I have been here for months and I still have mixed feelings. I read my blog from last February when I was here and I felt strange in the city then too. I will never be able to describe it I think, the best I can do is say, it eats whatever you give. I spent a long time here and feel like I have had different lives, different social scenes, different everything…. I went from living with friends in a home, moving from guesthouse to guesthouse every two weeks, living at the NGO office in a posh district, living with a friend in a room with rats and cockroaches, not to mention my travels to surrounding provinces for work. My purpose of staying so long in Cambodia was to volunteer. For six months I volunteered with the NGO VHCD working to support and develop school clinics in rural areas, create a health education curriculum for elementary and secondary school children as well as to provide continuing education to Cambodian nurses. I dream come true. This small NGO is ethical, real and allowed me to be flexible in my contributions. It has been a busy time, but all in all worth it.

As I will never be able to explain my life here so I won't try too hard. In a nut shell, my days consisted of waking up at 430, cycling to work, teaching and seeing patients, coming back to the city to enjoy the Mekong riverside, eat delicious street food, play soccer in the streets with the 'tuk tuk posse' as some of you may know them by, practice Khmer, then cycle back to my place to do it all over again. Not to mention the karaoke nights, the street/boat parties and meeting some riversiders…

Knom sebai, pontai, knom noek Kampuchea hi…