Adventures with Tanen (Howie howie)

(Ankor Thom)



(Temple in the woods.)



(Woods in the temple.)



(Tanen and I somewhere.)



(Tanen dressed up like me, ready to teach!)

We did a loop of the country. Traveled to Mondulkiri, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Kampot, and my site. The lan touri we were riding in got a flat tire and we got a little ripped off in Sihanoukville, but mostly everything went really smoothly.

I played a Soccer game yesterday and am really sore with a stomachache to boot. Excited about heading back to the homeland in less than two weeks though. School’s out for the summer. Luckily I’ve got some other projects to keep me busy. I’m working on putting together a speaker and audio file project for my co-teacher (funded graciously by Uncle Dale and the Joneses) so that he can use music next year in the classroom and in his private classes as well. Speaking of wells, I submitted a well proposal to Appropriate Projects and I’m still waiting to hear back from them to see if it got approved. Additionally, I’m playing the role of Harry Potter in an audio project that another volunteer Emily is putting together and also working on national curriculum development for grade 7.

Besides that, I’m finding some time to play guitar and read. I read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a very good book, recommended by Tanen Brown. It really captures some of the moral ambiguities that come up in Western medicine. Before that I read “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” a book about cross cultural medicine between a Hmong family and their little girl who has epilepsy, which translated from Hmong is the title of the book. I guess I’ve just been on a science phase lately, because I just finished “A Brief History of Time” as well. The pendulum is beginning to swing back though as I just got “Blades of Grass” from Tanen too, so I’ve started that, as well as another Murakami book.

Some people have been wondering what the exact dates are that I'll be home. I'm flying in on the 7th and out on the 27th of July. I'm hoping to make a trip down south at some point and I'll try and see as many of you as I can on the way.