Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Holiday!

I just had an Aussie holiday in the comfort of my own home! A friend from Australia came to visit me for two weeks. It was so fun to have a holiday with her. We have lived together before so it was nice to pretend we were housemates again. It was great to have a friend to do fun things with. (KS and I haven’t had overlapping holiday time yet.) Here is a photo of Ang riding Sambo the elephant at Wat Phnom!



We ate lots of Western food (rather than rice and fish that I would normally be eating); travelled by tuk tuk (I would usually ride my bike or go by motor bike taxi) and went to places that tourist go. These included places of historical/ political/ religious significance to Cambodia. In this blog post you can see some pictures of the temples near Siem Reap. One of them is Angkor Wat, which is on the Cambodian flag.







If you want to read Ang’s (aka Gelato/Dave id dah) impression of Cambodia and about all the different things we did have a look on her blog “The Adventures of Ang”. Scroll down to find what she wrote in the last 2 weeks of January (15th-27th).
And look out for her photos.




Thursday, January 10, 2008

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.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Very Cold this week!

According to yesterdays Cambodian Daily "The cold spell that is currently sweeping the country is expected to last until the weekend at least, officials said Wednesday."

"With low temperatures countrywide averaging around 18 degrees c, warnings have also been sounded that a few degrees lower could be dangerous."

At least it hasn't reached the emergency low of 12 deg which can be fatal for older people. The government said it will alert people if it gets that cold.

"...provincial authorities have warned locals to wear thick clothing and light fires to keep warm..."