Photo of the Month

This photo is so hilarious that it inspired a new blog tradition of photo of the month. What makes this so hilarious is that it was completely unprovoked and unplanned and we were not even aware of it until later when looking through our photos. It reminds me of when I was in my film class in high school and would play with the jog-shuttle button (a highly sensative and controlable fast forward buttom used for making perfect film cuts) to see how many contortions our face could make in the space of one word. When we would happen upon a really good one we would pause the image and call our friends over to laugh and point. So Bill, please forgive us as we call all our friends over to laugh and point, but your face wins!!! PS we love you!!

In fact, it is worth noting how much we really do love Bill and Jan, our coordinators at Rose Charities. Aside from having two new idols, and a plethora of projects we want to help with, we also have two new friends. Upon arriving at Rose Charities we soon found out that the doctor on duty, who was meant to take us around while we were here, was at the last minute called to help out with a big important project during our whole stay. So Jan and Bill didn't skip a beat and have managed to find things for us to do daily, including but not limited to watching live eye surgeries up close, watching the delivery of afterbirth and post delivery stitching, going on physical therapy rounds in the countryside to do impromptu art therapy, hooking us up with people to give us tours through orphanages, but mostly inspiring us with their amazing attitudes and life full of work and help. They are the kind of people who want to help, have ideas, and do them. I am proud to have met them and hope to be able to take a piece of their goodness with me. Thank you Bill and Jan!!

Weekend in Sihanoukville

We had Friday off last week so we took a long weekend trip to Sihanoukville ($5 each way by bus) to find a beach to lay on for a few days. In that goal we were completely successful. Our 2 days on the beach only involved a few activities besides lazing.

Reading books

Playing with strays

Watching the sunsets

Being served breakfast, dinner, and many many fruit shakes in our beach beds

It was a pretty ideal vacation from our pretty ideal 9-month trip.

The Massage Parlor Next Door

What's better than having a massage parlor next door that charges $5 for hour-long traditional Khmer massages? Having a massage parlor next door that charges $5 for hour-long massages and gives you free access to the gym, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, and showers, as well as toast and jam and AMAZING ICE TEA!!!

Danielle's face after trying the amazing tea

Pretty much the only thing this massage parlor doesn't include is a free visit to the chiropractor, which you'll need after experiencing a $5 traditional Khmer massage. We're going back as soon as we recover.

Cambodia

During a brief study abroad in 2005, I toured a clinic operated by RoseCharities in Phnom Penh and was impressed by the efficiency and dedication of the medical workers there. In fact, this was the clinic that first sparked my interest in becoming a doctor. It was one of the few NGOs my class visited that offered both immediate and long-term relief to people struggling through the effects of poverty: immediate relief through life-saving medical procedures that would have been otherwise impossible for the clinic's patients, and long-term benefits through community outreach programs and an emphasis on improving the quality of life in Cambodia.

Even in the few short weeks we spent in Cambodia studying aid organizations, it was easy to become discouraged by the waste, and sometimes obvious corruption, that plagued well-intentioned charities, but the Rose Clinic seemed to stretch every dollar it received. As I saw firsthand in 2005, a $20 donation to RoseCharities can restore a person's sight, and $50 can repair a cleft palate or give a child the ability to walk. For more information on how to donate to RoseCharities, please see http://www.rosecharities.info/donate.htm.

The organization's efficiency can be traced to its formation, as outlined on the RoseCharities homepage:

"Founded by aid workers who were disillusioned by the waste and bureaucracy often seen in international aid, we started in Cambodia in 1998. The aim was to deliver effective, sustainable programmes directly to those in need, with minimal bureaucracy, and with transparency at every stage....We are run by volunteers, so administration costs are kept to a bare minimum, with 98% of donations going directly to support our work."

- RoseCharities
http://www.rosecharities.info/

I contacted Rose last October and asked if they'd be willing to take us in for a few weeks as volunteers, and they graciously agreed. Since then, Bill and Jan Johnston have been bending over backwards to find opportunities to put our random interests and talents to work. We started last Wednesday with a short tour of the gynecology ward in the Chey Chumnas General Hospital in Takmao, the hospital where Rose Cambodia is based. That afternoon we helped enter patient files into the computer (data entry is a rare example of a skill that Danielle and I both possess).

Thursday we traveled to the countryside with Sokny, the physical therapist on staff at the Rose office, to work with a woman who had laid in bed for 30 years after a debilitating bout with encephalitis (for more info visit the Rose Rehab page: http://www.rosecambodia.org/?page_id=12). The physical therapists at Rose have been working with her to help her gain the strength to sit up, and in order to get her hands moving Danielle brought a bunch of art supplies. We made simple shapes for her to paint in, and Danielle taught her a few strokes. Danielle and I were so absorbed in watching her work that it took a while to notice the dozen or so kids from the village in a semicircle around her, jealously watching her paint. It was a great visit. As we left, Danielle hung some of her paintings next to her bed with ribbon.



On the way back to the office, we stopped to visit a woman who had been badly burned on her legs by gasoline, and the physical therapists changed a bandage for her. Apparently a skin graft had failed to take, so there was still a gaping wound behind her left knee months after the accident. While we were visiting her, her neighbors brought another potential patient to see the therapists and placed him on the bed next to her. The man had been in a motorcycle accident and could no longer move the left side of his arm. The physical therapists assessed him and made an appointment to see him later at the clinic.

As we were about to leave, the neighbors convinced the therapists to see a woman next door who was having trouble walking. While the physical therapists did their thing, Danielle and I hung back and smiled shyly at some very friendly older women, who seemed to be staring at us. One of them started talking, half at us and half at the women around her. She then started wiping at her nose, as if to inform me that I powdered sugar on the end of mine, so I self-consciously started doing the same but she just laughed. One of the therapists translated, "She wants your nose." This seemed hysterical at the time, so Danielle and I giggled about it for a while.

After the therapists had finished their work we got back in the tuk tuk, but before we could go there was some kind of commotion. The lady who couldn't stop looking at my nose jumped into the tuk tuk and handed us each a coconut and a straw. We very gratefully accepted and drove off.


We made one last stop to see a beautiful young girl who was working with the therapists to build the strength in her arms and legs, and then we took a holiday all weekend (2 working days is long enough...)

Today Bill gave us a tour of the Rose Eye Clinic just outside Phnom Penh in the morning, and Danielle and I returned in the afternoon to observe glaucoma surgeries. We watched for 2 and a half hours as nearly a dozen patients underwent the 20-30 minute procedure. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

I may move to Cambodia when I'm a doctor just so I can operate in flip flops

More to come on what we've been doing with our play time in this wonderful country.

The Tuk Tuks

The persistence of the tuk tuk drivers here in Cambodia has nearly forced us into hiding. Every seven seconds, or more often at corners or markets, we'll hear the familiar call of "Tuk tuk lady?" Danielle adapted immediately and is able to ignore most of the ruckus. I, however, feel responsible for answering every single shout with a polite shake of the head or a "no thank you." it might seem more humane but it's not, it just gives them false hope. They end up grabbing their poster of attractions and following us, expending their precious energy in the heat of the day, chanting "where you go tomorrow? Want see killing fields? Museum? Tuol sleng? Discount for you." I continue to say no in every language I can think of until finally I say, "we like to walk!" and make a little walking gesture with my hands. This seems to confuse them, and they either laugh or frown at us and walk away. Although we've had many entertaining interactions under these circumstances, and generally find the drivers to be very charming, we've decided to put a stop to the incessant attacks by going on the offensive.

So tonight while we ate at an adorable pizzeria on the riverfront and watched Valentines Day revelers celebrate (apparently it's a very big thing here - it looked like a pink bomb went off in the middle of Phnom Penh), we selected a driver who had parked near our table. After we paid our bill we waited for him to walk away from his tuk tuk, then we hurried onto the street and stood right next to his little vehicle. Four or five other drivers saw us and started screaming "Tuk tuk ???" like mindless drones, but we just pointed to the driver we'd picked, the only one who hadn't had a chance to yell at us yet, and said, "We want him." Then we crossed our arms and started tapping our feet as if we'd been waiting for him for a long time.

The other drivers looked like we'd stabbed them in the heart. It must have seemed so unfair for him to get the commission when they'd clearly called dibs on us. But that one driver smiled like he was king of the tuk tuks. He swaggered over to where we were, hopped on the moto seat and took off down Sisowath Quay. As soon as we were on the rode Danielle and I broke out in peels of laughter, and we could see from the mirrors that our driver was laughing just as hard. That'll teach them to yell at us all day.

Tuk Tuk drivers: 0
Jessi and Danielle: 1

Our favorite Siem Reap tuk tuk driver, Zut (center)

(Actually Written By Jessi)

Haiku

Illegal
Hikes like Haiku Stairs
Rock my world

We've only been traveling for 3 weeks and already our trip has reached such extreme levels of epic-ness that Danielle has decided to make a stamp of the word "epic" so we can stamp all of our most epic experiences in our various journals. That way when we come home at the end of the year and return to our normal, mundane existences we'll never be able to forget the extremity of our bizarre new lifestyle.

The most epic of all our epic days was Tuesday Feb 1 to Thursday Feb 3. It counts as one day because we really didn't sleep much in between. It started out kind of normal. We spent most of Tuesday on the beach and in the BYUH library, catching up on facebook, pampering our beloved blog and futilely trying to plan our stubbornly unplannable romp through Asia (unless you are my mother, in which case EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL). We left Laie around 9 p.m. planning to camp for the night at Bellows so we could get up early and beat the crowds to Hanauma Bay. Unfortunately our permit had expired before it was even issued. Thanks Satellite City Hall. The military guard at Bellows pointed to the discrepancy and turned us away.

It was getting late, and it seemed pointless to drive all the way back to the northshore to sleep and drive all the way back in the morning, so we decided to sleep in the car again. We spent an hour circling the area trying to find a hiding place for our car that was unobtrusive enough to prevent cops from noticing but close enough to the cops to prevent other sorts of people who hide from cops late at night from noticing. Being homeless involves a very delicate balance.

We found an ideal spot across from the beach park next to a high fence on a residential street. Once again Danielle stretched out in the back while I reclined the front passenger seat, and we slept about as well as you can expect to sleep in an economy car in a strange neighborhood waiting for cops to come knocking at the window.

The next morning we got up with the sun and realized we were next to one of the most beautiful beaches we'd ever seen, so we walked around for a bit before putting on our swimsuits and driving towards Hanauma Bay, where we spent a perfect Hawaiian day.

A scenic overlook on the way to Hanauma Bay

I want to put a house on this island

We rented snorkels and followed around schools of brightly colored fishes and perpetually indifferent-looking sea turtles for an hour or so, then laid out on the soft sand. When we had been there long enough to acquire funny looking tanlines (especially Danielle, who got tiger stripes on her derriere from her flashy bikini), we drove to Honolulu and got curry at our new favorite Thai restaurant.

We were feeling so refreshed from our relaxing day at the beach (and annoyed at the idea of spending another night in the car) that we decided to stay up all night and hike the Stairway to Heaven. We found a Walmart and morphed our sweet travel shirts into clubbing attire (what can I say? Danielle's a genius), used beach grime to style our hair, and spent the evening in Waikiki dancing with some very fun Chilean boys at Senor Frog's. As someone who doesn't go clubbing very often and doesn't have anything to compare Waikiki's nightlife to, I don't think I can adequately express how much fun we had that night so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say it was awesome.

We left our new friends around 3:30 a.m. and drove to Kaneohe, where we loaded up on caffeine, called my incredibly tolerant friend Ryan at 4:45 a.m. for directions, stumbled through a bamboo forest, hopped a fence laced with barbed wire and manure (we found a lot of amateur booby traps along the way), and began our ascent.

All I can say about the hike was that it was EPIC. See for yourself.

Pre-dawn

Slowly getting lighter

Almost to the top

Getting close...

Boom! The sun's up

I got a lot of shots of Danielle's back...

We reached the first landing just as the sky started lightening, and got to the very top in time for a brilliant sunrise. Then we ran down the stairs as fast as our shaking, sugar and caffeine crashing, sleep-deprived legs would carry us to avoid the awkwardness of blatantly walking back to our cars in front of the security guard who arrives at varying times every morning.

Our last stop was the STD clinic. Somehow Danielle had managed to avoid her routine Hepatitis B shots in high school, and the oversight hadn't been caught before we left Colorado. Luckily my mom had found a clinic in Honolulu that offered free Hepatitis B shots to "at risk" groups, and with the huge bags under our eyes, matted hair, and heavy day-old makeup we certainly looked the part. We stared at the small TV in the waiting room like zombies as it played a high school drama promoting the use of condoms on repeat for an hour and a half, got the shot, and somehow managed to drive back to the northshore before crashing on the beach. Not a bad way to spend 72 hours.

(Actually Written by Jessi)

48 Hours of Sleepless Travel

We were in the Honolulu airport as planned, ready to fly to Bangkok, where we would then go to Cambodia via land. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well 48 hours and 10+ stops later, we weren't so sure any more. Our seemingly simple trip turned into a maze of transits and layovers, creating a comically long list of stops.

Here's how it went:

Feb 6th at 1:30 p.m. Hawaiian time through Feb 8th at 7:00 p.m. Cambodian Time

Airplane: Feb 6 @ 1:30pm Hawaiian Time
10+ Hrs: Honolulu to Seoul (crossed International Dateline)

3+Hrs: Layover in Seoul
5+ Hrs: Seoul to Bangkok
4+ Hrs: Layover in Bangkok Airport

Taxi:
20 Mins: Airport to Train Station (plus an argument with driver who didn't speak English)
Train:
6+ Hrs: Bangkok to Aranyaprathet, near Cambodian Border
Tuk Tuk:

30+ Mins:
To first and illegitimate looking "Consulate"
To actual Consulate for a visa
To border
By Foot:

1+ Hrs:
To immigration line
To border
Line to get stamp
Across border to bus station
Bus:

3+ Hrs: Poipet Border Crossing to near Siem Reap
Tuk Tuk:

1 Hr:

Into Siem Reap to first guest house (full)

Arrived at Rendezvous Guest House (lovely)
By Foot:

Much too long: Upstairs to bed

In all our transit we were only able to sneak in a few naps and a few meals. We luckily have a "turn-into-a-robot" switch for travel so we arrived in good spirits none the less. However it took a good night's sleep to revert into fully functioning humans.

Since then we both have really taken to Cambodia and are excited for our prolonged stay in the country. The people are sweet and unobtrusive and we have felt safe from the moment we arrived.

Hilo Hanakahi and The Wild Hawaiian

It began halfway across the Pacific ocean, when our neighbor sitting in the window seat began vigorously shaking Danielle awake, shouting "You won! You won!"

The flight attendant suddenly appeared and handed her a CD, the prize for winning a competition to guess the exact time the plane would be halfway to Honolulu from San Francisco. Being a mathmagician, Danielle had naturally computed the time down to the second. As he gave her the CD, the flight attendant had told us, "This is GREAT date music!!!"

We decided that the 4-hour mini road trip we were taking to Volcanoes National Park would be the perfect time to screen Danielle's prize. As we drove away from Kailua in the early morning light, we popped in the CD, hoping for some lovely background music, and were instead assaulted with a bizarre array of experimental sounds. I'm not sure what kind of social travesty that flight attendant normally subjected his dates to, but "The Wild Hawaiian" was definitely not romantic. We finally found a song that we liked on the sixth track, titled "Hilo Hanakahi" - laid back, rhythmic and vocally intriguing. We didn't understand the words, which were all in Hawaiian, but we felt ourselves relaxing into the soothing melody....until we noticed that there was a lunatic screaming in the background before each new verse. The crazy man would bellow "HILO!!!" And then the lead singer would softly follow with, "Hilo Hanakahi I ka ua Kanilehua..." Then the first man would scream, "PUNA!!!" and the vocals would follow with "Puna paia `ala I ka paia `ala i ka hala..."

We imagined a wild-haired man gesturing nonsensically and screaming from the top of a smoking volcano, or a drunk uncle trying to get on stage with the band at a wedding and half sing/half scream lyrics he didn't really know. We listened to that song on repeat for four hours, crying our eyes out laughing the entire time. Check out the youtube link to the song if you want to listen in.

This is how we imagine the Wild Hawaiian.

The Land of Death and Dinosaurs and NAR NAR!!

Upon driving through Volcano National Park, near Hilo, the landscapes seemed to speak to me. They seemed to have a wild and dramatic past. As is something big used to live here.


As we turned the bend and looked out over a great, vast expanse of fire rock with smoke rising from the ground I realized THIS IS DINOSAUR LAND!!!


This is me in Dinosaur Land.

I made a naturalistic sketch to document my findings. I drew it how it would have looked in the time of the dinosaurs.
Jessi said that the islands were created relatively late in the earth's history and that since it was after the jurassic period dinosaurs probably never lived on these islands.
Don't worry I didn't believe her. You should not believe the nay sayers. She will see soon that this really is Dinosaur Land.

Now I will prove without a doubt that dinosaurs lived here.

Proof:
It is so obvious!! Just look at these pictures, how could they not have lived here?

Plus I found these seismographs which must have documented the movement of the dinosaurs, since the ground shook when they walked (cause they were so big). You can see that they were everywhere.


Q.E.D.

There now you have proof. But it looks like Jessi still has a doubt. It must be because she thinks the trees are too small for Dinosaur Land.I thought this at first too, but then I realized that the ground was black everywhere and that the dinosaurs must have burnt them all down when they left, so this small tree is just a new baby tree growing back. However, I will prove that this is dinosaur land again, since I said I would prove it "without a doubt", which is even more than just a normal proof.

Proof #2:
These are dinosaur colors. Orangey, Firey... implies DINOSAURS!!!!
Q.E.D.

There, Jessi looks satisfied. Now that I have proven it with out a doubt I will go on.