1 Week Left!

Ahem....alright, the picture above is a piece of work that I thought somewhat accurately symbolizes my current inner feelings (I guess it could also be interpreted as me about to eat a giant invisible sandwich but I'll let the viewer decide). 1 week from today I will be on a plane heading towards Phnom Penh! Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed money to help me to go and to support the work of the Cambodian community health organisation TASK that I am going to be working with. So far we've received enough support so that we can give a donation of over 600 US dollars to their work! Depending on where you're coming from that may either sound like a lot or a little but at the moment with the global economic crisis, and the skyrocekting food prices in Cambodia, it will help a lot. The average monthly salary of a full-time TASK employee is in the range of about 120-140 dollars a month so this obviously will mean a lot to their work and hopefully will help them be able to spend money to provide the most basic of needs (food, shelter, medication) for some of the most vulnerable in Phnom Penh.

Although I'm really excited about going back to Phnom Penh, there's a whole lot to do before I go. I've got a final exam on Thursday (it's an OSCE - Objective Structured Clinical Exam) where they set up patients in several different rooms and stations, and you have about an hour and a half to rotate through and spend about 8 minutes with each patient and perform an assigned examination, take a history, or interpret some results of tests. In a way, it's actually kinda fun, but also can be pretty scary (for both student and patient I imagine!). Anyway, that's on thursday so I'm spending the next couple of days preparing for that. Then, as soon as that's over, I'm moving all my stuff from my current house into a new one, and then wrapping up everything I need to do here before I leave on Tuesday! One final thing that I'm trying to organise at the moment is a job for when I get back from Cambodia. I've planned on only going to Cambodia for 5 weeks this summer as I really need to spend some time earning money to try and subsidize all the expenses that come up during the year. I'll probably end up trying to do some temp work, but it would be really nice if something became confirmed before I leave, cause it would take that concern off my mind. So if you're thinking of ways to pray for me at the moment, that would be a good one.

Alright, well I guess that's it for now, I'll try and post once again before I leave. Thanks again for your continued prayers, emails and support.