This is my review of grammarly.com's Grammar Checker.

I know you all want to know what’s with this title and what the heck does it have to do with me in Cambodia. Lets just say someone with my writing style makes those who like to follow the English rulebook for grammar pretty annoyed. I have had people ask me do I spell check use Microsoft etc in the past and never seem to believe me when I say yes. People fail to see that when your spelling is so messed up not even spell checker can spot it or when you write a sentence how could Microsoft not catch it well I am here to state for my writing it does not. What to do in the past 10 years I have not seen anyone try to one up the Microsoft word checker until now! This is my Review of grammarly.com's Grammar Checker.  www.grammarly.com You should check it out and test it out for your self do not just take what I say as the be end to end all as the saying goes. So a few weeks back someone from this company sent me and email to test the website out for a while, I have I will start with the positives. It is extremely in-depth like it will not just under line things for you it will state what grammar mistake you are making what rule your breaking show you examples. I think this would be invaluable to someone just starting out in America but also young kids. It would have helped me to better understand English grammar rules vs memorizing something for a test it would have made the whole process or writing more hands on. That is sort of an issue for me I honestly have no idea about all the grammar rules I seriously forgot the word for a period was clause why this made it difficult for me. Due to the way the website corrects me, it tells me what I did wrong but I did not thoroughly understand the jargon, they do have a dictionary of grammar words http://www.grammarly.com/handbook/.  However if your trying to write a basic email to a NGO in my case I don’t want to spend 30-40 mins looking it all up. However on the flip side if I was not so out of touch with more of a school atmosphere or this was used on a substantial report it would be worth my time it depends what help you need. It not only tells you when you did something wrong but if it thinks you are being too wordy which, is a nice feature. It allows you to be more direct and to the point thus making you seem more intelligent and have better stated email reports etc. Another added bonus is the suggestion to increase or make certain words of higher vocabulary or at the very least helps you to see words similar to the ones you have used. I think the greatest benefit to this would be for those really trying to learn grammar rules that it would really keep working with you to help improve your writing style above and beyond what Microsoft is able to do currently. Now I will go “Debby downer” on this and talk about all the things I thought either did not work for me or could use some tweaks. Like I stated above it’s a excellent learning tool however, ill be honest I am sort of lazy and do not feel like taking the 30 mins to learn I want to write up things quickly and send them off at least with Microsoft when it does catch my mistakes they just auto fix them I don’t have to spent all this time figuring out what its trying to tell me to do. The pointing arrow that shows you what it wants to change is difficult to tell where it wants you to fix it will highlight a whole sentence not just that one part it wants fixed. The web site also has a function to be combined into your Microsoft word however; it would not work for me I am assuming because it could not support a mac. It was also sort of annoying that it did not like the word you it always wanted you to type out the person name. I know for learning purpose the set up they have is good but if you just want to go though your paper once you cant its not like Microsoft where you see the mistakes fix and go on sometimes you can re read the same 5 sentences because you do not correct it the first time around. Example it may want you to put a common in but then a few categories later it doesn’t like the world you used then it goes back to that sentences vs just telling you what’s wrong with the whole thing the first time. I will say all in all I will keep using it as one more computer device to check my papers however, while I am happy to finally see a advancement in spellcheck etc from what we had since the 90s to me this web site still needs to be fine tuned before I could say it is my life saver.

grammarly.com's Grammar Checker. 

The sun eats the moon…Eclipse

Rocks that calm Baby fetus and help them not become stupid??? yea really

helping the monks out

Water helps the sun swallow the moon the water then brings good luck

i went around just banging on stuff to make cambodian's happy

Luna Eclipse 

Since the days of Jentee’s husband leaving she has been crying all the time is convinced she is pregnant and Peace Corps has come for a site visit. O and yes a lunar eclipse to add to that list which has been the hi-light of the week which will be sure to share pictures and details with you. Now that jentee is not so worried about the fact her husband doesn’t love her and realizes its all the god mom screwing things up she is more in love with her husband then ever however there is one issues with all of this their not actually married. They had a wedding the family tells me they are married but after the trip I realized there is no paper just a wedding party if you will which means there is nothing legal about this thing. I still worried the husband doesn’t understand what will happen if he doesn’t come back in a year or comes up with a better solution since she cant go to America. Peace Corps came to visit for their once a year visit, which is sort of more of a dog and pony show what I mean by this is the major disconnect between peace corps and my actual village life and I wish they understood how they come off. Ex my family think they lie because they say things to put people at ease without following though when I moved in they took down my sister phone number said they would call check in etc they never did. It was really funny she called them out when they came I guess they got lost and she was like well you would not get lost if you called me but I think u lost my number peace crops people were like no no we have it but jentee is pretty smart so she is like o yea then tell me what is it? Then they were all like well its not on us its in the office and she is like right sure. They come to help build the program in community but it just comes off like a yes yes conversations like they don’t really listen which, can be frustrating because when you really care about the work your doing and having Cambodian develop you want what your telling peace corps to matter which is just not always the case. Either way they don’t come off to well to people and that’s also difficult. Another downer to this visit I was sutel told that for people to extend they don’t so much want people to stay in the village but work in a bigger city for capacity building. Why this sucks for me the reason I am trying to extend with peace corps is my host family really wants me to say and I feel that I can do a lot of work still on a grass roots level other wise I could just go work in Phnom Penh with out peace corps. Speaking of another funny story my host family apparently wants to give me land which I didn’t really believe however they now have told peace corps they plan to do this and peace corps did not even know what to say because they were going to ask my family to take another volunteer next July instead they just had to keep quite. No its time mythology story time with out further a due what happens when there is a solar eclipse in Cambodia where this comes from no one can tell me but the way they say the word for eclipse is oute haow japp chan for the most part its consider good luck. People bang on tops of things and scream out loud to help the monks to bring the good luck and help the sun swallow the moon also to help the sun you leave out water right in front of the moon with incses over it. The other things you bang are fruit trees because its is the belief that the more you bang on a fruit tree with an eclipse the more fruit said tree will have. However its not all fun and games lol now if you are pregnant or they think you are with child you can not stand in front of the eclipse why??? Well simple the baby will be born stupid how to prevent upsetting the fetus you must go inside the house with rocks inside your shirt see picture. Due to the fact they though jentee eggo was prego I got to witness this first hand. FYI that next day we discover she was not pregnant so looks like she missed the eclipse for no reason. Anyways after an hour of banging and waiting for the sun to fully eat the moon it was time to take the water that helped the son and dump it on ur self and family members and house of course because now you will have sooooo much luck. Ironically that night I deiced to play with my tarot cards I guess I was feeling the luck of the craziness of the eclipse and the cards also told me jentee was not pregnant sometimes the cards know. I am currently trying to raise fund for a take back the night and Shisha and ngo that helps with rape victims anyways I just got word from lucky supper market I can hand out information on gender based violence and fund raise supper excited ill have to tell you how that goes until next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!

Teaching Brain Neurology

I have to say I have been know for my lofty ideas and sometimes they are winners and some are loser and some times they work out but not in the way I planned on either way I would not change any of them. This is the case with my idea for teaching about nutrition for the brain also explain how the brain works. A few months ago my friend Dara from world vision asked me if I could create a lesson for this health fair I was like sure but he stated he wanted me to try to do it without anyone translating it so you would think I would aim low. However I though hum they actually gave me a month to prepare I can have my khmer tutor help me and though some talk I was like well it would be cool to buy a cows brain and start a lesson with it. I thought I could play tag with them by showing them how the synapse and axon dendrites enzymes etc work then after teach them about nutrition. I tried to plan all this out so their was lots of games sadly though I was misinformed about the age they told me like 11-12 which would have worked but when I got to said out reach it was like 8 years old so a bit advanced. Not to worry though Dara just had to re explain everything I said in Khmer. I had some pictures to the tag also failed they ended up playing a Khmer version of tag that is called chicken but that is how things go sometimes. The nutrition lesson went smooth I had a poster some cards and they all played a game and understood the lesson kids in Cambodia are pretty smart with all the foods and names I swear I don’t know some names of fruit in English I only can call them the name in Khmer now. It was funny though because even with them being on different teams they still cheated with each other see pictures it cracked me up. In between all of this I played some Khmer games with them Dara made up some balloon bursting game were the kids had to bit on the balloon. Its cool when I have the opportunity to participate in a big out reach project like this one it gives me a chance to plan something bigger try new things out see if I can help teach things to village that most people automatically assume are above the heads of village people. While I can say there was not a real grasp on the brain neurology it did start them to think more about the human body and instead of just telling them eat good so your healthy I took a first step for them to think about how the body runs on food and how important the brain is. On another note I have put my hat in the ringer for my Peace Corps extension I word it this way because they only have 3 spots and 10 people want it =( and I am not exactly a favorite however they have asked that I try to partnership with an ngo to take on some of the cost and that it would help my chances. Due to money as well I may have to for go my ride home this summer, which is sort of a downer. The thing is this is how I look at it either way I am going to be working in Cambodia and will not have money to go back and forth so its not the worst thing. My action plan for my 3^rd year ideally would be to work in gender and development I have emailed USAID Gender branch to see if I could work with them I also met with the U.N Women to see if I could have a chance to do something with them. Now I am not delusional I know gender is not on to many peoples top list so I have other plans for public health as well though world vision who I work with already or khana or I recently have met with Marie Stoops they work on family planning and I really admire all that they do for reproductive rights. Other then this I have no real plan of action just to keep working in Cambodia. Until next peace out from the other side of the world! 

My Cambodian Family Vacation Pictures

Jentee's Husband Arrives the airport

the crab was amazing!

jentu and my grandmama

my host mom is ankle deep but needs a floating device haha

playing in the waterfalls my host mom churey and me

churey dancing to the sunset

jentu playing in the waterfalls

not quite a title wave hehe

my host dad with jentee's husband

Better Late then Never

What does it mean to be integrated while in peace corps training we were given markers of how many people ask you to eat rice with them or the amount of wedding invitations you get or even how many people want to drink with you. For me I never felt these markers fit my idea what integration was in fact I spent this last year really analyzing what would make me feel integrated and after these past two weeks I think I get it maybe? Well the peace corps markers that past volunteers left me with made me soon realize that’s more about popularity then actual integration so I started my search early on but now I can tell you its when people with in your community society can break down and cry to you scream at you trust you with every fiber of their being and not be worried you will shun them. It’s more about the disappearances of nationality into the humanness we all have. I think there are degrees in which one integrates as well and times we can fit in we can even become part of a family however to go past that is no easy feat and we or at least from my experience we don’t seem to get their to often and when we do its never what we except. These past two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster for me and I have had to really think about what is fair to write in this blog as for when I first started my blog it was all just free flowing I felt the information I had was mine to share with you my followers however slowly that has changed some things were no longer my secrets to share. It would be selfish for me to unload some things I have had to learn to deal with in part bc the person sharing the secret with me is clearly suffering far more then my self with that said if there are things missing in this write up that you wish you knew more about I am sorry but I can not share it on this public form and perhaps one day I will bare all to the world but for now you will have to take what I can give. This blogged is titled Better Late Then Never because my host sister American Husband finally came to Cambodia after a 4 year hiatus however with this preparation I had a lot of looming dread intertwined with complex thoughts where I don’t feel I ever reach a right answer to any of it. Even now as I am writing this blog way after the fact of meeting him can’t I say I know what’s best. My host sister has had to endure public stigmazation for her “husband’s” lack of support and stating he will come to see her and has not. When I first heard about this whole situation I feared the worst I am not going to lie I think some of my past blogs might reflect that. When you have to deal with the public shaming day in and day out you become numb to it and you start to lie to your self and others to the point you don’t even know anymore this is how I viewed my host sister. There is a quote from a movie goes something like this “don’t pretend to be someone your not because pretty soon you will forget you are pretending and so will everyone else” I didn’t want this for my host sister however I did not beat around the bush I took a weed whacker to it and that was no the best approach for a few month in the beginning I caused her to shut down on me. I thought at the time I was just trying to help her open her eyes and make her realize she is putting her self in a seriously dangerous situation at the time I didn’t know if this husband was some sort of pimp or what even just so desperate guy who wants a made. I truly feared for her life this was what sociologist called a fallacy of being to close to the situation I took my personal experience in the domestic violence shelter and could not see it any other way or would not. I learned a lot from this and I stopped and instead decided that my purpose was to make her happy now as you can guess sometimes what is best for someone and what makes the happy is not the same. That is a consequence I am prepared to handle down the rd. I will not go into details for this is one of those things that will not be stated on the public sphere of the internet. I started to help her Skype with the husband etc. and have had time to sort of help him realize what he was doing to her I think in some ways I helped force his hand to come and visit. Back on track to leading to the visit I came back from Phnom Penh it sort of hit me like a ton of bricks just how bad this situation could be or to know truly what it feels like to be 100 percent devastated. All my worst fears came out in this culturally polite conversation my host sister and mom had with me as to this god mom telling them to keep me quite so I don’t upset the husband what does that mean I don’t exactly know. I think I know enough however to know that what ever she is up to is not good and clearly she has some sort of ulterior motive I can not speculate as to what but I have not seen anyone in this life time act so worried about a relationship that is not their own unless they are getting something out of it. I just started to think the worst about this lady she was going to extort money or something I just did not trust her and I like to think I have pretty good intuition all I could think about is my sister is going to be sold or die or something. Have no fear though you guys it gets better from here on out. While I started the week off in my own boat knowing the real situation more so then my family was ready to admit they did join me soon enough! My week was filled with following the two love birds around to take lots of pictures I will post them asap. So its important to note there is a Cambodian law change that does allow foreign men over 50 to marry Cambodian women so jentee cant go to the states right now however the god mom started to act crazy telling her family she will make her husband divorce her etc.  In sight to this law makes you think thank god right they want to protect women but if you dig a little deeper you start to see men in Cambodian society like that status quo aka more women to men this has allowed their cheating behavior to rule the roost if you will. Once this lady started to get real hostile with my family the walls all broke down and they were no longer defending her and so many truths came out of it. However so of this came at a hardship because as the saying goes the truth really does hurt more on that story first I will bring this to a happy note with the trip to kampong som. My host mom always talks about going to the beach down south and with jentee husband in town this was able to happen he bought a van for the family and we all went down to the beach real Khmer style by that I mean packed up van with cooked fished meat and anything else they could fit into 5 different coolers. This was the hi-light of the week for me it just felt like everyone was on neutral ground again ate all the crab I could eat played in waterfalls swam in the ocean etc it was great. At night it was me in the room with 10 other khmer people I tried to take a picture to show that they pushed all the beds together so we could try to fit as many people on and this left floor space for some more people. They put the 3 year old to sleep with me and does this kid sleep crazy and he wet the bed I was going to kill him but they don’t really train him to go to the bathroom or don’t know not to give a kid that young water be4 bed. Actually the next morning my host dad tried to get him to go to the bathroom instead he ran outside and peed off the 3^rd story balcony thank god no one seemed to mind. With in the coming days when we got back my host mom realized how screwed up things were and that my host sister was trying to get pregnant I also happen to get sick from the AC. With no one around except me and the 3 year old despite my horrible khmer she just broke down. She was suction cupping me so I could not do much to console her at that time but she had her bubble burst after talking to me all week seeing the husbands actions (he is a good guy but supper slow) before she could not accept the situation for what it was and I cant really go into that much detail hear bc once again not my soul to bear but it was one of the saddest thing I have seen in all my time. All she could do want just cry into my arms and tell me how much she wanted better for her children then the life she had.  That she disserves to die for not living up to expectation she had for her self and what she has done to jentee which was crazy to hear out of her mouth. She regrets ever trusting the god mother but as the saying goes its never to late to be sorry but sorry cant fix things after the fact. In the mean time the dynamics with in my family changed jentee who was once so closed off and didt trust a soul had no friends now relied on me and liz . She kept telling me all trip long she was happy to have me and liz as friends and that I am the same as her younger sister really. To see her change into this person who was just so happy around her husband it made me see how repressed she has to be for the sake of Cambodian culture. I joked around with her bc she gave me so many speeches about when luis came how I could not kiss him in public but she was so flirty in public I just kept saying u wait the next time my bf comes! I spent a lot of time with both of them and together they seem happy so what ever reservations I had about him being some sort of sex slave trade dude I don’t think that’s him. On the other hand though HE JUST DOES NOT GET THINGS LIKE DOES NOT! My family left me in charge of getting him to understand he has a wife not just some girlfriend he cant not tell people in America he is married he cant just come once in 4 years not have a house with jentee etc. still after numerous talks was not getting it finally a little beam of light came though when I asked him if he would want his daughter to be treated the same way as this whole situation as treated jentee and of course not BINGO! So he told me he was going to think of better ways to support them as a married couple not just do what he has been doing thus far I don’t know how well all my pep talks worked but only time will tell. This was an emotional tiring 2 weeks for me and has made me kick my self 100 times over for not speaking Khmer better. It was a transformation for my family has a whole and maybe I became apart of it and just can’t see it from my perspective. While I will always worry about this on going situation it has also made me realize that there is more to integration then meets the eye while I may never viewed in my community as Cambodian I am also not viewed as American I am viewed as “Eileen” these imaginary boundaries that we put on people when we first meet them seem to disappear as time goes on and for that knowledge I will forever be grateful to my experience in Cambodia. Until next time peace out from the other side of the world!

Researcher USA: Human Sexuality

This will give away how much lifetime tv I watched as a kid but I do not know how many of you watched the Golden Girls but Sophia the old lady on the show would always start out funny stories with “pictures it 1889” then something about her being in Italy would ensue. I will start my story the same way picture it 2011 I am standing in front a few hundred people about to give a speech as an expert on human sexuality. I guess I should first start this whole fiasco from the start because after all one does not just end up on stage without a few events unfolding. As a peace corps volunteer one of the most valuable lessons we learn in training is all about IRBING this is a term that refers to making as many possible contacts to work with on projects etc while in country. About 5 months into living at site my counter part who is also studying to be a DR in Phnom Penh at International University has me take the IU van in with him to help him with a project it is during this faithful day I meet some higher ups in the university who talk about wanting to work with me more. However at this time, I am overwhelmed with so many other things at site I just put the offer to work with the university on the back burner. It was not until the end of the rainy season when I remembed their offer that I was like hum it would be cool to do something with this university of potential Dr’s and Midwives but what I had no idea. What I had in my mind was setting something up for drs to do more volunteer work or help them with out reach education which I do not think is ever really taught to them. In the meeting, I have set up I go back and forth with the international director who deiced he wants to start a potential class on human sexuality that would be more encompassing than just std type of education because he felt it could help with long term patient care. I sit back and cant believe I am hearing right that in Cambodia they are willing to teach a class about gender sexuality everything (my draw drops). I soon think though how can I help you with this? Once again though more talk they would just like me to come up with a prototype if you will on what a human sexuality course could look like. I take on this challenge they give me a dead line of the end of oct however, in-between all of this I was visiting china so this gave me to two weeks to create the course the pressure was on. Well when I came back from china I had the power point slides ready and had a date set up to meet with the director again of course by Cambodian standards you can not make a meeting in the beginning of the month and have it stand as is by the end of the month. Yea so it got canceled not to worry he would call me to re schedule me sigh o well had other things to do anyways. It was one fateful morning when my whole house came crashing down on me, it went something like this “Eileen I am so very surprised I see your poster at school you will be presenting” me to hong “huh what are you talking about right now” hong to me “yes there is a big poster of you saying you will talk about the human sexuality” inside my head “what the fuck did they do and why did know one call me to ask” few mins later in my own head “how am I going to deal with this sigh I guess I have to call and figure this mess out”. After a call, im told pretty much nothing except could I meet him this Saturday upon meeting the next wtf moment occurred going on the website to get the street address to give to a tuk tuk I see my picture now I know I am in deep. At this meeting, which he showed up to an hour, late my time is just no valuable I guess they inform me that they made these posters of the presenters and I would not mind right umm yea I sort of do mind. Like most things in Cambodia I am always pushed to go to new lengths to be culturally sensitive with this situation they would have lost face (a big deal in Cambodia) if I backed out thus causing me to lose face.  I suck it up and said I will do it however, this leaves me with another issues what do I tell peace corps? Well once anything could be media related which at this point I clearly had no idea if it would or would not be I had to call the director to sort of explain this situation out. Which went something like this me I am presenting a small lecture (I didn’t know the number of people) can you just tell me what I can and cant say if the press is their… huh what exactly are you talking about me well I am presenting on human sexuality but don’t worry the university has labeled me a research from the USA nothing about peace corps (most of you are under the notion that you must have a PhD to be considered a research, me to but in Cambodia turns out not!) the rest of the conversation in confession umm just don’t talk about Cambodian politics and you should be okay. So now we fast forward to the day of and were back on all these eyes on me and I must start a presentation on the history of human sexuality with an emphasis on Cambodian history no easy feat since there is little to nothing documented on the subject believe me, I spent weeks researching it! Now for those of you who don’t know me I have a big mouth and tend not to shut up however, big groups are not my things I do much better in small groups. In fact, I don’t think I have ever gotten a good grade in public speaking in my life in all the classes I have had on the subject, I pretty much get a B if I am lucky. I also have this issues where I speak 1000 miles a min and I cant stop my self for the most part it takes a lot of mental power to slow down however, when you know your audience 2nd la is eng you have to speak supper slow which I tried my best to do. Now Cambodia is pretty much in the dark ages when it comes to talking about sex in public with this in mind I did not go to extreme however, I thought since I was dealing with med students I should not be too worried. I was wrong the maturity level of people who are this close to dealing with patients was no better then a 12-year-old boy in the states it was sort of sad. On the other hand, the people who were interested seemed to learn a lot though no one except one person asked a question after the lecture more on that in a sec. the mic kept cutting out which was annoying which im sure made it hard for people to understand me but the two people who came with me Liz and Taylor said overall it was good that it was not the train rec they thought it could be. I know you think I missed the bullet on that one but wait it only became a train rec after… so that one person who asked a question was this old Khmer guy who was also a presenter about erectile dysfunction now my lecture was the history of human sexuality so I just kind played off his questions of that is another topics one I can cover at a different time but just stating I am wear of sexual dysfunction in both men and women. This kept him at bay for the time being however bc he was also a presenter we got brought to a special room with fruit I bought both my friends in with me thank god for what unfolds next would not be believed if I did not have other witness. Now keep in mind the whole situation was confusing and his line of questioning didn’t make senses but by the end, all I can tell you is that he wanted to correlate his ed with virgins. This whole situation was extremely sexist and if you don’t believe that patriarchy behavior is alive and well I am living proof so its 3 girls on one side of the table and all the men on the other side when all of a sudden I will call him ED guy starts to questions the hell out of me. Wants to know my approach to human sexuality and I was like I have a social sciences background but then he started to imply a social sciences background in it self was not good enough and then proceeds to ask me this is the terminology he used not me by the way, yea this guy is a dr “have I ever been inside a lady’s secret parts” umm me no I am not a gynecologist I am a social scientist with an interest in women’s rights and human sexuality. Then he starts to talk about virginity this is where it just got so sexist I did’t even know what to do Liz was turning bright red I thought she might punch him so I am trying to just keep my composure. He starts to question how do I view virginity as a good or bad thing now I did not want to state my option for I knew what he wanted to hear but I also wanted to make him see the fallacy in his logic so I did not say what he wanted to hear instead I asked a question with a question can you define what a virgin is to me? Naturally he could not bc virginity at best medically is defined by loss of hymen which most people lose in various activities that have nothing to do with sex. The way we think of virginity and sex is more socially/ culturally constructed then anything else. Then he keeps going on about Khmer women and the collapses of the moral system as far as not waiting till marriage and stating that its because they follow the west aka American where there is not such thing as a virgin now he was trying to call the 3 Americans sitting in front of him sluts or broken. I was getting frustrated liz was about to punch him when we ask him well what about a man virginity and he was like well he cant loss his hymen he does not have one so it does not matter if he has sex or not (nothing sexist their). Then he goes back to Erectile Dysfunction and is trying to figure out how can we know who has the problem and what can help. Well I am like you know there is medicine however, are you aware that statistically only like 30 percent of women are capable of achieving orgasm so if you are worried as a doctor about sex dysfunction maybe you should start their. That’s when he turns his ed issues into the thought that having sex with a virgin would cure him that’s when I just dropped my jaw and had nothing else to say to this man. I guess I can say I am glad I got to have my first lecturing experience in a country that is more relax with things such as this. Until next time peace out from the other side of the world.