Waiting for normal life to start.... last weeks holiday, this weeks fever

I keep waiting for a time when we don’t have relatives staying in our house and/or one of us isn’t sick, waiting to start normal life in Siem Reap. But maybe this is normal life!

We have been here less than 5 months and already had relatives staying with us on about 5 separate occasions.  None of us has been seriously sick, but the toddler has a fever a few times, we’ve all had colds, I have various pregnancy annoying things etc etc.

That’s what I was feeling a few weeks ago, then we had Khmer New Year and I just felt really exhausted after that,  and starting to get anxious about the next thing coming up. Feeling like a holiday. No time/money/energy to travel but started day dreaming about spending a night in a hotel in town.

Then last week was so crazy- most notably a massive long power cut all over town. A lot of things got cancelled because of it, and we never knew what would happen from day to day. Lots of checking in with other expats on fb about whether the power was on or not and what the latest rumour was about how many poles got knocked down in the storm etc etc.

But in a way it was kind of a holiday, some of the normal things we would do in a week were out, and it was hard to cook with no fridge and not knowing how long our water would last for.  No washing up or sweeping in the evening as it was dark and I couldn’t see the mess.

And it was a good excuse to have the holiday I’d been wanting, we  stayed a night in a hotel in town (number 2 place in the world to visit according to trip advisor, big tourist industry). They had a deal on because of the power cut, lots of expats were doing the same thing.

However on the 4^th and final night of the outage we were at home with a sick toddler. It was hot and noisy. He is still feverish, this will be the 3^rd night. He has been acting like a newborn, sleeping in little bits all day and night and screaming in between or looking floppy.

The week after KNY

Just when we were recovering from KNY Soeun woke up with this crawling on him. It was the day after the internet went out, the same day the toddler vomited, and the day before a town wide multi day power outage. As if being pregnant with a toddler in hot season wasn't hard enough. And there was the dead things in our drinking water....

The fall of Phnom Penh

Almost KNY again...

"This week hot season has arrived with a bang in Cambodia, and expats have responded with a whimper."
Move to Cambodia

The other week I was getting only a few hours sleep thanks to a toddler fever then my own cold, it seemed too hard even to just do the normal things...thankfully that pretty much over now. 

Now the struggle is just with the hot weather, extra teaching and preaching for Soeun, the New Year holiday (relatives coming to stay- its never a holiday, its a hot busy time), and the usual things of being pregnant with and looking after a toddler.

So glad our health is better and than we have electricity and water! It was getting quite hard when I still had a cold and the hot weather started , then there was a half day power cut... I tried to get myself and toddler to an air con mall but I was too sore and tired to move......

I bought 500ml of blue food colouring! Water fun, play dough....if only the toddler was as excited as me.

a bunch of annoying things all at once

Recently the toddler had a fever for a couple of days. Thankfully it turned out not to be anything weird or scary, he also had a runny nose and i suspect sore throat etc. Anyway, he is better now but I have a horrible cold. Its always hard to sleep when I'm pregnant anyway, plus the hot weather, and now with a cold and the toddlers sleep pattern all messed up, eeerk! Everything feels too much effort.

Welcome to the hot season finally

Throughout the long cold cool season we were lucky to have hot showers. This heater pictured above was attached to our shower. It recently made a loud noise, burst into flames and gave off lots of black smoke! Scary. Now the toddler says "fire" whenever he goes into the bathroom.

Anyway, annoyingly that meant we spent 3 mornings in a row waiting for the workman to come, and then waiting for him to work. The water was off for awhile. When you have a messy toddler and you're pregnant its pretty annoying not to have access to the bathroom for so long!

So now we have a new water heater (not that we need to use it at this time of year, the weather is hot and the tap water is often hot too) and the shower has much better water pressure and  we have an outside tap! We can use the hose Soeun bought when we first moved in. Water the herbs, clean the dirt off everything, wash down the toddler after watermelon or messy play and its a great new toy for hot season!