Our first night in Cambodia we went out to dinner with some of the staff at the Documentation Center to a really fancy Chinese Cambodian restaurant. We were on the top floor of tall building overlooking one of the main streets in Phnom Penh and we feasted on chicken, beef, shrimp, pig ears and pigeon while listening to the director of DC-Cam give us advice about our time in Cambodia. It was a great time, but we were all so tired that we had trouble staying awake towards the end of the meal.
Youk, the director, suggested that we make it a point to have fun before we start the interview process. He told us to make sure to still love Cambodia when we leave, which was really sweet advice. He advised that we are not going to be able to fix Cambodia's problems, that it has to be Cambodia fixing Cambodia's problems. With this advice in mind, we planned to go on a boat ride to a silk weaving village outside of Phnom Penh and spent the better part of the day experiencing "real" Cambodia. We watched the silk weavers, explored a Buddhist temple, and ate AMAZING Cambodian food... I seriously think that i tried 5 fruits that I had never heard of before, and I loved all of them.
When we were on the Silk island (I have to look up the name if it) there were all these children running around, playing with my class mates, asking for money, taking pictures and just being goofy. I was a little overwhelmed with the Buddhist temple, those kind of places are hard for me because I understand the devotion, but there is no truth there, and it breaks my heart. I wandered outside and away from the rowdy kids and my class to sit on a wall and journal/pray/think. When I was sitting there, a little girl came up to me, she was 12 years old and so beautiful. She didn't say anything, but just smiled and then looked at me with the most intense, beautiful, deep, enduring gaze that I have ever seen... I was captivated by her. She walked with me, and then sat with me again when the rest of the class was goofing around with the kids. She was... beautiful. Strikingly, wretchedly poor, but there was something about her that was just so precious. It made me think of the Shulamite woman in Song of Songs, who is dark but lovely, the object of the Kings affection. My Jesus died to save her. I am typing this to you all and I am on the verge of tears because I will never see her again. I don't know if she will ever have another opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ, and she needs to, because His heart breaks for her and desires to know her.... I desired to know her, to know why she had so much pain and so much beautiful strength in her eyes... and yet He desires her so much more... One of the girls in my class saw us sitting together and came over to us. She gave the girl a scarf and her eyes welled up with tears. She just sat and gazed at us, at me, and I knew there was so much to her, so many deep things that she wanted to express, but was content not to. When we left, she just walked away. My heart is still heavy with it, with her.
When we came back from our boat ride, we freshened up, explored our neighborhood and got fruit smoothies. We spent time looking in our lonelyplanet guide book and found the yummiest and slowest indian food restaurant to eat at. after dinner I was ready to crash and burn, but my sweet roomie wanted to get a drink to help put her to sleep. Funnily enough, it made her super chatty, so I fell asleep to stories of Eastern European currency and JEP drama... More to come, have to run off to start the day. Today is our first day of interviews - crazy.
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