School's out for the summer!

There's not a whole of new going on over here just yet, but there should be soon. Next weekend I am kicking off a health club with 11th grade girls from my high school English classes. I am a little bit nervous about starting to teach in Khmer but fortunately I found two lovely, eager, 12th grade girls with good English to help me fascilitate the club. My hope is that they will gain some useful leadership experience and the other girls will benefit from a lessening in the language barrier. I continue to be amazed by many of the common misconceptions about health held by people here. Educated people even. While it baffles me it also reassures me that the project I am about to begin will be useful. For example, while I was talking with one of the girls who will be helping me teach she asked what kinds of things I would be talking about. I told her we would begin talking about good nutrition and drinking enough water. She said "oh in Cambodia we believe that drinking a lot of water will make you fat, is that wrong?"...Ummmm, YES. That is wrong! That is just one of many widely held misconceptions. Many people think that eating a lot of certain fruits will give you a fever, that you should excercise while you are sick instead of resting, and that it is good for pregnant women to skip meals so that their babies will be born small. My hope is that the club this summer will give a large number of girls really basic information on how to keep from getting sick, how to recognize common illnesses, and how to take care of themselves and others when sick or hurt.

This past week I moved into more conversation based English lessons with the nurses at the health center which has been really fun. I have reached a point where I can joke around with them in Khmer and English and usually leave at the end of the hour or so laughing. Also, my mom sent me a crockpot and it is revolutionizing my cullinary world. AND, my market got sliced bread!!

On another note, I am currently in Siem Reap taking a short weekend break to celebrate the end of the school year. We have big plans tonight to go out and watch the US vs. England World Cup game. There is something strangely comforting about watching an event that is viewed all over the world; knowing that while I am sitting in Cambodia watching the game my family in america and my brother in Korea are all sitting watching the same game. We have so few points of commonality.

Another aside: as I was sitting in my hotel room a bit ago with a fellow volunteer, spreading peanut butter and jelly on bread with a nail file, we began discussing how much more creative we have become since arriving here. After nearly a year in Cambodia I am an expert at improvising. For example, when my metal clothes rack broke apart at the hinges last week did I go buy a new one? No. I wrapped small metal wire around the broken areas to hold the bars together and then wrapped it all with medical tape. Maybe not quite like new, but it gets the job done and saved me a good $6!