the end of the year

Today is the last day of the school year at the Bible school- so bye bye students! Over the last week we have also said goodbye to a few expat friends, and to the tree outside our house. It fell down in a big storm as you can see here.
So we spent last Saturday cleaning up bits of branch and tiles, then got a student to help a few days later.

How many bananas can fit on one motorbike?

Freshwater dophins

Mekong dolphins "almost extinct"

Dig Deeper

Kimsoeun has finished translating the book. It will be published soon. Have a look on the Fount of Wisdom web site.

Snail eating

This is how my husband likes to eat snails: pulling them out of their shells one by one and dipping them in sauce.

What am I doing?

More about what we are doing on Kronicle Extra and Kronicle Twitter.

I'm a grandma

“Da” is what a 17-year-old girl calls my husband. It’s the Khmer word for “grandfather” – so that means if she addressed me I would be “yiyay” (grandma).
So how can we be grandparents when we don’t even have children? I guess in this case the relationship is actually some sort of great uncle, as the girl is a descendant of Kimsoeun’s mum’s brother or something, rather than directly from our (non existent) children. But I find it amazing there is already that many generations younger than us in our family. Kimsoeun is only in his early 30s and people from his generation have already had kids… and their kids have already had kids…

(Soeun’s mum is the youngest of many siblings, and they all got married young, so by the time Soeun was born I think he already had cousins that were more than 13 years old. So if those cousins got married at age 16 too and started having kids, that would mean there would have already been a generation below him before he finished school.)

Killing Fields Museum- Choeung Ek

We thought it was ironic that our tuk tuk driver's name was Duch. We were going to visit a mass grave museum and the guy taking us there had the same name as one of the people who are on trial for their part in the genocide. I'll let these pictures speak for themselves, or you can find out more from the links.



The start of Pol Pot time : April 17th 1975
The end of it: Jan 7 1979
A prison from that time that has been turned into a museum: Toul Sleng
I also put some more of my photos on my other blog.

Visit to Preah Vihear Province

We left Phnom Penh at 5am, bright at early on Saturday(11th). No wait- it wasn’t bright yet, it was quite dark.

We spent the next few days with a small group of Christians who Soeun met last month (as mentioned here). Evenings and Sunday morning we spent sitting on the floor of someone’s houses singing and reciting Bible verses. On Sunday morning Soeun preached (although it was a much more informal sermon than he would preach in Phnom Penh).
We also ate most of our meals there as well- my back got pretty tired of sitting on the floor.




For Soeun the trip was a fun time, to see the people again. It was a break for him in between being at places where he has responsibility. We came from Phnom Penh where he works at the Bible school, then afterwards went to visit his family in their province.

For me it was an interesting and exhausting cross cultural experience. Everything was so different.


This type of transport is called a mechanical cow. Can you see why?

On the Monday we went out for the day to visit Koh Ker, I put some photos from that day, which turned out to be quite an adventure over here.
Preah Vihear province

Surreal

I had been walking around thestreets that afternon and noticed most people had set out a table with flowers, food and incense sticks. Cambodian households and offices usually have a Spirit house but this was something extra special and bigger. Just after 6pm I was standing outside my mother-in-laws house. It was starting to get dark and people had turned on coloured fairy lights. It looked like all the houses were decorated for Christmas.


Then I heard some strange music and a voice. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. It was so weird standing in the middle of the road, in the dark, looking at all the tables and lights and hearing all that weird stuff. My in-laws houses was the only one quiet and dark, as they are Christians. Later Soeun told me that at a certain time everyone turns on their radios to listen to the angel arriving. They broadcast some royal processional music and the voice of the outgoing angel updating the incoming angel. There are seven angels that take turns each year to look after Cambodia. I think they are daughters of a king who had his head cut off- I can't remember exactly.


That was last year, when the angel came just before 6.30pm, but this year she came around 1am. We slept through the music bit but woke up when they were setting off firecrackers. It would have been a bit scary if we haden't known what it was, especially as we were in Preah Vihear province, there was some fighting at the border the friday before last.
The angel tables are everywhere this week, can you spot them in the photos below?

Happy Khmer New Year!!!!

Around this time of year people are celebrating New Year by throwing powder at each other!
Also there are lots of games and dancing. On Kronicle extra I wrote about the Bible school Khmer New year celebrations (see: Overwhelmed)

Can you help?

Do you have management skills? A group of missionaries here is in need of some help ASAP, click here to find out more.
Spoken Khmer is not a pre- requisite. By doing this job as team leader you would be supporting a variety of activities such as bible training, poor families, education, vocational training, families with HIV, peace building plus much, much more!

Front loading Esky- previously known as Fridge

Hot season means more power cuts than usual. Our area of town has had no power for the last few days! As we live on campus we benefit from the school generator. They turn it on around 6pm so we have lights and power in the evenings. I think it goes off around 4 or 5 in the morning. So the rest of the day is hot, no fans at this time of year is not fun.

This morning Soeun and some students were supposed to practise music from Khmer New year celebrations and for Good Friday, but no power!

Road work

There is always lots of construction going on around here. The last few months our roads have been full of earth movers and different detours each week. Always made sure I had my helmet on in case I got hit on the head with something!
If you saw the flood photos I was posting here around August- November last year, you will have seen photos of our watery roads.

A few of these roads are being fixed. They have been using cement and iron rods, it looks pretty strong! They have been doing one part of the road at a time, so for awhile one lane was cement, about 15cm higher than the other side.