Big Orange Backpack

Today after my last bit of orientation before my trip up to the villages on Wednesday I went to the Killing Fields. I'm not quite sure what to say about it. It had more of an effect on me than any Holocaust museum I've ever been to. I walked into the pagoda and inside a case as far as I could see there were stacks of skulls. I almost threw up and half-ran/stumbled out of it. I couldn't handle it, looking at these skulls that were looking right back at me. It was like a staring contest, and I lost.
There were dug out ditches all throughout the site where they exhumed mass graves, so the land looked wavy, if that's a descriptive word I could use here. There were kids there that were skinnier than I've ever seen, begging for money. I went with Jake, an American that volunteered here with the school from its start, and is leaving on Tuesday. He told me to only give a few hundred riel, 300 max, because these kids would become dependant upon foreigners "donating" to them, and wouldn't be able to count on their thinness or cuteness forever, and would then be adults with no skills. It was interesting to me how not giving money to these starving children was in their best interest, but I understood why.

You can see some pictures here: http://rutgers.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171400&l=d3899&id=8818340