Hi from Phnom Penh

I feel like I should blog right after Adam because I have as different an internship as I can imagine being funded by the same organization. I'm working jointly for the Face to Face AIDs Project and Salvation Centre Cambodia, out of Phnom Penh, on a project about the obstacles faced by disadvantaged children in the Cambodian educational system. Both organizations have come to be involved with vulnerable children and educational issues here as an outgrowth of their work with the Cambodian AIDs crisis.

It's taken me about a week to meet everyone and make a schedule. I'll be working at the SCC's Boeng Kok school Mondays through Wednesdays, where I will help teach and also interview the children and teachers.

On Fridays, I'll head south to Takeo province to help out at the orphanage at Wat Opot. Originally more of a hospice for AIDs patients, Wat Opot has become a children's community for children orphaned by AIDs and HIV-positive children. I hope to stay out there some weekends, although I'm not entirely certain of my stamina for life without air conditioning in the Cambodian rainy season -- even for someone like me, who hates air conditioning, this is rough going. So far, it seems I'll be getting their sewing machines working and showing them macrame (of course I can make macrame pot-hangers! I'm a law student.) and also interviewing the kids.

SCC is helping set me up with interviews with teachers in the public school system as well, and I hope to spend Thursdays doing research outside of the two schools I'll work at.

I don't have much in the way of pictures yet -- I want to get to know people before taking their portraits. This boy, however, came running up to us when we were traveling back from Takeo on Friday and said, "Take a picture!" I showed him himself on the digital screen and he grinned and ran away.

Also, I hope to figure out how to post a short movie about trying to cross a Cambodian street.