A group of WTAMU students visited the Southeast Asian country of Cambodia as part of the freshman Readship WT experience.

12 freshman students won an all-expense paid trip to Cambodia through an essay contest discussing The Road to Lost Innocence, the Readership book for 2010. Over 300 students submitted an essay of which 12 students were chosen.

“The trip was life-changing and it opened my eyes to ignorant issues in the world, such as educational learning,” Samantha Pearson, a freshman Special Education major, said.  Pearson met some children on the river who “were shy at first but once they opened up they had a lot to talk about.”

Freshman Broadcasting major Sabrina Meck said Cambodia had a different infrastructure.

“There was no trash management and the streets were very dirty,” Meck said. “Children wore ratty clothes and wore them everyday.”

Due to the Khmer Rouge, a dictatorial regime that killed nearly two million Cambodians in the 1970s, the average age of the Cambodian people is very young.

“I saw a lot of children running around playing,” Meck said. “I also saw a group of young boys doing Taekwondo. If the kids were not in school, they were in the streets.”

Even though these people lived in poverty, they treated their guests with the upmost hospitality, sleeping on a wooden bench under an elevated house.

“The people were very loving,” Pearson said. “They gave us their rooms that didn’t have any air conditioning and no light. We had a small mattress to sleep on and a mosquito net to keep away the bugs.”

This trip was a moving experience for the students. Each of them returned to WT with a different story to tell.

Meck said that her favorite experience on the trip was when the Readership group visited a rural area where they waited for a bus to pick them up. However, the bus didn’t arrive on time, so the students had time to visit with children who were swimming in the river.

“Instead of trying to change people, we ourselves need to change. Without the understanding, we will not know their needs and desires,” Meck said.

“The book is the reason I went to Cambodia but it’s the experience that made the impact,” Pearson said.