Day 1

Today officialy starts the adventure. After the long trip over the Pacific, we pretty much skipped Friday and landed early August 21st in Phnom Penh, Cambodia - the final destination. The trip overall went really smooth, no delayed or canceled flights and the 14 hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong was quite comfortable and the private headrest tv screens gave me plenty of entertainment. The process of actually getting into the country could not have been more easy, good thing I choose Cambodia over Bangladesh (that was my other potential placement). The 3 SALTers who were supposed to go to Bangladesh ended up going else where because they couldn't get their visas, here they practically handed them to us and told us to have a good time.

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Before I go on I should probably highlight that I'm here with three other SALTers: Liz Andes, Nicole Geiger, and LynAnne Wiest.

After arriving at the MCC office, which is where we will all be staying for a week or so, we met most of the MCC crew and got a much needed shower. We then jumped into some Tuk Tuks and hit up a local Chinese restaurant (awesome dumplings) it was tasty times ten. Afterwards, one of the many MCC couples took us out to visit the central market along with some good site-seeing spots--most names I don't recall even slightly. At one of the temples we saw an elephant and a whole bunch of monkeys. To my enjoyment these monkeys were completely used to humans and would walk right beside you, I will probably try to claim one as a pet. There was this little old lady sitting next to the temple with a bag full of fruit just handing them out to the monkeys, she told us she does it everyday--I wish I had her job, I seriously could have watched those primates eat bananas for hours, but we had more to do.

We got some super tasty drinks at a really relaxed coffee place which helped keep us from falling flat on our faces from the jet lag. I got an iced coffee w/ sweetened concentrated milk. Later we walked down a few nearby streets and got a quick tour of some good restaurants/stores as well as an early dinner at an authentic Cambodian restaurant. Let me say this, I wasn't really expecting a whole lot from Cambodian cuisine, but this stuff was awesome. Even though I know that we're getting a bit spoiled since it's our first day, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to eat these foods more consistently.

So now dinner's done and I'm back at the MCC office in my temporary bedroom trying to resist sleep until I can justify a reasonable bedtime (8:00) I'm hoping to get my body into a healthy sleep cycle early. All I can say at this point is that my first day has been incredible. The fellow MCCers I've met so far are very friendly and the city is ballin', I'm looking forward to getting a bit more familiar with it. From what I can make out of the culture and the people here is that they are very relaxed and polite. Phnom Penh has some tourists here so they don't go too crazy when they see a Tuk Tuk full of white people.

As for the next few days I'm excited to learn more about the city, meet more people, ride a moto, eat more of this awesome food, and start learning the language. I'll try to get some photos up soon so you can get a better picture of what I'm up to.

Take care,

Michael