So I guess its office my youthful innocents is over now when I ride Cambodian taxis I get asked where my 3 kids are o well. So its been 5 years since I turned 20 and left those teenage years behind me what I can now reflect upon. Most of you many not know this about me but at 20 I took hard look in and realized how big my ego was and really started to get into Ram Dass and other sort of life philosophers in order to these writers and books etc really helped me recognize my behavior and egotism in ways I cant always admit to my self even today. I will say I have come along way and what better way to truly celebrate a milestone like 25 then with a trip to india to see the Dali Lama speak! So for my actual birthday I kept it pretty low key as I had my conference in a 2 days and most of my ideas about being 25 lay in the northern Indian mts =) my host family had a taxi go all the way into the city to get me a cake for my bday which was really nice I feel bad when they do things like that because I know they have no money and would not take the money for the cake. Some other people came over and just hung out for an hour or so like I said no bar hopping this bday. Since being in Cambodia I can say I feel my life path changing I just wonder where it will take me I can say 25 right now feels less of a choice of action and more of a flow that seems to be just taking me along for those of you who actually read this blog vs just looking at my pictures feel free to explain to me ur memories of being 25. Well valentines day just so happens to be my bday yea I know I am just a regular cupid however this yea instead of worrying about all the love stuff I have decied to take the feminesting challenge you should check out the blog http://feministing.com/ to take the chance to talk about reproductive rights. However I did this for Cambodians because thanks to Susan G Komen I now know how serious American women are taking their reproductive rights =) anyways just so you know I did not come up with this activity alone this 19 year old girl who is a first year med student came to my house one night to ask me to train her in out reach public health sort of stuff could she work with me this was the best news ever! So I gave her some books and materials I had and just asked her to pick what she wanted to teach and we could lesson plan etc after words. She came back and said she wanted to sexual education at the school this meant permission from the school director who I had no idea who they were. Lucky for me the sub school director who I thought was just some eng teacher knew me bc I played soccer etc with him so I just was like can I teach health and got a yes. I taught 6 classes but they combined two each so not so many hours anyways thanks to my host sister I knew where to start explain the menstrual cycle yea my sister cant understand why you cant get pregnant in 2 weeks so I figured a bunch of 14 year olds would be on par with this belief. Next I had them draw the human male and female anatomy just to see what their understanding of it was before teaching it to them and guess what no one knew the female anatomy only the external male atomy can we say penis culture proof. Had them talk about pressures on both boys and girls in Cambodia to have sex get married have babies etc and overwhelming of them stated that girls are in lots of pain and will die while having a baby if you get married to early. I should also mention Cambodia lack education for even adults is provided on family planning and birth control so abortion is more common for whatever reason it would bring less shame on the family according to the students and also when I did the womens group to have the teenage girl who gets knocked up to have an abortion vs giving them birth control. However more of the students in the room also told me they knew where they could get birth control with out their parents knowing. Despite this though they had a lot of questions about abortion which is ironic because if I was in an American school omg would my ass be grass if I actually answered said questions but in Cambodia no big deal but they asked me where they can get one procedure side effect really detailed stuff. I then tried to change the topic back to using birth control and explain to them about plan b as well as I don’t want any person first choice of birth control be an abortion. Apparently their was also a big myth behind keeping condoms past the expiration date by freezing them this might explain why Cambodians have 5 kids jk. I also took the time to explain that you should never force someone to have sex with you which is a huge deal in Cambodia I am not sure if this was understood because pretty much the way they define boyfriend girl friend means you must have sex with that person even if you don’t want to. All and all it was an awesome time because pretty much I was told in Cambodian culture they would be to shy to talk about this etc and that most time the girls just opt out of the class. I think the reason I had such a large participation is one I gave out bubilicious gum sent from America lol but it was two girls vs a male which im pretty sure is how sex edu is taught and I am also an American and since im pretty sure every culture over sexualize Americans its okay to talk about anything sexual to an American we are just gurus on the subject. Since this blog is getting long ill save my needs assessments survey for another blog entrey. Just like to thank the world for my existence and thank all of you who have wished me happy birthday for the existence I have because seriously without all of you my life would be really boring and not worth living. Unit next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!!!
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