oops!

Sorry, didn’t mean to go so long between blog posts. I’ve experienced just about every technological difficulty possible and last week my site was flooded so I haven’t been on my computer quite as much. I have some more pictures I want to post but now I can’t upload pictures onto my computer. This is really going make achieving my goal of taking more pictures in my second year an issue…hopefully I’ll figure something out soon.

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten some pretty hilarious drawings/notes from the kids in the class I help with. The kids in the class range from 9-21 years old and for some reason it’s the older kids 16-17 that are the ones drawing me pictures. My health center director’s daughter comes to class everyday and is really shy and never wants to ask a question but a few weeks ago she showed up with a note for me. Really it was just a song called “I love you” that she copied but it must have taken forever, it took up both sides and where there was some blank room she decorated the page and drew a picture of herself going to school…

The other picture is from a boy in the class who always has a question and is one of the better speakers. He drew a girl standing on a beach with a helicopter flying off saying “don’t worry!” Maybe I worry too much?

Last week the new group of volunteers got their site placement so we found out which volunteers would be coming up North to join us. We got 5 new volunteers including one not too far away from me! I’m really excited about having new people up here. It was fun to meet them in town and show them around a little bit and hear about their first few nights meeting their new host families. It seems like forever ago that I was just getting here but it’s still such a vivid memory.

The health center has been pretty busy lately. Last week we didn’t have work for a few days because the river flooded and one of the bridges fell into the river so not all the staff could make it into work or had to deal with flooding in their houses. Luckily my house was just fine and it was nothing more than some muddy sloshing around. Next week is Pchum Ben the big holiday here to honor the ancestors and the very first holiday I celebrated with my host family last year! The combination of not being open part of last week and not being open most of next week for the holiday left me to do checkups on 20 pregnant ladies all by myself yesterday! Just one midwife came in and she wrote up all the visits and left me very busy.

I got a new sampot made for Pchum Ben that matches the silver wedding shirt I had made not too long ago. I can wear the silver outfit to the wat or to weddings to it made more sense than getting another colorful outfit that I can only wear to weddings. This year I am determined to not be shy and take more pictures so you guys can have a better idea of what I’m actually talking about. Here’s hoping my computer cooperates!

And because you can’t really get a good picture of life here without stories like these…this morning I woke up to the smell I dread the most. Dead mouse. I don’t know if I ever blogged about it but last year while my family was away one day I found a dead mouse in my bed under my mattress, you know where I stick my hands to tuck my mosquito net in every night. Let’s just say it’s a very distinct smell that now has some not so nice memories attached. Luckily this time the mouse was outside my room but unfortunately very much rotting. It was really disgusting and I couldn’t bring myself to take care of it so I called over a neighbor who I had seen many times handle mice, chickens and other things I would never touch. He calmly grabbed it by the tail and chucked it while commenting on how bad it smelled, my favorite way to start the day.

I also added a new page with a (mostly) complete list of books I’ve read since coming here. Check it out, let me know if you want to know about them and see if I’m missing anything I need to read.

Xoxo,

B