When west and east collide

Yea its been almost two years but it was time to introduce my mom to my Cambodian life… while every volunteer gets excited for family to come and visit there life aboard we also get nervous of how will all of this be handled. Be4 most of my friends moms came we would sit around and speculate on what events would throw our parents over the edge have check list to not go over board we get it we signed up for this they did not.  Hum though I have to admit with my mom who never really leaves the country and idea of a vacation is going to the “country” aka Pennsylvania yea I know your thinking hum is that really considered country well in my family it is lol that’s how you can tell we are just too new york anyways I knew this was not going to be the vacation she was excepting or wanting or even ready for.  With all this said the on goings of this visit with my mom and aunt Marybeth are at times funny and sad but this is not to say anything negative about the over all vibe of the trip because it was awesome to just share random moments with people from back home! But for sake of entertainment what I bring up will be all the over the top moments but know not every second was that crazy.  I think its fair to say that until you come visit you also will think half of what I write is made up or not real however soon my American family was in for the shock of just how real Cambodian life could be. I never go about things the easy or normal way so my host family came with me to simreap to meet my mom and aunt the night before I have my host mom walking around outside with out a shirt or bra on why because she was soo sad that she did not have a bra to were to meet my mom and spend the whole day having what she thought were American style clothes made to meet my family. Mean while on the west side of things my mom and aunt both went out shopping in Thailand for what they thought were Cambodian clothes and to see how west and east thought they made the mark on the other was amusing to say the least. My host sister jentu who thinks America is number one was the guide for this trip anything involving Americans she is front and center. She is the one who sells used clothes which I always call salvation army clothes needless to say she waned to give my mom some of her clothes as a gift so I spent the 5 hour car ride to semi reap conving her why that was not a good idea she had high hopes and dreams I think that my mom would love said clothes so much that jentu could have her take a bunch back to America and sell them…yea really lmao she has not realized they come from America yet. Due to my rocking the boat antics once we got to said hotel I had to fight with the manger bc he was not happy about the fact villagers aka Cambodian nationals would be staying in the hotel haha lucky my family is not someone who gives much thought to the discrimination they get put though in there own country, however some Khmer people really will not even attempt to go in what they feel are “white people” only places. When we get up to the room my host mom is going to take a shower however 20 mins later she finally comes out to inform me that she could not take a shower because she did not know to. I go to inspect to see the western shower and all the nobs and understand so for once im not the one having to be taught something by her which is an hourly occurrence in my day to day life. In true khmer style even though I called the hotel my mom was at hours be4 to let them know I was in they forgot so after a while I finally call back to discover they are in we all meet up at the hotel for the meet and greet which I think went well. Onto ber-iey which is this all khmer resort something that I don’t think shows up in lonely planet but you take a boat and there is some runis and an awesome sunset to watch and that was the first exploration of Cambodia for my American family and perhaps got them up excited then nervous about Cambodia maybe? Anyways we get a big dinner were jentu convince the khmer staff that I am Cambodian when jentu puts her mind to something she really can get anything she wants its sort of shocking. Ankor Wat and the other smaller wats were a full day event which took a lot of energy but well worth it I think I personally liked the wat with the tree thought it the best. Lunch was the interesting while I am used to my Khmer family idea of packing lunch but my mom and aunt who have been on only package food had to move out of there comfort zone.  That morning we did go to a Khmer market and I got coffee while jentu ran around buying food so I never actually saw what she was buying until we sat down to eat which I might have warned her about a few things never minded. So jentu and my mom are unpacking this lunch which was just in a Khmer style cooler nothing like America anyways she pulls out this full chicken which she did have cooked at the market but it still has it head on (typical for Cambodia) but not for an American to see it still has some feathers on it or hair. When my mom turns to me and says your not going to really eat that and I just laughed bc I eat this type of chicken all the time and there is never a refrigerator involved however I think her and my aunt liked the shrimp or prawn I still don’t know the difference between the two one is bigger then the other? Mean while my host family is eating the eyes of the chicken and fighting over who will eat the claws. The next day we go to some hand made art places that are ngo like which I think my mom liked better then the wats more up her ally and bought some stuff to support the ngo it was nice after a long day in the hot sun. that afternoon all of us get a fish massage which is us putting r feet in a pool full of fish that eat the dead skin off ur feet. The Cambodians felt nothing while all of us Americans were freaking out and like ahh it tickles im sure the people watching us were entertained. On our way back to phnom penh we stop in prey chore where my other host family lives that was pretty uneventful however I could tell my host mom was not happy to meet ther other Khmer mom I guess 3 moms in one place is not a good idea. We stayed in the city for a night and then headed to my site when on the way to the taxi stand they decided that a shared taxi with 8 people is not something they want to try just for the record that is the typical way of getting around for Khmer people but I was able to find a private taxi for 40 dollars for the day. I gave the mtv’s crib tour of my village and a lot of people spoke with them im pretty sure it was a lot to take in so it was hard to judge how they really liked it. On that note I guess it also goes with out saying when you go to such an extreme place to visit you need a month to really appreciate 1-2 weeks just not enough time to adjust. I think the tour of my actual life was hardest for my mom to see evidently I did not give her enough of an idea what she was getting her self into and that could be due to my two years of working on integration into being “Khmer” I am sure on either end of things whatever was sad or frustrating at the time will settle in a few weeks once everyone gets back to normal and life and will realize seeing a country like Cambodia can help you grow/change as a person even if its for a short time. In the mean time to show that even a small interaction with another human being and creat a ripple effect my host sister jentu now wants to desperately learn English so she can call my aunt Marybeth up and play speak with her and keeps telling me how much she wants to skype with her. You never know in life who's life you will touch and on that note peace out from the other side of the world!!!!

More on being a nomad in Inda

Okay im horrible at keeping up on my blog and I don’t feel like writing a blog for each crazy event that transpired in my trip so this will be less detailed sorry. After the north we spent a short time in the city then headed to Agra to see the taja mahal which I did not actually pay to go into instead I opted to eat on a roof top and see it from a far for free im just not as much into buildings and things as natural ecotourism/ cultural tourism so when I go somewhere that wants a shit ton of money for me to stand for 30 mins and leave ill pass. Agra was a desolate town did not like it I would say pass unless ur dying to see the taja mahal we had to deal with a real creeper there who tried to come in our room with whiskey and bragged about how rich he was but sexual harassment in general is horrible in India as a female you ust have to except that its going to happen which sucks in general guest house are really skeive and if you can not afford something nice I say skip the guest houses bc they are more unsafe then couch surfing. This brings me to what made our trip we only spent limited time in guest house thank god for that bc every single place we stayed was creepy really where couch surfing its like u get this inside view of the cultural and life of people you are visiting we had some great host. Jaipur is the capital of the Rajasthan desert and is the first planned city in India and its supper nice and up scale and way more put together then New Delhi I had the chance to stay with this family near the amber fort which was this little nitch away from the city but still close to get to other places soo awesome. The father of the family and me really got along exchanging ideas and philosophies he was a wealth of knowledge I learned that most pray beads in any religion adds up to 9 for the plants in the sky in India its 108 1+8=9 the rosary 2+7=9 lots of mythology was talked about and of course palm reading. I should note most of this trip was spent with me palm reading I even read the palm of my astrologist good fun always perfecting my skills I also read other couch surfers who were staying there as well and apparently I was really on with a few of them. I also found out Brahman is not the highest caste in india like I thought but raja Stan which is the royal class who are the ones who are in power.  However I personally could not figure out how u figure out who belongs to which caste I asked but I guess the days of yester years are over and they don’t have as obvious dress etc like back in the day however I guess the richer class has nicer clothes. In Jaipur have a lot of interesting forts and things that we were able to explore with these awesome side streets it really felt like this unique place to be when we couch surfed. Another plus of this trip and couch surfing was that we met people from all over the world and just had great convos and taught people about not just American culture but Cambodian culture as well. Most people didt think I was American while in india pretty much I got Spanish everywhere I went how I know this because they kept trying to say hi to me in Spanish and ask my name in Spanish apparently that much of my 8^th grade Spanish class I could apply yay for me lol. Exploring broken down forts and palaces getting o know a local family it was time for us to move on to jasomere. We couch surfed with another really nice guy who actually owns his own guesthouse hotel and gave us a room for free and took us out to this none touristic desert it was just so amazing. Him and his friend sonny threw us a dance party and we ate really good Indian food with them as well.  They were telling us about village life and how he was forced to get married at 14 to his cousin and just a lot of cultural stuff and understanding of more human beings. The biggest aspect of this leg of our trip was the camel ride  not going to lie had no real desire to ride a camel but this was Hannah’s dream mine was that elephant I rode last summer but for the sake of saying I rode a camel I signed up. When we get on our camel I soon realize how big they are soon after we start walking hannah’s camel starts to make werid werid sounds like it sicks and then is foaming at the mouth its tongue is enlarged and cant seem to stay in its mouth and we are both like wtf. So after 2 hours we finally are asking this 10 year old kid who is in charge of the camel whats going on and he just laughs and finally this other old man with a handle bar mustache just looks at us and is like he wants the female and we are both like what then he goes on to explain it’s the mating season and im not buying it bc none of these other camels are not acting like this. Then he is like no no this one is really in heat and before we know it at a rest stop they take off all the camels gear and start to help the camels have sex like really it was crazy see pictures below. So after our adventurous Horney camel ride we eat dinner and then get to go back in the desert to sleep under the stars which was just the coolest thing ever I love stars and getting to sleep under 1000 of them that were visible even better. Overall ill leave you with this India is a place to see and so big you will have to go back more then once but understand it really is one of the most challenging places to see while I had a chance to see so much meet some great people I also has to be on my guard the whole time and can say I don’t know how untrusting I had to become while visiting India traveling takes it toll but each place we made it to was out of the world and recommend trying it out for ur self but only if you can live by patients in a virtue or go on a tour.  Until next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!! 

sunset 45 mins to the boarder of Pakistan 

couch surfing friends shark and sonny 

this is a pool extremely old but built very artistically 

so this is the little road we had to walk to get to the house everyday

snake charmer 

my camel 

yea thats the tongue situation no exaggeration 

my camel is on the bottom 

lights out the stars 

The Dalai Lama Teaching

Im only going to re cap ill see if I can post the video so you can watch it for ur self if you so choose don’t know if that allowed yet but ill try. Anyways he started off by talking about intelligence and to use it how not to just follow any one-thing religion etc and used Syria and China as examples. Then he went into compassion and the human condition of how we all want to be happy and don’t want to surfer and knowing this we should look at each other in the same way. Then he started an enation in to Buddha and talked about to take in the Buddha as to be a selfless act of not just thinking about ur karma or ur next life etc but to taken the Buddha is deciding that you will not move on until you can help every living being reach a state of happiness or enlightenment. Wise words I really did get a lot out of it however I feel it would be unfair to only talk about what I agree about with the Dali Lama because if I saw the pope I would have some ideas that I would need to express so I must hold all religious leaders to the same standard. Okay so this event took place march 8^th international women’s day so he did talk about women some what in passing but I was pretty disappointed with his idea of how he supports women and feminism. So I have a major with most world religions they make women the second sexs they use langue, which justifies women as being un pure not as worthy as men blah blah im not going to interrupt religious text right now but feel to do some research on it.  When bring up women he talks about how he encourages women who are nuns to take part in debate with the male monks and supports there studying. Why this is disappointing is that he has enough power to really work with what ever the board of Buddhism is to take away this separation of not allowing women to be monks in the first place. It also bothers me some what more in Buddhism that women cant be monks vs in Christianity women can be priest why this is bc Buddhism is all about how enlightenment works and equality and eliminating suffering for all living things but how can this be the case when they would allow half a world population to be seen as less equal and contribute to half the world suffering. I talked about this with a friend when I got back and she had to remind me that the Dali lama cant admit to it to do so would mean he would have to give up his title or whatever because they don’t even test females to be the dali lama and how can a person so revered by the world come to terms with the fact he is on the top of the high archy chain. Despite this lack of support for women he really does have really positive good energy and the most unique laugh he really has away to make everyone feel at peace and like the chance to have a world of happiness is so possible and its hard not to respect that. It is said now that once this Dali Lama die which he claims will be at the age of 113 they will be stopping the tradition of having a Dali Lama because of china making a mockery out of it so is hard to believe I might have seen the last Dali Lama to ever exist. When we left the teaching we discovered it was happy holy day in India which I just thought was like a once a month thing but turned out to be this big festival of color that only comes once a year. all day long people come up and put all these color all over u its a lot of fun however we had to travel so did not get it to bad it was cool to experience.  Until Next time Peace out from the other side of the world.

you tube video of the teaching sorry it would not embed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie2wgOzvDN4&feature=relmfu

India the dance of life... Tibet in Exile

India is now the home to the Tibetan people who have been exiled from china I will not go into the politics of it all but it’s an unfair situation, which has not really received enough attention. This part of India was my first stop and one I have to admit to you all I have been dying to see for a long time the combination of the Tibetan culture and the Himalayan mts just always left me with a yearning to see this first hand. Originally I had planned to do a 3 month tour of India which now in retrospect soo happy didt more on that later anyways what changed this big plan of action was that on march 8^th the 14^th Dali lama was giving a teaching and it became a how could I pass this up sort of a deal. Anyways me and Hannah a volunteer that lives about an hour away who I do a lot of gender based projects with are like we have to go and so started the trip planning on India. After getting off the plane we have to find the bus we need to take to take the 14 hour trip up north however before we do this we run into some tourist from new york and Bulgaria they are just giving us some heads up about prices etc much needed I did research online but India is not a place u can research you just have to experience first hand. However I can say Cambodia helped me deal with most things really well never the less we take a subway and then a tuk tuk or a rigs haw as they like to call it in India to the red fort area shocked that we did not get lost we had time to spare so we walked around just to get a feel for it all had some food it was pretty cool ill admit I did have some mcd frys to get some American western whatever into the mix as well. After we exchange money we head to the bus station to have our first sort of rip off situation so the bus does not pick us up there they make us take a guy who rides you around on a bike to this high way were I felt really bad bc I hate them in Cambodia to it feels weird to use a person like an animal he was struggling to get up that hill man anyways we make it to the bus and they try to charge us 100 rupe charge for our bags but we have been in Cambodia to long so we were like o we asked and they told us it was included in the price which we didt but we knew with out written proof they were going to have to drop it and they did won that battle on not paying. This bus was actually the best form of transportation we had the whole trip or at least for sleeping it was we had this nice bed with a closed door sort of thing I guess if u don’t like the idea of being in a coffin u might not like it but to be it reminded me more of a fort you would make as a kid so it just made it exciting. We began to climb up north and could feel the cold I knew it was cold but I don’t think I realized how cold it would feel to my now accumulated Cambodia ass of 90 degrees. We had to take a few more bus to get to our destination some bus that could have been out of some 1960s horror movies but never mind we were well rested and felt we could take on this adventure plus we had the drive that we had to make sure to get tickets to see the Dali Lama which you ended up not needing. On the web site they tell u about a passport showing up 3 days a head of time blah blah none of it mattered. We did not couch surf this part of India because my mom was awesome and for my bday got us a hotel which was sweet except said place did not have a heater or hot water for more then a min so washing ones hair was a master of tricks =) none of this matters to me any more bc once u live life with limited everything you are just like whatever im surprised at the level of whatever I have reached.  So the name of the town we were in was Mcleod ganj it was a very quite town with small streets that are just ment for you to walk around talk to people supper relaxing with the Himalayan mts in the backdrop every which way you turned. We soon took on the chi tea habit to warm up every hour but it made it real nice Tibet people are really easy to talk to and the whole culture just gives you this energy of serein peace. Every place in the world has ideals etc but you never see it actually transcend into a culture for me this was the first the Tibetans walk around with pray beads and this circular looking thing they spin while praying this goes on all day long while they are doing simple task and it changes them or to the outsider such as myself it seems to really change them. What the bleep down the rabit whole is this movie about metaphysic anyways part of the movies talks about an experience done with frozen water by this Japanese scientist where he put words positive and negative and for whatever reason this energy changed the way water crystals formed then they turn it into the fact our body is more then 70 percent water is it possible the same thing could effect humans. I personally can’t say for sure but its left me pondering however seeing the Tibetan people makes me think maybe its more true then I ever thought possible. We spent more of our days just walking around talking to the people learning some things about the people and also the foreigners you meet this far up north are going to have some food for thought when you talk to them as well which helps keeps you thinking about the meaning of life etc etc. one night we were around they had a free Tibet rally which I went to I have video try to post it but it really made me think why cant the UN help them why does china get away with this the next chosen Dali lama has been kidnapped at like 6 and has been considered the youngest political prison and the rest of the Tibetans who never escaped deal with persecution and have lost so much of their culture to China. I also sprung for my astrology reading sorry everyone you have to wait until im 40 for me to have any real money however apparently I am going to travel a lot not get married until im 30 plus and I have to make up for my past karmic life which was bad it was determined I don’t have bad luck just obstacles that always come up. Hum whatever else I have a drive and am career focused and should work with people. We took a taxi out for the day and saw some of the sites around the area like the hot springs caves and tea fields which was really cool I can honestly say every step of the way we kept running into so interesting people and it was nice that they could communicate it what I now consider to be pretty good eng. The food it Tibet was pretty good as well I had something called momos with potato’s a lot sometime with chicken it was good eating street food cheap once again it nice to know that Cambodia affords me to eat street food with no side effects =) some places around the town were also a sigh to be hold the first day we actually made the walk to this church that was built in the 18^th century by the French it was like being in what I imagine the twilight book would use for a church really lol. Some the of the best moments of the start of this trip were out in the cold with some chi in our hand sitting on a log looking out into the mts talking about whatever came up. Next blog will be about the reading it has come to my attention that I try to pack to much into one blog so ill do more separating but that means you might read about India for 5 blogs or more sorry if that bothers you trying to see how things work out this way. 

The city in limited color

st johns church

tea fields

hot springs

highest point to see the mts

FREE TIBET RALLY

domestic violence workshop Kampong Chhnang pictures!

art display 

makara peace corps staff opening speech

director of mowa

participants 

local kids taking an interest in violence in cambodia

mowa teaching

gonrey teaching

the only female cop at the workshop bad ay

group work

action plan to help victims

chief of police of kp chhnang

saeed taking it home for peace corp kp chhnage with a fluent khmer speech... 

thanks for all the donations!!!!!!

Domestic Violence Workshop COMPLETE!

Well just want to update you on the important news that 17 months of hard work has paid off the dv workshop is complete! I will post up pictures soon so you can see what all your donations got you once again thank you for anything you were able to contribute. Leading up to the conference I had to go all around Phnom Penh getting books and am soo grateful for the UNFPA and un human rights women’s etc and of course GADC all these people provided so many resource to the workshop of information in Khmer and Eng.  Well nothing I do can be with out a story so its 9 at night me and makara who is part of Peace Corps staff she is one of r counter parts on this project anyways we are sitting to finally get dinner when Hannah rides her bike over to us and its like there is a huge problem the school director said he did not have some sheet of paper that he needed and that we could not have the rooms for the workshop if we did not get it to him be4 tom well its 9 at night so wtf do we do. Soo there is all these different gov branches in Cambodia the one that is in charge of edu is the POE who we gave all this paper work to their director but it got lost. I should also mention to get said paper work we had to pay 20 dollars lets just say that fee is not a real fee but a fee you feel in heart to pay when you want something done in Cambodia call it whatever you like. Poor Hannah ran all over the place a week be4 our workshop bc we found out about said paper work then. I should also mention there was a bad falling out between the school and peace corps bc Hannah went to teach else where and by Cambodian standards I guess this is face losing and peace corps did not fix it by talking to the right people so basically any chance said school director got he just screwed with us bc he could. Anyways back to 9 at night Makara saves the day makes a million phone calls get this POE directors cell number or something we get the okay after 30 mins thinking this is it 17 month of our work down the drain. After all of this we have a talk about how if we did not have a Khmer person with us their would have been nothing we could have done and how there is just some scope as a volunteer you can not fix and this is something I think the staff can forget so Makara was like I think ill bring this up at next staff meeting. The next morning we show up early to set up but the ministry did not show up until 30 mins later but hey they did show up on time so that was a step in the right direction! In typical khmer style the opening ceremony has to last way to long because we had to have every important person their give a speech o yea I guess I did not mention that the deputy governor of kampong chhnang showed up apparently this is sort of a big deal. I help Makara write up her speech the night before and I think it was pretty short and sweet got the point across of thanking people for coming give us money etc and then talking about violence being a community issues. I have to say though the director of the ministry of women’s affairs though it was really long and I understood only some of her speech was BAD ASS!  What I mean by this is she called the police out in her speech and the chief of police was attending our event she was just like the police are to slow in responding to the crises in Cambodia they ignore violence in the family and it is only breaking our society apart. Its rare for me to see any one call out the Cambodian gov for fear of what would happen to them I mean some ngos will but not usually people working for the gov bc I am told their has to be favoritism to get into some positions and if you speak to much against the party you will be disfavored. After this we separated the groups to make them into 2 diff classrooms to make it easier for them to ask question and learn. I have to say the sessions were really well done the women working with the ngo they partnered with worked well  and I think a lot more people understood aspects of violence gender and culture. In fact my gauge for how much people were liking this workshop was that they showed up early and even when it rained in Cambodia this NEVER HAPPENS LIKE EVER I ALMOST DIED. The only thing I sort of struggle with in all of this is the notion of evolution of people understanding gender and violence etc like we in the states have gone though many stages and realized our mistake in the feminist movement etc to make it not only one dimensional however when this is a newer concept to people such as in Cambodia its like you have to re see the same mistake being made. EX okay so I really do like this ngo GADC they have a lot of really good materials in Khmer etc and they train men to not be violent towards women that it’s the mans job not to hit the women vs the women’s job not to get hit. While its all well it good that they are trying to take away from victim blaming it’s a paradime shift in my option because they are trying to say this is what a real man is he takes care of the family helps his wife doesn’t hit his wife etc but its only re enforcing the idea that there is such thing as masculinity which is exactly why they are trying to fight. Despite this observation from my self most people better understood why not to victim blame etc so I guess I can not totally knock this method of teaching. So at the end of the day we set up to give out money and this was going to be a shit show bc Saeed who was going to be in charge of this got sick and we did not have names but only like health person one this village village chife so on and so forth on top of this we did not take into account how many Cambodians can not read in khmer even people that are leaders in the community so their were people singing in the wrong area etc it did not get solved until the ministry actually read out the list which ended getting things back in order. Then we had these random ladies show up and we were like who are you and they are like o we are the victims and we are like wait what how did you find out about this because it was on advertised we had to hand out invitations anyways lucky for them we did in fact have enough money to pay them as well. Then the next outrageous thing happened so after these women who were basically the last people left there is this guy behind them and I joking around turn to Hannah and am like great this is the abuser but Maraka over hears us and thinks we are serous so doing the Khmer thing she just turns and ask him and he just openly admitted yes he did beat his wife but has changed his behavior once again on idea where this guy came from. At the end of the second day I just felt relived to know we did it and made it though working with the ministry like we did is not very typical in fact I don’t think anyone in peace corps Cambodia has worked on the level we did with them which as you have seen from other blogs has not been always easy. The chief of police ended coming up to talk to me after words he spoke a little eng and I was able to speak some Khmer so we had a pretty good conversation about the legal system and crime against the state like it should not be up to a victims family etc to releases an abuser from prison and he was telling me how he wants to work harder to help victim weather this is true not sure but he seemed like he ment it and he was telling me most times when he has learned about this stuff is been though foreign ngos and its not taught in Khmer so he only understood a little but this workshop being in Khmer helped him a lot and he wants to go back and share what he learned with other police and I thought that was really cool capacity building at work! We also had Cambodian news coverage so if I figure out how I can upload it to my blog I will try and I will add pictures soon promises until next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!

My life thus far…25

 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!!!!!!