3-3-11 Wednesday

We arrived in Korea at aroud 7:00 a.m. local time, and headed straight to our new gate where we each took our own row of chairs and slept for a few hours.  It is freezing here, and after walking most of the airport we couldn't find a single blanket for sale!!!  This is by far the nicest airport I have seen, with designer stores, spas, and movie theaters!  It makes passing the time for our 9 hour layover not so bad....but still pretty long!  Our flight leaves at 4:00 p.m. and we are ready to bring this very long travel day to an end!  The plan is to sleep the whole 10 hours back to San Diego where we will part ways, and hopefully get our luggage back in the end since it took forever to get our luggage checked in with our complicated itinerary!  We will miss Cambodia and the wonderfully warm people very much, and we have truely had an experience of a life time.  Thank you Operation Smile!

3-2-11 Tuesday

We woke up and had our last yummy breakfast at Journeys Within before we drove to the airport and hopped on our 10:00 a.m. flight.  We got in to Phnom Phen and met Joseph who is a missionary that Carly had gotten in contact with before we left the states, and he had been living here for 16 months.  He picked us up with his personal Tuk Tuk and we dropped our luggage off at the Thi Ming in one of our friends room who was still here from the mission since it was too early to check our bags.  We got back in the Tuk Tuk and went to a very nice inside market, and afterwards started the ride out to the killing fields.  We walked through the informational readings and video and it was very heavy material.  The victims were sent to the Killing Fields straight after their time in the Toul Sleng prison.  There were 86 mass graves with 100-460 bodies found in each one.  It was a horrific time that sent Cambodia back in to the stone age.  Pol Pot's hope was to whipe out currency and cleanse the people through hard labor in the fields so that the country could begin again from year 0 and follow their communist leaders dilligently.  We walked through the monument in the middle of the area which held 9 glass tiers of bones from the bodies that were excavated from the graves.  To cheer ourselves up afterwards we went to one of the orphanages that Joseph works with and had so much fun running around and playing with the kids!  They gave us a work out!  We went to another orphanage afterwards that had more older kids, and the orphanage is located in an old monistary.  On our off roading Tuk Tuk ride to get there we broke the Tuk Tuk and had to have a new driver come and get us!  Whoops!  We stopped at a few markets to get some last minute goodies before we went out to dinner at a place called Jars of Clay.  It was very yummy, and it was truely a unique place becasue all the staff had been involved with human trafficing and were now learning new skills.  We said goodbye to Joseph, and we really appreciate everything he did for us.  We had such a busy and fun last day!  After a quick shower we headed to the airport and got on our midnight flight to Seoul, Korea.  We slept the whole way!

3-1-2011 Pictures

at the temple today 

the temple accross the water

tomb raider scene

the temple ruins

restoration -AMAZING difference

last dinner night in siem reap!

our buddy mark that we bought desert for (:

3-1-2011 Monday

Today we had a little later start compared to yesterday, and we were at the temples by 8:00 a.m.  The first temple we saw was a 50 minute drive in to the jungle.  It was a smaller temple, but it was very intricately built and carved.  This temple was very unique because it was built with a pink/rose tinted sandstone.  Afterwards we drove to another temple where a scene in Tomb Raider was filmed!  It was very cool because they left the temple as they found it, intertwined with nature.  There were giant ancient trees growing on top of the temple and poking out from inside.  It was amazing and very surreal.  We headed back to the hotel where we sat by the pool for a few hours until it was time for our English class.  We went next door to the Journeys Within Our Community center where we helped teach an English class.  We played lots of fun games with the young adults there, and they were very cute about speaking.  We returned to our room after class had ended and read and showered up for the evening.  We took at Tuk Tuk and had dinner again at Madame Butterfly and then came back and shared a chocolate mouse with our new friend at the front desk who we gave the American name Mark.  It was hilarious to hang out with some of the staff and hear their stories!  Not to mention the mouse was delicious =).  We are having a packing party to get ready for our big travel day!

2-27-2011 Pictures

anna in our b&b room

our beautiful poolside at the b&b

delicious dinner at Madam Butterfly

met up with some of the team at angkor wat

angkor wat

playing around in the temple

one of the temples

posing at entrance to temple

being the 4 headed buddha

on a bridge at one of the temples

getting our fish biting massage, haha

2-27-2011 Sunday

This morning we had a 5:00 a.m. wake up call, and as you can imagine we were practically fighting over who was going to be the lucky once that got to get out of bed to answer the phone!!  Our tour guide and driver picked us up and we went to the amazing Angkor Wat temple where we watched the sunrise.  We headed in to the temple and walked through the ruins for four hours learning about the stories behind reliefs on the walls, Buddhism, and the meaning of the lay out and artifacts.  It was massive and very cool to see.  We even got to climb up a giant staircase to the Bakan which is the top most section of the temple that housed the laying Buddha.  We returned to the hotel around 10 and had a delicious late breakfast.  We hung out at the pool reading, swimming, and of course napping!!  After showering up we headed out to Bayon temple which had many interesting faces carved all over the ruins.  We had a funny photo shot with Amanda and our tour guide, and we also got a history lesson on the ruins themselves and Cambodia as a whole.  We jumped back in to our car after a few hours, and headed to pub street which was busy and full of shops, restaurants, and unique people.  We got a fish pedicure, which is were you sit around a giant tank and leave your feet in water for 25 minutes while fish eat off your dead skin!!!!  It was hilarious and took us forever to work up the courage to put our feet in that tank!  It tickled, and was one of those things you just had to try!  After a yummy dinner and brief shopping after running in to some of our Chinese medical teammates yet again (they were also at Angkor Wat that morning), we grabbed some ice cream and headed back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep!

2-25-2011 Friday

Sorry to be out of order!  Friday was our final day of surgery and upon our arrival at the hospital we got our team Cambodia t-shirts and took a group picture.  We only had 15 patients that day so it went quickly.  The youngest patient was 14, so we got to talk and put together puzzles with our older patients.  We also got to pass out the remainder of our toys and after giving our patients in post-op lots of goodies we traveled around the whole Soviet-Friendship Hospital giving toys and toothbrushes to other children and patients in the local hospital.  We had so much fun handing out goodies, and it was so cute to see their faces of amazement when we gave them toys.  After the last patient was off the table we packed up our supplies and left the hospital for the last time.  We had lunch at Ally Cat which was delicious Mexican food, and Carly's burrito was made with white sticky rice which was hilarious!!  Afterwards our whole lunch group went to a heavenly spa and got massages to relax after the completion of our mission!  After a little primping we headed off to the final party where we recognized sponsors, received certificates and scarves, sang a little karaoke, and danced the night away!  It was the perfect way to end an amazing time together with our medical mission teammates!!

-Anna and Carly