Saturday, August 7, 2010

Back to the grind (almost)

This weekend has, so far, been really great and I'm lucky to get online again so soon. I traveled to see a PCV that is currently in a district town and the town was right by a lake and it was really beautiful. Not to mention, the house we were at had the cutest little puppy everr. I have pictures that will be uploaded. I also got to meet a lot of PCVs from the region and got to ask a million questions.

Today was really interesting because I really started thinking about the way things are in Cambodia. Yea, initially it was a huge shock. I was trying so hard to just adjust to everyday things. But now a lot of us are looking to the future. In 7 weeks training will be over and we'll be moving to our permanent sites. There we'll be trying to change peoples perspectives and opinions across a variety of fields and to create self-sustaining change. At least thats what they tell us in the brochure, but today was really the first time I thought about the system and really understood why it is the way it is.

I think a lot of times, being an American and a young person, I have a very skewed view of history. Even in my relatively short life span a lot has changed in America and those events drive how we act and the path of our country. Events like 9/11 and Katrina are subconsciously and consciously pushing our country down certain paths. History is not just in the past, its part of our everyday lives. No where has it been more clear for me than in Cambodia. I can come here and I can complain about the toilets and the health care system and the education system, but all of these things are basically only 30 years old and were recreated by people with little resources or experience in buildings these kinds of infrastructure. I walk around and the people that I live with and joke with have lived through a genocide. Their past is always there and yet, for two weeks I walked around totally oblivious. All I saw were things that needed to be changed, but in retrospect it is amazing how far Cambodia has come in such a short time. If you're at all curious the history of Cambodia is very rich and intriguing. Google Khmer Rouge to start and go in either direction from there.

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to my village. Training has been tough. Sometimes we have 4 hours straight of language and then 4 hours of technical and then I go home and try to understand my family which is a like a big logic puzzle sometimes. My brain is just tired and the roosters at 2am really dont help at all. It's been stressful emotionally, but that part is slowly getting better. There's only 7 weeks left and I have a ton left to learn.

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