Day by Day

It's been raining here nonstop for almost two weeks straight now! However, I am not complaining whatsoever because the rain keeps the weather nice and cool. And I would much rather be wet from the rain than wet from the sweat! Our little lake at the end of the street continues stay flooded, and at this point I just happily trudge through the filthy water. I happen to be one of the clumsiest people on this earth, and there's no way I can balance myself across the "brick" pathway they have set up.

Kelly and Cyndi came down to Sihanok ville for the weekend and brought with them the new missionary family who just arrived from the states a few weeks ago. It's a small world since I know of them through a friend and they both graduated from Southeastern. They have two adorable blonde-headed children..and the kids at the orphanage were just in love. Our kids aren't used to being gentle since it is just not part of their culture. I had to remind them to be gentle to poor Ethan since they were pinching his cheeks and loving on him, yet being quite rough! The kids were enamored with these new American children since they obviously speak English. They couldn't believe these little kids could speak so well. Haha.

Also down for the weekend were two missionaries from El Salvador, Lydia and Lloydi. They have been living in Phnom Penh since April and are in language school. Lloydi gave most of the older boys new haircuts and they were all excitedly sporting off their new hair do's. It was funny because the boys would bring her a picture of a Korean boy band and tell her they wanted their hair just like that. So most of them have some pretty stylish hair. =)

On Friday, we were blessed to be visited by members of the US Navy from the USS Tortuga and a group from the Mercy Ships. A team of about 30 came out to visit us and were a blessing to the kids. Like usual, I have a feeling our kids were more of a blessing to them than anything. (The kids just have a way of doing that.) There was a soccer game between Cambodia and USA which was pretty funny to watch, and I'm not exactly sure who won. The kids were amazed by how tall the American men are since here in Cambodia, the average height is just about 5 feet. The Navy brought several boxes of coloring books, stickers, bubbles, school and art supplies for the kids. We had been under the impression that the Navy was going to be doing some construction work around the orphanage grounds, but there were some miscommunications. However, we were blessed by their visit.

Since we thought the Navy would be doing work in the kitchen and the cook would be unable to cook, we had bought sandwiches for the kids to eat for dinner. It was as exciting as being at Disney World for the kids as they tore the sandwiches from the wrappers and indulged in their much anticipated "special food." When all you eat is rice every day for most of your life, a sandwich for dinner is a big deal! I'm using the term sandwich a bit loosely since I can only compare what we ate to some type of sandwich. It was basically a baguette with some type of processed, packaged meat of fish and pork with some lettuce leaves, pickled vegetables and some type of fish paste. It's better to not look at the contents and just eat it since it tastes pretty good. As excited as the kids were to eat their much anticipated sandwich, it made several of them sick! During my English class, almost all of my students had to leave and use the bathroom. I felt bad for them..their stomach's are just not use to anything not served over rice! (And I was really surprised that they did not serve the sandwich with rice.)

On Sunday we were blessed to have a visit from a team from the Assemblies of God church in Hong Kong. I knew something was up when the service wasn't starting on time and everyone seemed to be anticipating. The team finally arrived and in walked about 25 fellow Asians from Hong Kong. The pastor leading the team was quite a large man and the kids stared in awe as he walked by. The team worshiped with us, gave testimonies, did a human video and the pastor shared a message on forgiveness. It was neat to worship God with three different countries in the room.

In the afternoon, Emily and I went down to the beach with Sarak and Kanarith. We had been planning to go on Saturday, but the torrential downpour kept us from going. While it was raining still on Sunday, we made a break for it while the sky seemed to be clearing and were blessed with great weather. The water was much cooler due to all of the rain and lack of sunshine and we had a fun time. Emily decided not to get in the water and watched from the shore. I was in the water swimming with the boys and turned back to see a huge crowd of Cambodian's completely surrounding her! One lady was trying to get some business and began attempting to "thread" Emily's legs, much to Emily's dismay. (Threading is another way of shaving, only they use thread to take out each hair individually. Can we say ouch?) Some of the people who try to find business along the beach threading, selling bracelets or fruit are pretty persuasive and don't like to take No for an answer. Seeing she was in a pickle, I came to try to help and we were able to convince the lady that we really did not want to get either of our legs threaded and she finally left. (I think the crowd had gathered because they wanted to see if this lady really would take advantage of Em.)

As we walked back we saw a lady selling soft serve ice cream and had to see if it really was the real stuff. My lactose intolerance could not stop me once I saw the real soft ice cream she was dispensing into the cone. It was the best $1 I have spent in a long time. We bought the boys ice cream as well and at first they didn't really know what to do with the cone we had just placed in their hands. They kind of stared at it for awhile and we had to teach them to lick the melting ice cream. They finally got the hang of it!

Another week has begun and we have just about 16 days left until we begin our journey home. It doesn't seem real that I'll be home in just over 2 weeks. I'm very excited to go home and see my family, yet I know that it's going to be very hard to leave the children I have grown so close with and become so fond of. I am going to miss life here in Cambodia.