"Reflections on my Selective in Cambodia" by Julianne Reighard ('05)

A 2005 alumnae, Julianne wrote this as a fourth year medical student. She is pursuing family medicine.

Johm riab sua!

Hello and warm wishes from beautiful Cambodia! As I end my second week in this strikingly resilient country, I am drawn to think of you all more and more—my friends and family and loved ones—with whom I often wish to be sharing so many of my phenomenal moments, and even the not-so-phenomenal ones.

I departed for Phnom Penh on Thursday, January 13th, after saying goodbye to Dylan at the Dulles Airport. As he departed for Seattle and filled with mixed emotions, I began my wait at the check-in desk for Korean Airlines. I stood in line holding my paper tickets (no e-tickets accepted here) amidst a sea of foreign faces and indiscernible language and felt already as if I were in another world. It evoked a feeling at once alarming (grating against the common-sense needs of safety and comfort) and incredibly thrilling.

I arrived in Phnom Penh on Saturday, January 16th after a 14-hr flight to Seoul (where I had Kimgi and rice), a 3-hr layover, a 5-hr flight to Bangkok, a 7-hr layover, and a 1-hr flight to Phnom Penh (pronounced “P-nom Pen” with a hard P on Phnom). Whew! It was 9:10 a.m. Saturday here, 9:10 p.m. Friday in Ohio. I had been traveling for a long time, but given the amazing hospitality of the Korean Airlines staff and my luxurious blow-up neck pillow (thanks Mama), I felt surprisingly alive and ready to start the day.

I was met at the airport by Jack and Amy Middlebrooks, an expatriate doctor and nurse, from California and Pennsylvania respectively, who had met in Cambodia and were married in October. Jack had been my contact person for the Sihanouk Center of Hope and had informed me by e-mail that he would be waiting for me at the arrival gate in a red Hawaiian T-shirt. There he was, true-to-form, maybe 150 steps from the exit ladder of my airplane, bright and cheery in his red, short-sleeved, tropical-T-Wonder imprinted with a frenzy of palm leaves and round flowers. When I grinned at him, he sent me a huge, loopy wave and Amy smiled luminously. I loved her immediately.

As we stepped from the airport into a bath of humid heat, honking car-horns, and the sounds of a chattering Asian city, I felt a wave of emotion splash over me. Hooray, I was in Cambodia! I felt elated, and was even more delighted when I recognized the feeling. Wow, the enormous, wonderful, exhilarating joy of the adventure. I was awash in it. It was glorious.

Jack and Amy drove me around for a quick tour of the city. They showed me the Tonle Sap Riverfront, the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, and numerous Wats (Buddhist pagoda’s, pronounced with a soft “w”). I half-listened, captivated by the sites beyond the dusty rear-seat window: sidewalk shops, ramshackle vending stands, and people galore. Khmers shopping, dining, visiting, talking on their cell phones, and jay-walking across the street into a mass of mini-motorcycles which darted in and around and among cars and people and bicycles alike.

“Those are moto’s” Amy explained, following my gaze to the mini-motorcycles. “And those,” she said, pointing to men on elevated bikes with reclining seats-on-wheels in front, “are called cyclo’s”(pronounced see-cloe), “and those,” she gestured to motos attached to solid cart-cabooses with bench seats for 4, “those are Tuk-tuk’s.” “You can use any of them to get around the city,” she told me, “but cyclos are probably the safest and the cheapest.” Sold!