Weekly Update

So I finally got access to the internet, so I figured I would go ahead a crunch out a quick entry. Life here is the same as usual. I am still teaching a good bit of English, hanging out with all of the kids here, and I went out with home care last week as they made rounds throughout the community. In addition to checking up on ill patients, I managed to see a 150 pound pig mounting another pig, 3 little girls peeing along the side of the road, and the village cross dresser. I continue to say that nothing in Cambodia surprises me anymore. The food here is still really good, and it is nice because I have seen a lot of meat options recently. In fact, we had an interesting meal the day I returned. Earlier that morning, one of the communal goats got a bucket stuck on its head, fell in a nearby pond, and drowned. Humorous as it sounds,I bet you can guess what we had for dinner that night...(and lunch the next day).

I have never really gotten to talk about the wildlife here (aside from the kids, of course). On a typical day, I come across several goats, cows, chickens, squirrels, and lots and lots of insects. Bugs have recently been going to town on my left leg, and I have the battle scars to prove it. Unlike my bug bites in the US, my bites here are pretty gnarly. They get really swollen the pus for days. I am constantly having to medicate the bites while avoiding additional ones. I have also seen several enormous geckos (probably a foot and a half long), frogs, and of course the massive catfish we fish out in the nearby ponds.

The weather here is still paralyzingly hot, but at this point I have gotten used to it. My Khmer has gotten a lot better too, even much so that I often surprise myself with my conversational skills. This being said, everyone still laughs when I open my mouth.

On a final note, one of the women in the gave birth to a baby boy last night. At about 1 am, kids came screaming, waking Wayne and myself up, letting us know that the baby was on the way. The pregnant woman hopped on board a moto, travelled 45 minutes to the Tako provioncial hospital, and gave birth shortly after. Interestligly, both the mother and father are HIV positive. Without approrpiate medication, a baby has a 1/3 chance of being HIV positive to an infected mother. However, if given ARVs within 24 hours of birth, the baby should be safe. Im assuming that the baby boy was born negative, but I don't know for sure. Also, the last woman to give birth here did so in the back of a car on the way to the hospital...a monk was driving.

Thats all for now, and I probably won't post again for another week or so when in Phnom Pehn