Last comments from civilization
Well this is it: last night in civiliation before off to Asia tomorrow. I've been busily running around trying to arrange last minute stuff (money, last meal at McDonald's, etc). Went to do a load of laundry at the corner launderette and it cost me almost $10 to do just ONE load of clothes!!! And they're STILL not dry! England is outrageously expensive. Can't wait for cheap 3rd world prices.

On Saturday I visited my friend Liz who lives about 2 hours away. We grabbed lunch at a TGI Fridays-type place, rented a movie, looked through photos from Africa, and got some fish & chips. Liz is doing good but still in a bit of a funk about what to do with life after Africa. I can emphathize with the feeling and am sure eventually she'll find something just as fulfilling. Missed my train back to B'ham so spent the night. Of course then the morning train was canceled so had to take a 3 hour bus ride instead. My world lately seems to consist of timetables and sitting in very small, uncomfortable seats for long periods of time. And I've another 20-odd hours in one tomorrow. Bleurgh!

After all my fellow volunteer trainnees left on Thursday, a group of returned volunteers arrived and had a meeting here as well. I got to talk with a 60-something woman who just came back from Cambodia a few months ago -- she said it's wonderful and most people end up extendeding their placements, which is encouraging. More bizarre was that after they left the VSO Board of Trustees (the heads of VSO that control all the money) came and had their annual meeting here as well. I've been hob-nobbing with all the VIPS, including the head honcho Mr. VSO himself (I forget his name - doh!) I wandered into the dining hall last night all dishoveled and smelly from walking about in B'ham, and to my surprise they were all there in nice clothes and suits and stuff, eating MUCH better food than we had been previously served, plus they had wine at each table. I got invited to join and ended up talking politics and swapping stories with the head of VSO Canada and his wife, as well as some woman who apparently has the ear of the "Big Guy". I felt like the lowly goldfish swimming with the whales -- I think they viewed me as an interesting novelty.

Everyone wished me luck and I was reminded not to forget to have fun. I intend to follow that advice.

Training, thinking, bonding, drinking
Well it's Friday morning in Birmingham and finally raining -- after all the nice weather I'd seen in the past week I thought maybe I was in the wrong country. VSO training classes ended yesterday afternoon and now I just have to kill time until my flight to Cambodia on Tuesday.

As for the training classes, it was 4 days of long, intensive thought-molding on international development work. There were 3 trainers and about 15 people in two groups each. I think out of 40 or so total people I was one of only two other americans, (Jonathan, a 50-something guy from Florida off to Tanzania to teach English and Steve, an 34 yo from Iowa heading to Kenya). All the others were from the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Canada. Very interesting to chat with them and learn about themselves and their placements. People are moving to all sorts of locations as placements: Uganda, Rawanda, Eritrea, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Philipines, and of course Cambodia. In fact there were 3 other girls in my group who will be flying over there the same time as me:

Clare -- working with disadvantaged women in Phnom Penh
Hannah -- working as a teaching assistant in Kampong
Tammy -- working as a graphic designer in Phnom Penh

and Tammy will be working at a health magazine just like me! She actually got the placement I had been applying for last winter but was turned down on last minute. We seem to have lots in common so good friendship seems inevitable. Good to have several new ready-made friends and apparently there will be 15 others once I arrive. Glad to know I'll be surrounded by lots of people in my situation -- there's a commaraderie among everyone that's similiar to my African truck group a few years ago. I like that. Classes have usually run from 9am to 8 or 9pm and then we all meet at the pub and bond. I've made good friends with Tammy, Rob, Marty, Dan, Christian, Cissy, and Marcel (I list these names more for my own reference when I look back on this journal years from now).

Training has taught me all about dealing with people and situations I will likely encounter while working abroad. Bureaucracy, corruption, bribes, but also lots of work on facilitating group discussions, negotiating, diversity, gender issues, and establishing communication. One or two people would volunteer to do ice-breakers each day to get people moving/thinking between classes -- i ran a session having people draw another volunteer in their placement country. Lots of stick people with funny captions :)

Not sure what I'll do for the next few days. Supposed to meetup with Liz (friend from Africa trip) and spend day in her town tomorrow. Tammy invited me down to London to hang out the day before our flight out, so may do that as well.

All in all, it's been a fun and informative week in England. I'm enjoying civilization while I can...

A Chance to Hang with Hung?
Just read that Americal Idol singer extrordinaire William Hung will be returning from his tour of Singapore the same time I will be transfering there myself on my way to Phnom Penh. I can only hope for the chance to brush with his greatness as I make my way thru the airport.

Chad Brobst...Astronaut!
When I was a child I really wanted to be an astronaut. It wasn't so much a dream to me as it was an inevitablity. I was born almost 2 years to the day after man first landed on the moon, and I was raised in the "space-optimistic" 70's when nothing seemed beyond our grasp. We'd conquered space; we'd stepped foot on an alien world -- surely within a decade we'd be on Mars, and certainly by the time I was an adult I'd be commuting to my job at the moonbase via jet-pack. I grew up with Star Wars, space-blue Lego blocks and Tang. If I could make it through grade school, keep my grades up, in only a few years I'd be exploring distant planets!!! I was so excited for the future.

But as you might have noticed the future didn't turn out like that for you or for me (at least not yet). The novelty wore off; people got bored with space, choosing to watch morning game shows rather than the latest moon mission. And then the Challenger shuttle exploded and we began to play it safe...stopped taking risks. Now don't get me wrong, of course we need a safe space program. No one wants to see people die. But the only reason we had come as far as we had was because we were willing to take chances -- people were WILLING to risk their lives for something they believe in. Now we had lost the spark that fueled us. We were afraid of failure, which wasn't easy for gung-ho America to cope with.

So I spent the rest of my youth disenchanted and gave up on my astronaut dreams. Yes, of course I could have still gone on to be an astronaut. And sure I could have been doing space-walks and building an international space station. But let's face it: without the light-speed travel, without the exciting battles with the Jedi, without three-eyed, antennae-clad alien women to put the moves on, exploring space loses a lot of it's charm.

Having given up on the astronaut thing, I decided I'd be an investment banker instead. Around age 15 the idea of lots of wealth and toys was appealing. I'd live in New York, have a big house, and learn to play golf. Then I wanted to be a chemist. Then a lawyer. Then a computer scientist (these were seriously all true!) And by the time I settled into college I decided to just fall back on what I enjoyed: art. I spent A LOT of time drawing those spaceships, and if I could never gain the skills to pilot one, at least I had developed the skill to create them on paper.

And I've been working as an artist ever since. But that astronaut thing just kept bugging me...

I was surviving, prospering. I paid off my student loans and I had an ok apartment, girlfriend, and car. But where was the adventure? Where were the risks? I was playing it safe and it was killing me -- Astro-Chad would have smacked me upside the head.

Fine then. If my outer space adventure wasn't gonna happen, I'd have to look to inner space for an alternative. Ok, so it's not Alpha Centuri, but there's plenty of strange and exciting places on our own planet to be explored. I went back to university for anthropology/archaeology. I studied bizarre cultures and fascinating ruins. I travelled the world to see these sights first-hand. And I didn't meet three-eyed alien women, but I did find some that were just as strange and sexy (you know who you are :))

After seeing so much...humanity, after seeing the relics of great civilizations and the dirt poor, undeducated masses that inhabit them now, it became hard to squeeze myself back into my little work cubicle. I enjoyed my job and my friends and my very comfortable Chair (see 2002's "Get Outta The Chair" for that backstory), but I'd find myself staring out the window into the parking lot, and think about the camel market in Egypt. Or the bumper cars at the amusement park in Iran. I'd think about the flies swarming around deformed children in Varanasi or the toothless/shoeless porter who carried my pack in Peru. Humans had created the Pyramids! great Renaissance masterpieces! and...well...ASTRONAUTS! who had broken free of the Earth and into space. But yet on the same planet we still had diseased people, living in mud huts, shitting in a bucket. We could produce technical marvels, but some people were still starving just about everywhere-- even in gung-ho America. What's wrong with us?

So....when I was talking with my parents the other day about my upcoming stint of volunteering in Cambodia for 2+ years, I was trying to explain WHY on earth I wanted to do this. And my answer actually surpised even me -- I'm going to Cambodia because I want to take risks, I want to see new things, I want to realize my own potential and encourage others to do the same for themselves.

But deep down, I'm doing it because I still want to be an astronaut.