smaskifa

This will be my first time writing in over a month and I think it’s fair to say that at this point, any and all attempts I had in updating this blog with some sense of consistency have more or less completely failed. Looking back, I realize that in my last entry I made no mention of the fact that I was headed back to Thailand for two weeks in April to celebrate Songkran and explore the north-western part of the country. Well, I have just returned from said trip and now find myself sitting down to hammer out what will likely be a photo-centric blog entry, as accompanying the written details of this journey are 100 photographs most gratefully compiled from the cameras of Charlie, Tricia, Gina, and Michelle. I have tried to place them ... read more

For quite some time now, my housemate Michelle has been spending Saturday afternoons traveling to Govap District to volunteer at an orphanage for infants, toddlers, young children, and teenagers. Many times Lindsey and Leanne make the trip as well and having heard moving stories and been shown beautiful pictures of their time there, Charlie and I decided to join the girls for an afternoon with the children. Depending on scheduling and staff support, volunteers seem to be assigned to whichever age group necessitates the most care at any given time. When we arrived, most of the toddlers were zonked out for naptime - as we walked past we could see them sprawled out on evenly spaced cots, mouths slacked open, limbs overflowing their tiny bed. We were led into a courtyard and up a flight of ... read more

Alright, the first blog entry of 2009! I feel the last few entries have been exponentially increasing in size and maybe growing a little too long-winded and a little less practical for a “toilet time” read, which is, of course, the intended purpose of these ramblings. So, as a resolution of sorts, I will begin the New Year with a shorter story about the arrival of ’09 in Vietnam; maybe by cutting the length of these entries, I will be able to update the blog more frequently. We shall see. To usher in the New Year, the housemates and I romped down to the center of Le Loi street, outside the market. Where a neon green globe had been erected a week earlier for Christmas celebrations, there now stood a large and festive multi-colored display that ... read more

Well, this is the entry I thought I would write two entries ago. I have been back in Vietnam for almost three weeks and blog-wise, have nothing to show for it. Next entry I hope to cover three very exciting topics - motorbikes, roommates (house included), and jobs. But before all that, I need to detail the first two weeks back in Vietnam and the end of the LanguageCorps portion of my adventure - Teacher Training Part Two! NOTE: Upon completing this entry, I realized that I had taken a woeful three pictures that actually correlated in some way with what I had written. So what I have done is posted photos from two places I visited on my second day in Vietnam - the War Remnants Museum and the Vietnam Zoo. To be honest, I ... read more

At the time of this entry, I have been back in Vietnam for just over a week where I’ve found myself immensely occupied with meeting many new people, going about logistics such as acquiring cell-phones, setting up interviews, so forth, and of course teaching English every day to a wonderful group of young adults. But I will hold off on all that for a later entry because I feel that I need to properly wrap up my Cambodia experience before I go any further or else it will never get written. I’m going to dedicate this entry to our last day in Phnom Penh and our visits to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. To begin with, a brief history. In the 1970’s, the Cambodian National Assembly reversed their policies ... read more