What I Learned This Week:

How much is a person worth?  We all want to know we are worth something to someone, right?  What if you found out you are only worth $3?  I recently learned that in Thailand there are "karaoke bars" where you can buy a girl for an hour.  When you pay your receipt will say the following: beer $4, food $5, girl $3.  Does anyone else find it disturbing that a person is considered to be worth less than a beer?  These girls are seen as property, not people.
This past Monday I went to a viewing of Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.  This documentary was all about modern day slavery in the form of human trafficking.  Going into the viewing I had no idea what to expect but I left so much more aware than I every thought I would be.  I learned about various types of slavery (prostitution) and was shocked to learn that sometimes it is done from a place of wanting to honor parents by prostituting to make money and done with parental compliance. 
Another shocking new knowledge was what I learned about some Eastern European countries with high numbers of orphans.  Traffickers often wait for girls to age out of the orphanages and then either sweet talk them into leaving under the pretense of a job in a shop or they will just abduct the girl.  What these girls then go through is heart breaking.  They are literally beaten and "broken in" until they are both physically and mentally broken.  The treatment of these women is something unimaginable and happens all around the world, including here. 
Here are some facts that I learned Monday: 27 million people are enslaved around the world (Free the Slaves by Kevin Bales), trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry (United Nations), and the average entry into commercial trafficking in America is 13 years old (US Department of Justice).

There are several organizations that are working diligently to fight trafficking so I thought I'd share a few links (these are some of the more well known organizations but there are a lot of others out there):

www.a21campaign.org

http://exoduscry.com/about/modern-day-slavery/

www.ijm.org

www.humantrafficking.org

www.endhumantrafficking.org

Road Trippin'

This past weekend some friends and I road tripped up to Kentucky to visit our friend Gloria.  Gloria is awesome!  She has been working with some people from her church for the past 2 years or so to start a coffee shop and teen center for their town.  The coffee shop is up and running, and making some bawlin' drinks, and the teen center will be open around Christmas.  One of the best parts of the trip was getting to surprise her by bringing an extra member of the crew.  Gotta love a good surprise! :)



One of my personal favorite parts of the trip was going to Keeneland Race Tracks. I had not been to a horse race before and I'll just sum it all up by saying it was a memorable experience.  Although next time I go I will be sure to drink a lot more water because I learned that there is a lot of standing at these events.

Basically, below there are going to be a lot of pictures of horses.  I got a slight trigger happy with my camera and, well, it was kind of like I was afraid I would never be able to see a horse again because I took more pictures of horses than anything else this weekend.  Can you tell I was raised in the city?

 

(Had to throw in one of the John Deere that pulled the gate since the day before I got to Kentucky my entire school went to Farm Day at the high school).