Even though my grandmother told me about the discrimination my father experienced from his teachers being a brown kid…
Even though I have heard the stories from my Asian and Pacific Islander girlfriends about being fetishized and demeaned by men…
Even though I saw the sinophobia, anti-Asian racism, and xenophobia at the beginning of 2020…
Read MoreChi Phat was incredible, even though I came down with a fever the night before we left. I didn’t tell the professor because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go on the trip.
Read MoreI signed up to be part of the UW College of the Built Environment’s inaugural program in Phnom Penh. Six graduate students of landscape architecture flew out for spring quarter 2016 to conduct community-based outreach and design with an informal urban community called Pongro Senchey. Our first week involved a lot of orientation to the country, city, culture, language, and our host university.
Read MoreWe made it back to the bustling, dusty, smoggy capital of Phnom Penh. There are a lot of challenges here, Cambodia is home to the most NGOs of any country in the world. Institutionalized violence has left huge scars on the country and its physical and cultural landscapes. Conversations about history, landscape, architecture, art, and planning inevitably involve a distinction of before-and-after the cultural cleansing of the Khmer Rouge.
Read MoreMarch 23rd I took off for Phnom Penh to spend the term with professor Ben Spencer of the University of Washington, and five other graduate students in landscape architecture (more about that later). After landing, and going through the oddly casual Cambodian visa and customs procedure, I dropped most of my baggage at the professor’s house and hit the road with two other students for Kampot on the Preaek Tuek Chhu River. It is a more rural city and province known for their pepper farming!
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