When I first arrived in Cambodia, I was surrounded by differences. Phnom Penh, the country's capital, is huge. The buildings are tightly packed, and the streets are filled with pedestrians, cars and mostly mo-peds. People zigzag in and out while traffic whizzes in every direction. Vendors sell everything you can imagine, cheap under the harsh florescent lights of their shops.

The first night, these differences scared me. But the next day, I began to see familiar scenery—a dog on the street, people eating breakfast and others grocery shopping. I saw piles of shoes by a front door and laundry on the line. This was the beginning of my understanding that although Cambodia and Cambodians are quite different from America and Americans, there are also similarities.

My summer trip to Cambodia was with a small group of high school students from all over America participating in Partnership for Youth, organized by the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. The intention is to build international relationships. We were able to help each other practice communication, ignore stereotypes and learn a host of things.

Children and teenagers in Cambodia think education is important. Most American children agree, but not to the same degree. Many Cambodian youth study at public school during the day and take extra classes at private schools in their spare time. They do their homework diligently and study for hours every day. The children we talked to wanted to be doctors, teachers or work in business.

Achieving this goal is difficult for most Cambodians because schools are costly to run. Even when money is available, many schools are not able to provide quality education because of uneducated teachers and lack of supplies.

Several organizations help those Cambodian families who cannot provide education to their children. One organization, with a connection to Partnership for Youth and La Pietra, is PACE, or Program Advancing Children's Education. PACE is an associate program of Life and Hope Association that provides housing and school scholarships to girls in rural communities. La Pietra's middle school raised money last year for backpacks and school supplies to give to the PACE girls.

By Cambodian standards the PACE girls live in an average house. There are two main rooms on a floor elevated by stilts. In the day the biggest room serves as a classroom; at night it becomes a bedroom when the girls roll out sleeping mats under large mosquito nets. Meeting us was probably quite nerve-racking for the girls because they introduced themselves in English, and many had only just begun to master the language. The youngest girl in the program was 12, and she was the most accomplished in English. She was excited when we gave her the backpack, and she put it on right away. The eldest in the program was in her early 20s but in grade five because her family had needed her to work when she was younger.

The kids we met do more than just school, though. They play sports (basketball, soccer and volleyball), games (hide-and-seek, tag and cards), ride bicycles and swim. They enjoy Khmer and even American music and like to dance and sing. Just like in America, there are class clowns and quieter kids. Some of our group found their Cambodian twin! My friend met a boy, Sirong, who is uncannily like her in mannerisms. They make the same faces and jokes. We all discovered connections that allowed us to see how similar we are.

Although there were many things we expected, what we found was a cultural study, focused on relationships and making connections between a country's past, present and future, and, most important, how these connections affect the people. The similarities between Cambodia and America are hard to find among the apparent differences, such as religion, but once you find them they are hard to ignore. The starkest for me is that there are as many different kinds of people in different situations in Cambodia as there are in America. You can't fit any of us into a stereotype, and you shouldn't try.