A day off the treadmill and a helpful question

Excited to see this sign- in Cambodia usually you are not allowed on the grass.

These photos are from last Saturday. We went for a walk in the city/botanic gardens. I think it was our first nice day since we got here!!!     Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us. I feel like people keep suggesting we should have a holiday, but Soeun doesn't have time or energy for that this semester, but we did have this one day holiday. 

               "What do you most miss about Cambodia?" I was asked recently by a returned missionary. After thinking about this and talking to Soeun about it, I feel a lot less stressed, in some ways. I realised I've lost something I really really like, so of course I'm sad etc.

Walking on the grass!!

To answer the question: Rewind 4 years, back to when we first got married, a few months before I started this blog. We moved into a duplex house in Phnom Penh. I was SO SO happy to know I'd be living with the same person in the same house for four years, in the country that I plan to live.

The years between when I finished school/left my parents home and when I got married I lived in many different places in 3 different countries. I was always living some where for 6 months- 18 months, just to do something and be on my way to something else.  Felt really unsettled and homeless. And its very emotionally exhausting living with different people all the time.

But when we got married I felt like I could really settle down and invest emotionally. We plan to live in Cambodia long term, so as well as having a "permanent housemate" I had a country to live in and learn about, knowing that the hard work of learning now would be worth it in the long term. Before that I had always felt like I was waiting until I move to whatever country I would be living in, it was hard to feel at home anywhere.

So great having green space in middle of city!

So now that we have packed up our house, and left Cambodia for a few years, the happiness of feeling at home and settled is gone. Mostly Australia is a place we come to do some things, once we get our list ticked off we can go back and set up home again. At the moment I feel as if we are living out of a bag, rather than unpacked and living here. For example last week Soeun bought some preaching books. They were on special, and they will be a good resource for him in the future. But I felt anxious when I saw them. I don't want to start accumulating things here. We just got rid off all our stuff back in Cambodia, it was hard and it took ages to chuck stuff/sell stuff/give stuff away and try to find places to store his books etc. I know if a few years time we'll have to do that all again here. I'm so sick of having to move countries, the less stuff we have the better is my feeling at the moment. I think later on, the memory of getting rid of stuff will fade and I'll be more willing to get stuff.

So right now I'm really missing the feeling of being at home. As well as trying to adjust to this new environment: new space to live in, new people to relate to, and new ways of relating and a billion other different new things both visible and invisible.  Mean while Soeun is also trying to cope with being overseas and being sick, having some big responsibilities back home, new study, sickness. So both of us going through all these things together has been quite hard. Hopefully one day it won't be this hard.

And a lot of the time I feel like we shouldn't feel this stressed. I've been here for more than 3 months now, I should feel normal by now. So then I start feeling even more anxious because I'm worried about why I feel anxious.....Last week Soeun and I talked to a couple about all our stresses. It was great having some one to listen to us and pray for us. One helpful thing for me was being told we are going through a stressful period, so of course we feel stressed.

Often in casual conversation with the many people I see each week, I feel like people think we should be settled now (maybe that's my own expectation, not sure anyone has actually said/thought that). I guess it's hard/inappropriate to acknowledge/explain in small talk that we are going through something really big. If our house had burnt down, it would be as easier thing for people to understand. (I'm really glad our house hasn't burnt down- that would be horrible!)

Just to prove we're in Australia!