Family Holiday Cooking Fun Photos part 3

sister making sushi rolls

Not pictured - lots of potatoes, mangos and Christmas cake, Christmas pudding

Family Holiday Cooking Fun Photos part 2

 Cooked pizza with brother

Family Holiday Cooking Fun Photos part 1

Mint toffee made from the mint in the garden

Sister making dessert

ham

Cooking cambodian food with husband and brother

Musical chairs with food

by digitalart

Over the last there have been so many arrivals and departures of siblings (75%) and their families, as well as lots of food!
  So many "firsts" this year* as I mentioned on Jan 23.  And to add to that list this is:

-Soeun's first Christmas staying with Aussie family
-my first Christmas in Australia being in the middle generation rather than the 3rd/youngest (my grandparents have all passed away now, and now my parents are the grandparents- very weird!)
-first Christmas with no siblings in high school

First time to....*

...fly into Sydney in 9 years.
...fly Thai since I was in high school.
...live in Australia not as a student since I was 5.
...live as a married couple in Australia.
...live on campus as a student's wife.
(I've lived on campus as a student in Australia, as a teacher in China and as a teacher's wife in Cambodia.)

is it an inner problem?...is it a migraine?...no!..its an inner ear migraine!!

NTE

This month I enjoyed getting to know some of our FOCUS students as we went to a conference together, and then served together afterwards at a Chinese church.

Reading the Bible with FOCUS friends (at conference)

Two of our students prepared their testimony to give at the Chinese church. Although I couldn't understand the final product, as it was in Chinese, it was really encouraging to watch them prepare for this.

Pork, preparing to feed lots of people at a Chinese church , part of the Christmas outreach

 One of the jobs the church we worked with gave us was to shave pigs belly. Apparently when you buy pork in bulk you need to get a cleaver and scrape off the hair before you cook it. We found this quite amusing, it was the first time any of us had done it. I also enjoyed smashing the hard boiled eggs to make tea eggs.

training event over, off to mission

Just spend the last few days at a Christian training event, it was great it lots of ways! Now we're all on missions, ie helping out in different churches. While we were at the training event we had to help usher everyone into the dining room. That wasn't part of the official training (we were there to learn about God and how to teach his word etc) but on our first night of mission the first thing our church explained to us was about how they want us to usher at one of the events.

never thought i'd be used to..

Pork, rice and pickled veg for breaky in Phnom Penh

 I never thought I'd get used to eating rice and meat for breakfast, but the last few years I ate pork almost every morning! I never thought I'd get used to having cold showers, but now I'm fine with it (I don't like doing it in Aust though as the water here is so cold). I wonder if I can get used to other things too?

Bible school students sleeping area on college mission 

It would make life easier for us if I didn't mind sleeping on hard wooden surfaces. I always try to find a mattress to sleep on if I can, and i'm always so happy to get back to my own bed ("a proper bed" i would call it) after travelling in Cambodia. I can't imagine ever choosing to lie down on tiles or wooden planks to sleep, I sometimes have to do it but I don't like it.

Thats how it used to be with cold showers and Asian breakfasts... but now I would choose them.

Happy, noting enjoyable things

Tonight cooking Cambodia food to eat with our housemates! It will be similar to this the dish we photo-explained here.

It might not be genuine Khmer food as Soeun won't have his usual cooking implements and surfaces, you can compare the photos here with an Aussie kitchen, a litte different.. anyway, it will be cooked by a genuine Cambodian. (more photos of the spices here)

Soeun has finished studying for the year. I borrowed a stack of ancient history related dvds from the local library for him, currently watching Time Team , its nice to hear him laugh.