today had a not so pleasant start to it. i woke up this morning not feeling 100%, we went for breakfast in the hotel restaurant and afterwords i had to go back to the room for a bit. when it was time to leave for Rahabs house i began to get a fever. taking all of this into consideration the team decided that i will stay at the hotel and take a sick day while they went and worked in Svay Pak. while taking a rest at the hotel i was able to watch some great "high quality" Cambodian TV. Such great shows consisted of Cambodian price is right, karaoke, and other "top quality" Cambodian game shows.
later on in the day we got to go to ARC and meet the girls that had been rescued. it was quite the experience. it started off just this wonderful awesome place where girls could be safe and unharmed. we got a tour and the whole place was just perfect.
after the tour we got to have lunch with the girls. this is when things became a little awkward. i noticed as i was eating my chicken soup on rice and mystery meat (I'm sure it was beef but yet again it also could have been pork i dont really remember) that all of these eyes were looking at me. not just the whole team, but me individually. i think that the girls were beginning to form crushes on me because i remember when in the hotel Grant (dad) was saying that Clayton (the one who works for ARC) was telling the team this morning that it might be more difficult for me because the girls after being rescued sometimes have the dream of a western man coming and marrying them and would want to them and taking them back to Canada with them. now with this in my mind i couldnt help but think what these girls had gone through and here they were asking Kit all of these questions about me (age, occupation ect =P) and i couldnt face them. all through lunch i couldnt even look them in the eye. Though there was this one girl (who i will not name due to security reasons) that we had met when she came to Rahabs house the day before. When seeing her i couldnt help but smile back.
All of these girls looked so happy and if just going to ARC without knowing about their pasts in the first place, you never would have known. they all were just so full of life and willingness to learn. many were just so out going, there was this other girl who as we left said. "see you next year". this had never crossed my mind that a young girl who had been through what she had been through could laugh and make jokes with mostly (no offence to the team) but middle age men who normally in Cambodia would have bought them. it was just so special that she could just make jokes with the team.
after the emotional time that we had at ARC we went to a "beer and BBQ" place for dinner. it was kind of an IKEA type meal. We "had to do it ourselves". it was kind of cool, we got the raw meat and were given a gas powered BBQ cone thingy and cooked it ourselves. we ate with some people from IJM, Naomi a "law fellow" as she called herself and her husband Josh. we also had the pleasure of eating with Sarah and Lisa who are also from IJM (i didnt catch their official titles). overall a good meal and good conversations. though as we left the restaurant we came across a sight we did not wish to see after eating all of that meat. there was a GREAT BIG rat pasted to the road. made us wonder if the meat we were eating was legit or if it was just pieces of our great friend "squishy the rat" (only joking)
this is Jeff signing off
God bless
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