I’ve been wanting to watch this documentary for 1 1/2 years and finally saw it tonight. I saw the preview for it and it almost moved me to tears. I didn’t cry whilst watching it tonight (don’t know why – I’m blaming it on culture shock), but it was still incredibly sad to witness the lives these children live.

It’s interesting, because I thought it would be very uplifting at the end – and it wasn’t. And that’s ok. That’s life. There is hope for some of the kids, but some of them go back to the brothels. As I think about it now, it seems to me that we have a hard time accepting gifts. We want to do it on our own, but sometimes we need someone’s help. These children needed someone to work on their behalf. This one boy who remained in the brothel wanted to attend college, but I honestly don’t know how that’d ever happen now.

So, back to the whole “receiving” issue. A few weeks ago some of my friends and I decided that we were going to try to encourage (say positive things, say what we like about the person’s character/personality, etc., etc.) each other every time we met. And many of us had a hard time actually listening to someone praise us – we couldn’t “receive” this “gift.”

Is this sounding weird? I hope it makes some sense. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but I think many of us have a hard time receiving.

On another note, the US embassy in Syria was attacked. I’m pretty sure I walked by it when I was there in June. One of our team members was from Denmark and her embassy had been burnt down following that danish political cartoon last year. So, our embassy isn’t burnt down, but at least we’re kind of in the same boat. I think I’ll send her an Email saying, “You’re not the only one.” She was really nervous going to Syria being Danish. But everyone was fine about it. Some people there had boycotted Danish products, but by the time we got there they were eating their Lurpak (danish margerine).

Enough for tonight. Thank you for reading my thoughts.

Till next time,

Jenny