg someone else for a ride. The midwife gave her 1000 riel, the equivalent of 25 cents. It costs maybe 5000 Riel, about 1.25 to get back. Plus, she didn't have the health insurance so she paid 1500R for the meds already. I was on my way out so I walked with her back to town, we were going the same way. Along the way I asked her about her family. She was pregnant with her 3rd child. From what I could understand she begs for a living, at least right now she does because one of the temples is having a festival that attracts a lot of people. On the walk, I gave her 5000R. I gave it to her because I knew she needed it. Because in the end the only thing that will solve her problems is more money. Education, health insurance, other schemes will not do anything if she doesn't have more money. It sort of just seems so futile to try to fix things when no one can even really touch the biggest issue. When we parted she reached out for my hand and wished me good fortune and to meet again. I don't know if she held my hand because I gave her money or if it was because I walked with her. I always hope for the latter but I don't blame her for the former. It's a bit ironic that her trip to the HC made her almost as much money as she would make working in the rice fields all day.

3. So, I've been teaching in the villages these past few weeks and as an icebreaker I have everyone go around and tell me their names, favorite vegetable, and whether they prefer cats or dogs. I was in a village last week when halfway through the activity a woman replied that she doesn't know if she likes cats or dogs cause she's never eaten a cat before. The villagers had thought I was asking if they preferred dog meat or cat meat since the previous question was about vegetables. I had to clarify that the question was whether you loved dogs more or cats more. I could see that everyone thought this was a much more appropriate question.

So, today I met with my school director to go over my summer classes and my plan to visit each 10th and 9th grade class to personally tell them about it. Really, this is the only way I can get info out in my school. I requested to see the schedule. Turns out, they lost it. It took about an hour for them to run to the copy center across the street and find it on the computer. How does a school function if the Director has lost the schedule?

I think waking up in the morning is always hard for people. The bed is a comfy cozy safe haven. A place of relaxation and no worries. And yet, every morning i'm forced to leave it. Mornings are hard. Especially here since I could potentially choose to never get out of bed and no one would think that its strange. Some people spend the entire day in a hammock. Every morning I make the choice to put myself through things I would rather not do. Like be ridiculed for my accent for the 5000000000000th time.

I was working on a grant proposal with some fellow volunteers this past month and it got approved! Now the real work begins. I'm trying to keep my girls' empowerment club going and will amp it up from once a month to 4 times a week. Only problem is that I am not fluent in khmer. Big surprise there. It has been so hard to find a counterpart, especially a woman counterpart. That's not even with the criteria that they should speak some english. I just am not sure how I'm gonna pull off 4 times a week if we can't understand each other. Anyway, hopefully this will work and then it'll lead to Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). It's a 4 day camp for girls from 3 villages, we got the grant for this project. It won't take place until September so we have some time for planning, but time certainly does fly here.

Something that has been bugging me more and more lately is the attitude of foriegners toward developing countries. So many people think developing countries are so messed up already that they can't possibly do any harm. As long as they come with an open mind and a desire to help everything will turn out hunky dory. WRONG. So totally wrong. Cambodia is not an experiment. It's not a place for people that have no idea what they're doing to come and play around. I think a lot of PCVs join up with this mentality that what they have to offer is better than nothing and I think some of us eventually realize that we can do better than just show up with a superiority complex thinking that we're better than anything the country itself can offer.

Yes, I am a native English speaker. Cambodians can't offer that. I can teach kids to speak English with a proper American accent, but what about the inferiority complex I may be indirectly causing. A lot of Cambodians believe that Cambodians are just not as smart as foriegners. They think this is a universal rule. A lot of Cambodians are so used to having foreigners come in to give them things that they never try to help themselves. And why should they? It seems so easy for the foriegners to part with a few bucks here and there. Foriegn aid is being spent willy nilly and completely wasted in some cases in countries like Cambodia all over the world. Why? Because there is a fundamental disconnect between the people of the country and those that are "just trying to help".

There are many levels at which this disconnect occurs. I think the most blatant occurs when some foreigners come in and just give things away. They have all this money and they build a school. Yes, people need schools. But, who's gonna use those buildings? Who's gonna teach? How are the students going to get there? Who's gonna figure out a way to feed families so children can leave the fields and go to school? In my opinion, People that just give things away are the people that want to make themselves feel better and think that they can fix it all with money. Sometimes its not money, sometimes its those pesky tourists that just pop in for a week or two, teach some english and then flit away back. You think you're not doing any harm? How about all the kids that became attached to you during those two weeks that you just leave behind? How about people like me that are trying to build relationships while you make it harder by demonstrating how temporary I really am? (Yea, I'm very personally biased in this respect). But really, I'm not angry at these individual volunteers. They are trying to help and for many this experience may be a stepping stone to a longer committment. My short time in New Mexico has definitely influenced my time here. The people I really hold responsible are the mid-level organizations and groups that perpetuate this structure, where responsibility sort of goes out the window. They throw people that have done no research, no training, no cultural climatization, and just blindly believe that no harm will be done. This is the exact opposite of the "Do no harm" philosophy. There's no initial training, no monitoring during service, and no real evaluation. Peace Corps is not exempt from this criticism either.

On another level, there are people and NGOs that start out really well. They do the research, take the time to understand the culture, work with Cambodians to make curriculums and programs for Cambodians. And not just Cambodians from Phnom Penh, but getting the input of Cambodians in the villages or whoever their target group is. But then they never really figure out if what they're doing is effective. Essentially, the problem is that change isn't 'mainstreamed'. In any organization, there needs to be a certain amount of felixbility. A willingness to throw out the current model and put in something new because people change, communities change, problems change, and solutions NEED to change. So, you need to constantly have a way to figure out if your solution is still working or if it ever worked in the first place. You need feedback from the people and communities you are helping, constantly. Otherwise, what you are currently doing is probably useless. The people in the villages are tired of projects that don't work, they lose faith, stop being interested in helping. Add to this mix the 50 NGOs that are all trying out a slight variation of the same model that doesn't work in the same villages and you can imagine the magnitude of the indifference that is being created.

How can we fix this? I don't think we can. I try my best to not exacerbate these issues. I tear my hair out trying to find people in my village to work with, try method after method, discussion after discussion and I will keep trying even though doing things by myself is extremely tempting. But I know my two years are not nearly a long enough commitment.NGOs are also too big, too many, and too stubborn. I wish someone with a clear view of development work and Cambodia could just come in with a magic wand. They would magically make either ALL the NGOs better or get rid of all the crappy ones (though after this we might be only left with a handful of small ones). I wish we could start again so that, this time, we would do our jobs right and do it thoroughly.

So, there's this man in my Wat. (A Wat is a large complex that holds the local buddhist temple, monks' housing, maybe a small school, some places to put cremated people, and such stuff). This man has been there for months. He is tethered to a post. Yepp, tied by rope like a dog. He has maybe a 2 meter radius to walk around. Sometimes I see the monks take him out for a walk. I asked my khmer tutor why the man was tied to a post everyday and he replied that the man had a nervous issue. In other words, someone decided he was mentally ill. Apparently, he's tied to the post so he doesn't wander off and get lost somewhere. He's at the Wat because the monks to pray over him and bless him to treat his mental illness.

In Cambodia, mental health issues are everywhere. How can they not be with Cambodia's long history of genocide and oppression. Plus, its not like everything is all hunky dory now either. The problem is that no one really understands mental illness and there's really no one around to deal with it. The majority of medical professionals are midwives or nurses. There are very few doctors and most doctors work in expensive clinics or for NGOs.

I think this illustrates a fundamental issue in how the public views mental health in general. Clearly, if you have a physical ailment and die it doesn't matter what state your mind is in cause it no longer exists. There's enough need for professionals to treat physical illness in Cambodia to justify many more years of neglect in training mental health professionals. But that's precisely why it's so difficult to find treatment for mental health not only in Cambodia but around the world. People never think it's all that important. First, it's difficult to pin down, difficult to diagnose. Whereas a broken bone or a cold are fairly easy to diagnose. Second, it's difficult to treat properly.

But people forget that mental illness is illness of the brain. It is based on a physical organ. When people say "it's all in your head" that is, very literally, true! The chemicals and electrical impulses in your brain interact in an almost unfathomable way every millisecond of your life to create who you are. When shit goes wrong, its a physical ailment. The unique issue of mental health is that if chemicals make your thoughts then your thoughts also make chemicals. That's why going to a shrink works. When you talk things out, work out issues in a totally unphysical way all that talking results in a physical change in your brain (in my opinion your most important organ). That's why drugs work and talking works too. The physical is the mental and mental is the physical. Most people never grasp this relationship and dismiss psychiatry as a bunch of mumbo jumbo. However, neglecting mental health is neglecting your brain and without a brain you (at least how you currently view yourself) doesn't exist.

It's sort of insulting to your own brain to say that mental health isn't important enough to address.

It's really odd that I haven't put up a post about food here in the 9 months that I've been writing. Food is such a big part of my life and I know you all know it. Let me start with saying that I am probably no longer the girl that can go to the bakery, then sushi, then applebees, and then white castle in a single afternoon though I would like to do that loop again with some of my fave girls from home. This morning I had delicious pumpkin spice pancakes for breakfast...and I couldn't finish them. There were only two! (No, my host mom didn't make them. They were from a western restaurant in the city)

I think most of you know that I will eat pretty much anything and I have eaten pretty much anything. I'm always offended by tv shows about "gross food" because most of those foods come from China and are on my list of favorite foods. Stewed pigs feet, tripe, chicken feet at dim sum, chicken gizzard, fried frogs. All delicious. Don't judge. I think in my lifetime I've eaten at least three different kinds of brain. (Which, with the discovery of prions I would no longer recommend.) Here in Cambodia, everyone eats mashed fermented fish. Which sometimes I can't stand. It's in the same category as japanese fermented beans and stinky tofu (though I love stinky tofu). But, sometimes it's delicious. I really only like it hot. Sometimes people eat it cold and it's just too fishy for me.

I also eat a lot of fish. Sometimes I have 5 different kinds of fish during the course of the day. And sometimes I can't take it anymore. The bones. The bones. Especially when a small one just sticks straight up into your gums and you can't get it out. Most meals consist of a fish based soup and a shit ton of rice. LIKE A LOT. Not those wimpy chinese bowls of rice. I'm talking a dinner plate of white rice and then you HAVE to refill. One dish is never enough or my host mom will be offended. The soups are not bad. My fam knows I like veggies which they never stop telling people. Usually it's just a fishy veggie soup and that's pretty good. On days with pork or beef I make sure to clean my plate so she knows I like it. It's all about subtlety. Once in a while I get stirfried veggies too. Another staple, at least in my household, is salted dried fish. It is exactly what it sounds like. Hard dried fish, heated over a fire, and it is super salty. Eaten with rice, as always. Sometimes that's all people will eat. I can't do it.

Rice porridge. A staple of mine since childhood, but with a twist. Here, you can buy rice porridge with the works in the market. Usually cooked in fish or chicken soup. Chunks of meat, organs like liver, fried minced garlic, add some pepper. Pretty delicious. But, the plain white rice porridge you make at home...different story. In America, there was nothing I loved better on a Sunday morning than heating up some leftover rice, adding water and then eating it with some side dishes. Plenty of pickled veggies, fermented bean curd, stirfried edamame with pickled cabbage, homemade sour cabbage and turnip, kimchi. God, writing this is making me sooooo homesick. Here, you HAVE to make porridge from scratch. No using leftover rice. Which means it takes like an hour. Then all you eat with it is dried salted fish or sometimes just soy sauce. And not even good soy sauce. No kikkoman's here man. I was sick two days ago and my host mom is super nice and kept giving me sugary drinks and made me some plain porridge cause I just couldn't stomach anything else. I would have traded my computer for some of my dad's stirfried edamame with pickled cabbage. MY COMPUTERRRRR. Or some plain chinese noodles with salt in a light chicken broth. yea, the chicken broth is a stretch.

I will probably talk about food again now that I've opened the flood gates. Be prepared.

It's really odd that I haven't put up a post about food here in the 9 months that I've been writing. Food is such a big part of my life and I know you all know it. Let me start with saying that I am probably no longer the girl that can go to the bakery, then sushi, then applebees, and then white castle in a single afternoon though I would like to do that loop again with some of my fave girls from home. This morning I had delicious pumpkin spice pancakes for breakfast...and I couldn't finish them. There were only two! (No, my host mom didn't make them. They were from a western restaurant in the city)

I think most of you know that I will eat pretty much anything and I have eaten pretty much anything. I'm always offended by tv shows about "gross food" because most of those foods come from China and are on my list of favorite foods. Stewed pigs feet, tripe, chicken feet at dim sum, chicken gizzard, fried frogs. All delicious. Don't judge. I think in my lifetime I've eaten at least three different kinds of brain. (Which, with the discovery of prions I would no longer recommend.) Here in Cambodia, everyone eats mashed fermented fish. Which sometimes I can't stand. It's in the same category as japanese fermented beans and stinky tofu (though I love stinky tofu). But, sometimes it's delicious. I really only like it hot. Sometimes people eat it cold and it's just too fishy for me.

I also eat a lot of fish. Sometimes I have 5 different kinds of fish during the course of the day. And sometimes I can't take it anymore. The bones. The bones. Especially when a small one just sticks straight up into your gums and you can't get it out. Most meals consist of a fish based soup and a shit ton of rice. LIKE A LOT. Not those wimpy chinese bowls of rice. I'm talking a dinner plate of white rice and then you HAVE to refill. One dish is never enough or my host mom will be offended. The soups are not bad. My fam knows I like veggies which they never stop telling people. Usually it's just a fishy veggie soup and that's pretty good. On days with pork or beef I make sure to clean my plate so she knows I like it. It's all about subtlety. Once in a while I get stirfried veggies too. Another staple, at least in my household, is salted dried fish. It is exactly what it sounds like. Hard dried fish, heated over a fire, and it is super salty. Eaten with rice, as always. Sometimes that's all people will eat. I can't do it.

Rice porridge. A staple of mine since childhood, but with a twist. Here, you can buy rice porridge with the works in the market. Usually cooked in fish or chicken soup. Chunks of meat, organs like liver, fried minced garlic, add some pepper. Pretty delicious. But, the plain white rice porridge you make at home...different story. In America, there was nothing I loved better on a Sunday morning than heating up some leftover rice, adding water and then eating it with some side dishes. Plenty of pickled veggies, fermented bean curd, stirfried edamame with pickled cabbage, homemade sour cabbage and turnip, kimchi. God, writing this is making me sooooo homesick. Here, you HAVE to make porridge from scratch. No using leftover rice. Which means it takes like an hour. Then all you eat with it is dried salted fish or sometimes just soy sauce. And not even good soy sauce. No kikkoman's here man. I was sick two days ago and my host mom is super nice and kept giving me sugary drinks and made me some plain porridge cause I just couldn't stomach anything else. I would have traded my computer for some of my dad's stirfried edamame with pickled cabbage. MY COMPUTERRRRR. Or some plain chinese noodles with salt in a light chicken broth. yea, the chicken broth is a stretch.

I will probably talk about food again now that I've opened the flood gates. Be prepared.

These past couple of days have been spent on vacation due to Kmai New Year. I spent all of the New Year at site, but before New Years I did a little traveling, mostly to Phnom Penh for some awesome free books for the school library. The other traveling I did involved scenic biking, some mountains, forests, leeches, lots of leeches, sun, rain, and seeing some good friends. There are plenty of pics up on facebook. Let me know if you can't see them because they were taken by Peace Corps friends. Also, you should check out the leech vid, its a cute clip of my favorite foresty friends (on my leg).

New Years here was fun, but actually not so eventful. We ate a lot of good food and tons of fruit. At night we went to play some games, though I guess my host sister is still hanging with the hs kids. I feel a little out of place because I'm technically an adult. It's weird to feel out of place there, but kids in HS are just at an age of silliness that I can no longer purposefully imitate. I'm totally fine speaking nonsense and running around with/like the two year-old, but being one with the HS kids is just too close for comfort. I offered food to the monks at the Wat and sort of messed up, but he gave me a redo so my karmic points are all good. We also caught the ice cream moto man so it was a really good trip to the Wat. I also went to Siem Reap city for a few hours with my host sister and brother and I showed them around the supermarket.

At first, they were sort of hesitant to enter. Then even asked me if they could just go in to look and not buy anything. I was like...yea. Then I sprayed my host brother with some random Adidas cologn to show how much you can take advantage of the supermarket's hospitality. Then we went around and compared the prices of everything to our local markets. Of course, a lot of stuff in the supermarket you can't buy anywhere else, but they really do jack up the prices of things. When we were about to leave my host bro runs back to the Adidas section and sprays himself some more. I'm glad I picked out a fragrance that he enjoys. Then we went to this carnival place on the side of the road. I've been there a few times before, but this time we didn't go to ride the rusty ferris wheel. We went shoe shopping. Here, you can get a pair of used shoes for a dollar. Not used Cambodian shoes, you can't really sell those used cause they fall apart in a few weeks. You got italian shoes, korean shoes, other random country shoes. I'm sorta thinking that expats decide to throw away their shoes and they somehow end up here and I end up buying them for a dollar. Though I actually didn't buy anything this time. I feel like, for a dollar, these shoes better be perfect so I'm waiting for a time in the future.

At the carnival we met up with a classmate of my sister's at midwifery school. In Cambodia, midwives a licensed medical professionals with responsibilities similar to those of nurses and with the complete lack of doctors they usually take the place of doctors in most Health Centers. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of gender barrier for women that want to study to be nurses. For sure, no men are midwives because men can't possibly deliver babies in this country, the gender roles are too strict in this area. Anyway, we meet up with her and her dad drives her here on his moto. I feel sort of bad because my bro just waits for us the whole time. I thought he'd go do something fun...

So we finish, and I think we're heading home, but we end up eating Mee Cha for dinner. This is a dish sort of like stir-fried noodles. Can't really describe how it's different from chinese takeout noodles, but it's different. I'll make some for you guys when I get home. The girls' dad pays and then we head off again, only to stop once more at the girls' house. It's only polite because her dad paid for dinner. We chit chat a bit and by we chit chat I mean I go through the usual first meeting blurb with the parents, while the kids play on the new laptop (its a typical first year of college Dell, actually sent from Boston by a relative, hopefully it won't go the way of Kerry's laptop). Near the end of the convo the dad asks me a question. I'm not sure I get it so I ask him to repeat. Then I repeat the part I'm sure I understood" You need how much ___(blank)___ to get a wife?" The word in the blank was money. I had heard correctly the first time, but cultural differences made me unable to comprehend. I responded that you don't need to give money for a wife, though in some cases I guess that can be debated. He understands instantly, "Oh you marry for love". I heartily agree with firm nodding of head. I ask him, "how much does it cost for a wife in Cambodia?" His wife replies, "10,000....Dollars" I was like ")*@#*(@&# shit" That is a fortune. Anywhere, but especially in Cambodia. I think she notices my shock and quickly tells me that sometimes its only 5000 or if they are really poor sometimes 200. But, I guess that the value of a woman's life here.

Yepp, New Years is almost here. It'll be here in about a week and I'm not really sure which year it'll be but its definitely a new one. This'll be my third new year in Cambodia so far and not only is it a New year, but somehow Khmer New Year lasts three whole days! I'm anticipating a ton of food and parties around twon starting this Wednesday. School has already stopped and won't start again for 3 weeks. Unfotunately, or fortunately, the Health Center doesn't close for quite so long. I think we get 3 days of vacation time. More updates on that as the days roll on.

In other news, I finished my first major/minor project! I've done some other things but I think this is my first project where a start and finish are easily identifiable. Though, as with any project, you don't want it to ever really end because you hope that the change will last forever. Anyway, what i did was a reading contest at the local primary school. A few months ago I started hanging out at the primary school because my khmer tutor taught private english classes there 5 days a week to the high school students. Every once in a while the library would be open late enough for me to hang out there a bit. It's a fairly new library, very cute and well stocked. It's the perfect environment for young children to hang out, play games, and read some books. But, I rearly saw other kids there. So, I remembered that during summers at home in NYC I'd go to the library every week. Mostly because i was a nerd and I loved to read, sometimes I went multiple times in one day. But also because the library would have summer reading contests where you read as many books as you can over the course of the summer and you qualify for prizes. Along the way you have to record your books, give either a verbal or written summary, and have it checked by the librarian.

This project costs relatively nothing, just costs for prizes and photocopies. For prizes I gave some pens and some cute notebooks. In total, about 3 dollars per winner for 4 winners, and that was a splurge on my part. I proposed it to the school director in early February and he agreed immediately saying that he wanted to do something similar, but he couldn't think of a less labor intensive way. His idea was for each child to provide a lengthy oral summary of each book, which actually could be a great contest on it own. I remember we used to have storytelling contests in elementary school. So my plan was that my khmer tutor and I would make out a standard recording form, and write out directions, and photocopy everything. After that, it was up tot eh teachers to explain the contest and the librarian had to approve every sheet that the students turned in. At the end of two months I would collect back all the forms and figure who won. The top kids in each grade level would get a prize and all participants would get a certificate. At the end of the two months, the school would also organize, on their own, an award ceremony for the kids. So mostly all I did was work out the logistics with the school director and make a lot of photocopies. The school handled the rest and I tried really hard to trust them.

It all came down to last week. I sat down with all the forms, organized them, and wrote out about 90+ khmer with the help of one of my host cousins. She's 8 and has better handwriting than me... I was really happy overall because we had about a 25% participation rate in the end, if you count the kids that cheated. Which is a hilarious anecdote of its own. So i first became suspicious when I noticed some of the forms were photocopied. I thought that maybe they just wanted it to look neater. Then I realized that the forms were the same, which really was obvious because the handwriting was so distinct. Some of the kids literally took the form, photocopied it, then crossed out the names and put their own. Some were a little more highclass and used whiteout. Most of these kids were in 3rd grade, so in a way its understandable.

I had the school director make the decision on those and surprisingly he made the same decision I would have made and I didn't even have to lead him in that direction. He told me to just leave them out, even when it was obvious who made the original and who made the copies. At first he wanted to give the originals the certificates, but since it wasn't always clear he just made it a blanket ruling. Which in my mind is the most fair. My khmer tutor did protest, saying that these were just kids. And it made me hesitate, just a bit, but then I said that kids will never learn if you let them get ways with it all the time. And maybe he agreed. But part of me does feel really bad about the 3rd graders.

Anyway, the day of the ceremony rolls around and I really have no idea what to expect. I go to work for 2 hours in the morning and then I walk over to the school. To my delight, there's a huge crowd of kids. Some desks neatly organized. Flowers in vases, even a megaphone! Some teachers are there to help. I enlist some in taking pics, which will be up at a later date. The whole thing is a huge success. The certificates even go the official school stamp and signatures on them. The kids were all super happy and when I go home I saw my 8 year old showing off her certificate to everyone. I made a speech, the director made a speech. He even bought the water for everyone like we arranged and had an actual receipt which i had asked for! The clouds wnt away and the sun was shining, but it wasn't too hot. Everything was so perfect.

Overall I thik the project was a success. I'm hoping to see book borrowing rates increase and this project definitely solidified my relationship with all the teachers and students at the primary school. Some things I would have liked to fix : 1) having the school come up with the idea on their own or asking me for help to make their idea happen instead of me proposing the idea. I tried to emphasize open communication in all my meetings and my speech so maybe this'll be better later on. 2) increased participation in 3rd and 4th grade with no cheating. I think it's really important to get people reading early on and these grades had the lowest participation rates. I think partly because they don't really know how to read. My host mom, a 5th grade teacher, told me once that her students didn't know all the vowels. Granted there are like 20+ vowels, but still...This is a problem that won't be addressed by a reading contest necessarily. I think this contest really will only push kids that were on the edge toward being better readers. Kids that just needed a little more motivation to go to the library regularly. It won't teach kids to read. 3) The library at the high school is not very good so after 6th grade there are no age-appropriate books available to the kids. That sort of just kills the sustainability right there.

In a week I hope to go to Phnom Penh to pick up some books from Asia Foundation which will then be donated to the library. I'm also hoping for some health education books because I haven't seen any of those in Khmer around. Pics will be up soon! I promise.

Lately, I've realized that funny things happen to me all the time, but I forget them pretty quickly. It's not because I'm getting used to it. On the contrary, when something unusual or funny happens I always remark on it, but the sheer quantity of these happenings is so overwhelming that I just can't remember them all. As a result of this epiphany, I've tried extra hard to remember some funny things that have happened this past week. For example, I was at the HC as usual when this man comes up to pay the fee because his wife had given birth that morning. The receptionist goes through the usual spiel, but when she asks him for his wife's name he falters. He actually has to run back to his wife, who's resting in a "room", and ask her for her name. Now I'm not exactly sure why this occurs. Presumably they've been married for at least 9 months, but apparently this phenomenon is common in Cambodia. After observing this occurrence I tried to investigate by asking some patients. Usually they didn't understand why I was asking them these strange questions about names and marriage. Mostly, we just ended up talking about why I wasn't married yet.

Yesterday, I spent 10 hours trying to go about 300km to Phnom Penh for a meeting. I woke up at 5:30 and did the usual routine. Then I left my house at 7am to go meet the taxi. I sit in the taxi for 30min. Then the taxi drives around my town in circles for 30 min. Then we go to the next town over and we wait 20 min for some women to buy snacks. We keep going down the highway, but for some reason the police and the Cambodian Red Cross student groups are out in full force this Sunday. We get pulled over 2 or 3 times for the usual reasons that I will let you infer...Then we finally finish the 30k ride to the city and we end up driving around for another 30 min dropping people off, switiching cargo. At one point I could literally have just gotten out of the car and walked to the bus station and I would have made it faster.

Then I got to the bus station after 2.5 hrs in the taxi and I get on a very Khmer bus. Usually I take Sorya but I got ambushed and ended up on another bus line. The problem with this is that the less foriegners on a bus the more stops the bus makes, at least this is the correlation I drew from my observations. We must have stopped a total of 50 times between SR and PP. For example, the lady next to me got up about 5 min into the ride, after we left 30 min late, and made the bus stop to pick up two giant bags of rice. Every 20 min someone would want to get off and new people would get on. By the end of the ride we had about 10 more people than seats. Children had to sit on laps. I'm not talkin' bout 5 year olds either. But somehow we still made it in 6.5 hrs. Not sure how that happened.

This past week was pretty epic. I went down to Kampong Cham for the weekend and visited my first host family. I think I ate twice the number of meals I normally eat and had a fruit shake for every meal. The reason for all this is because I went with Saeed, who was my neighbor during training. His host fam and mine are related so he's sort of like my cousin. After I eat at my house I end up at Saeed's house eating a second meal. It's actually a pretty good deal. I also had a ton of free time so we went running every morning and played bball every afternoon. Playing 1 vs. 4 kids is actually really fun because even though they can barely make a basket they force you to be quick on your feet. Little kids can turn on a dime though they have some trouble anticipating your moves.Yea, the highlight of my trip was hustling little kids. I'm not ashamed though maybe I should be.

After Kampong Cham I headed to Phnom Penh for IST (in-service training). Which was basically a series of meetings, informative and boring. Though really, no one can make these meetings interesting all the time so there's no one to blame. We did get to have two days of it in a super nice hotel. Like 5 star hotel...maybe. My standards for hotels have changed drastically since I moved here. We had a free 22 dollar buffet both days and free snacks and tea/coffee during breaks. It was awesome for us. Unfortunately, the second day was a conference with Cambodian counterparts. Some of the people at that meeting had never left their provinces and had never had Western food before. It really made me realize how ridiculous the hotel was. Even though we were in their country, the Cambodians were the ones that probably felt the most uncomfortable. Cambodians would be the ones asked to leave if they acted the way Cambodians normally act. The presence of hotels like that are preposterous.

Well hot season has started. I'm not sure i'm ready to call it dry season though. In the mornings it feels pretty humid still, but no one can deny that the dust and sand is out of control. It pretty much hasn't rained in the last 3 months, probably more but I didn't keep track. Instead of sinking into the mud I sink into the sand. No longer do I need to avoid puddles and splashes from passing trucks, but I do need to hold my breath and close my eyes to avoid being suffocated and blinded. The ants have gone insane too. I'm not entirely sure why because it's not like any rains are driving them nuts. Maybe overpopulation...Anyway they're all over my room. There was a time where I wouldn't mind this because usually they got what they wanted and would leave. But now it's war and I'm probably gonna lose. Now, they just want to live here. There's no food in my room. I have strict rules. Any food is in a ziploc bag which has been a time tested repulsant of ants. I've cleaned and even flooded them with hand sanitizer. I think sometimes the ants get drunk off the ethanol or at least knocked out. But its all just temporary. Today I stepped on a fire ant hill. That was painful. I literally was only on it for a second, but they are vicious and I didn't have any water around. So I pretty much just jumped around and threw off my shoes. Then jumped around some more. It's funny because I was with a 12 year old and a 6 year old and they were both unfazed by the ants.

Progress report on my biking skills: there is clear improvement. I am not bad at biking standing up now though I still only do it when I'm alone. I'm scared of falling and knocking other people over. I can bike over 30k and my butt doesn't hurt like crazy anymore. After biking a while, my arms are more tired than my legs. I think using a super huge city bike for 2 months and all that practice using a squat toilet has really improved my leg strength. Even doing the laundry isn't such a workout now. I puposefully use laundry time to practice my squat instead of sitting on a small seat.

I've started playing volleyball with some kids this past week. The first time it was almost all girls and most of them had never learned how to play before. I did some basic drills with bumps, but for some reason everyone wanted to set. Except, they didn't know how to do it. So I tried to teach them, but the concept of fingertips was hard to get across. In Kmai the word for hand and arm are the same.

Today I played with almost all boys. Deja vu. The girls/boys dynamics in sports is definitely the same way it is in America. Girls are easily intimidated and don't assert themselves when boys are around. Boys are exclusionary even though, skills wise, they are equal to the girls. Boys can hit hard and hit far, but they have no idea how to direct their hits. Girls learn technique faster because they can't rely on hitting hard to muddle through, but as a consequence they look worse playing the game since their hits are timid. These are purely my observations of these two groups playing, but it's exactly the same thing I experienced in high school. The frustrating thing is that these girls are good, but will probably never get to be better. Since they aren't amazing off the bat they get excluded. Being excluded means no practice time. No practice time means they will always be stuck at the playing level that they're currently at. This is exactly how it worked in my high school. The only way girls get better is if they can challenge the boys and kick their asses or if they get individual playing time.

Case in point, As I was playing with the boys today a tenth grade girl I knew came over. I invited her a few times to play but she declined. She kept telling me she didn't know how to play which in Cambodian can also mean she just doesn't like to play. Instead she joined the younger kids that I brought with me who also felt excluded. When the boys left for class I got my volleyball back and I taught her to bump. She already knew how to set pretty well. We played for maybe half an hour and she was late for class because she didn't want to stop. Out of all the kids I'd played with she definitely had the best control of the ball. She could direct it properly and knew how much force was needed. It was, by far, the best practice I'd had with the kids in my village. But without me spending extra time with her she would have just been stuck watching on the sidelines.

Some Things I do:

Today my kmai tutor asked me to explain what a blind date was. To do that I had to go back and explain what dating was. This was interesting since it doesn't really happen here too often. Neither does going out to eat dinner or going for a coffee with the opposite sex. Sometimes I had to refrain from saying that in America it doesn't happen very often either, but I didn't want to confuse him.

I color. As in coloring books. Some volunteers/tourists from another NGo gave me some coloring books before I left. They said it was for the kids in the HC and I've tried to follow their wishes. So I started with the coloring books and pencils they gave me and I gave them to kids that looked bored. This did not turn out how I expected. First, kids that are under 5 years of age cannot successfully use something as long as a colored pencil, so I bought crayons. Secondly, parents/and some kids think that there is some skill necessary to color. Sometimes parents think their kids are doing it wrong and they do it instead. But really, I think it's because the mom's never get to do anything and they want to color too. Slowly, this project became "Helen Teaches how to Color!" Sometimes I get the elderly to do it. Now, they are insecure about coloring. Some tentatively pick up a crayon and then put it down. Some color a little and then walk away. Some go nuts. Now I've found that I have to very firmly give someone a coloring sheet. Then I need to walk away for a while. Usually the kids get it by then and some moms are getting into it. And its a small insider victory for me because girls and guys color the same stuff whether its Thomas the train or Sleeping Beauty. I'm working on getting some health related stuff but I might have to draw them myself. Those of you that have seen me draw know that it's a disaster waiting to happen.

I've been imaginarily practicing William Tell overture on my imaginary flute because I think my tongue is becoming lazy. I can't really speak properly anymore and I needed to give my tongue some exercise.

Today has been a really crazy, good day so far. I'll start from the beginning. This morning I woke up around 6. This is the time my family gets up. We're pretty lazy for a kmai family. In training, My family woke up every morning at 4:30am. Anyway, I get up and do the usual to get ready for my kmai lesson and work. I look at my watch and somehow it's only 6:30. I actually have enough time to go to the market today! So I mosey on over to the market and buy a whole bunch of bananas which costs about 25 cents here. Then I go over to my waffle lady. Now waffles in Cambodia are not the same as they are in America. First off, they're made from rice flour. Plus they tast totally different, but they look the same and they're hot off the griddle. I'm usually the first one in line so I get the first two of the day. I go back home and make a banana and peanut butter waffle sandwich. SO delicious. I eat it as I walk to the temple for my kmai lesson, which is abnomally productive.

I go to work and people are cleaning and things are getting done. All because the US Ambassador to Cambodia decided to visit my site today! I found out a day and a half ago. Around 8:30 Am two giant white vans roll up in front of my health center. The Ambassador, her name is Carol, steps out and we chit chat. I give her a tour of the HC and describe the services. Answer some questions and what not. Act like I give tours everyday. Some kids are furiously coloring, the toddler that tried to eat my crayons runs into the Ambassador. Carol, because only on a blog am I on a first name basis with any politician, asks a woman how old her baby is. The woman quickly replies 7 months and then goes on a long spiel about how her baby has 'romuh' on his hand. It's a word I haven't found a satisfying translation to yet. It sometimes means an itch, but not always. Somewhere between a skin affliction/rash/itchyness. We eventually get to move on, but that baby had the saddest baby face I've ever seen. Usually, babies look pretty nonchalant even when they're suffering. But this one knew it was dealing with something extremely unpleasant while two strangers stared at him. The whole visit is over in an hour and it was a really fun hour. I like things that are pleasant and shake up my day. Especially if it's an opportunity to speak in a language I know fluently.

After that I go to this big meeting at the Commune Office. All the village health volunteers are there and we chit chat. I get an awesome sandwich out of it. In the middle of eating my sandwich the meeting starts again. Did I mention that because of the Ambassador I missed the first half? Trust me, that was a blessing. Anyway, the reason we have the meeting is because a new NGO is starting to work in my town and I get along very well with the Project Manager, who speaks excellent English and is the first Cambodian I've met that told me he wanted to go to Africa. Not only does he want to go to Africa, but he wants to help the people there. In the meanwhile, he settles for helping Cambodians in Cambodia. Anyway, he tells me to go sit in the front. A few minutes later I realize that he means in the front with all the important people facing the audience. So I between the Chief of Police and the Chief of my Commune. He's next to the Chief of another Commune and my Health Center Director. It's me and a bunch of middle aged/elderly Cambodian men. About 20 min into the meeting he asks me to talk to the group...I have no idea what to say and I thankfully did not have to say it in kmai. Usually, I do an OK job of speeches in kmai, but usually I practice before hand. Luckily, the project manager agreed to translate for me so I just said a short speech right there on the spot.The rest of the meeting isn't bad. The guy even said once that (I'm paraphrasing) " If we don't use the funds then Sudan will get it! Do you know where Sudan is?" I cracked up inside. By the time it ended it was 11 and time to go home.

I get home and a few minutes later the Peace Corps car rolls up just before lunch. I get 4 packages. One from PC, one from my fam, one from lawrence, and one from Amazon. The one from Amazon was a gift from a friend and was insane because I did not believe that Amazon could deliver to Cambodia. The shipping cost more than the gift but only by a few dollars. The one from PC was standard, some meds, some forms, a resource book I asked for, and 3 CHRISTMAS CARDS!!! I was so excited. At least one was postmarked December 15th...it took 2 months to get to me, but it finally made it. Thanks Nandini and Ian! The third is from my fam. Package from Lawrence is full of awesomeness. Thank you so much! A letter is coming your way. I've already written it. The package from my fam was full of stuff I asked for. Including my makeup. Yea, its strange that even in Cambodia I need to worry about looks. It also included ear plugs. I'm convinced that in 10 years, Cambodia will have the highest rate of deaf youth/middle aged people in the world. I'm pretty sure no one here knows that loud music or sounds will make you go deaf. There's also no sense of privacy in Cambodia. Everyone knows everyones business, medical or otherwise. Also, you can play your music or sing karaoke as loud as you want and no one will complain. Cars and motos beep their horns to make sure you get out of the way before they almost mow you down.Anyway, even though I knew what to expect I still get great joy from opening it because i never know how my instructions will take physical shape. Thank you to everyone that sent me something and also for everyone that keeps in touch whether by calling or through the internet. It is awesome to have friends and family and I never want to be without either! Did I mention that for lunch we had pork instead of fish? Awesome!

The reason people can forget malnourished babies and grandmothers can laugh while holding a child with arms skinnier than twigs is because it's so utterly normal and common place here. When I saw that baby I saw a baby that was going to die. But everyone else sees something they can't change. Something that is so commonplace that it's become a way of life. Accepted just as easily as they accept the poverty that causes it all.

Peace Corps has a rule. That's a phrase I know very well in two languages and I'm sure I could figure out how to say it in a few more if I really needed it. This rule or suggestion, sometimes I forget which is which states that I'm supposed to stay out of politics in this country. I shouldn't be caught on record talking about any of it. Whether it's American politics or otherwise. As long as I serve the Peace Corps and I'm in Cambodia I should not comment on politics in any strongly opinionated way. I agree with this policy. Here, politics are integral in life. Everyone has connections and you never know when a poorly placed word ruins your reputation and the reputation of your agency. They always tell the story of how a postcard got PC kicked out of Nigeria or something like that, which is why I'm always careful of what I say here. Though it is definitely a concious struggle.

Blogs can be filled with observations, simple commentary, and other trivial things. But, if that's the focus of your blog then it's not trivial. People read the blog to see pictures of oddly shaped marshmallows or weird things I've found in Cambodia. But, this blog never had such a focus. It was and is about my life in Cambodia. Many people might say that because I work in health education that politics has nothing to do with me. But the reason I educate, the needs I address are caused by poverty, and the only way to change poverty here and anywhere is through politics. Policy change and enforcement. It's amazing how many people refuse to see that. Poor literacy rates are caused by poverty, but what is poverty caused by? How can we relieve it? Should we increase volunteer rates? I can tell you now that even if you put a million health education volunteers in Cambodia, or Africa, or the slums of NYC there still won't be lasting change. Not if the only thing those volunteers are doing is educating about health.

When you get hurt, you need a bandaid or maybe even stitches. But those don't heal you. They are necessary treatments, but in the end the body heals itself. Volunteers, NGOs, Foundations are all bandaids. Necessary, but in the end not enough. Things need to change on a fundamental level for real change.

I never came here thinking that I could change the world. I value the connection between people. That I will create change on an individual basis and who knows how far that ripple effect will reach. But, I think the only concrete reason for why I came is still to understand people. To learn about a culture and interact with people under extremely difficult circumstances. The Peace Corps has three goals. The first is to provide needed services. The second is to share American culture. The third is to share Cambodian culture with americans. All three of these goals require understanding of people. People that serve in the Peace Corps gain a set of skills that very few people can say they have. We have an understanding of the people in Cambodia. The ability to understand is vastly underestimated just like the ability to listen.

I promise my next entry will be funny.

I've always been a believer in fate. Throughout my relatively short life, I've experienced my fair share of unusual coincidences. That has not changed in Cambodia. Here are a few:

1. Alex Zenoff, a fellow PCV and graduate of John's Hopkins university, and I are mutual friends with Becca Cholas-Wood. A wonderful woman who I had the pleasure of meeting at Baylor College of Medicine during a summer internship. A person who I also spent some of my last weeks with in NY before I went to Cambodia.

2. The Harpswell Foundation. A group that gives scholarships to Cambodian women so that they can attend University. In addition to the scholarship, they provide room and board, transportation, and a leadership seminar series. They are partnered with Bowdoin College along with a few other northeastern schools. Their summer office is in Brunswick, Maine.

3. Taylor Noyes, another fellow PCV, went to Exeter. Therefore, she must know Bowdoin peeps that I also must know.

I'm sure there are a lot more, but the Harpswell Foundation one just blows my mind and I had to put it down.

I've been here for half a year now and still everything is new. Always, there's the feeling of standing on the edge. That any minute I could be pushed over or back. One day I could lose my temper and destroy a much needed relationship or another day I could feel so defeated that I choose to speak to no one. Feeling constantly like I'm in a valley of confusion and simultaneously on the precipice of decision. I always have to do something, but I have no idea what I'm doing all the while everyone is watching. But that's just me being dramatic. In Cambodia, this is how I feel, but I know that I can always escape.

I'm young and stupid. I make mistakes and this is the perfect time to make them, in a twisted way. So many of my fellow PCVs are constantly wrestling with the question of "how do we do this job?", but more importantly "how do we do this job right?" But since no one really knows how to do this job right I have the opportunity to experiment. Coming from a science background I already know that about 80 to 100% of early experiments fail. I know I will fail and I will walk down the wrong path, but I have the freedom to do that, no matter how much I hate making mistakes. Through my mistakes I will learn and I will keep working. No matter what I have to keep working. And I hope and hope and hope that when I finally get things right that I will have done no harm to those around me. Though that seems like an impossible wish. Even if you just choose not to smile one day you may have done harm. There's no way to account for all your actions and the impact of any action or inaction is incalculable. So should we be extra careful or should we not care at all?

I think there should be a scale. A scale that measures how philosophical my posts get with how crappy I feel at site. It's a direct relationship. These past two weeks were hard. The longer I'm here the clearer it is that doing my job is the hard part. People think of Cambodia and think life must be hard. The bathrooms, the food, the lack of soap. But that's the easy part. That is survival. The hard part is pushing yourself past the basics. I could be happy just living here. Just going from village to village socializing. Teaching a little here and there. Smiling. These days I'm mostly unhappy because a project is going wrong or someone that I force myself to work with is being extremely disrespectful (though I've only really met one of these people out of the hundreds). It makes me upset when I put everything behind a proposal and no one steps up to the plate to take it on. But everyday there are people and events that remind why I need to do my job. That I'm not just here to chill out and say that I lived in Cambodia. Sometimes I'm scared though. I'm scared that I'm forgetting about those things.

Last week I went out to a village to give out vaccinations. It was a routine visit. Usually you show up in the village and people bring their children and babies to you. But this time I went with a particularly dedicated midwife who went house to house to people that didn't show up. The last house we went to was clearly poor, but no poorer on the outside than those around it. The grandmother brought the baby up the road to us and with them came the aunt. Immediately, I knew this baby was in danger. He was a year and a half old. Naked, as is common here. Arms and legs skinny sticks. Not much hair for a year and half. His stomach a rotund semisphere. Jutting out when every other aspect was shrinking in. Clear signs of malnutrition. He was feeding from a baby bottle, something that is typically discouraged here because no one can afford formula. If they are fed from a bottle it is usually only water or sometimes rice water from porridge. Practically no nutrients at all. The mother? In thailand, which happens with frequency. The midwife gives the vaccine. We talk. They've taken the baby to the doctor in siem reap already, but clearly no changes have occurred. The midwife tells them they need to give the baby milk, but at this age milk is no longer enough. I try to tell them about enriched porridge, but like with most people they either already do it or they need to be shown. Then I forget about him. I really do. And so does the midwife. I think that haunts me more than the baby does. The fact that I could forget so easily. A baby that I know will die without help. A week later I finally remember to ask. I want to go see the baby, but the midwife is reluctant. She tells me to wait until next month, a ridiculous request. I ask her why? And she says because she doesn't have free time. I say I want to go by myself. I've biked to that village more than once already. I just don't remember the family's name. She looks it up for me, but she's insistent. She wants me to wait until she's free. I want to go and I could, but I haven't yet. Why haven't I?

Well, I'm frustrated. That is the perfect word to describe this past week. I'm not necessarily frustrated by a specific event or a lack of results. I'm not frustrated by boredom or by language. I'm frustrated with people. Sometimes I just want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them. Shake them and shake them until they do something different. Until they realize that if they want the world to be better they have to start by changing themselves. I'm not talking about things like learn a new language or go to a new school. I'm talking about finally being comfortable without a routine. To not be prisoners in your habits. Sometimes people are so set in their ways that they never even see how rigid they have become. Maybe it's unfair of me to say this, it's not like I have a choice in my routine. My days are ruled by others and when I choose my schedule I usually end up isolated and alone, so I've learned to grudingly give up routine. And so far I've survived, happily. But the walls of other people's routines are blocking my ability to evolve and change. I would like to do new projects, teach health, teach teaching, build wells, eradicate diarrhea, but none of those are possible without someone else willing to break their routine. Someone else needs to be able to see beyond the importance of what they are already doing to a bigger picture or just feel enough pity to work on a project with me. Someone else needs to give up an hour here and there to change themselves. That is the wall. I've come and I've changed, but I need to be met halfway.

I have a theory. My theory is that people think I'm learning k'mai so fast that sometime in the near future I'll suddenly be fluent. Once I'm fluent I'll do great things. I can tell everyone right now that that is a complete myth. I will not be fluent, at least not soon enough to leave enough time in my service to complete miracles by myself. And if I could complete miracles I would have been a saint in America where I was already fluent.

That is sort of a tangent. Anyway, back to me being frustrated with people. This is no new concept. I remember this feeling well in America. I'm sure everyone knows someone that is constantly too busy to do anything else, even though they probably spend at least an hour a day on facebook or something similar. The person that never says no, but never says yes either. Yeah, there are busy people. Yes, some people are struggling to feed families or have some other pressing obligation, but I can probably list at least 20 people that know they should do something with their lives, but are unwilling to give up the time or change their routines. It's like going to the gym. Plenty of people have time and some even have the memberships already, but it's fundamentally a matter of discipline and true desire. Going to the gym, volunteering for your community, starting your next paper on time. These are things that people never get around to and may never get around to because they think there is always time in the future.But there isn't. You just keep pushing it off and pushing it off, sometimes pushing it onto other people.

This is actually a huge issue in Cambodia. Cambodia is so filled with NGOs that I think there needs to be an NGO governing the NGOs. Actually, I think there is one, but that NGO needs another NGO to help it out a little. But the fact that there are so many NGOs creates a dependency. Everyone's waiting for the next NGO grant before they take the initiative to do anything. There's a bit of irony in this. When we look at America, our equivalent of an NGO is a nonprofit organization, though many nonprofits actually get money from the American government, but the general purpose is the same. Generally, when I say NGO I think of an organization that is in a country to help the people of that country in some way. When I mention NGO workers, most people think of someone working tirelessly in some African savannah with little to no resources. Sometimes that's true. But here in Cambodia, NGOs have the money and sometimes have the power. The problem is that here the NGOs give the government money whereas in America the government gives nonprofits money. In both situations the organization gives help to the country. But in Cambodia, if the NGOs run out of money the government loses its budget. In America, if the government runs out of money the nonprofits close. In Cambodia, one of the best jobs you can get is to work for an NGO. That's where you can make 'big money' as long as you have one skill, the ability to speak english. This will get you a job in an NGO, hotel, or KFC. All coveted jobs. Here the tables have definitely turned. In America, nonprofits are just that, they are not profitable. Meaning that most people make no money doing work that is essential to the betterment of out society.

Although Peace Corps is not an NGO it is and organization, which is how i describe it. Most people here don't differentiate it from an NGO. Its been interesting to find out that first they think I'm rich because I'm from America, which is expected. But, they also think I'm rich because I work for Peace Corps. I always get asked about money, my salary, my rent, everything! It doesn't even faze me because I always thought it was normal. No one ever does anything to make me think those questions are rude here. But, six months in now and I'm starting to wonder. Everyone I meet operates with a set of assumptions. In America, its what you get when you meet a quiet asian girl with glasses that majored in neuroscience. Here I'm a rich foriegner that works for an NGO.

This year alone, I've seen at least three new NGO programs start in my village. I'm not sure if there are more that I haven't seen, but it just adds on to the long list we already have. It makes me wonder how much could be done if we added up all the administrative waste. That alone could probably pave some roads that desperately need it and build a few wells that don't run dry in the dry season.

I just got back today from a Health Education Volunteer meeting in Phnom Penh. Volunteer organized and volunteer run. Every time we all get together to share I leave more motivated to work on new projects. This post will be a bit disjointed. I want to get some stuff down that I wrote on my list but never managed to get around to typing about. First up, pajama sets.

Pajama sets are popular here. I'm not talking about a set from Victoria's secret. They are plain old pajama sets. A top that buttons up and some loose pants. Both must have the same pattern. Pajama sets are worn everywhere. For my birthday, my host family gave me a pink floral pajama set. Unfortunately, they are ridiculously warm and sweat extraordinary amounts when I wear them.

Second, eating carbs with carbs. Cambodia is not a country where the Atkins diet would ever work. Everyday, people eat rice 3 times a day. And it's not a little serving of rice. It's a huge full plate. Then on some days we get fried noodles...to eat with the rice. I love fried noodles. I don't like rice as much, but I eat them together anyway. There's really no other choice in my house. It seems absurd, but it's just another part of my life.

Third, being Asian in an Asian country. You'd think it's easier and sometimes it is. I know some volunteers whose faces just automatically make children cry because they've never seen a caucasian before. On the other hand I have the same conversation with everyone. "Are you japanese? Are you Korean? Where are you from?". "You're American? Why don't you look American? I think your parents are from somewhere else." Sometimes its enough to make me want to scream or at least shake someone. The really hilarious part is when Cambodians pull their eyelids and say "This is what a korean looks like" or when a kid trying to sell me bracelets tells me my eyes are small...umm...no our eyes are the same size.

Fourth, NGOs. There are so many NGOs here that there needs to be an NGO to keep track of them all, no lie. Some are good and, factually, Cambodia would not be able to run without NGOs. A chunk of the Cambodian budget is from NGOs. Unfortunately, this causes a countrywide dependency on foreign aid with no sign of diminishing. In addition to this, there are numerous NGOs that are not legit at all. Most of the time Cambodians don't know better and foreign donors don't know any better. On the Cambodia side, it stinks. People are trusting these foreigners and working with them, but getting very little or nothing out of it. Sometimes, they'll build a road or give a water filter, but where does this leave them 2 years from now when the road has huge potholes or the filter cracks? The Cambodians wait around for the next irresponsible NGO to come around and give them new roads and filters because no one ever told them where the filters come from or how to organize and fix their roads. Some NGOs are bad because they give a bad name to volunteers in country. When you say you're a foreigner most people immediately jump to thinking you're a tourist. If you tell them you're a volunteer then you are some temporary being that has come to give them something. There's very little trust at times because you can't trust people that will disappear in a month. People can come and help and feel good about themselves, but in a month they are gone. They don't know the language, the culture, or the people. They think they help, but in reality they are really harming the work others are doing and creating a culture of distrust and dependency in Cambodia.

Fifth, maturity. I am finally very very tired of talking to people that giggle every other sentence. I would really really like to have a real conversation where I am not being interrogated and where I am not being ignored and where the person speaks in full sentences without hiding. It's like there's permission to speak or act disrespectfully to me because I am a foreigner. In part this is caused by the lack of investment by past volunteers. If I'm temporary then of course you can act however you want towards me. If I'm just some rich voluntourist then it doesn't matter all that much. I'm not your equal. But, I will say. For every person that ignores me or asks me rude questions there are many many more that have intelligent conversations with me.I have seen great improvement in every student that started out speaking to me in a mixture of giggles, kmai, and silence. Things change everyday and sometimes, most times, I'm just along for the ride.

Not too much has happened in the last week and a half. Mostly just going to the health center and studying kmai. I think by the end of last week I started getting really worried about not having enough people to talk to me regularly. The family I live with is awesome, but the girls are really shy around me and my host parents are not the most talkative. Talking to students and kids is good and fun, but eventually I really felt the need to seek out adults to speak to. Adults that won't giggle after every sentence, cover their mouths when they speak, spend 5 minutes debating about what to ask. So, I took a long bike ride to some villages and I stopped anytime anyone showed any interest in me. Anyone that was standing by the side of the road got to have a conversation with me too whether they wanted to or not. I felt desperate for someone to talk to. I think I met some good friends. I also had a horde of kids around me. Usually hordes of children are insane, but for some reason I have a calming effect on kids here. They don't run away and scream. They also don't run around me in circles yelling like kids tend to do. I pushed some kids on a pair of tire swings (awesome!) and then I sat on a bench. I even read a page in "Mountains Beyond Mountains" to them and they listened, quietly. They had no idea what I was saying but they listened. I asked questions and they answered. They asked and I answered. It was perfectly adult of them. Then we walked home together, or rather I walked them home. Two of the boys did stop to pee before we got to their houses though.

One of the boys had a bookbag on with Disney princesses on the back. Sometimes the rules are different and it's a good thing. I see commune chiefs, tough old grandpas, with notebooks and folders that have baby Winnie the Pooh on them. Men wear pink here all the time and they look good in it. But maybe this lack of commercial gender lines ends here. In most other aspects of society, gender roles in Cambodia are as strict as any other society if not stricter. Clothes for example, are fairly regulated. The school uniform for girls is a long traditional K'mai skirt. The skirt is fairly restricting, though girls still manage to play badminton in them, and extremely hot. Female teachers also have to wear these skirts. For formal occasions, like ceremonies or weddings, women also have to wear a long skirt. During the day to day, women typically can't wear anything that shows their shoulders and most shorts are past the knee. No one in my village, outside of my host family, has seen my shoulders. The casual wear for men can be pretty much anything, except maybe a traditional skirt. Men can walk around in their underwear or typically they tie a scarf, called a kroma, and essentially make a short skirt. Their formal wear is the same for any event or job, a collar shirt and long pants. It's not that wearing skirts is intrinsically bad or good. Pants can be sweaty and hot too. It's just the lack of choice in the matter. So now I'm going to go on a tangent about Feminism and you can skip it if that's a word that offends you for some reason, or if it offends you maybe you really should read this next part.

For me feminism was always about choice. It was about letting people have the ability to make decisions for themselves. It's not about having all women work in offices or having all women wear pants. Either of those ultimatums is decidely unfeminist according to my opinion. To me 'the fight' is to let women decide if they want to be stay at home moms or high powered CEOs or both if they can do it. It's also about giving that choice to men. That's really what equality is in my mind. It's that everyone gets the ability to make the same number of choices. I think Feminism, in this generation, is molded by the individual. You can make your own version of feminism. What does that word mean to you? I think a big reason for why so many people recoil from the term is because it was such a powerful movement in the past and it created a lot of change. As a consequence, it became defined by the changes that were made in Feminism's name. But really, the original intention was to give women the choice. Telling stay at home moms to become CEOs was a necessary part of that change, at the time, because all women were stay at home moms. I haven't studied the history of feminism in depth and I couldn't give you any references, but I do know women that are veritably scared of the word "Feminism" and I really wish that they weren't. I really wish that everyone that jumps at the word would just take a minute and ask themselves why. Why do they label certain people as Feminists and think it's a negative label? For me a Feminist is someone that believes in women.A Feminist doesn't have a mold they want to push women into. They trust women to make their own decisions. When I look at women in Cambodia I see strong women. Women who are the pillars of their families. All I want to let them know is that they have a choice in what they wear, what they do, what they hope and dream. I also see strong men, who are under a lot of other pressures that I won't go into. But I want them to know that they have those same choices too. It takes everyone to make these changes work. I know there's a lot left unsaid on this topic, you could write pages and pages arguing. I know that, in a way, this is an idealist's point of view, but I believe in it anyway.

I've realized a lot of my blog posts are titled Almost ..something something...I guess I'm always looking forward to the next thing. These past few weeks have been just as packed as November. I'm waiting to see when things calm down, but I don't know if they will. Being busy isn't a bad thing. I went to Angkor Wat and did the 30k bike race. I didn't really race. The other PCVs and I just wanted to see the sites and it was a really good experience. We had dinner and brunch for free at a really really nice restaurant that I could never afford on my volunteer budget. We got up early and had Angkor Wat all to ourselves. We saw the sunrise and climbed on ruins. Here, you can pretty much touch everything, for better or worse.

Afterwards I had to book it back to site because I was scheduled to have my first club meeting that Saturday at 2pm. I made it back at 1:30pm, changed and headed off. I've had 3 meetings to date and it's been a lot of fun. Things never go according to plan and the hour goes by quickly. I think I'll slowly make it longer and longer. Right now, I'm helping with English, but my real goal is to gain their trust and build their confidence. I'm not teaching any English they don't already know, but sometimes the kids are just so timid. My only real rule in class is that EVERYONE has to participate. I will wait 10 min for them to think of something to say if I have to.Yesterday we played Pictionary for an hour and that was only supposed to be my warm up exercise. It's only once a week because of some scheduling issues. If you ask me about this through email i'll give you the real deal on "scheduling issues".

The work weeks has been hectic because suddenly NGOs are coming out of the woodwork. I met SCC and I went to Yeeang, a nearby group of villages, with RHAC. Last week I met a man from URC and I had the most rewarding and honest conversation about the state of Cambodian health care that I have ever had. It was the best 2 hours of my week and I didn't even plan on it. I've been actively visiting villages in the afternoon either with HC staff or on my own. This is a lead in to the crazy wedding I went to last week.

A few weeks ago I called a village health volunteer I knew. The VHVs are Cambodian villagers that communicate with HC and have certain resposibilities, such as giving out birth control pills. Somehow the VHV invited me to stay over her home for a night. I had no idea why. A week later I call her again to try to clarify and figure out its for a wedding. I have no idea who is getting married, but I go anyway. Last Tuesday, I bike straight there after work and for a few hours I just sit around. I wasn't sure when to go because at first she told me 2pm then 1 then 12. Also, it poured for a few hours and the ride on the mud road was not pleasant. I got there and met the bride and watched her get makeup on. I put on my dress after showering outdoors in the open for the first real time. This was how I figured out no one in this village had a bathroom, which is a common issue in Cambodia. I walk over to the wedding area and this is where the similarities end between a small village wedding and the slightly bigger wedding I went to in my town. Apparently, I was the stand in for my VHV, who was the aunt of the bride. So, I started out the wedding by leading the bride around the town. We were all dressed up walking on mud and cow shit, trying to avoid puddles and potholes. I prayed to someone to not let me mess this day up for her. I prayed hard.

After we walked around we got to the groom's house and I handed her off. Then it was time for a photo session. I forgot to mention that while we were walking there were bunches of drunk grandmas and grandpas fighting and dancing. It was a spectacle. I almost got in the picture next to the bride too, but I was relieved when some other relatives bumped me back. Then we walked back to where we started and I danced along the way. The first ceremony is the hair cutting ceremony. This is where we wait and people go up to the bride and groom. They pretend to cut hair as a symbol of starting anew, but without messing up her hairdo. As I'm sitting there, I suddenly get a punch in the jaw. It hurt. I look over and realize that a drunk skinny woman is hitting this teenager that was sitting next to me. He ducked and I got hit. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

I spend the rest of the day chit chatting, eating, taking another shower. Around 8pm we get dressed again and go to the dancing part, except it doesn't really start until 10. At 8pm, its just about 50 people slowly becoming deaf by watching really really loud K'mai music videos. Around 8:30 two women start dancing and they make me and the VHV start too. So now its 50 people watching 4 women dance. And by dance I mean making hand movements and slowly walking in a circle around a table. By 9:30 things have picked up and everyone is dancing. I sit down for a break and get punched a second time, this time in the arm, by a really strong grandpa telling me to go back to dancing. By 10 I'm already tired, I would keep going but my VHV has started to limp and I think it's a good idea to sleep.

The VHV lives in a single floor wood home, but the single floor in most homes is really the 2nd floor. The way up is by a really old wooden ladder that actually isn't bad except it hurt my feet to climb up. Around 1am I wake up and realize I really really need to pee. The only way to do that is climb down the ladder and try to find a tree. This actually was the best part of the night. After stumbling around in the dark, waking everyone up because the floorboards are loose, and almost falling off the ladder I emerge from the house and look up at the sky. It is lit up like Time Square. I have never seen a sky so bright with stars and the moon, not even camping in Maine. It was so light out that I didn't even need a flashlight. I stood there and stared for a while.

The next morning I had a breakfast of instant noodles, which is well accepted here. I think I had instant noodles 6 times the past week. Then I biked back in time to go to work. That was the day I had the awesome healthcare conversation. I biked into Pouk today to get some internet and I won't be back on until close to New Years. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

If you send me anything it may be cheapest if you get a flat rate box from USPS and then stuff a ton of shit into it. Though maybe you can look around online at the different shippers like Fedex or UPS. They may be cheap too.

On Tuesday, I found out about something really tragic. I woke up and my host parents were watching TV. I didn't understand why Hun Sen (the prime minister) was making a speech and I was too groggy to care. I took my usual bucket shower and when I got out my host mom kept telling me that people in phnom penh were visiting for water festival and kept repeating a word I didn't understand. I didn't think anything of it and I went to class. There my kmai tutor informed me that over 300 people were killed and 300 more injured Monday night when something triggered a stampede on a bridge in Phnom Penh. The first thought that came into my mind was "wow, that is a lot of people to die in a stampede". To me this is the epitome of senseless death and it really sucks for a country, that has already gone through so much, to go through such a tragedy again.

Later that day I found out a tidbit that was also surprising. Around 5 I went to the usual English class I help at and sometimes the students overcome their shyness to ask me questions. One girl asked me if I heard about Phnom Penh and what I thought about it. Then she asked me if any tragedies like this happened in America. We started talking about 9/11 and I realized that none of these students have ever heard of it. These were 10th to 7th grade students. They asked me why people died and in my broken k'mai I replied, "because people didn't like America." They wanted to know how many people died. They were curious, but the generation gap was obvious. There was also probably a large difference in the choice of topics in education. For a Cambodian, learning the history of another country that they will probably never see or even come clos to is logically not a priority. I did have another conversation about 9/11 earlier in training with my first host family. That one went more like I expected, but I think thats because I was speaking to my host parents. A generation that lived through it, like I did. Memories are short. We try to learn from history, but how much is ever really learned?

* I am updating my wishlist, but really if you send me anything its awesome. Also, try to let me know if you get me something so I don't have 5 people sending me sports bras...

So, Water Festival is a three day celebration where they do, surprise!, dragonboat racing. I've talked to some Cambodians and they had no idea that China did it too. The origin story for each country is also surprisingly similar though, of course, the hero in each is the nationality of the respective country. I biked the 30k into the city with Travis and Kyle, two of my volunteer neighbors. By neighbor I mean people in the same province aka state. Anyway we bike in and the area by the Tonle Sap River, which translated is River Sap River, is roped off and there's street shops and vendors everywhere.

Boats are going up and down the river. Dragonboating here is a bit different than in the states. First, they use super long skinny paddles. I'm not sure how they even move the water. The paddles look like big sticks. The person steering just uses a paddle. Also, some people stand and have extra long paddles. This is particularly hazardous because they have to go under multiple bridges to get to the finish line. We wander around the festival all day and meet up with Kurt who lives about 70 or 80 k away. Kurt and I, together, end up buying 9 bars of soap because if we buy 8 we get 1 free. Also, we save about 2000 Riel, which is the equivalent of 50 cents. This is at least 2 breakfasts for me, you can see the volunteer--no salary for two years, I live in a tiny village-- mentality coming out. Then we go to a pool! AWESOME. There are tons of pools in Siem Reap and the one I go to is basically free if you buy a coke or water. We go get dinner and have fun. Meet up with some K3's.

The next day we go grocery shopping! Yes, Siem Reap has a supermarket. It is amazing. Because it is a supermarket. In Cambodia. Though I have heard there is a Walmart type store in Svay Rieng. I might go all the way there to see it. Anyway, the reason we go shopping is because we are going to cook an American dinner for Travis' family!!! We even comparison shop cause there is more than one supermarket! We buy hotdogs, hamburgers, fries, bread, and condiments. Then we stuff all this into Kurt's backpack so that he can walk all the way to the highway and try to hitchhike back to travis' house. The rest of us get on our bikes for the 16k ride back, which was uneventful except for our big FAIL in trying to register for the Angkor Wat Bike Race/ half-Marathon. It also involved biking across the highway multiple times, which is scary.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon we get to Travis' site and start cooking. We realize we have no idea how to fry frozen fries. There was a big debate about thawed versus not thawed. Kyle pulled through anyway. He had plenty of experience from KFC and Wendy's. There's a joke in that but I'm not going to elaborate. Kurt is awesome with his knife skills. Using the classic Asian butcherknives. In the end, everything is delicious and we are all very full and ready to sleep. We didn't get much sleep the night before and by 7 we were ready for bed. Which is actually normal, most days I fall asleep at 8. Travis' family had different ideas. First, we all go out onto a balcony and awkwardly wait around confused. Turns out day 2 is the moon festival! Travis' host mom sets up a huge table with fruit, candles, and flat rice to offer prayers to the moon. Meanwhile, there are about a million insects, big and small, swarming around us. Flying into our faces and every else imaginable. They are really attracted to light. When the offering is done I think we're all relieved to run back inside the house. We think it's over, but Travis' dad asks if we want to go to the Wat (temple). They tell us tonight is the night Cambodians don't sleep. We all look at each other and we all are thinking the same thing, but we can't refuse an offer. So we all get into the camry and start driving, not really sure which Wat we are going to. It's Travis and his dad in the front. Then Me, Kyle, Kurt, and Travis' 25 yo sister in the back. It's a comfortable but tight fit. We drive in the dark, something I really miss about America actually. After about 15min we reach a wat and drive around it. Since we were tired we arrived too early to the party. Only a bunch of kids were there running around so we just drove out of the Wat, never leaving the car. We don't head back to the house, instead we continue on to Siem Reap City. By this point I start falling asleep because I'm the only one silly enough not to have taken a nap. All I remember from the rest of the trip are candles floating on the river, it was really beautiful. On our way back I snap awake when i hear someone ask " Can I have a pool on the moon?" Clearly we're delirious already, but I reply half-asleep " Of course! There's still gravity, duh!" In hindsight, I'm actually not too sure. Then we start talking about having alien octopus pets in the pool and jellyfish. Somehow I end up trying to explain how jellyfish tentacles can react to stimulus collectively when only one tentacle feels the stimulus and it doesn't use a brain. Yea, I'm a neuro major.

We go to sleep finally! The next day I eat about 6 bananas and then bike back home. I find out all the students I live with went home for the weekend so its just me and my host mom. Which was really nice. Finally some time to just be me. I guess this was way more than I anticipated so It'll have to be continued...

I'm always surprised when people mention my blog. It seems like going to Cambodia is really what people need to do to get their blog noticed. But, thanks. It's awesome to know that I'm not just writing another xanga entry or live journal or any o my other older blogger blogs. haha. Anyway: Week 3.

Week 3, I got to work on Monday and finished the last day of training with the Village Health Volunteers. I thought that after that I would be free, but it turns out there are 20 more volunteers and four more days of training. On that Wednesday, the Peace Corps medical officers, Navi and Joanne, drove up to Siem Reap for a visit. It should have been simple, but first I found out my Health Center Director wouldn't be present because he had a meeting. He asked the lab tech/ nurse (everyone is a midwife or a nurse, there are very few doctors in Cambodia since their school system is only about 30 years old) to meet with the doctors. The Lab guy seemed to really look forward to it since it would be two women visiting. Come Wednesday, I bike out to a village at around noon. The road is totally washed out and I walk my bike across a pond. The pharmacist and assistant are about half and hour late arriving and we are half an hour late starting, but it doesn't matter because only about 20 people show up for vaccines. We just sort of chill out and eat oranges and unripe mango dipped in what tastes like ramen noodle mix. It's actually really good. Then it starts pouring. After scrambling to get all my stuff out of the rain I realize I'm going to be late getting back. It's about a 9k bike ride on a rocky bumpy road and now it's all muddy too. Awesome. A few minutes after it stops I bike back, as fast as I dare to because as most people learn in Cambodia you risk decorating your back with mud when you bike too quickly.

I finally make it back to the health center. I'm really really sweaty and the first thing Navi does is give me a hug. I apologize immediately. I also notice that the lab guy went home and instead my midwife has to see the Peace Corps docs. Not sure if he forgot, I miscommunicated, or he just delegated, but whatever. This kind of thing happens everyday. The rest of the visit goes well. They visit my home and talk to my grandma at first then they cycle through people and eventually my mom comes home from work.

The next day I get up early and get a taxi to Siem Reap. Getting a taxi is not a simple as it seems, but it's also very simple. Basically, I have to get to a certain place in town by 7am. There, I wait until I see a taxi like car pass by or stop. When it stops I ask how much it costs and I get in. Then I wait for it to pick up more stuff, passengers, or just sit there and do nothing. This usually lasts about an hour and I think 5 u-turns. When we finally get to Siem Reap this guy, that I met on my trip to Siem Reap with the students, calls my taxi driver to have a conversation with me because he saw me pass his tuk-tuk. It is a small world. I eat a quick breakfast of ice tea and a brownie and get online for about 20 min before my Program manager comes to pick me up with Kurt, the other health volunteer K4 in my province. We go to meet the Provincial Health Director, except he's busy and the person under him is busy too. Eventually, we meet the Deputy Director of Maternal Health and she is a very nice woman. Later we meet the Provincial Police Chief who is also a Brigadier General. We each receive a nice silk scarf parting gift and, eventually, someone in America will be the lucky recipient of this gift. Later that day we go back to my town, after we drive up an absurdly ditchy dirt road to drop off Kurt. This time my parents are home, but mostly its my host dad awkwardly sitting there while the PM interviews me in English. Site visits are for the higher ups to see my living and working conditions and deal with any issues. Then we go to the health center and the PM has to meet with the midwife again. Part of the conversation was asking the midwife what I could improve upon. Mostly they just say my language, but that's a given. She's clearly really nervous about giving feedback.

This nervousness is like a wall I come up against every single day. The older students are shy or nervous or scared, I'm not really sure. So it's just super awkward at home everyday. The staff, most of the time I think that just don't have time for me or they really don't know what I should be doing, but when you ask them directly for feedback or guidance they get very nervous. People find it hard to speak directly to me. The whold not knowing what I'm doing is a big part fo it htough. Since I'm part of the first group of health volunteers I really don't have a precedent to follow so we're all just doing what we can and each situation is truly unique. I have friends that can give presentations in English and have it translated, but I have no one that really can translate. Some have NGO's established in their towns, but mine mostly work on an outreach basis. Some Health Centers are new and have rooms for meetings, we have meeting in the waiting room. Sometimes there's a woman that just gave birth lying on a wooden bed while meetings go on....Each situation is just so different and we all are just trying to figure out what to do with what we have.

Anyway, that weekend is water festival and us K4 volunteers have big plans. More on that later...

That Sunday, I go to a wedding that I was invited to. I get up at 5am because I have to be at the house by 6:30am, put on one of the 2 appropriate dresses I own, and head out. It's sort of awkward being all dressed up and walking down the street in front of everyone. People stare and tell me I'm pretty which is a pretty common occurrence, not because I'm exceedingly pretty all the time but because it's just a common compliment to make on a day to day basis. If someone dresses up or does anything different, everyone knows and comments on it. I get to the house right on time and find a long line of chairs. They're red plastic, typical, and placed in pairs facing each other. I'm totally confused and had no clue what to do. My first kmai tutor lives in that house and we started helping put fruit and snacks on the chairs. By fruit and snacks I mean big baskets with ribbons. They're all arranged to be offered at the wedding. Eventually, people started showing up and I am totally underdressed. When I get a chance to upload pictures, you'll all realize that it's pretty easy to be underdressed at a wedding. After putting the fruit on the chairs everyone picks a seat. Eventually, all the seats are filled then we pick up the offering and form a procession down the street. Men playing instruments lead us down the street and we walk a about 1 k to the wedding house. Then we file in and sit down. There's a band, but they accompany these two comedian/hosts. As far as I can tell, they know all the motions of the ceremony, but they also crack a lot of jokes, sing, and dance. After the ceremony we all eat rice porridge, which is wayyy more delicious than it sounds because its cooked not just with water but in a really good chicken soup. Everyone eats as fast as they can because they all want to go home, which is sort of strange considering they got SOOOO dressed up for the event.

So we all leave and wait until around 11. I put on my second dress, my host sister and aunts also dress up. My host sister went to Siem Reap the day before and bought a pink prom dress for 30 bucks, which is a lot of money here. Pink prom dresses are an example of typical attire for weddings. We did our makeup and put on heels and everything. When we finally get to the wedding it's just like a big buffet with an open bar, but I don't drink anything because women typically don't drink here. We get some really good food, but I notice my host sister isn't eating much. Usually she could eat an entire horse herself, but still stay stick skinny. It turns out her dress is too tight and she can't eat. On my other side just so happens to be the host sister of another volunteer. It's a small country. Oddly enough, we once again want to book it out of there even though we put in so much effort to be there. All the while, music is blasting. If you've been to a rock concert you experienced about the same amount of music blasting except we were not really far from the speakers on the stage. We were next to them. It seems that my efforts to keep my hearing will be completely wrecked because there's no concept of going deaf because the volume is too loud here. At the end of the buffet, we put our money in envelopes and quickly flee the wedding.

The next day I visit more villages and help in the Center with Vitamin A dispension. Then, Tuesday is a holiday so no work. It's a pretty typical day. Get up at 5:30 and brush my teeth. Eat my waffles, bananas, and peanut butter for breakfast. Then I do my laundry. It's sort of meditative and a work out at the same time because I repetitively handscrub my clothes for about an hour and a half. I hang them up to dry and start reading a book. I sing a little with my host sister and then after lunch a random van shows up. It turns out that the 5 students living with me are going to Siem Reap City for a day. They ask me and my sister to go to and I agree because they said they would be back early and that they had to go to school the next day at 7. I was worried tht I wouldn't get back in time for work the next day, but it seemed logical that they wouldn't miss school. So off we go. Spontaneous random trip to Siem Reap. We are driving along and i start becoming concerned because I have no idea where we are going. We drive on the bumpy road up a mountain and we end up at a big fish shop. We get out and there's just piles and piles of fish everywhere. I am thoroughly confused. Turns out that we were meeting the parents of the students. Behind the shop is a huge lake called the TonleSap. We walk down the street back to the van and someone whispers to me that there are a lot of Vietnamese people here.I ask them why and they reply that its because they are good at fishing. Anyway, we get back in the van and actually do drive to the city, but with the parents too. It takes about an hour to find the hotel then everyone showers and changes, even though 2 hours ago they changed to get into the van. I only brought pajamas so I just put on my "old" clothes. We went to a big restaurant, ate good food, and then went to Angkor Cyoon yoo. I've been here once before. It's a carnival with rides and games and food. It was a lot of fun though the rusty ferris wheels and small rollercoasters sometimes felt like I was risking life and limb.

Overall it was a fun day. I thought we would be going back, but we didn't and it was too late for me to get my own ride back. The next morning, I didn't get back until 11 because, even though we woke up at 4am, we didn't leave the hotel until 7, didn't finish breakfast until 8, and didn't get out of the market until 10. Throughout this morning I was fielding calls from America, call my HC director, and my kmai tutor trying to make me go to an impromptu meeting with RHAC. Plus my cell battery was dieing. Somehow, it all ended up working out and work was cancelled because and RACHA decided to start a 2 week training for village health volunteers. I ended up being able to meet up with RHAC, another NGO, later that week.

So later that week I go to work and do the usual chit chatting. I ask this woman next to me, she's with her daughter, her name and which village she's from and blah blah blah. Later that day I realize she's my next door neighbor and owns the big gas station. That was embarassing. Then I find out I'm going to the village to do a vaccination run. For various reasons, I haven't been able to go yet and this would be my first one. I ask multiple times about when they are leaving and each time they say 1pm. So around 12:30 I start walking to the HC and I see the pharmacist on her moto with her assistant going the other way, 30 min early. She tells me to go ask the Director for directions. So I go over and I ask this little girl, who I assume is his daughter, to get my boss. She goes inside and tells in a tiny little girl voice that her dad is resting. So I walk to the Health Center and some lady is giving birth so no one is available. Then I walk all the way back home and have no idea what is going on. I'm feeling pretty low at this point and really dissappointed. Half an hour later, my director calls me. Half and hour after that I'm in the village giving out Mebendazole and Vitamin A . I meet the village health volunteer and we have a really good talk. All the kids are shyly listening and looking at me. It was a really awesome experience.

Then I got home and somehow I ended up teaching my sister how to sing Love Story by Taylor Swift since it's really popular here. Then she asks me to do a random Britney song that I have never heard, but whatever. And we just sing and sing and sing. It ended up being an awesome and happy day. I also realized that without music life would not be worth living.

If I could describe this month with one word, which I can, it would be "insanity". For some reason, my second month at site has decided to be a crazy, hectic, rollercoaster month in more ways than one. In order to accurately transcribe these events I will be updating this blog this weekend and next weekend, yay for training in Battambang! I will begin with the first week of November...

So, for Halloween I went into the city and I saw a bunch of volunteers. It was awesome to catchup and see everyone dress up. Though I, lamely, just put on a dress. I told everyone that I was either a Cambodian, a Korean, or a Japanese person. It's ironic because most people think I am those people on a daily basis. I got back home on Sunday and everything was fine. Got ready for work on Monday. I woke up at like 3 am on Monday unexpectedly for reasons I will not disclose here. But it really set the tone for the day. Went to my kmai lesson things went well. Went to work and went home. That afternoon I realize I can't find a pair of dress pants. I wasn't sure how i lost a pair of pants, but I only have 3 pairs and one has a huge hole in the crotch. So I decide to get another pair made since my butt doesn't fit most pants here. I go to the market and they tell me they don't have the material and I have to buy it in Siem Reap. I go to a tailor down the street and she tells me its 10 bucks! A fortune considering my other pants were 5 bucks. I go to another one and he's not home. I go to another one and they only make shirts. Later I go back to the one that wasn't home and he tells me he only knows how to make clothes for men even though I just want him to copy another pair of pants I already had. Some other things go wrong later that day and to relieve some stress I decided to go on a bike ride to Yeeang village, about 5 k away. I've made this ride a few times before and it's on a really big, nicely packed dirt road. I went a bit farther than I intended and realized that if I didn't book it I would be really late for this english class I help out at. I don't really help that much, but I like to hang out with the students. So I'm biking pretty fast and the road isn't bad. I'm almost home when I see a giant coach bus comming down the road the opposite way. This road is big enough for 2 lanes so I should have no problem. There's a moto in front of me and I watch him pass the bus, it's a tight fit. I make it past, and then I'm on the ground. I cleared my bike and skid a foot or so, reminded me of snowboarding actually. Luckily, there was no traffic behind the bus and I fell onto the road instead of off the side of it into a ditch. I get up and my left knee is throbbing. There's a small rivulet of blood running down my leg.I stand around trying to figure out what to do.

Then a nice guy on a moto rides up. I think he was by the bridge I just past fishing. He offers me a ride on his moto, which I should have taken, but instead I reflexively quoted the Peace Corps rule of not riding motos, ironically this is being changed at the end of the month. After a few minutes, I suck it up, ride the last 1 k home and my host sis helps me clean and bandage everything. Somehow I busted my left knee and also bruised the back of my right leg. I really don't remember at all how I ended up on the ground and now I'm a little more scared and wary of large vehicles. That day while I was bleeding, one of the girl's that lives with me had her mom visit unexpectedly and, equally unexpectedly, a monk came with her. In some cases, women are not allowed to touch or make eye contact with monks. Though actually it's the monk that should be the one trying to avoid doing those things. I'm not the one that took the oath. Anyway, I was limping around. The monk was watching me. The mom was watching me. I'm bleeding, I'm limping, I'm accidentally cursing in front of a monk. It was a crazy day. That was November 1st. The beginning of a journey that I think is a test sent by someone to test my patience and adaptability. Gratefully, today, three weeks later, I can say that my knee is almost fully healed and I'm riding around again. Another update tomorrow!

Sometimes happening are artistic. Or they are semi-organized events that make a point, but here in Cambodia a lot of things just happen to me. Here's a list of things that have happened to me:

1. I biked about 30 k through floods, rain, and intense sunshine from Siem Reap City to my village, Sasar Sdam. While I did plan to bike home, I didn't realize that the torrential rains everyday had flooded the national highway. I also did not account for the fact that I would encounter torrential rain during my ride. Everytime I got to a cloudy patch I tried to peddle a little harder and get to a dry patch. When I got to the dry patch it would be intensely hot and my clothes would dry only to bike into another rainy patch. My bike was also stuck on a really high gear so near the end of my ride I was being passed by women biking in skirts with 50 pound rice bags on the back of their bike.

2. My job mostly consists of conversing with patients about almost anything. Last week, I talked to this woman for an hour because she was worried I would be kidnapped on my morning runs, which I hope she is exaggerating about.

3. Almost everyday I get asked, "Are you bored?" by at least 3 people multiple times. At first I would always say no because I wasn't bored. Everything was so new to me. Now I admit I am sometimes bored because it's a slow process to find enough projects to keep me busy like I used to be in America, but I also ask people if they're bored. And they are. They are very bored all the time and sometimes I wonder why they don't do something about it. I'll go on a bike ride or visit a neighbor, but some people just watch TV all day.

4. For some reason, really old Jackie Chan movies are really popular on tv. I watch at least one a week and sometimes they have chinese/english subtitles. And let me tell you, Jackie Chan movies are hilarious. It's way better than Rush Hour at combining action and comedy. At one point in a movie, Jackie Chan was dressed as Chun Li and mimicked her mannerisms perfectly.

5. One of my crowning achievements so far came one night while watching the usual werewolf soap opera from the Phillipines. One very short lived character made a joke and for the first time I fully understood a joke on tv, thought it was funny, and laughed because it was funny. It's rare to laugh because I think something is worth laughing. Usually, I laugh because I notice other people laughing. I have only a partial idea why and mostly I just want to fit in.

I keep putting heavy boring things on this blog because that's whats on my mind, but plenty of funny and cool things happen too!

Some time in the past 3 weeks, my host mom shaved my face with a razor and I'm not talking about a razor with a plastic handle. It was just a razor. Luckily, she sent someone for a new one right before it was my turn so no risk of any diseases if i get accidentally cut. Originally, it was just to shave my eyebrows. Something I agreed to because I needed it. And she did a really good job with all the other girls. I told her that in America we pluck eyebrows all the time and we don't shave. Her reaction was that plucking hurts like hell and why would people ever want to do that? Which is very logical. Though having a razor next to your eye also seems to carry some risk. After she finished the brows, she kept going. I didn't know I had hair on my cheeks but they were shaved. She did my whole face, but really I couldn't see the difference afterwards. I don't think I had that much hair on my face outside of the eyebrow area to begin with, but clearly she thought it was necessary to remove it all. Will I do it again? Probably not the whole face shave. But the eyebrows, definitely.

10/10/10

Sometimes I wish i could just spend all day watching DVDs in my room. That much hasn't changed about me. It's weird to think that I've been here almost 3 months already. It seems long, but not in comparison to how long I will be here. And yet each day passes at its own pace. I have no control over the movement of time, but only of my perception of how it moves. A slow day is slow because I think it is. Because I haven't been able to think of a way to make it pass quickly. Being here has really been a mental battle at times. This being most evident at night time. In the 'middle' of the night, which here is about 11 or 10 pm, I'll half wake up and all the things that bother me during the day will just manifest itself. Some nights i'll be hopelessly itchy, thinking that ants or mosquitos are all over me. Some nights, I'll wake up midsentence, voicing the negative thoughts that I keep inside all day.

All of these things are just inside my head. Taken objectively, none of these things alone are really worth worrying over. A few ants, some mosquito bites, they're all part of life. Nothing huge, but everything adds up. All the pressures, annoyances they become the easy way to deal with the larger hardships. The fact that most days I'm practically mute. People, whether conciously or unconciously, don't speak to me because they know I won't understand. And I, choose not to speak to them because I don't have the ability to. This is not an issue I can fix except through persistence and continuous learning. A long and slow process, but the effects of my ineptitude are felt everyday.

In a way, I'm caught in an awkward transition stage. During training, I was a baby. Learning the necessities for survival. My family knew this and they treated me as such. It was continually rewarding because each small baby step I made was instantly praised. I could see the effects of learning a single new word immediately. Here, it's different. I'm expected to be an adult, to do a job. I have the mindset of an adult. The ability to observe, learn, and analyze as an adult, with a college level education at that. But in this country, I speak like a toddler, my best friends are children because they don't rely on language to bond, and I'm completely illiterate. The act of learning to read, of memorizing the alphabet, an exercise that seemed second nature to me as a child, is proving to be more of a task than I could have imagined.

As I write this entry, I have been living in my village for two weeks already. It seems like an eternity at times and I have to keep reminding myself that friendships and relationships take more time than that.In that time I have accomplished a lot already. I've started going to work everyday, which consists of observing the Health Center for 4 hrs a day. I've already started teaching English to my coworkers at the Health Center and I've found that the bonds there are slowly growing. At home, I play "basketball" with some kids with a ball I bought and some days I teach a mix of yoga/aerobics. There's some confusion with my language tutor, but, as with everything, I'm just dealing with it as I go. I've biked to my nearest neighbor for a visit (16k each way) and another neighbor has biked to me (30k each way).

Hopefully, when I write my next entry I will have accomplished so much more and will have found comfort in my new routines. Though really, as with life anywhere, you can't really predict what will happen. For example, this weekend was a 4 day weekend which could have been immensely boring. The first day I biked to my friend's house and when I got back I found out that the 6 people living with us (students of varying ages that live with us to be closer to school) were going to Siem Reap City for 2 days. The next day was slow as expected but I got some errands done. The third day everyone returned much earlier than I thought they would and somehow I ended up going to Angkor wat with my aunt. We packed 8 people comfortably into a toyota camry. The concept of seating is drastically different here. In fact, the Peace Corps vans have seats in the trunk so people can ride back there. I once saw a moto strapped to the back of a van with a person riding on on the moto instead of in the van. After angkor wat we had a picnic and went to a random carnival. There, on a full stomach, I went on a really fast ferris wheel and another ride. All of this was totally out of the blue, along with my host sister's departure for Phnom Penh tomorrow.

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10/16/10

I'm in the city so I can post this entry today. In the past week, not much has changed, but a lot has changed. With my sister gone and school starting up, not many people are around for my usual yoga sessions. I'm definitly on my own a lot more. I came into the city to get my bike fixed, which has been a source of constant aggravation. More people than I can count have tried to fix my bike, but unfortunately a mountain bike is a bit difficult to understand. It's funny, but most of the time people don't even see the problems with it when I first show them. But, to me it's obvious. The chain touches the sides of the cage on some gears, the bottom of the cage on others. But, most people initially just change the gears until they find on that works and they're like OK it's fine. I think they don't always realize that ALL of the gear combinations are supposed to work. Not just 5 out of 24.Anyway, I'm trying really hard to just let it go and ride it out until i can get a new bike. It's really understandable why people think this way. One, they don't usually have mountain bikes and nobody has told them how it works if they do buy one. In fact, I went to a store selling tons of brand new mountain bikes and they really had no idea how to fix my bike, though they proceeded to do so for an hour. Two, I look around most people's bikes and realize that they get really beaten down. Bikes cost a lot and they are the main, and sometimes only, form of transport. A simple bike can last for years and if the chain still moves the wheels when you pedal then that's awesome. Weird sounds, such as the chain rubbing against some metal, are common place. Which is probably why no one saw a problem with my bike and everyone said it was fixed. I'm the only one that knows that my bike should run silently, that parts should not rub against each other like that, that with a two month old mountain bike all the gears should still work. It seems strange that getting this bike fixed has been one of the most frequent reoccurring instances of the cultural gap and it's the one that makes me angry most easily too. There's just a culmination of all my frustrations. Cultural, language, and realtionship issues all come into play. Everytime I start getting upset I have to keep reminding myself that it really is not a big deal. if it breaks, I'll get a new bike. That's that. shit happens. But, sometimes it's just so hard to stay objective and reasonable ALL the time.

Today, I took the bus up to Siem Reap city. Tomorrow, I'm heading to my permanent village. I'll be there for the rest of my time in Cambodia and hopefully I'll like it there. I'll be living in my village with a new family and a new town and a new job to get used to. To top it all off I'll be in the village alone, as in the only volunteer. The next volunteer is about 15k away. Pretty much, my job is whatever I make of it. The first few weeks/months I'll just be learning to live again and getting to know people. I have to report to the health center every day, but I really can't do much yet because I need to learn a lot more k'mai. At the schools, it's a little easier to get started because they have a set national curriculum and also english speaking teachers. At the health center, a lot of it is just up to me and my own initiative. It's easy to just sit and give up. I have to make the right connections, identify needs, think of projects, start them, and finish them. There's not really a boss looking over my shoulder to make sure everything is going according to some grand plan. I hope I'm ready for that kind of responsibility because I know some days will be hard. Those days will be the ones where I'll be able to kick myself in the butt and make myself go to work and do what needs to be done.

On a lighter note, today my giant coach bus stopped by the side of the highway to pick up bags of cucumbers.

Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Phnom Penh. It's odd, but I never realized, until now, how much coffee shops remind me of home. The last two months I was in New York, I spent going from coffee shop to bakery to library in search of internet so I could study for MCATs and now I'm doing the same (except for the MCATs part, I'm pretty sure I never want to do that again). Wow, this internet is super fast (for Cambodia). I actually just loaded my first youtube vid in 2 months. And let me tell ya, the adrenalin rush was better than when I get stuck on the top of the rock wall and go into a blind panic.

Something else that reminds me of home is doing aerobics. Picture doing a workout dvd, except your not at home. Instead, your standing in the middle of a huge concrete/tile sidewalk that actually is just a giant divider for one of the busiest streets in the biggest city in Cambodia. There's random music blasting on the speakers and you are surrounded by 20 to 50 year old women and some men. There's about 50 people just sitting on their motos watching you. There's a skinny K'mai guy who looks about 15 doing dance/aerobics moves and everyone is following him in (almost) perfect sync. Depending on whose leading the group, this can actually be an intense workout. Not to mention that it's 90+ degrees/ 80% humidity every single day. I've heard that this type of public exercise is also really popular in China, but that's just a rumor.

This morning I left my training host family and got on a "van" to Kampong Cham town. My host mom and little brother started crying as we walked away. It seems strange because I feel like I should be going home to America now. Like I just finished a summer internship and I've learned a lot and now I should be going back to Bowdoin to cram for exams and run around in a snow storm. Instead, I'm going start this all over again. Part of me is really frustrated because I worked so hard to adjust and integrate into the community and right when I feel comfortable it all gets taken away again. The next 3 months will be harder than the last two, mostly because o I will be on my own. It's me and the village. That'll be a good book title.

So because I was leaving this week I decided to loosen my eating principles for a few days. That was a mistake. I think one night I ate so much rice that I had a stomach ache for about 2 hours after because it was just too much. They eat so much rice here. I'm talking a dinner plate mountainful of rice and then they go for seconds. And after the rice I had a pineapple smoothie. My host family has been making fruit smoothies for me for the past week except for a few days where our electricity was out. The last 2 days I've have double meals because I'll eat with my family and then my host aunt will invite me to eat again and I can't say no cause she'll be really disappointed. Also, I really like the food they make. This morning for breakfast I had fried rice with beef and then I had chicken curry with french bread. That's one of the things the french did right here. They left awesome bread behind. If only I could get whole wheat or 12 grain...

On a semi related note, in order to burn off a lot of the rice I've been eating I've been biking more. I'm very proud to say that I biked 15k on dirt, mud, and by the side of a lawless highway. Though I've biked further here, the 15k was at a fast pace for me and I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the nearest town to mine will be about 15k away so I'll get a lot of practice. Eventaully, I hope that I'll be less dirty and sweaty after 15k because I'm sure my friend's host family will not appreciate a sweaty smelly girl showing up every weekend.

In less than a week i'll be officially sworn in, but before I left this morning my host sister put my hair in pigtail braids and I put on my aviators. I'm going to leave you with that image and the word 'badass'.