And you thought we were just on vacation huh? Well so did we, or so it seemed. We worked hard to see as much as we could before our field study began only to find that our work would be slow starting...or so it appeared. We went in on Monday (I know, my blog is seriously lagging) to take our first tour of the place that wi ll be taking up all of our time over the next few months. I must say, the place is a charming 4 story building that depicts the French colonial scene of early 19th century Phnom Penh. As a matter of fact, in many of the places here you can find yourself wisked away for a temporary moment to Paris, sipping on tea and eating a French baguette in a laissez fair manner. It is quite enthralling. It has a charm that can only be seen by looking through the utter disparity and repulsive oppression that has been apart of this countries history. This is a place that one does not have to look very deep to see what is wrong, it is obvious in the scenery.
After brief introductions and detailed presentations at RACHA Monday and Tuesday, we chose our unit that we wanted to be involved in for the remainder of our field study. Rebecca, Laura, and I all decided that we would like to be engulfed in a world of Capacity Building. The Capacity Building team works to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Health at the health center, district, provincial, and national levels. In other words, we will be focusing on strengthening a broken and starving health care system. With visions of saving the world in our heads, we returned the next day to meet with our director to discuss further what we would be doing with our time at RACHA. Suddenly, our heads were sent in a whirlwind as we quickly learned what the next month had in store: none of this which involved staying in Phnom Penh.
As we opened our calenders, we quickly learned that we would be heading out to the Provinces in Cambodia to see and do many different things. We would start the following Monday by heading to Pursat, a province just west of Phnom Penh and a town that "isn't much of an attraction, nor does it have anything that will distinguish it from other small capital towns in provinces throughout the country" (thanks Wikitravel). All in all, we are only there for 2 days, then we head off to Battambang by way of Siem Reap, spend about a week once we leave Battambang in Siem Reap, head to another Southern province Koh Kong, and after two weeks take a bus to Bangkok (due to the convenience level of proximity from Koh Kong to Bangkok) and spend the remainder of a large holiday week parading around Bangkok, sleeping on beaches in Bali, and practicing Yoga in Singapore. I know, that was a long sentence, but it is truly the only way I can help depict the whirlwind in which our heads were sent as we found out we would be leaving Phnom Penh not to mention so soon. We barely knew where these places were much less how to pronounce them right, and we were about to dive right in to the thick of things.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things we will be viewing. This includes health clinics, floating villages, sanitation facilities, and local health staff including birthing assistant trainings. I will keep you updated on those as we go. As for now, we are packed, typhoided up, and malarial pill ingested...in other words, we are ready to hit the road for a month. We will be making our way from place to place via bus (and hopefully we won't be on the Antartic bus again). Wifi may be poor in some of the places, but I can promise you one thing, the experience and the pictures will make up for it later. Here's to our new visions of helping women and children one Cambodian province at a time.
After brief introductions and detailed presentations at RACHA Monday and Tuesday, we chose our unit that we wanted to be involved in for the remainder of our field study. Rebecca, Laura, and I all decided that we would like to be engulfed in a world of Capacity Building. The Capacity Building team works to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Health at the health center, district, provincial, and national levels. In other words, we will be focusing on strengthening a broken and starving health care system. With visions of saving the world in our heads, we returned the next day to meet with our director to discuss further what we would be doing with our time at RACHA. Suddenly, our heads were sent in a whirlwind as we quickly learned what the next month had in store: none of this which involved staying in Phnom Penh.
As we opened our calenders, we quickly learned that we would be heading out to the Provinces in Cambodia to see and do many different things. We would start the following Monday by heading to Pursat, a province just west of Phnom Penh and a town that "isn't much of an attraction, nor does it have anything that will distinguish it from other small capital towns in provinces throughout the country" (thanks Wikitravel). All in all, we are only there for 2 days, then we head off to Battambang by way of Siem Reap, spend about a week once we leave Battambang in Siem Reap, head to another Southern province Koh Kong, and after two weeks take a bus to Bangkok (due to the convenience level of proximity from Koh Kong to Bangkok) and spend the remainder of a large holiday week parading around Bangkok, sleeping on beaches in Bali, and practicing Yoga in Singapore. I know, that was a long sentence, but it is truly the only way I can help depict the whirlwind in which our heads were sent as we found out we would be leaving Phnom Penh not to mention so soon. We barely knew where these places were much less how to pronounce them right, and we were about to dive right in to the thick of things.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things we will be viewing. This includes health clinics, floating villages, sanitation facilities, and local health staff including birthing assistant trainings. I will keep you updated on those as we go. As for now, we are packed, typhoided up, and malarial pill ingested...in other words, we are ready to hit the road for a month. We will be making our way from place to place via bus (and hopefully we won't be on the Antartic bus again). Wifi may be poor in some of the places, but I can promise you one thing, the experience and the pictures will make up for it later. Here's to our new visions of helping women and children one Cambodian province at a time.
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