rice paddy fun- there's more than one way to catch a fish

 When Soeun was growing up he caught various kinds of protein to eat, so many things live in rice paddies! He recently had the opportunity to re live this bit of his childhood. He has a "groma" around his waist to put the fish in once he catches them.

Got it!

Some more photos of the long colourful day.

At 7am I was sweating already,and it turned out to be such a long hot day. This is me in the fruit procession, that's the first big thing that happens. My mother in law gave me the fabric for that top, its the sort of thing that people wear to weddings here.




I think Khmer wedding cakes are more for looking at than eating! Note the cans of silly string all lined up ready for use. I've been told cake cutting in a fairly new thing in Khmer weddings.

Guess what we did on the weekend?

Huge temporary outdoor kitchen...


As well as coconuts, can you see what else is in the tree?


...huge speakers and colourful tent set up near the house...



Kimsoeun borrowed a friend's camera so he could take photos at this wedding in Kandal province. We stayed over on Friday night so we could be there at 6.30am for the start. We got back to Phnom Penh around 10pm- it was a very long day!

Picnic in a province

Christmas and What Next?

Recently I was in a shop and I saw a Christmas tree right next to a spirit house and here is the photo I took. Most shops and homes have spirit houses. It’s a place to give incense, food and Coke to various types of spirits- local ones, big ones, ancestors ones. Food is given to appease and/or worship them. For Christians the Christmas tree is for celebrating Jesus birth, so I thought it was interesting to see them right next to each other. In this case the tree is more to do with Western culture and commercialism, but it made me think about the Cambodian churchgoers who also go to visit Buddhist temples.
My language tutor was practising to be an angel in the college Christmas play, so before Christmas I learnt the word for angel (DAVE-id-DAH). So every Christmas play and service I went to I listened out for this word.

The most entertaining angel was the one I saw at an orphanage. The kids acted out the Christmas story to a sound track for that purpose. Whenever an angel entered the audience heard clanging Chinese music and saw a little boy jumping, spinning and kung fu kicking in the air! It was hilarious!

KS’s church celebrated Christmas on Dec 23rd. They also acted out the story, but to a song KS wrote.

Christmas Day, KS had the day off. We belatedly celebrated our wedding anniversary as well as Jesus’ birth. In the evening we went to a dinner for Cambodian church leaders.

Here are some photos from the day we went on a picnic out of town. You can see fish with lemongrass shoved down their throat, and Soeun in front of a field.

We’re glad December is over. I guess it’s always a busy time at church leading up to Christmas. This year as well as working at college has taken on role of co-leading the church. Among other things this means preaching about twice a month, so weekend are often busy anyway. Adding Christmas preparation to that mix made it even busier! It would be good if the church had more people on the preaching roster.

The Friday before Christmas I had my last language class at the university. I studied Khmer language there for nine months, this month I’m beginning a new phase of language study. Although I won’t start properly until next month, this month there are a few other things happening.

Snails

KS often eats snails as a snack, pulling them out of their shells one by one and dipping then in sauce. But one day we made a snail dish, so we had to pull them all out at once.........

After buying a few kilos of snails at the market, the first thing that needed doing was what you see in this photo. Using a knife the shell of the snail is smashed on one side to make a hole.

After that they were put in a pot with some water over the fire. Here you see just after they have come out of the boiling water. You can also see the water vat. Many people in Cambodia use these to store their water in. We don’t need them in the city, as we have running water.

Some of you guessed the photo in a previous post- you were right! It was of us de- shelling snails. We used some small sticks to pull the cooked snail out of the shell. The holes made in the shells earlier made it easier.

- The de shelled snails have a shower.

- And now for the seasoning! This is actually a dish we make at home sometimes. We usually use beef rather than snails, it’s called “Char Gdar”.

On the left there is a bowl of something yellow. It’s a mixture of roots and herbs crushed together using the mortor and pestle you see in the middle. The mixture includes a yellowy-orangey root, a white root that looks a bit like ginger and lemongrass.

Lime juice, lime leaves, garlic and chilli are also used for flavour, along with salt, sugar, pepper and in this case prahok. But if you don’t have prahok you can use fish sauce. The green leaves in the top right hand corner are from a plant called “mreh-bro”. If you buy it in a bottle in Cabramatta, Sydney the label says “Holy Basil”.

Peanuts are also used to flavour this dish. But first they need crushing. This type of flat woven basket is also used for sorting rice, drying fish and probably a million other things.

Time to cook! The yellow mixture and garlic goes in first.

I think the snails were added next and the other seasonings, and finally the holy basil. Almost ready to eat.

The finished product. Can you guess which dish is the snail char gdar? I love the smell and flavour of char gdar so I was looking forward to eating this dish. Although I must say I’d prefer beef to snail, but the dish as a whole is so “chngoi” (good smelling food) that I wasn’t too concerned about what meat was in there. However when I tried it it was too spicy for me! I forgot that when we make it at home I control the amount of chilli that goes in. So I filled up on the other dishes, I might tell you about them in another blog post in the future.

These days...

The other weekend we went out of town with a group from college. I don't go out of the city much, and whenever I do I see lots of things I've never seen before. Can you guess what we’re doing in this photo?

To get to where we were going we had to cross the river on a ferry. The photo below I ook when we were on it. Our moto was right at the front, I felt like we were about to drive into the river!

Our church building has been flooded the last 5 Sundays, so we have been meeting peoples houses. Last week we had to walk along a rickety narrow bridge to get there- it was a bit scary!

I’m about half way through Level 3 Khmer language classes. I’m finding I have much more writing homework than before. I used to try to hang around outside in the late afternoon for speaking practice. At that time of day people on campus are playing sport, or sitting on the grass talking, so it’s a good time for chatting. But these days writing homework is taking up my time.

As I have already got to know people a bit, spending time speaking with them is a bit more natural now anyway.

Also, I just started going to an evangelistic Bible study. So far its been exciting for me because I’m starting to understand more words, and I’m enjoying trying to talk to people after the meeting.

At the end people share prayer requests. Its quite overwhelming, many people have sick family members, and/or are out of work