Cambodian Adventures

As I'm leaving Cambodia I want to reflect a little on everything that has happened so I thought it would be fun if my last post was a list of 10 things I've learned while in Cambodia.  So here goes... One of the first things I learned was how to ride a bicycle through the crazy Cambodian traffic. The streets are not particularly wide and there aren't really lanes of traffic.  The rules of the road only sort of follow those in the US and then it's only when it is convenient.  It was quite the adventure. I learned a lot about Angkor Wat as we toured it and even a little from the locals in preparing to go to it.  This is a necessity since it is essentially the national treasure of Cambodia.   I learned that planning a project works really well when we are willing to listen to each others ideas and especially to the locals since they know the culture better than we do.  Flexibility is key! I learned that there are many ways to say hello.  In addition to the wor

For the last few days of work for the internship we did some more surveys, but we also did some garbage clean up days.  This idea came from some of the raw data from the surveys. Garbage disposal is a huge problem in Cambodia and most people just throw their garbage wherever.  The big solution to this problem is starting reliable city wide garbage collection systems, but that is probably a few years away still. So instead we talked about how garbage that is thrown everywhere is related to more disease especially when it is by the cooking area and water storage.  Our solution was to dig a mini landfill pit by houses to create one area for their garbage.  That way even though they still have garbage it isn't all over their yard.  We also helped start a compost system for those who didn't have one yet.  While this was a cool experience and really helped us to get involved in planning and implementing a program and seeing the process up close and personal, I'm worried it wasn&#

I wake up in the morning around 6 or 6:30, say a prayer, and then if I'm lucky get a little exercise. After this it's nice to start the day with a cool shower before eating breakfast and talking to people from home.  Most often I talk with my fiance in the morning, but sometimes I talk to my sister or my mom.  Breakfast usually consists of toast and fruit with some cereal on occasion.  It's hard to keep things like cereal stocked when you are feeding 7 adults. Around 7 or 8, depending on the day, we leave in our tuk-truck to work on whatever project we have planned for the day.  Some days we head out with our translators and bags of soap to do health surveys in the local villages. Other times we are ready to do an outreach project such as dental hygiene clinics, days for girls programs, and health presentations. No two days are exactly the same. After driving for a few minutes to upwards of an hour we arrive and pile out. If we are doing an outreach project it is t

Today I just want to talk quickly about the fun opportunity I've had over the last couple of days teaching English to some children between the ages of 5 and 8... I think.  That's a rough guess.  There were four classes overall with some children being closer to 12 or 13 in the advanced class.  I was in the kindergarten class.  We divided off into pairs except that I was by myself since there are only seven of us.  It was really fun though because many of the students were eager to learn and improve their English and they love high fives and getting involved in anything.  We played a game where there were a bunch of words on the board that they had learned previously and two of them would race to be the first to point to the correct word.  Even those who were not the top of the class and confident in their English were excited to volunteer and participate.  We also got to enjoy story time and read the classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  The kids really enjoyed it and asked me to

This past week and a half has been amazing. It has also flown by.  It was our retreat to Thailand.   The first night we arrived we had a late dinner at a cute little restaurant that had lanterns hanging all over. We slept in a hostel called Pudsadee House. It was about the quality of a cheap motel in the states. The next day we moved to a new hotel, the Napbox and then it was off to see the elephants. We started with an ox cart ride which was fairly uneventful. The ox carts took us to the loading station for elephant riding. It was bumpy and not really comfortable, but still quite an experience. We then watched a little elephant show. While we didn’t see them jump the fence or anything crazy like that we did see them paint pictures, dance, and kick soccer balls. After being kissed on the cheek by one, we watched a demonstration on rice planting. It was cool to see the whole process of rice planting laid out so simply. I have seen pretty much every step they talked about in actio