Staying at home with celebrations, storms and sickness. April 2020

Happily Easter was much more noticeable his year, it normally gets swallowed up by Khmer New Year as they often fall close together in mid April. We often don't have any special Easter thing at church, or sometimes we don't even have church if most people are away. And going out anywhere, such as church, is hot and chaotic, not very pleasant.

Palm Sunday

Thanks to Covid-19 the KNY public holidays and travel were cancelled, so the 4 of us were at home together for all of April. No travel, no relatives staying, no church. So great, I wish we could do it that way every year. Well, you know, apart from the unprecedented uncertainty playing in the background.

We spent the lead up to Easter reading out bits of Matthew, and then in the days before Good Friday reading some of Mark. And because Australians were also at home, we got to enjoy some extra things as everyone took their ministry online. Colin Buchanan started doing Facebook live concerts at home, Quiz Worx put some talks up with activities sheets and extra things. So great! We also watched the weekly Sunday school lessons from a church in America called Saddleback, just randomly found on Youtube. The first one we watched is here, in the lead up to Easter, then it became our weekly thing.

We had a Khmer zoom Sunday morning meeting, and there was also an English language church meeting by zoom in the evening, but we had a huge storm as mentioned here and power cut so couldn't join.

The next day was the first day of Khmer New year, and people welcomed the New Year angel around 8pm that night. It was so noisy and smoky! I think they usually visit relatives out of town to do it, I hadn't realised but I think it was the first time the kids saw and heard what I described back here- photos from 2009 but the post is mainly about 2007. 

The rain started the Thursday before Good Friday, and since then it has been stormy/low pressure so Soeun has been unwell since then. The cooler change meant I was feeling a bit more energetic though, after the humid weeks of late March and early April, so I started adding a bit of school work into the day. We don't really do much homeschooling in the hottest part of the year.

As far as hot season go, it wasn't so bad. In fact according the to BCI it was easier than normal. We only had a few short power cuts, and the pump only stopped a few times, probably due to lower water level underground. It was also much calmer than March, which I'm still getting my head around. And the stress that caused the blog black hole of Nov19-March 2020 took a back seat, so despite the humidity it was actually a pleasant month. The kids spent a lot of time drawing and playing together, I tried to take a photo of some of their creations and activities but I couldn't keep up!

Still reeling from my own March 2020 experience (hope to write about it here soon), I was reading stories like these: Aussies who stayed and Aussies who left.

At the start of the month we had just been through what felt like some quick, scary changes and were bracing for a disaster. On the final day of April I went to buy fruit and veggies at our local market as usual and felt like people in our village are more relaxed about it now. In Feb I was the barefaced white person at the market while most others were masked, but now on the other side of March, I'm still wearing a mask but less Khmer are.

The last time the kids left the house/yard was 8th March, 8 weeks ago! We have the space set up for our homeschool life, with a big yard and they are used to playing at home together, so its been mostly quite nice. Things are beginning to open up a bit now it seemed, although it doesn't feel like things will just spring back to normal in weeks. Maybe never? Siem Reap economy is missing the international tourists.

The kids just keep making things out of things they find around the house. Their ideas are like a tap that won't turn off, we have an endless supply of boats and spaceships.