Fun Factoids About Living Here

Factoid #1 - Ant cabinets are much needed. They don't keep out ants so much as rats, mice and other varmits. :) Although we haven't had much bother with ants. You still keep the stuff closed up inside these cabinets even though they are sealed pretty good!

Factoid #2: Having mice are normal! This is like a large sticky glue plate, kind of like US sticky tape for mice, but NOT :) Hey, they're bigger, so you can catch them easier. Notice it's as big as a plate!

Close up pic! Gross huh?

Factoid #3 - Be aware of ants! Here is a great ant deterrent - putting flour around the legs of the cabinet. It really does keep the ants away; they won't cross over the flour. Who knew??

Close up of the flour

My new dish drainer!

Here's our lovely washer & fridege - the stairs back there go to our "loft" bdrm

Factoid #4 - Can't read the languages - have to label the washer :)

Notice no agitator

New Furniture Delivery!!

Here's our new furniture being delivered! :) We bought new furniture yesterday, then spent all day moving out furniture that belongs to the teachers that lived in our home last year and moving in our stuff.

Here's how the furniture came delivered. A cart attached to a moto (Vespa). It was piled high and wide. I couldn't find my camera at the time it came - rats! The guy actually got a ticket on the way because of the overload - it must have been bad! Tim said it was amazing! Nothing broke!

Tim and the Landlady's son watching the proceedings!

Couldn't fit some of the furniture through our front door, so they hoisted it up over the verandah! Yikes! Is it going to fall? This is our desk! This pic and the next one are out of order.

One desk coming up!

This pic is supposed to be first. Getting the desk ready to hoist up :)

Here come our drawers for our desk

Pulling them up over the balcony railing :)


They made it!

Dining rm area in the great rm


The living rm/dining rm (great room) looking from our loft bdrm


Our 3 wardrobes lined up :)


I told Tim we had to come to Cambodia to get the loft bedroom we wanted :) LOL :)

We've always thought it'd be cool to live in a warehouse type house with a loft bdrm. Well, here we have out tall ceilings down in the living/dining rm (kind of like a warehouse look) and the loft bdrm. Yes, those are windows on the inside of the house :)

New end tables

Anything Goes!!

Pretty much anything goes when it comes to traffic rules in Phnom Penh :)

You can't see it in this pic, but this black car is trying to cut in front the tuk tuk we're in. You just kind of start edging your way in and people move over. No road rage here, it's just part of the traffic "rules". There is method to the madness.

See the guy walking out in traffic - right behind the moto, in the right side of the pic.

There is always lots of transportation lined up on either side of the streets, in addition to vendors, etc.

Lots of motos!

Khmer Food - Yummy!

Beef and Rice (after Tim had mixed it all up) The green things are green tomatoes, and the yellow stuff is egg. They put fried egg on a lot of stuff, which is ok, since most dishes are so low in protein - lots of rice and noodles.

Khmer desserts - these are all different types of roots and sweet pototoes with brown sugar and kind of a caramel sauce. Very good!!

Here's that Club Sandwich I mentioned - fried egg and cucumbers also in the sandwich. Very yummy!! Kind of like eating crumbled eggs in a salad in the States...and the fries were good too!

Blessings!!

Things I (Cynthia) am thankful for here in Cambodia:

~ For nice cool showers - we don't have a water heater and don't need one! :)
~ For water coolers and bottled water - everyone has a water cooler in their homes, you don't drink from the tap water, although we are brushing our teeth in it and have been ok so far.
They will deliver 3 or 5 gal water bottles to your door and the water cooler is electric so it's nice cold water! And only about .80 cents per bottle, less than refilling at WalMart :)
~ For refridgerators. We have a small fridge, but it's perfect for us and we have ice in the freezer.
~ For a friendly and kind landlady and her family and that 2 of her children speak English! :)
~ For such wonderful staff and teachers at Logos who have so helpful in making us feel welcome and helping us find places around the city.
~ For new friends
~ For Webol, our Tuk Tuk driver, who comes at our becon call and who is on time! And if he can't come he gets someone else to come pick us up. :)
~ For aircondition in our bedroom and aircon in the classrooms - yea!
~ For great power here in our area - no major black outs or brown outs
~ For the blessing of getting anything you pretty much need or want here - we even found Pepperidge Farm Choc Chunk cookies (of course you pay out of your nose for these) so they are only for special occasions! And they have sodas too.
~ For airconditioned restaurants
~ That you can get a lunch special from $1.oo - $3.00. Yesterday we found a little cafe that sold a club sandwich, with fries!! WoW the fries were even good. The sandwich included cucumbers and a fried egg, but it was great. Not much more different than the Souper Salad where they have crumbled egg you can put on your salad (which I like).
~ For airconditioned malls and grocery stores, although they are more expensive than the market.
~ We are blessed to live in the Toul Kork area where the market is right beside us, there are little cheap restaurants everywhere within walking distance and the bank we will use is right down the street. That will save us lots of money for transportation.
~ For cheap internet in our home. And the internet office where we pay our bill is right down the street too; we can walk there.
~ That so far we have seen no spiders or have much problem with ants (which I have heard can be a problem). We are very careful about not leaving crumbs - hey, it's good cuz it helps us improve our eating habits! :) And it helps that we have an ant cabinet - aluminum cabinet with glass doors that ants can't get into.

We are so blessed here. They were saying this morning at in-service that things are improving more and more here in Phnom Penh. Even 2 yrs ago they had far less paved roads and had very few stoplights. But now you have paved roads everywhere and more stoplights. It is becoming quite modern! Of course the traffic is crazy, but you get used to it and for now we're not driving in it anyways! We leave that up to our tuk tuk driver who is quite an expert at dodging cars, bicylces, vendors, cows, motos, etc, etc.! LOL

In-Service

Cynthia here...
In-service started this morning :) What a great time. It was so different than in-services at public schools in the states. We started out with devotions and people even became emotional while sharing. It's so nice to see staff being honest and open with their feelings! It felt like a family atmosphere and of course it was such a blessing to be able to talk about God! :)
The school provided some local fruit (yummy!) and even had donuts!
We talked about schedules and other stuff. Lunch was also provided by the school. We ate upstairs on the top floor where it's all open; it was beautiful, there was such a nice breeze and it was very pleasant.

These last two days have been gorgeous, overcast and very comfortable!! Everyone is saying enjoy it; it won't last! LOL
I have decided my new temperature gauge is whether I wear my hair up or down while I'm outside (well, in addition to whether I have sweat dripping down my back or not) :) For the last two days, I've walked around town with my hair down. And while typing this in my living room I don't even have the extra fan blowing right on me, just the ceiling one! Amazing! :) We have our windows and door open out to the balcony.
The low today was 75 and the high is supposed to get to 92; humidity is currently 62%, not too bad.

Tomorrow we get to go on a field trip and see other Asian Hope Ministries such as the Boys Home, another Asian Hope International school and the Kindercare program. Should be fun.

Cynthia, over and out. :)

Lost my I-Tunes-up

Tim Here:
Well, somewhere in my phnom penh sojourns my Norton Antivirus was sabotaged. I tried everything known to me and the support teams on line, but to no avail.....Had to do a complete system re-install. Now normally that would be stressfull all by itself, but it is more stressfull because there is no way to call anyone here because the phones are all set up for local calls only.

So.... I backed up all pertinant files on my Seagate external drive and felt pretty prepared. I give the command and away we go! Well, Good news is that no more pesky little virus changing things here and there. Bad news- I lost my I-tunes and when I dragged the file back over to the C drive, No way to get I-tunes working again. I have all my sound libraries but no way to load it up and install it. I tried 4 times from the internet at Apples I tunes website, but at about 8 kb/s it times out and loses the signal somewehere on the 2nd hour of downloading the 93mb file... It is at times like these that you want to smack anyone who ever complains about their Cable Speed being too slow! Oh, the joys of DSL/Dial-up. The funny thing is that this is considered High Speed in Cambodia.. LOL. Still, even though I am venting in my blog, I am very thankful that I have any service at all.

God is good! Technology..., Not so much! I was just thinking that technology is mans way of trying to do some of the things God does. The difference is God can do it all, and so much more without having to plug in anything, or wait for anything to download. And speed is not a problem because his speed is immediate and instantaneous.... Oh I long for Heaven!

Factoid 1: If you come to Cambodia bring a normal everyday decent towel with you. The towels here kind of fall apart and slowly turn to into little balls of lint everywhere. They are paper thin.
Factoid 2: Most all pots and pans are made out of aluminum. I'm not sure about the health factors involved in cooking on Aluminum but everyone here seems to be doing fine.
Factoid 3: If you have ever lived in Hawaii, the pricing structure for things here is pretty similar. If you go native = cheap/affordable.....If you try to keep your western lifestyle in food and shopping = go broke quick!
Factoid 4: Spiders can be as big as a grown mans hand and they do bite... Shake out your clothes!
Factoid 5: Ants are insanely voracious and completely ruthless. If you spill even a crumb and don't clean it up you will wake up with "the black swarm in the morning. Actually you can have the Swarm in about an hour!
Factoid 6: Car chases in the movies where they are going the wrong way against traffic? Cambodians yawn and go to sleep during these scenes because for them you are simply filming normal driving conditions!
Factoid 7: When you pay $2.50 per ride to just about anywhere in phnom penh, you become an avid proponent of walking everywhere. I put in about 2-3 miles a day just to and from things in the market and the store and visiting vendors in the market square.
Factoid 8: If you didn't see them cook it and its not flaming on the end of a stick, don't eat it. Fresh is best!

One Week!!

Cynthia here...
Well, we've made it through our first week in Cambodia! It's hard to believe we've only been here for a week; it seems longer :) We are adjusting quite well. I am so proud of my very American husband. He is becoming quite the missionary. :) You should see him cross the street. He's braver than I am now; that's saying something since I was born and raised in a developing country! To cross the street, you just start across and dodge all the traffic - cars, motos, tuk tuks, vendors, bicycles, people, etc. It's quite exciting! If it's a two lane road, you stop in the middle and do it all over again and finally reach the other side - whew!! And you thank God for sparing your life - LOL :)

We are adventurous and have been to many places around the city (see older blogs). We went to the mall the other day, it's airconditioned, but much more expensive than buying stuff in the market. We'd rather shop the markets. We keep hearing from the other teachers how lucky we are that we live in the Toul Kork (pronounced Tool Cork) area. We have a market right next door, lots of little eating places within walking distance and the Total store (read about this in previous postings) right down the street. We walk a lot around here - we figure we are sweating off the pounds!! :)

Well, this is our last day of freedom - ha! New teacher inservice starts tomorrow -Monday, and school begins Aug. 9. We actually are looking forward to start teaching and getting to know the kids. :) It is nice to have had some time to adjust and get out bearings, etc before school starts. That's why we came early.

Well, I'd better go eat breakfast, then get ready. Church this morning. Our tuk tuk driver is picking us up at 11:00 a.m. :)

Food, Freedom and Being a Foreigner.

Tim Here!.....I am Sitting here at the computer typing in a word document so that I can download it to our blog later on. I have some Bob Marley and James Taylor playing on my I-Tunes and am listening to kids playing, vendors hawking, neighbors partying and a few people fighting. Not much different from back home if it wasn’t all in Cambodian “Khmer”

I really should have ordered a Rosetta Stone for Cambodian. The way things are written in the phrase book are really off when you try to pronounce it.

I have observed that the fruit juices here are quite a bit different than in the states. For one thing, they do not use high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener for anything. It is mostly cane sugar or something like that. Things like drinks just aren’t as sweet. However, this is not a bad thing. There seems to be a lot more fruit and pulp in the drinks and they taste much more like fresh squeezed. Juices come in large quart sized boxes instead of plastic. Same with milk….Oh and the milk, it is sweeter and just has a different taste entirely. It is quite good! I have been pretty careful about eating from street vendors and probably will only eat things that are cooked while I watch. I still have to get my Hepatitis A vaccination sometime in the near future. I have the Hep B and Typhoid, but did not have time to get the Hep A because we left in such a rush. I went down to the internet café about a ¼ mile walk from our apartment last night and had an iced coffee for $2. It came with a glass of yellow water, (I found out later it was Cambodian Iced Tea, however, did not taste at all like tea) which I did not touch. The Iced coffee seemed safe enough…. Yes, I woke up at about 2 in the AM and headed to the bathroom for a thorough, yet un-anticipated intestinal cleaning. After that, things settled down and I was just fine and went back to sleep until about 4:30 when two vendors decided to begin to yell good naturedly, yet very loudly at each other on the street below us. The day has started. I just lay there for a bit and thought about what a contrast our life is now after only a few short days to what it was in the USA. I feel fortunate to be here and in a place where I can do some good. Those of your who know me, also know how frustrated I get with the Church in America not putting themselves behind their convictions. Here there is no escape, no where to hide out, no where to go and be someone your not. Here everyone in the church serves and is involved in a full time ministry of some sort or another. I did not realize that only about 9% of the church in the world is English Speaking, yet about 95% of all dollars taken in by the church are spent amongst the 9% of English speakers...mostly in America. It is making me re-evaluate some of my priorities and I am coming to a quick understanding of the needs of missionaries overseas, especially in third world countries. I knew I would not really know until I came and lived… and now I am learning why this is true.

One thing Phnom Penh has that is unique is its smell. Any of you who know me know how sensitive I am to smells whether good or bad. Well…. The city has this unique blend of burning wood/coals from vendors cooking…along with rotting garbage, which is just put on the side of the streets for pick up as the garbage truck get to it…..along with cooking food, diesel and gas exhaust, dust, rotting vegetation, mahogany wood being worked and sanded in roadside mills and a bunch of smells I have not identified yet. Yes it is definitely not the pastoral countryside and well manicured yards (What is a yard?...they don’t have them here) I was reading today in the paper about how the working girls in town are rounded up in police raids and taken to detention stations where they are sometimes beaten, raped and left to bathe in stinking pools of water and don’t have any clean water to drink or access to food. It reminded me of the rights we have in the USA, even the criminals have more, and demand more rights in the USA than the common man here is able to. In the states you are annoyed and upset when you get stopped and get a ticket for something you did. Here if I were to get stopped I would not know the rules, because there really aren’t any that you can really count on. There is a sense of almost fear, because you don’t know the language and don’t really know what you would do if things did not go well. Would I end up in a Cambodian jail until someone discovered I was missing??... Hey, its something I just choose to not think about. Although, It can be a very insecure feeling, yet that is the way most people feel in a foreign country when they don’t know the language. Just a reminder to all…. Have compassion on those around you who do not speak the language. This includes churches when those who do not know God come to visit, because we in the church in America also speak a foreign language from that of the rest of Americans.

And never forget freedom is precious and a moral government that is just, and not corrupt, is a blessing from God to its citizens.

Sights for Sore Eyes?

Sights while out walking...

Starbucks anyone? LOL

Extremes in Cambodia - the very rich and the very poor

Pig on a spit

Affectionately called "Home Depot" by expats

Local School

"Tuk Tuk"

Here's the "tuk tuk" that we take and Webol our driver. :)

Toul Kork Market

Tim trying to "blend in" - he he he

fresh fruit - oh so yummy!! For those of you who know, there's Rambutan and Durian :)

see the "moto" - sm motorcycle

Rack of ribs anyone?
Huge carrots and they are really good!
Fresh fish - so fresh, some are still alive :)
fresh meat if you buy before 9 a.m. before it starts rotting! meat comes straight from the farms
vendors and table everywhere
more vendors and little eating places
The market, looking from our street, before all the close up pics above

Upload Times for Internet

Hey all, It just took me2.5 hours to upload my video of the market. Wow! I figure a Norton Antivirus Update will take about 3 days. Oh well, I'm just happy to be able to chat with friends now. However I will probably post more pics that clips from now on.l

"Say What You Mean"

7/21/10
So this morning about 7:20 Tim and I headed out to do our errands. Everything we were going to was within walking distance. We went to the MetFone building to order our internet. They said they'd be here tomorrow, and if you ask what time, they can't tell you, so you just wait around all day. We then sauntered over to the T&C, a little restaurant that has free wifi. You get one hour and you usually order food or drink to be polite. We paid $5.00 for the whole meal, his meal was only $1, but the drinks were $2 each :)
Later, after doing some other errands, we head out to the Terrace, a restaurant/coffee house. Their sign looks like Starbucks, except for the goddess pictured in it. :) When entering, we asked it they had internet. The host said yes and took us to an ice cold part of the restaurant (but we weren't complaing, believe me!) After sitting down and ordering 2 Pepsis, we asked if there was a password to get online. The waiter promptly told us their internet was not working right now. Jeez! Talk about misleading...in the States you could sue for that! Much different thinking system here. They obviously wanted to get our money first. Next time we go there we will say what we mean and first ask if their internet is working. :)

Toul Kork Market

Get it while its fresh... and that means "still moving" LOL!!!!

).K.! Things are done so differently here that in the States. It was interesting that I just bought a couple of 220v power strips... same as the ones in the states, only not really.. let me explain. I bought two new ones, a three outlet and a five outlet strip. I brought them home and somewhere during the next few days only two of the three outlets in the strip now work. I then used the other strip for some other things and about 3 days later two of the 5 outlets in that strip have stopped working. Then to top it off, I went down to the main street near the central market today and bought two 220 volt transformers that reduce the power down to 110. I plugged one of these into another 220 power strip that I had, and the darn thing blew up on me! Scared the hoochy right outa me!! In the states one might have cause for a lawsuit as pieces of a power strip kind-of disintegrate before you in a puff of explosion. Not here, this is just a normal part of life... I think I need to find a higher quality vendor of power strips, if that is possible?

We got our internet hooked up today, Yeah! two guys on a Motto showed up with one of the guys carrying an all aluminum ladder over his head through traffic. He then placed this up against a power pole with an incredible mess of wires and electrical lines. I kept waiting for him to touch the wrong thing, or his ladder to touch a power line and then be blown right off the ladder, or fried instantly, on the spot! Well he gets things hooked up without too much trouble and then crawls over our balcony to with cable in tow. He throws it through the ventilation window way up high in our apartment and then strips the wires and hooks up our router. Nothing is taped down or anything secured and I have about 40 feet of wire on my floor that is extra... maybe just in case I want to move the router someplace else??? Then I go out onto the balcony and there is a spool of loose wire laying there... about 50 feet. I yelled at the guy and held up the wire so he could come clean up or finish tidying a bit with the splices and stuff, but nope! not going to happen, he smiled and waved and was gone.... and I'm holding this spool of wire and going to get a broom to clean up after the hook up guy. It is just very different.

Construction side note: There is not really a whole lot of pride taken in a job well done with many of the workers here. If it works and its not falling down, then its good enough. In construction it drives me crazy to see jobs that are just plain dangerous or finished and just look somewhat shabby. For all we complain in the states about building codes and inspectors, if they ever had to get things to code around here the entire city would have to be dismantled. I really hope there is never an earthquake here because the death toll would be astounding. Everything house is made out of concrete, brick and stone, but none of it to USA code standards. Scary, very Scary! I found out that you can build a huge three story mansion type of house with about 3000 -4000 square feet for under $100,000 but there are a few catches; You can't own the land, only a national can own land in Cambodia, so you have do do everything is someone elses name. Also, the land here runs about $1000.00 per sq. meter. So if I figure that correctly, a 25 X 25 square meter piece of property is going to run about $250,000 or something close to that. So the labor and materials are fairly cheap but the land is at a premium.

Cynthia and I are acclimating to the neighborhood life and market. I have posted a few clips of the market from this morning. If you get there early you can find the food fresh... as in, LIVE or freshly Slaughtered. You don't want to come late or things start to spoil. You will see what I mean when you watch the video. I also have take a pic of the Internet installation so all of you in the states can giggle! We are back to 56K for speed, but it works fine for us. We were spoiled with Cable.... Heck, we were spoiled with everything in the States! I think about just running down to Quiznos or Subway and picking up a sandwich and it seems like it has been months since we did that, not just a week. Cynth and I are dropping pounds faster than a monkey with a tapeworm. Can you sweat Fat??? I swear you never stop burning calories trying to cool your body. Right now my palms are hot from the laptop and I have to keep it raised off the desk to get airflow under it so it doesn't overheat!

The little tour guide pamphlet says that Phnom Penh has an aroma that is distinct to it. They are right. The smell kind of bothered me when we first came, and I thought...'this is going to be a long two years smelling this all the time,' but now I am getting acclimated and don't really smell it anymore. It is a combination of garbage, food, people, rotting vegetation and more garbage. There is no hot water to speak of, but you can wait a couple of minutes and it is very warm just from the pipes running under the street. Showers are quick, utilitarian and about 2 minutes at the most. You want to get it done before the water heats up and becomes yucky!

I am going to try to post some videos, but it takes quite a while with 56k upload speeds. All for now Love you all! Cambodia out!

It's the Little Things...

7/20/10
"It's the Little Things..."
As we settle into living in a third world country as expats, I'm learning it's the little things in life that get you excited:
~finding skirt hangers - hey I looked in every market we went to! I found regular dress and shirt hangers, but no skirt hangers. So today Tim and I walked to the "Total" shop right down the street. It's actually a gas station, but has a shop inside too. Kind of like a glorified Circle K or Kwik Trip. You can find anything from toiletries to milk, dishes and hangers.

~drinking a cold Pepsi. When all you drink is bottled water, a good cold Pepsi is great. Actually I'd trade my first born for a tall glass of iced tea about now. :)

I'm also learnig that living a developing country as an adult is much different that living in one as a child. As a child my mom did most of the work and we had house helpers who did our laundry, cooked and drove us around (house helpers are normal when you are a missionary; you're actually providing work for the locals and its very inexpensive). We played with our friends, went to school and had fun! As a MK (missionary kid), I grew up enjoying the food from the vendors and never worried about what to eat and drink. I also spoke the language.

Now, Tim and I don't speak Khmer (pronounced kmi, long i sound) and we are responsible for finding and fixing our own food. We also have to find our own transportation, kiind of like being an adult in the States, but you don't speak the language or don't know where anything is yet. But we'll learn. We are learning quickly and getting around just fine. Our landlord has children who speak English a little, so they translate for us. The people at the market speak just enough to say, "what you look for...I have" and they dollar amounts. Oh, and they take dollars here. They love dollars and you can pay for anything in dollars, just not coins. So you have to pay in dollar amounts and they'll give you change back in Riel (CAmbodian money). You can pay in both dollars and Riel together if you want - pretty cool. :) But DO NOT pay in torn or worn out dollars; they won't take them. Very picky about dollars but not their own money. :)
We know how to say no and thank you in Khmer. The language is hard to learn and has French roots and over 60 vowel sounds alone, not to mention the many different ways to pronounce consonants like "T"; there is a hard T with no aspiration (breath), there is a T with breath coming out and a T that just stops dead in its tracks and doesn't really sound like a T at all but more like a D that suddenly got hit by a car.

We are getting acclimated to the weather. Currently it is rainy season here. Which means it is supposed to rain every afternoon or evening, but it doesn't. If it rains late afternoon or evening, it cools off and is beautiful! But if it rains during the hot day, it just gets more sticky afterwards - yuck! If you're out and about walking and it rains, you just wait under a over hang or in a shop for a bit and it usually doesn't last too long, but it does downpour when it rains. After rainy season comes "cool" season, kind of American fall - from Oct/Nov - Jan/Feb. It can get down to the low 70s in the mornings and evenings and mid 80s during the day I think. About March it start really heating up again and by April and May it is stiffling - hot and dusty!! Can't wait! Tim and I are already sweating so much, we figure it's a great weight loss program! LOL Imagine if we were actually exercising too (besides our walks to the market and stores). There is an Olympic size at the school so we're hoping to get some laps in before or after school :) even if to just cool off!

For transportation, most locals use a "moto" (small motorcycle like a Vespa), or a "tuk tuk". You can see pics of these in our previous blogs. They are everywhere! You can hire a moto dop, that's a guy driving a moto. He will transport you and everything you have! I've seen whole families on motos - amazing! We are currently taking a tuk tuk everywhere, if we're not walking. Tuk tuks are safer, people can't yank stuff off your shoulders and you are out of the elements when it rains. We use a tuk tuk driven by Webol (W pronounced with a V sound, not a W). He is a Christian and speaks English quite well, and he's on time - which is good for here!
A tuk tuk ride is around $2.50 one way and if we use him every day for school we can make a deal and pay $2.00 one way - so about $80 a month. We figure it's still cheaper than buying a moto and paying for fuel (VERY expensive here) and repairs, etc. Plus we just don't want to deal with the traffic yet! :)

Cost of things are more expensive if you are a foreigner. Of course if you go to the store, you can't bargain. but if you go to the market, you can bargain. They start the price higher for you of course than for a Cambodian. Usually to bargain, you offer half of what they asked for, then dicker back and forth. Sometimes if you walk off, they will comply.

Ok, as I write this there are people wandering throughout our house. :) The aircon guys are here adding freon to the aircon in our bedroom. And here comes the landlady with the money in her hands. She's following the guys around making sure they are doing what they are supposed to do. Oh, and look here. The land lady's dog just joined in the parade. He must have followed her in. Once she noticed, she shooed him out immediately. Khmer people are very friendly and they don't ever want to offend.

Time here is like rubber - it stretches. In Indonesia we actually called it "rubber time" - "jam karet." We were told last night that the aircon guys were coming at 8 a.m. this morning. So, we called our tuk tuk driver and rescheduled for him to come pick us up at 9:30, to be on the safe side. So of course 8 a.m. rolled around and they weren't here yet. Finally at 9:20 we told our land lady, via her daugther, that we had to go, we had an appointment. She said, "they called and they promised they will be here at 9:30." We said, no, sorry, we can't wait, we have to go.
They asked when we'd be back and we said 2:00 p.m. Later, we got a call from the school secretary saying the land lady called and wanted us to know that the guys said they'd be here at 3:00, not 2:00. And sure enough, they showed up about 3:30, not bad. :)

So, I HAVE to tell you about our first night here! We get into the airport about 11:2o p.m. Friday, the 16th of July. After getting 7 pieces of luggage we met Dan Ohlin, Director of Development for Asian Hope. He takes us to our house. We walk into a hot, but clean apt, threw all of our luggage in the large living rm and head for the bdrm, where there is an airconditioner. We had no fans yet for the rest of the house. We finally find some toiletries, shower and fall into bed. Tim goes to plug our alarm clock we brought from the States. We had brought a transformer with us too, so we plug that in first, then our alarm clock. We hear a loud pop!! and the electricity dies!! We are saying, Oh my gosh! Did we kill the whole apt building? Now what? it's going to be looog hot night! Then Tim, my ever resourceful handy man looks around for a flashlight we had brought along; we had help from street lights too. :) he finds the electrical box in the living rm and sees that we had blown the breakers. So he switches them back on and voila! Air con and lights back on -yea!! We realized that the transformer we bought in the States was actually only an adapter. *sigh* So...we finally got to bed about 1:30 and then were up by 5:30 from streets sounds - cars, motos, vendors, people talking and yelling and someone drilling and nailing. Remember we had no fans yet to cover noise. So went our first night/morning in Phnom Penh :)

We were off for at 9 am Sat for a quick tour of the city and to get a few things - thanks agian to Dan Ohlin! and then supper with his family and then the night market that night. the night market is loud, but much cooler. Since then, we have been to several markets, to school for a tour, had dinner with another teacher and his family and then just checked things out.

Tomorrow - Wed, we are doing some fruit shopping at the local market right beside us. Then off to MetFone to order internet for our house. Then we've been invited to another teacher's house for dinner. They have 10 kids, yes 10! They homeschool; 2 are in the States in college.

New teacher in-service starts Monday, July 26. School begins Aug. 9. So we have time yet to acclimate and learn our way around and contine to get settled in. Catch ya later...Joneses in Cambodia - over and out.

Video of the Night Market

Tuk Tuk ride to school

Just a quick video of our ride to school in Webol's Tuk Tuk He is a Christian national and actually understands English quite well. He has kind of become our main source of transportation, therefore I am adding Webol to my prayers for his safety, well being and a Tuk Tuk that never breaks down. There are times when I fight the urge to yell at the top of my lungs "YOU ARE ALL NUTS" Because I really don't know how everybody keeps from having a huge pile-up. I will get a video of the inner city and the round-a-bout. That is even more crazy than the outlying roads! Every time I arrive safely at a destination I offer a prayer of Tanks to God!

The Night Market - cool market you go to at night

Motos (sm motorcycles, like Vespas) lined up at the market. Motos are the main type of transport here.

The night market. Really nice time to shop - it's much cooler :)

Eating picnic style - they have this all set up on the ground where you can eat, also have some tables

traffic :)

the food court at the night market :)

the trip to the market. We went with a family who works here. They took a van full of kids, kids from the 2 homes that Asian Hope runs. Asian Hope is the umbrella company, they have several international schools, one of them Logos International where we're teaching. Some of these kids Tim will have in classes :)