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I have been neglecting the blog, and I keep trying to say its because I am busy or because too much is happening to even try to fit into a post, but that would be a blatant lie. Then I've been contemplating just deleting the whole blog, but then I felt that it would be unfair to those of you who have actually been tracking me while I'm here. 

So I'm breathing underwater here, and let's just say I'm not a fish. In other words, I'm drowning. 

I came on here to tell you all of the more amazing things happening, example: I'm going on Voice of America radio in about fifteen minutes with a few other students. We are being interviewed for the Phnom Penh post in a few days, my picture was in the newspaper last week when I distributed books! I've been at the Duch trials, and I want so much to talk about it, but if you all thought I was all confused after interviewing Him Huy, that was nothing compared to what I feel after these trials. I just want so much to give Duch a hug, and tell him that God loves him, no matter what. Here, this man is on trial openly admitting to killing 15,000 people, he is more educated and keeps correcting the prosecution to implicate himself further, and only because he has already lost everything and played a role in destroying an entire nation. But he is not even in the top echelon in the regime, he just wrote a diary so he was able to implicate. They dont even have enough hard evidence to put the few top leaders who are still alive on trial, in fact some have diplomatic immunity. It just crushes my soul. And Duch, he is just so stoic and well mannered, and brave and wants so much to heal the country that he helped ruin. I'm just flabbergasted and floored.

And now I just feel so much that I am useless. I am here, doing nothing, really. I want to understand these trials, this genocide, heal these people. But I can't, most of them don't even want to talk. And why are we wasting so much money on this? They are talking to us because we ask to, but what are we doing with all of this? Publishing a few meaningless articles in newspapers, writing more books that wont be read? It's hard to find meaning in exposing someone's deepest pains when I have nothing to give them in return, to show them my gratitude for even speaking to us. 

And then it's like this genocide is in these people's past. The children who stand outside our car windows who are seven years old with babies around them. What do we do with them? What should my heart do for them? I can't give them money because it goes to pimps. THey dont have families to come home to at night. They dont get the money I want to give them, it lines someone else's pockets. And if I dont give them money then they get beaten for being useless, for not wrenching tourist's hearts enough. What can I do? What can any of us do? And it's not like you can follow them, its not like you can take the cops. This is a country where corruption rules everything. The cops turn a blind eye because they are paid by the pimps to disregard it. It cant be brought to trial because there is no justice system here to speak of, it too is overrun more than anything with corruption to the maximum. 

And when we walk down the riverfront streets at night, there are girls who are selling themselves, their bodies, and not even for their own gain, but for someone else's own monetary gain. They get beaten for not making enough money, for not being pretty enough, or seductive enough. 

These are their real problems. Now. And here I am for a class learning about "justice". I dont know what I am going to write in this twenty page paper because the word is meaningless. And justice and forgiveness doesn't feed parentless children, it doesnt root out pimping children and women, it doesnt slow the sex trade. Forgiveness is something we as outsiders want to help us sleep better at night.

I'm not sleeping well. My heart hurts more than it ever could for a boy. And my crying heart doesn't save humanity, it doesn't even help humanity.  And even if I could save Cambodia, this is one of hundreds of countries with similar problems. The problems here arent even as bad as other places. 

SO anyway. I am not writing any more. It feels dumb and pointless and heartless to write on here and entertain you all when really I just want to spend my time crying on curbs with children who I can't do anything for. 

I was almost inclined to say pray for me, but more than anything I would rather all your prayers, at least for this one night, go out to not only Cambodia, but to all the ills that plague civilization and humanity.

Thanks for reading, hope you all laughed in the past. Thanks for caring enough about me to read this for two weeks, it really does mean a lot to me.