Orientation.

Today I went in to the World Relief office just a few blocks from the house here in Phnom Penh. The past few days they have been cleaning out the septic tank at the office. I am told that they don't have pumps and vacuums and whatever we use in the states to do these jobs, so they send actual people down there with shovels. They set up little one-foot-tall walls made out of rocks out on the side of the road, and dump all of their findings within these enclosures and then let them sit there until the sun dries it all up. If only the smells could be transmitted over the Internet...

I was introduced (and re-introduced) to some of the office staff and was shown Sivan's office, where I'll be working on things. Sivan is a Cambodian woman who heads up the child survival program, but she is seldom in town, which means I will be using the office along with Jean, a woman from Arizona who is volunteering with World Relief part time. Jean took me around town a little bit.

I got set up with a bank account, at a new bank that is all the rage because it actually has ATM machines, a first for Cambodia. I was also provided with a cell phone for domestic calls, and it is one of the pre-paid variety, so we pulled over along the side of a street at a little phone card stand and got a $10 card that should last me a month and a half or so.

My sleep schedule is still trying to make sense of what I'm doing to it. I took a nap again this afternoon, and then attempted to stay awake through The Mission with Tim and Kathy, but was dozing off. It is now 9:52pm, and I am calling it a night.

One last thing I should mention is that the transfer from the old server (which was slow and unpredictible) to the new server (which is, hopefully, fast and reliable) is now complete and so our technical difficulties should be behind us. If you have tried emailing me but did not hear back, your message may have gotten lost during the transfer in a cyberspace black hole. Re-sending the message would be advised and appreciated.