Michelle Obama is currently on a five-day trip to Asia to promote the U.S.-led education initiative "Let Girls Learn," a community-based program to be run by the Peace Corps that is meant to help girls in the developing world stay in school. Before stopping in Cambodia, Obama spent a three-day visit to Japan, which is helping to fund the program.

"The trip has given the first lasy, who is traveling without her husband, a chance to soak up some of Asia's rich culture. In Japan, she visited Buddhist and Shinto shrines, and in Cambodia she traveled to Siem Reap, home to the famed Angkor Wat temple complex," reported The Washington Post.

Obama spoke encouraging words to the girls in Cambodia, who talk about rising early to help their families on farms, walking long distances to school, and studying late into the night.

"Mrs. Obama's trip marks the first by a sitting American first lady to Cambodia. Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cambodia in 2012, and pressed Prime Minister Hun Sen in private on a variety of human rights and political issues during a meeting that White House officials described as tense," reported The Washington Post. "After meeting students Saturday, Mrs. Obama spoke to a group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers who will be running the global project and called on them to share American values with their students."

"Values like equality, inclusiveness, fairness, openness ... aren't just American values, we know this. They are universal human values," Obama said.

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By Samantha DiMauro, Education World Contributor