A Stark Contrast

Today was a very interesting day for me. I felt like the morning and afternoon were in stark contrast to one another. One was very somber and emotionally draining. The other was revitalizing. Each carried with it its own sense of importance and its own spiritual connection.

In the morning we went to S-21/Tuol Sleng and to Cheoung Ek Killing Field. S-21 was a place where they tortured and killed a number of people. They used any means necessary to get the prisoners to confess to the crimes that they had committed (or in actuality had not committed at all truly).

One of the prisoners of S-21 and her baby.

A prisoner found dead in the hall of one of the buildings.

Many of S-21 had been left just the way that it was when they found it in 1979. The beds that the prisoners were chained to were in the same place where the prisoner had died on them. The ghosts in that place were very heavy. Visiting here did not get to me as much as visiting Cheoung Ek. After we had looked around the buildings of S-21 we loaded the bus and made the trek to Cheoung Ek. This was another site of mass execution and torture. Torture was not performed here as much as execution was.

Teeth found as the ground is washed away during the rainy season.

Skulls from the mass graves.

Between 1975 and 1979 17,000 Cambodians were brutally executed and put in mass graves. Approximately 8,900 bodies have been exhumed from the mass graves. Many are still closed as a memorial to those that suffered the tragedies that occurred there. The largest mass grave held 450 bodies. There were also mass graves that had headless bodies found in them, as well as one for women and children that were found completely naked. The thing that upset me most here was the Killing Tree.

The Killing Tree

The Killing Tree is where they took babies and killed them. For the sake of anyone reading this blog I will not describe what they did to them. It was traumatic enough to see the painting that someone did as a rendition of what would have happened there. That is when I broke down. The thought of someone ripping my child from my hands and taking them to that tree to be brutally murdered made me unbelievably upset. Children don’t know what their ideology is yet, so how can they even know what’s going on. They couldn’t have known. It just makes me unbelievably sad. Pol Pot committed mass genocide against his own people and still no one knows what the reasoning is behind what he did. It took a lot to process Cheoung Ek and I feel as though I’ll still be processing it when I get home. I just pray for the survivors and for the souls of those that were brutally murdered there.

After the Kililng Fields, we traveled back into the city of Phnom Penh. We were a little rushed due to our late start so we opted to eat snacks on the bus so we could spend more time at the byTavi workshop and at the Daughters workshop. The byTavi project is truly a prevention project. It takes girls and woman that are in a position of extreme poverty and it teaches them how to make purses, totes, and other like items to give them an income. CGI believes that most families in extreme poverty are just one crisis away from trafficking one of their daughters. In order not to create an artificial crisis in the family by taking the daughter out of the income structure of the family, CGI supplements the family during the time that they are in training by giving the family $50 a month. This helps the families survive during the time when their daughters are not at home.

Sina and I in the Daughters workshop.

A baby whose mother works for byTavi.

We saw the workshop where they worked and we spent a lot of time buying bags to take home to our families. After we were done there were walked just two shops down to see the Daughters workshop. The girls were so excited to see us!! We each were greeted with huge hugs and smiles and “I missed you”. The smiles on their faces made me so much more emotionally recharged. I needed that after the morning that we had. I can’t stop smiling when I’m around them. They are all playing and being silly. I showed the girls pictures of Lola and they couldn’t believe that I had a baby. They all thought she was very beautiful. Chanty was being silly and picked me up. She pretended that she was rocking me like a baby.

Being around the girls brings a new energy into my life that I can’t describe properly in a blog post. They are so positive and carefree, something that many of us in the United States lack. I know I could take note of the way they live their lives and it would help me a lot. I need to slow down. Nothing here is on time and if it’s late no one worries about it. I’m always in a rush and it gets me nowhere but stressed out. I want my daughter to be around girls like them. Girls that don’t worry so much about what they look like, but what’s in their hearts. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of joy that I get when I’m around them. I couldn’t stop smiling yesterday; they made me smile so much that my face was hurting. I haven’t been that happy in a very, very long time (except when I’m with Lola. Nothing makes me happier than she does). I love all the girls that we are working with and all of the people on our team. Speaking of the team, I spent a great deal of breakfast opening up to them about what has been going on at home. I truly enjoy getting a new outlook on what I should do and what would be best for myself and for Lola. I’m glad this trip is making me look at things, instead of avoiding them, which is what I’m very good at doing.

We also got the chance to walk down the alley where some of the girls in the Daughters project have come from. It was an alley where homes were built on stilts out of small boards, planks, pieces of aluminum. Anything the people could find is what they would use.

One of the houses in the alley.

There was feces covering the streets. There was dirt and flies everywhere. The children were walking in it in their bare feet. The smell was horrible. I can't even describe the stench that came to our nostrils. We then met a man whose wife is an alcoholic and their baby has fetal alcohol syndrome. He was very angry because he had brought money home to feed the children and his wife had spent it on alcohol.

One of the children that live in the alley.

More of the children that live in the alley.

We then got some time to shower and get ready for dinner. We went to a very, very nice Italian restaurant. I probably had the best lasagna that I’ve ever eaten in my life. As we walked some of the group to a small pub where they were going to watch a band play and meet someone that is a business partner of Chris’, we saw young children sleeping on mats on the sidewalk. They were totally asleep and people were just walking by them. It made me so unbelievably sad to see them lying there. They had no choice in the circumstances into which they were born. They didn’t make that decision. They are innocent and yet they live in such horrible conditions. My heart aches for them and I just pray that they can come to find a better life.

Travel, Travel and More Travel

Today was another big travel day. We got up in the morning and went to ride on the bamboo train. It was a crazy experience.

Our "train"

This is how it works: You get onto a bamboo platform that has two axles. It also has a motor attached to it. They start the motor and off you go.

This kind of shows the "driver" with the motor.

The only problem with the bamboo train is that there is only one track for going and coming traffic. When one car gets close to another car, the car with less people jumps off, disassembles their car (since the bamboo platform and axles are not connected to each other by anything permanent), and pulls the pieces aside so the other train can pass. Once everything is clear the axles are put back on the track, the platform is put back on the axles, and the passengers hop back on and go. The people of Cambodia used to transport their rice this way. After we got our joy ride for the morning, we traveled up the mountain to one of the killing fields from the Pol Pot regime. We got to the bottom of the mountain, only to find out that the only way to get up to the top was to take a motor bike. This meant riding on the back of a moped/motorcycle up a steep hill. I was a little nervous about this but I was kind of excited too. Me and my moto driver. Kinda freaked out!

It was a fun experience and I'm really glad that we got to do that. We got to the top of the mountain and toured the mass grave. The soldiers would drop the people into the cave that we walked into, essentially turning it into a mass grave.

The cave that we walked down into to see the memorial and to learn more about the killing fields.

The Pol Pot regime killed many, many people and the effects of the killings are still felt today in many areas of Cambodia. We toured around the site and it had an amazing view of the valley. You could see for miles and miles. It was wonderful! God truly has created beauty in this country beyond my wildest dreams.

The view from the top of the mountain.

After that we had lunch at the Culinary Training Center. Josh will be staying there for the next few days to teach them and then he will join the group in Phnom Penh. Lunch was delicious! Originally they were supposed to make pizza, but the power was out in the city from 8am to 5pm so the only things that they could make were things that they could make on the stove. We had two different types of pasta with chicken wings and vegetables. The girls did a wonderful job! After our superb lunch, we had to board the bus and endure the 5 and a half our drive back to Phnom Penh. I did a lot of sleeping, reflecting and listening to some of the sermons on my iPod. We had a little change of plans too when we finally reached Phnom Penh. The power is out in the province where our original hotel is. Instead we are staying at a different, much nicer, hotel...sadly just for tonight. It's the only reason that I actually have pictures as a part of my post tonight. Now I'm just typing all of this getting ready for bed.

Today was emotionally draining, but not as much so as visiting Rapha House. Seeing the mass grave that was associated with the Pol Pot regime was hard, but it didn't touch me in quite the same way as seeing the young girls that had been sexually exploited. I did a lot of self-reflection on the bus on our drive. I've been listening to some of the sermon podcasts on my iPod from a series of sermons at Common Ground that are very pertinent to my own personal issues going on at home. I think that they are really going to help me process a lot of things and help me to begin seeing certain aspects of my life in much healthier ways. There are a lot of people in the group that have really helped me to think and reflect and process. God has truly brought together a fantastic group. This trip was definitely something that I needed. I miss Lola and I miss everyone at home, but it's nice to be taken out of my element, put in a place where I am surrounded by people who know God, and be made to talk about issues and situations that I have been brushing aside for many years now. God knew this trip was exactly what I needed at a time when I needed it. I am so grateful for everyone who helped me make it here. Without them I wouldn't be having this wonderful experience and I know that it is going to change me for the better. So from the depths of my heart, thank you!

Pleasure and Pain

Here’s a run down of our day: We woke up and ate breakfast, which was followed by a quick team meeting. We each talked about what had touched us the most. For me that’s been talking to my group members or having experiences that are helping me to deal with certain situations at home. I know that God has knitted together this group in such a way that it will all have a tremendous impact on each of us and on each of the people that we come in contact with. After that we went to Rapha House. This was a very sad and interesting experience. The girls that are at Rapha House have been trafficked and many were brought back from other countries. These girls range from six years old to twenty years old. Many have been raped and beaten. The program that Rapha House does is in three parts. The first is prevention. Rapha House has some part in prevention but they mainly focus on the second and third steps of the process. The second is that of recovery. They are saving the girls from sexual exploitation and trafficking so they need to be counseled emotionally, psychologically and medically. The third aspect is reintegration. They are teaching the girls a variety of vocational skills and then they have a process of reintegration into the community. After we went to Rapha House it was time for lunch at the Culinary Training Center.

Mallory and I trying to cool off before we eat at the Culinary Training Center.

The girls in this program have been taken out of extreme poverty situations or orphanages and are learning how to cook. This will give them a marketable skill that they can later use. After they complete the program, CGI will place them at a restaurant or hotel where they can work. They did an amazing job. They made traditional Cambodia dishes, as well as spaghetti and hamburgers. The food tasted wonderful. Next we traveled to some of the orphanages where the girls are from. We saw two orphanages in stark contrast from one another. The first was rundown and pitiful. The living conditions were sub par and the overall complex was not well kept. The second orphanage was a beautiful compound that did so many things to sustain itself.

One of the girls working on her loom.

They taught the children how to produce silk, sew clothing, and make furniture. It was a very lovely place, given the fact that it was in deed an orphanage. Then it was time for dinner. We ate at a cute little restaurant that has a very interesting mission. They are providing jobs for the extreme poor in Battambang. All of the people that work there are from the community and they have taken them in and taught them marketable skills. They also provide them with wages well above those at the poverty level, bonuses are offered and they get three good meals a day. It was a very nice place. It reminded me a lot of the place that my mom and I went to in Morocco where we had lemon tarts (I know this means nothing to anyone but me. But at least it will help me remember the ambiance since I forgot to bring my camera to capture its simple beauty). It also made me laugh that we ordered "Blizzards" there. They were much better than Dairy Queen, but I had to get one just to say that I had a Blizzard in the middle of Cambodia while listening to U2 and Fleetwood Mac play over the radio in the corner of the room. Overall it was a busy day!

There were a lot of mixed emotions with today. I am so unbelievably grateful that God is working in the lives of the girls at Rapha House. Many of them have been saved and have committed their lives to Christ. That is amazing to me because it goes against everything they know in relation to their culture and their family. It takes a very brave person to let those things go and embrace something new. It was wonderful seeing God work in their lives like that. It was hard to see them because many have been hurt in a way that no human being should ever go through. We weren't allowed to take pictures so I can't even begin to describe to you how petite some of these girls were. God has not allowed me the capacity of mind to comprehend what it would take for a grown man to sexually abuse any of those tiny girls and I am so grateful for that. If I could wrap my mind around that I think it would break my heart so much that I wouldn't be able to put it back together again. The wonderful thing to me is that Rapha House is creating an environment where these girls can learn vocational skills, but they also learn to be children again. They play games and do arts and crafts. They laugh at silly things and they take turns doing each others hair. Those are all things that young girls should experience and it is being given to them in an environment that fosters love and kindness instead of pain and hatred. Their smiles are so innocent and for many you can't see the pain that is hidden behind the smiling gleam in their eyes. Others wear the pain that they have in a place for all to see. It is hard to hide the pain of being beaten and raped and it takes a lot of time to process the emotions that come along with something so horrible. I pray that we can raise awareness for the cause that Rapha House supports and for CGI as well.

Please visit these websites to learn more about what Rapha House and CGI are trying to do through their missions:

http://www.raphahouse.org/

http://www.centerforglobalimpact.org/

One of the Seven Wonders of the World: Angkor Wat

We had another wonderful day here! We got up at 4:30am to go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. For those of you that don't know, Angkor Wat is a complex of temples that were built in the 12th century. Originally they were Hindu temples then at some point in their history Buddhist monks took over. We were supposed to watch the sunrise but the cloud cover was too thick for us to see them. The main temple is Angkor Wat proper. There are a ton of temples scattered throughout the complex. We went through Angkor Wat while the sun was rising. It was beautiful to see the immense structures and to think that they had built this using only rudimentary tools. It was beautiful and mystic. There were a great deal of Hindu statues and Buddhist statues scattered throughout the temple. Many of them had "lost their heads" to thieves who have taken them to museums and other places over the years. There were some places where Buddhist statues had been placed on Hindu statues. It is the only place in the world where there is a marriage between Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. After walking around for quite some time we all needed breakfast and some coffee. We traveled back to our hotel and had an amazing breakfast! We gathered the group and checked out of the hotel. We then traveled back to the Angkor Wat complex to check out a few other temples. The first one we checked out was Angkor Thom.

One of the heads at Angkor Thom.

Another view of Angkor Thom.

A Hindu carving at the temples.

Sorry I can't help being a goof ball.

It's the one that many people see in pictures of the Angkor Wat temples. It has huge faces and towering buildings. Some historians said that quality was sacrificed over quantity but I still thought they were all beautiful. I took some time to sit outside of this complex and pray about all the things that have been going on in my life. It was a great feeling to sit there and see these temples in the most natural place. God gave those people gifts to build such beautiful things. After that we traveled to the Ta Prohm temples. This is the temple where there are huge banyan trees growing all around and through it. The trees were so immense it made you feel like an ant. These are the temples where "Tomb Raider" was filmed. It's been a long time since I've seen that movie so I couldn't really remember what scene or what part of the temple was in the movie but the temple itself was awesome so I didn't need Angelina Jolie to make it any better for me. After we were all done dying in the heat, we got on the bus for another road trip. I can't even begin to describe quite how hot it is here. I think that every ounce of fluid that I've been drinking just pours out of my body and my cells just scream out for water!! It's so unbelievably hot!! I don't think I've ever been so hot in my entire life. It was nice to get back onto the air conditioned bus. We ate lunch in Siem Reap. Mallory, Jessica, Brandie, Ashton and I ate lunch at a Mexican food restaurant. It was just as good as any Mexican restaurant we have in the US. While we were waiting for the rest of the group and the bus, we saw the lady that had cursed us the day before. It was scary because we could tell that she recognized us and came over to where we were shopping to ask us for money. We hopped on the bus the moment that it came to our meeting point. Then it was off again for another 4 hour drive to Battambang. We made a stop at a silk farm to see the process. Chris and Nicole might consider working with this particular silk farm on a more couture line of dresses later on after the Daughter's Project gets a little more credibility in the US and the market grows. We saw the whole process of how they grow them and what they feed them. That was pretty interesting because they feed them mulberry bush leaves that are a cross from mulberry bush plants from Japan, Malaysia, and Cambodia. We get silk from the cocoons that the silk worms make. They do the whole process at this particular silk farm. The artisans did beautiful work! It was a very clean work environment for those of you thinking that it might be like a sweatshop. Then we hopped back on the bus for the rest of our grueling bus ride. We are all just really tired of traveling since we traveled so long to get here and now we're doing a lot of our sightseeing. It takes its toll on the body really quick!! After a long four hour drive we made it to our hotel. It's absolutely beautiful here! It's just as nice as a lot of the hotels in the US. For dinner we went to a French restaurant. It was interesting having French cuisine in the middle of Cambodia, but it was a very good meal. I had lamb chops and they were very tender with good flavor. Mary Beth and I spent most of dinner asking Chris about the Center For Global Impact (CGI) and what it's different projects do. Each project teaches a girl or woman a different type of vocational training. byTavi teaches women to make bags and totes. The Culinary Training Center teaches girls to cook so that they will be able to work at restaurants and hotels. And the Daughters Project teaches girls to sew dresses. Each project is very different and interesting in its own unique way. After dinner we got massages and they were amazing. With tip it was only $10 for an hour of a full body massage. It was the perfect way to end a very long day of sight-seeing and travel.

So far the trip has been more touristy than it has been work so I still don't have a lot of feelings to process and write about. It is sad to see all of the poverty though. There is trash every where and what doesn't make sense to me are the amazingly beautiful homes that sit right next to a shack. It's all very strange to me because that would never ever happen in the US. There is a distinct line between where poverty is and where riches are at home. Here there is not as far as that goes. The thing that does upset me a lot is seeing the children of the homeless beggars. They didn't have a choice to be born into that, but they were and that makes me sad. If I could take them all home with me then I would. They don't deserve to have that life chosen for them. I'm still trying to work out in my head the impact that I can have for the girls that we work with once I come home. That's a struggle because a lot of people come home from mission trips and they are really excited about the cause still for a little while and then after some time it goes away and they forget all that they have seen. I'm not going to let myself forget.

Happy Independence Day...From Cambodia

Today has been so much fun!! (Well let's be honest, every day here has been fun. lol). We woke up early and got ready for the day. This first week that we're here is kind of our cultural immersion week and then next week is our work week. So we left Phnom Penh to go on a six-hour drive through the country side to Siem Reap. The ride was fair from smooth but we did get to see a lot of different things along the way. I think we passed probably close to a million rice paddies. They're everywhere!! But they look so green and luscious. It makes the countryside look tropical. The people that work in the paddies have to plant the rice by hand. I can't even imagine working in the heat here. On our way to Siem Reap we stopped at their version of a truck stop. They have fruit vendors and bug vendors...yes I said bug vendors! They sell different types of bugs that they have cooked, a variety of water beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, and tarantulas. They don't just cook the tarantulas though, some of them carry them around as if they were pets. They come up and put them on you if you look afraid. Apparently I looked terrified because I ended up having a tarantula put on me at two different times. Let me just pain this picture for you...whenever I was a child I couldn't even touch a picture of a spider because I was so afraid of them, so having them put on my body while I'm looking right at them...can you just say SCARED!!!!! After we were there for a little bit we got back on the bus and kept going. The sights around the countryside were overwhelming. Thatched huts on stilts with garbage all around them. Bulls that were so bony you could see every rib and every vertebrae. Naked children running around in stagnant water that had to have parasites in them. But everyone that we passed had a smile on their face and waved to us. They are all so happy here. We stopped for lunch and I got my first lesson in how to use chopsticks. Apparently my hands just don't work like that. It took me the entirety of lunch to figure out how they worked. At certain points I had to use a fork because I couldn't let the amazing food on my plate get cold before I ate it. We had cashew, pineapple chicken. My mom would have loved it! Then we finished up the drive to Siem Reap. Our hotel is absolutely amazing. We dropped off our stuff and took a walk around the area that we are in. Brandie and I got a fish massage on our feet.

You put your feet into a tub of fish and they eat the dead skin off your feet. It tickled so much that it took me quite some time to get used to it and keep my feet in. It didn't hurt but every once in awhile they would take a pretty big bite and it just felt very strange. Then we walked to a little restaurant and had milkshakes. Very strange for Cambodia, I know, but they were mango so maybe that makes a little bit of a difference. Kids were coming up trying to sell us trinkets and items. There was a man on a hand-pedaled bike selling books. He had lost his legs and that was his way of making money was to pedal around and sell his books. A woman with a baby boy that was probably two years old kept begging us for money. The little boy had sores on his legs and water in his bottle. He looked as if he were slightly malnourished, but not too bad at this point. While we were sitting there some of the people in our group saw here pickpocket some people on the street. When Chris, our group leader, told her to go away she used a lot of cursing in Khmai (the language here) and she used some very interesting English profanities as well. She was not pleased with us. After we regrouped at the hotel, we went to a buffet style restaurant that also had a show at the end.

The show was of typical Aspara dancing. Aspara dancing is similar to what some might have seen in "The King and I" the movie. It was very beautiful. Some of them I didn't understand but it was still very interesting. The food was wonderful. They had a mixture of Western dishes and typical Cambodia dishes. I stuck to the Cambodian dishes. It was a lot of fun!! Then we went to the night market.

It was awesome seeing all of the vendors and what they had to offer. A lot of it was the same stuff but it was still a fun place to people watch. It was a million degrees though because of all of the people and all of the lights.

I can't really blog anymore tonight because I am so tired and we're getting up at 4:30am to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I'll add pictures tomorrow because I haven't put them on my computer yet.

Sunday is a Fun-Day

Today has been absolutely amazing! Joni (my roommate) and I woke up well before our alarm was supposed to go off. This gave us time to chat and get to know each other. God made her my roommate for a reason! After our chat we both got up and got ready for church. The breakfast that we ate at the hotel was pretty good. We had omelets and toast. Nothing too exciting but it definitely reminded me of home. After we were all done we loaded everyone up in the bus and traveled through town to New Life Church. The service reminded me a lot about Common Ground. The worship part of the service was very fun and lively. People were dancing and really into the music. The crowd was younger than the other churches the girls have attended before. I think this will be good in the long run because they will have more people that they can relate to and that will reach out to them. They need a sense of community, especially in a faith that is new to them. The sermon was perfect (I’ll get into that a little bit later). After we got done with church we ate lunch. It was a great experience because we all ate family-style and we tried a bunch of different types of traditional Cambodian food. I pushed aside my annoyance of textures enough to try some things that I would not have necessarily tried before. It was a lot of fun! After that we traveled to the Daughters’ house where the girls live. It is such a cute little house. They sleep on the second floor and the living areas are on the first. It is on a fairly large plot of land and they hope to develop it over time if the property owners will let them do that. We played some hand games with the girls and then retired to the hotel to get some much needed napping in. The girls came to the hotel for a pizza party and for a fun activity. We made nametags with the girls so we could get to know the names, but we could also help them with their English. We had to drawn an animal that the first letter of our name started with. I "drew" a snake. I'm definitely not an artist so it doesn't look much like a snake. The girls then left to go back home and let us have a team meeting. Now I'm laying in bed about to fall asleep on my computer so I'm typing as feverishly as I can. Hopefully I'm making some sense but I can't promise anything.

The sermon related completely to what Joni and I were talking about this morning. God calls us to go and do and we have to answer His call. I had thought about this before when I received the letter that was telling me not to come on this trip. But a faith-filled life is about being a player in the game and not a spectator. Being a player takes work, it can be fun, but it can be a hard time too. Being a spectator is about the fun of the game. Being a player can be fun also, but it takes on a completely different meaning for the spectator as it does for the player. I'm not going to be a spectator in the life that God has planned for me. I'm not going to watch as the days idly pass by. I want to touch people's lives and have them touch mine. I'm being blessed just as much as we are blessing the people that we come into contact with here.

The other part of the sermon that struck me was that there is a difference between believing and having faith. Faith is an action. It's when God calls us to do something out of our comfort zone and we follow His calling because we believe in Him and His glory and His grace. It's not having a life devoid of problems, but being able to overcome the problems that come into our lives. God wants us to put our faith in Him so He can work miracles in us and through us. I truly believe that is why God has brought me to Cambodia. I'm learning so much about myself and about the wonderful people that God has put on this earth.

A few of the girls at the Daughter's Project are being "tested" to see if they can make a dress completely on their own in 10 days or less. This is one of the girls showing off her hard work.

This is Srey Nouch. She's my photography body. She asks for my point-and-shoot camera so she can take pictures of everyone. She is absolutely beautiful inside and out. If I could bring her home I would in a heartbeat. She's 10 years old.

This is eyeball fruit (I don't know it's actual name but they call it that because it's exactly what it looks like). It has the consistency of what I think an eyeball might have. It tastes like something at home but we haven't been able to really figure it out yet. The white fruit with black spots is dragon fruit and it's very tasty.

Our nametags that we did with the girls. Saran is on the right and she is a sweetheart!!

More airplane food than you could ever eat

I knew when applying to be a part of this group that the journey would be a long one, but man I didn’t realize how my body would feel and the journey isn’t even over yet. I’m sitting on our last flight from Seoul, South Korea to Phnom Penh, Cambodia typing this on Microsoft Word to post later. I’m sick of studying and needed something else to do so I figured I would just go ahead and type this out.

This has definitely been a test of my patience. I haven’t lost it yet, which is pretty typical for me since I have such a short fuse. The only time that I got kind of annoyed was when the gentleman that was my row mate on our 13 ½ hour flight decided to spend most of his time drinking beer and burping. I guess I should be a little more accurate, he was belching. I could hear it over the movie I was watching. It was craziness. Other than that it has been a pretty smooth trip. We thought we were going to have to get our luggage in Korea and go through customs there but we ended up just having to go through a transfer counter and didn’t have to mess with luggage. The Seoul Airport is beautiful! It was great getting to walk around and stretch. I still have ankles at this point, a little fatter than usual, but at least they haven’t become straight up “cankles”. My feet still fit into my shoes! Now we’re on the last leg of our really long journey and I can’t wait to get there to get a good night’s sleep. I’m pretty sure I’ve fended off any jet lag by sleeping at the right times and making myself stay awake even when all I wanted to do was sleep. I’m ready to take on Cambodia!

Me, Jessica and Mallory excited to be in Cambodia finally.

The whole team together (from left): Joni, Jen, Marybeth, Brandi, Joe, Nichole, Josh, Jason, Melissa, Me, Jessica, Mallory