Volunteering in Cambodia: When status updates about your lunch finally get old

HOPE International Development Agency’s Coordinator of Volunteers has previously shared her thoughts on being overseas with poor families in this blog.

While in Cambodia, this past summer’s team did not have constant Internet access, but when they did, volunteers kept their families and friends up to date through the micro-dispatch of the Facebook status update.

With his permission, we have re-published one volunteer’s updates here:

• Heading to Pursat to start our volunteer tour and live in their shoes for a few weeks!
• My heart wants to explode and my face hurts ... I can't stop smiling cause I'm in LOVE with these days!
• It's amazing how one water well transforms lives ... And we get to be apart of it tomorrow.
• Cambodians are filling my heart with love ... One smile at a time!
• Today is the greatest day I've ever known!

Rainbow comments that, ‘"Today" refers to the day we went back to visit a family we had met that was waiting for a HOPE International Development Agency water well, and the team took the initiative to buy a water filter from the market, along with 50 kg of rice, some dried fish, some pork, and salt, sugar, and soap, to bring back to the family in need.’

More than one volunteer wrote status updates about the way Cambodians smile.

Are smiles in different nations and cultures appreciably different? It’s one of the details that makes traveling—and even better, volunteering in this country so intriguing and enriching.