I just found this picture that I took in Chicago, and had been meaning to post. There may be decomissioning but the real problem seems to be in the U.S.

So as I was buying a pack of shampoo from my host aunt who runs a small shop from our house, I was surprised to see a very familiar logo. So if anyone in Ireland figured we weren't a part of globalism, think again. Look up towards the right hand corner and see what's on sale in the middle of a slum outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Here's a closer look.

Siem Reap Story

So the day has finally come and gone of bringing these guys to Siem Reap. It was really fun to see this dream coming true. I'm sure I'll never understand just how much a trip like that means to Cambodians, let alone poor Cambodians who'd never dream of this becoming a reality. But now it's come and gone.

I wish you all could have been with me on the trip and known everything that went on, but it was so busy that it would take many lines to write out everything that we did, and I'm sure I'd forget a lot of it too. But here's some "highlights".

Sunti- the 19 year old girld- insisted on making us lunch for the bus ride there. She insisted and so I at least convinced her to use some of the money I had been given for the trip, I gave her 5 dollars for making meals for the 5 of us, that was more than plenty, but I don't think Sunti was quite experienced at making packed lunches. We each ended up with like a half pound of dry rice, and a few pieces of meat, and cold fried egg (which my host brothers didn't even end up eating). The packages that you could buy from the side of the road, suddenly seemed like a much better option, but experience is the best teacher. We all thought it was pretty funny.

We went with a group of 13 other people, my co-worker Nay was taking a group of girls she mentors and works with in an income generation project (all orphans aswell). After the 6-7 hour bus ride, we arrived in Siem Reap, and checked into our basic, but comfortable hotel then hit the Cambodian Cultural Village, which is sort of a disneyland of Cambodian culture (excpet no rides). There's a bunch of shows going on like a millionaire's wedding, or a harvest festival dance, then there's the ethinc group shows, like the chinese dancing, or the tribal ceremony to pick a husband, all of these shows have audience participation as well, so it's usually a good laugh.

First night restaurant we took them to a $3 all you can eat Thai BBQ restaurant, where you choose the meat and cook it yourself at the table. They all had tons of fun and was an experience I'm sure they'll never forget, everyone was overly full by the end of it. This was as nice a restaurant as most of them had ever been too.

The next day was at the temples, We spent about 2 hours in the first temple and got progressively quicker through the 5 other temples we visited throughout the day as temple fatigue hit in. We had some good down times as well, just to look at the view.

That night we took them to this great themed restaurant on the main street in town that was about 2-4 dollars a plate. The restaurant was like you were eating in one of the temple ruins, had great lighting and a really fun atmosphere. It was a thai restaurant again (which seemed adventurous to most of the Cambodians with us-cambodians aren't known for liking a wide range of foods-), but some of the really adventurous even tried western dishes (most not finding them too satisfying though). They had a good time though, and we went downstairs and found a snooker table and a disco ball set up with a small dance floor so we danced and played the night away. It was really fun to see these girls and my boys all acting just like normal aukward teenagers. They had a good time though, and we finished the night off with their choice of ice cream and soft drink. (yeah, okay so we spoiled these kids, but if any kids deserved to be spoiled it's these ones).

The next morning was spent relaxing and at the local market buying gifts for friends and family at home, then made the long treck home.

All in all it was a great trip, and my family were all pretty happy (but admittedly worn out) when getting home. I'll try and post some more photos soon.

Well we had a great time in Siem Reap! I don't have time to tell you all about it right now but here's a few pictures of our time there. This one is of us crouching infront of a miniture version of the royal palace at "The Cambodian Cultural Village".

Leaving for a few days...

Thank God for the past few days. It's been the festival of Pjoom Bun here and I've had a great time. Sunday night I went out around town with a friend of mine named Phanna, he's just two years older than me, and has really been great to me since I've been here. He's also an AIDS orphan and used to live in one of the areas where I teach, he also used to be part of a gang, so he's really good and giving me insight to some of the things I'm coming across.

Monday afternoon I spent with Teara, Tearum and Sunti and we went to visit their grandfather and grandmother as this is a family holiday. Their grandad is an Ajaa which is sort of the buddhist equivalent of a priest or pastor, unlike the normal monks he's the one who organizes everything, givers "sermons" (I'm not sure of the buddhist word for this) and arranges funerals and weddings. Currently they live in the temple because their current house is almost underwater. We spent a bit of time with them (I had never met them before) and then took a boat and hung out at their one room house. It was fun just spending the afternoon on the boat, and then also on a one man innertube with plank on it. Teara's best friend Boyaa came with us and ended up falling in to the pretty scummy water.

Yesterday I spent mainly at home with the family and then today we had a Servants retreat where we discussed a lot of team issues and had an afternoon of swimming, so that was relaxing.

The last fewdays I've been eating non-stop. All neighbours and relatives come by and give food so we've been eating pretty well, and if I ever had any doubts about Cambodian cuisine, not anymore, I've never had such delicious food. When Cambodians spend money making their food, it's unbelievable. One of my favourites (which I know doesn't sound very appetizing) is this food which is like a brick of semi-cooked sticky rice with spices surrounding various things (either banana, beans, or -my favourite- pig fat...yes I knowI'm disgusting). It's then wrapped and kept in banana leaves. You can eat it straight from the banana leaf or sometimes they cut it up into slices and fry it, making it really, really delicious and pretty greasy. Praise God though that if there was any day I should have had food poisoning it should have been over the past few days, but as of right now I'm still doing pretty good, I had a bit of an upset tummy this afternoon, but I think it's passed now.

Tomorrow I'm finally off on the trip bringing my host siblings to Siem Reap. Thank you those of you who have contributed greatly to this trip, I'll definitely let you know how it turned out when we get back. If you get a chance pray for us. The weather's been pretty bad lately (last night we had a crazy strong storm that pretty much flooded our room) and so I'm sure the roads are pretty bad too.

All the best for now,

Michael

These two pictures are of the 3 days I spent in a really poor province of Cambodia, which is normally a desert. They had a little rain for the past two weeks so everything looks amazingly green and healthy, but this is a really poor area and the families here are depending on this rain for their lives.

I've got to say that scenes like this, after you've spent the previous 4 months living in a tight-packed, smog filled, urban slum, become sort of magical

Sorry it's been a while...

Well I wish I had a really good excuse for not keeping you all up to date recently, but I don't. I was going to try and say that since we were out of internet for a few days at the office and had to use internet cafes for email that it would have been too difficult to blog, but I really could have if I had made the time. The truth is that I've just been busy. I have a long day. I leave the house each morning just before half 7 and then get back home at night at about 7:00 at night. 3 days a week I get to eat lunch at home but other than that I'm running. I love it though generally.

I'm really getting into this drug research, finding out all sorts of things, and also about health conceptions. It's really interesting. The fact that I taught all my interviewees English for 3 months before I started interviewing means that the majority of them are really comfortable with me and willing to open up to me. I didn't plan on that so that's definitely great how it turned out.

Since I've last written, I've spent a few days in the country side. It was amazing, I was there to accompany one of our organizations doctors who goes down to work with patients at a small health center there once a month. Just being out of the city was amazing, and this province was unbelievably beautiful. The country life is such a contrast to my slum life. Amazing, and a real retreat. I also spent two days at a conference on contemplative prayer and spiritual formation, I know that probably sounds weird to most of us, cause it is a bit out of our usual vocab. But it was good a restarting my times of prayer as meaningful times and remembering that it's not just about me speaking but me listening aswell.

What else?... I've been able to get to know a few of our youth group members a little bit more, which has been good and met some other youth in the community. It's good to get to meet more of the non-Christian young people in my community because I haven't had many chances to interact with them. Cause I work at the day and there usually not around much at night.

Well, It's currently the Cambodian version of Halloween, called "the festival of meeting". Here though the festival goes for about 15 days. It's the time when all the spirits are let out of the afterlife and come back, so everyone is extra specially giving offerings to their ancestors and even to ancestors of people who don't have any living relatives. I guess that's very charitable. But, It's a big family time here (and also a time when everyone has the creeps). From October 1st -5th everything will shut down, so servants is having a one day retreat to use the time wisely. I'm hoping to get some rest too.

Well, I've got to run off and teach my evening class. I'll try and post some pictures soon.

Keep the emails coming! I love hearing from you all.

Taking my mind away from the slums...

Well, I spent yesterday afternoon doing something very frustrating. It wasn't necessarily frustrating because of what I was doing but more because I had to do it here in Cambodia, where I feel I could be spending my time in better ways.

Yesterday, I went about researching different UK universities that offer 5 year and 4 year medical degrees. There are suprisingly many medical schools in the UK, compared to just the 5 in Ireland. Since I'm not like a normal applicant (in that I already have a degree) I fall into the non-traditional applicants section. Thankfully the UK has had much more experience in this that Ireland has and so most schools are happy to consider me. I spent the afternoon figuring out which schools I can apply to (whose requirements I meet) and asking other schools who I wasn't so sure of what they would think of me. This meant lots and lots of emails and navigating more or less navigatable websites. The UK application forms are all due on October 15th and I will have to have narrowed down my choices to the 4 maximum that they allow by then.

I know this is important for my future but right now it is difficult to find the motivation, especially with the guilty feeling that I shouldn't be spending this much time on the internet, especially not in Cambodia. But living in Cambodia doesn't mean I can avoid all the real decisions I have to make about my future, as much as I wish it did. Anyway, I'd appreciate prayer for the right decision in which schools to apply and that one school would deem me worthy of offering me a place. Pray that this process would be easy and not terribly expensive (as I'm sure I'll have to travel to interviews if anyone is going to consider me).

Pray also that I won't let myself get wrapped up in the process to the detriment of the real reasons why I am here.

Thanks you for all of your support and prayers.

Just sitting here...

So I'm sitting here in the office, writing up an interview and it's lashing rain. I thought what a perfect time for another post.

I'm enjoying this part of my internship a lot. I've been having enjoyable times with my family and my work and PRAISE GOD, that this week has been really easy in terms of communication. Each week I feel that my level of understanding and speaking changes, but this week it's been pretty good, no huge frustrations.

So one funny thing about this week has to do with my host siblings. One of my t-shirts that I've had for a long time (and originally bought in a thrift store) fell in a puddle which had some oil in it, and so pretty much I think it's dirty for me to wear. But my little brother Tearum has decided that it's not too bad and has worn it several days this week. When he started wearing it, everyone starting calling him "Bong Michael"- meaning older brother michael- and them me "Ba-oan tearum"- little brother Tearum- it's been really funny because sometimes (like last night) when my 3 siblings were eating together they pretended as if I was eating with them. Tearum did an excellent job of intimidating me, and my struggling with Khmer, and then they tried to speak in english for a little bit (but that failed after about 3 words...). It's been a really fun week just messing around with my host siblings. We've been slagging each other right and left (and finally I know at least a little bit of how to respond).

Anyway, it's been a good week and I'm doing alright.

Some of you might appreciate this. I was sitting in a prayer meeting at our church last night and one of the leaders in the church was praying for unity in the Christian church in Cambodia, he prayed that all the denominations, catholic, protestant, baptist, 'mormon', methodist and presbyterian would be one in Christ. No one else in the room except for the pastor and myself new what these words meant so it doesn't really matter. At least his prayer was an expression that there's very little denominationalism here in Cambodia and that's a good thing.

It makes me think...

So wednesday morning class is the one of the week that I probably dread the most, but also the one that I usually find the most challenging and meaningful. There's a few things that make this class different. One is that the kids really are kids. The oldest is about 12 and I'd say they're all about 9 or 10. Another difference is that they love coming to class. They're always waiting for us. Today, my co-worker had a late meeting in the morning so we arrived late. Class is supposed to start at 8:30, we came at about 8:40. The kids came and said they'd been waiting for us since half 7. Another thing that makes this class different is that these kids are probably the poorest. Glue sniffing combined with a lack of any education has definitely affected some of them so that the "easiest things" academically are really quite difficult. Writing any letters (khmer or english) can be a really difficult thing. They are to tough for their age. One of them tripped on his way to the front of the class and fell on the sharp corner of our white board. It ripped up the side of his stomach and he just sat to the side of the class wincing in pain for a few minutes, but didn't make any noise.

It's just downright wrong that these kids have to live like this. They live in a really rough slum that floods. The only way to get in and out of their neighbourhood is to walk through a working fish factory (the smell is pretty hard to take at first). These kids are visibly hungry. They're families usually aren't ideal situations. School is not an obtion for most of them. Their only escape from this life is through the glue that they buy with any bits of money they get from begging or scrummiging through rubbish. I know I've talked about these kids before. And people probably get tired hearing about their condition, but I can't get away from it, I can't just click to a different web page. They're still here.

I'm struck during class though, at their joy. They smile so big when they answer a question correctly, even when they get it wrong they're still happy. When we play games they go nuts! Even boring games (sometimes my co-worker isn't the most creative person). And even though we play the same 3 "games" every week, they are so happy to play them.

Again, life shouldn't be like this for them. This is NOT God's desire for their lives. God will use these experiences as he makes beauty from ashes, but this can't be God's desire. How can life come into a place where kid's best experience of life is on the glue that they sniff. I don't know. If there's a place for God's kingdom to come it's here.

It's hard for another SERVANTS worker here who has been living in this community and seen some of these kids grow up since they were babies. It's hard for her to see this as their life and forseeable future. Sometimes "development solutions" just don't come fast enough.

There is hope though. We know that God is on their side. We know that God wants to use the church (with it's some billion members) to make a difference and bring his peace to the World. But the sort of scary reminder there is that "wait, WE are the church." We (in Christ) are God's plan to bring peace to the world. Not a comfortable thought.

In the middle of the day.

So during the busyiness of the past couple of weeks, I have to say my mind hasn't really been all that reflective. I've been more worried about trying to get everything done, keeping appointments and figuring out what I'm going to teach more than sitting, thinking and praying about the situation of the people I find myself with in Cambodia.

Yesterday though as I was running out to the library at Medicam (a co-ordinating organization of all medical NGO's) and then a meeting with the country director of Pharmaciens Sans Frontiers (PSF), I went to the front of the alley way that our office is located down to find a Motor-bike Taxi. I found one, but right before we left he got a call on his mobile so I had to wait for a few minutes. I looked up and saw a 'normal' immage. There were two young boys rummaging through the giant rubbish bin right infront of me. One was half inside it and the other was holding a bag that they used for collecting items they can sell for recycling. When the boy who was half inside the bin came out again, I was a little taken aback. He was one of my students from my wednesday morning class across the river. It wasn't that I was incredibly surprised. I knew that this is what most of those kids do with their time all day, to try and help their family make ends meat, but I had never seen any of them actually doing it, especially not in my neighbourhood. I gave him a smile as we finally headed off, I don't even think he saw me though. But it did force me to be more reflective and to pray for these kids, whose lives are unimaginably (to me) difficult.

This whole phenomenon of flooding is really interesting to me. I've definitely never experienced anything like it. So my Tuesday class that I've been teaching is located about 15-20 feet from what used to be the river bank. We used to drive up to here on motor bikes and everything was fine. Well since the wet season got fully underway, the banks have burst and now we have to park the motorbike at a school about a mile away, and go by boat to the house that we teach English in. It was surreal, boating down the road that I've been down so many times, passing children floating on various things between houses. This is a picture of the house where we teach and some of our students. You can see that the flood waters are actually completely under the house, there's the boat that we used in the background. The oddest thing about this, is that this is just incredibly normal to everyone who lives here. It's true that their way of life has adapted to these conditions, but I think it just highlights another form of their poverty. It's sad that having a river flowing through your house has had to become normal, because you can't afford to buy land anywhere else. Having the water there provides a load of it's own problems, let alone the inconvenience, but it's incredibly difficult to maintain any sort of hygiene when your constantly wet. But, I guess that poverty can seem just normal sometimes.

Dreaming of Siem Reap...

Let me set the picture for you for a second. Siem Reap (a province in the North West of the country) is a magical place. It's where the temples from the Angkor period are located. The temples are a wonder of the ancient world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Angkor temples hold a special place for Cambodians. They are the only remnants of a time when Cambodians were prosperous and leaders in the region. The temples are so masterfully constructed that it confounds us as to how exactly they were constructed. The main temple complex, ANGKOR WAT, is the main symbol of the Cambodian flag. Over almost every door in the house where I live is a picture of Angkor Wat. People in my community dream of going there but it is a distant dream. The poor can't afford to go there. It's not the admission to the temples that's the problem (they are free for Cambodians) but the travel, guest house, and food prices (not to mention the expected gifts brought back for the extended family) that make it prohibitively expensive to go.

Myself, I've now been to Siem Reap twice. The first time was a one off opportunity to go with my organization, TASK. I was the lone foreigner amongst a group of Cambodians. It was a great experience, they appreciated it so much more than I could. Every school child learns about each of the temples and it's history and folklore. This was a life long dream come true for those who had never been before. After I returned from this trip though, I heard some comments around my house about how us "poor" people will never be able to go to Siem Reap. I felt a real wedge come between us as I realized again the difference in experiences between me and my hostfamily. To make things a bit worse, in only two weeks time I was going to go again. I went last weekend because my advisor came to visit me from Wheaton. Since he has a lot of intrest in Archeology (and has taught archaeology before) he's been looking forward to going to these Temples since January. I was very happy to accompany him and myself and another wheaton student used the weekend as sort of a retreat to discuss our respective times here. I was happy to go this second time, but again it reminded me how this type of a trip was completely out of reach for my host family.

So, I've decided to go a third time (WHAT!?). But this time I want to go just to bring some of my host family. I'd love to bring the 3 orphans (Sunti 19, Teara 15, and Tearum 14) who have really adopted me as their older brother, and who have given so generously to me out of their lack of resources. I also want to bring May Saa (13). His life is so dificult. His doesn't have a father and he and his mother both have to run a small stand outside our house selling odds and ends. When the other kids are playing in the street he can't because he has to watch the stand and sell. (There's pictures of May Saa, Teara and Terum previously in this blog).

Originally, I was thinking to pay for this trip myself, but I know that some people have been asking how to support me financially while I'm here. I personally don't need any money, but if someone had a desire to help pay for these 4 people to go to Siem Reap that would be an incredible encouragement to them. The trip would probably cost somewhere in the realm of $80 (USdollars) (the main expense being hotel and transport) for the four of them. I'm very happy to cover this charge myself, but several people have been asking myself and my parents how they can help, and so this would be a great opportunity to do so. If you're interested or want to know more, please email me at mikekingsley@eircom.net . Email me also if you'd like to know of other ways that you can support the work that God is doing in Cambodia.

I had to share this picture. This is of the neighbourhood that the kids from one of my classes live in (the same kids in the picture below). Since it's the wet season now and this neighbourhood is on the river bank it's begining to flood. It's just the begining of the wet season really, so these waters will rise a lot higher. To get to the house where we teach, take that first plank on the left and then the first ladder up to the room, you can't miss it.

These are some of my students (we teach english to them and play some games). They're each holding bags of rice generously donated by the Czech government. These 8 kids (young teenagers I guess is a better word) were selected from the community because they all have problems with drug addiction. Even though their English is not the best -although they are learning little by little- through the classes we're teaching them valuable skills about listening, learning and paying attention. Through the organizations continuing involvenement with them they know they have someone to turn to and someone who cares about them. These kids have come a long way since the first day when we had to break up 4 fist fights and when one of them (the on in the front on the right) wouldn't stop sniffing glue in class.