Cambodia part 1

Day 1

We arrive in the middle of Khmer New Year weekend so the city is very quiet - most people return to their home villages or go on holiday during this time.  It is also very hot!  Seems to be much hotter than Bangkok, or is that just because we actually can see the blue sky and feel the full sun?  

Our Khmer skills are pretty rusty, but we are pleased with what we understand and how easily it begins to come out in speech.  The girls are excited to be in a hotel again and are quick to find all the fun things of our room - and take forever to fall asleep!

 

Day 2

We manage to find our way to Phum Preah Yesu - the church we attended when we lived here - despite major changes in the landscape.  A wonderful reunion and catchup with a few friends, but again, Khmer New Year makes a big difference: out of a usual congregation of 150-200, there are 25 people there!

In the evening we go out with our first host of our trip to the river front for a coolish evening walk and a supper treat out at The Pizza Company for the kids: his two boys and our two girls. The highlight of the supper turns out to be the free balloons!

 

Day 3

We set off early with a van full of church friends for a trip to the zoo and Tonle Bati - a place to swim.  The drive is longish, and true Cambodian traffic weaving in and out of each other and around the many potholes and other obstacles in the roads.  It is a relief to arrive!

Unfortunately, it seems as though we have chosen the hottest day of the year, and it is not really the best day for walking through the zoo - both because we get too hot and the animals are mostly all holed up out of the heat too.  Thankfully, Grace gets her wish: as we are driving in, we pass through the deer section and we see many deer, and even some fawns.  We also saw some other animals before giving up for the morning:

baby Crocodiles

Otters

Shaking hands with a monkey

Elephants eating sugar cane

Elephant watchers

We gave up after awhile and sought refuge from the heat in the "food court".  This is a large area of bamboo platforms under thatched roof. You rent a platform, order your food, and hang out as long as you wish.  There was lots of people under there eating, sleeping, chatting, hanging out!  Balloons and boys again kept kids happy (though Grace did ask me where all the girls were :o) as well as the always present hammok.

Grace's picture of our friend's Baby Timothy

Hammok fun

Balloons and boys again

After lunch we hung out for awhile, hoping that we could manage so more of the zoo. But it stayed unrelentingly hot, so we drove off for the riverside.  An excellent choice - it was much cooler and enjoyable!  We rented one of the covered platforms built out over the river, which created a safe swimming area, and provided us with cooling breezes and a bit of adventure getting out to the platform on a log-wide bridge with a rickety rail... 

snacks for sale by boat vendors

some of our crew swimming

Mommy really wanted to go swimming to cool off, but she heeded past warnings of what can be picked up swimming in such waters and contented herself with dangling her feet in.  Grace and Jasmin marveled everyone with knowing how to swim already, but also showed their city status by being unsure of swimming in yellow-brown water.  Still, all had a good time.
It was some mighty hot, tired people that got home to fall into bed that night!  It is so good to have friends who take us into their fun. We sure wouldn't have had such a day on our own!

Day 4
Mommy and the girls stay at the hotel all day while Daddy meets with his business friend to talk shop on all sorts.  It is a needed down day, and there is no problem simply lying around and playing in our hotel room.  Grace comes down with a fever just before supper, turns down ice cream, and falls asleep at a noisy restaurant. Hmm... body systems adjusting to Cambodian food and water, no doubt.

Day 5

Another hotel day, this time all together.  We had planned to move on today, but with lingering sickness and tiredness, we decide to stay put.  It is make up time for Daddy being gone all day yesterday - only Daddy will do, and Grace especially is quickly jealous of anybody Daddy pays attention to!  Daddy and the girls go out for lunch with Daddy's business friend, while mommy sleeps - even one day of rest is not enough catch up for her!  Tomorrow we move on to a friend's house where there are some girls to play with - something our girls are really looking forward to :o)

Jumbled Thoughts

It only took us a week of daily combing to be lice free thankfully. Whew!

It is hot. Nap-most-of-the-afternoon hot.  Even with the unseasonable occasional thunderstorms, it is hot. Don't-dare-check-the-thermometer hot. Perhaps only so for a far along pregnant mom, but it is what we are living right now.  Extra thankful for a pool we can use any time.  For a cruel week or so, we were without two of our fans as they were in for repairs.  The girls enjoyed the nights of air con (they have the smallest room), but the parents didn't enjoy the fantastically increased power bill that came with it!

We did get my computer fixed! A mac savvy friend thought it might be such-and-such a manufacturing problem that Apple actually was paying rebates for fixing.  Some extra checking uncovered that my computer fit within the time qualifications (just barely!) to receive a free repair.  So, we found a mac repair shop (and a new mall in the process) and, with a little bit of patience, got a repaired computer nearly for free (we had to pay the service fee)! Considering that the motherboard had to be replaced and the alternative was to wait for a few months without a computer, that is pretty exciting.

Only 4 and a bit weeks until we fly out to Canada now.  That really frustrating time of needing to get things sorted, packed, sold, stored, etc. and yet having to hold off on so many things because we are still using them.  Having older girls is both a help and an extra frustration: they gladly help pack a box (of all sorts of mismatched things!) but then shortly after they rummage through it for something they just need for their particular game!  I think the bulk of their teddies have been packed at least 5 times now...

Two of the 4 weeks left we are spending in Cambodia and Chiang Mai.  We leave on Saturday.  When we planned it, it seemed like a great idea. Now that we are days away and still have so much left undone... well, it better deliver the promised oasis of rest...!

Grace had discovered just how to make paper snowflakes all by herself.  She has binges of practice... and each one must be admired, discussed, and collected for some later activity that never happens.  At least by now, the practice of catching all the cut bits in one place and getting them to a garbage can has also sunk in.  I think if we had kept them all, we could have our very own snow storm!

This baby is a crazily active kicker!  He is quite capable of waking Mommy up and keeping her awake for an hour or so while he works out.  Other days he seems to be at it most of the day. Hopefully he is working it all out in the womb and this isn't an indication of his preferred activity level!

Easter.  We attended our church's Good Friday evening service.  It was late for kids, but we wanted to be there as a family.  It was a meditative service of readings and songs. Grace really felt the mood, and told Mommy she felt a "strange sadness" about Jesus dying.

Grace's narration:
In the end of church, we looked at the candles. They were on every table in different colors. The table of candles near us had wax dripping down making waxicles. We started picking them off. We did it on other tables too. We didn't know that we were helping the church until the end, when the pastor told us. We brought home a big collection of waxicles.

Easter Sunday church was special too.  Who ever decorated really worked hard.  The entrance to the church was a tunnel of "rock" into the empty tomb, and at the front of the church was a tent made to look like a tomb...  The kids all loved it!  After church we had a potluck lunch, and there was a egg hunt for the kids.

Grace's narration:
In the end of church, we get to have an easter egg hunt.  Some kids didn't want to but we were in.  We got lots of eggs. They didn't have anything inside!  We could exchange them for candy in the end. While we were egg hunting, we went int he church's main place. the lights were off. They gave us flashlights. That was really special. I never had an easter egg hunt like that. They were all over the place!  Under the chairs, behind the stage, behind the tomb.  There was flowers on the cross too.

We did our own egg hunt at home too - with symbols of different parts of the easter week in them.  I think this might be the last time we can do it effectively: the girls told us the story bits  - and more! - as they opened the eggs. Of course, they still enjoy finding the eggs and discovering what is in them.

We missed hosting a passover meal and our Emaus walk this year, and the making of an Easter garden.  That comes of Easter falling just before we leave... hopefully next year this time we will be more settled.

April Showers

I guess there will be lots showers in our house in April - Mommy just discovered lice in the girls' hair again.  Hopefully it will not take as long to get rid of them as last time!  We don't really have time for this... but at least Mommy hadn't packed the lice comb yet :o}

There have been other showers too - more like downpours, really.  A few months early (it isn't supposed to begin raining frequently until June, so already there are murmurs of worry about crops and floods.  While they do bring welcome relief from the heat, it is hard to enjoy fully knowing they also may well be bringing disaster - again.