this is a post about shooleys

Ben is in a bit of a silly mood today. For those of you who don't know what a shooley is let me explain:  "shooley" is the neutered term of endearment used by both Ben and myself to express our undying affection for one another.   Today ben is making up songs having to do with the word shooley and all it implies.  Usually when we ride in a tuk-tuk one or the other of us sing a little ditty, sometimes original, sometimes a classic.  

Today the weather in PP is reading at a balmy 81 degrees.  There is a nice breeze in the air and all things considered it is a fairly nice day in Cambodia.  Our Sunday will consist of Comme a la Maison, our favorite French breakfast nook, followed by church, a short stop at the Russian Market and Ben's soccer game.  Then a long ride out to our countryside school.  This week will be a bit off the norm, which we have just barely settled into.  Being New Years we have Thursday off, and neither of us teach on Wednesdays, so we will be back in the city and having internet access more than usual.  I leave on Friday morning for Thailand, where my next two weeks will be spent seeing doctors and waiting for the blessed child to arrive.  Ben is going to get a few more weeks of teaching in before joining me on the 17th of January.  This new year for us will mark some of the biggest changes yet in our lives.  Besides being in yet another new country, we will have our first baby, which is a step both of us are trying to prepare for daily.  It is daunting to say the least.  Thank you for keeping up with our postings and caring about the mundane events of our lives.  Seeing your comments and receiving your emails makes a big difference in our lives.  

Hopefully you all have a very Happy New Year and a find it also new and different for you.

These kids follow their mother about our dormitory while she cleans. I like to give them stuff and try to talk to them.

On the drive to our school this is typically what you will see...

One of the sweetest restaurants ever...

Christmas week in Cambodia...

Ben and I sit this lovely Saturday morning in Java coffee shop eating our yogurt, sipping coffee and waiting for signs of life on Skype.  It has proven to be more difficult lacking internet during the week than I thought it would be.  We are two of three Americans out at our campus, no one else speaks much English.  We live amongst Khmer students and Korean teachers, all very gracious and kind, but conversation is lacking to say the least.  Having barely a connection with the outside world is difficult, I think it is especially difficult being almost 8 months pregnant and knowing my little sister is going to deliver soon too.   Emotions run high. 

The weather is beautiful today.  Only 80 degrees and there is a nice breeze.  Besides waiting for family to pop on Skype we are going to take care of our car today, and move yet again. Let me explain... We bought an old school Jeep Cherokee with the hope that it will stay together on our bumpy road to and from school.  We needed something with a little more clearance than the Toyota we were borrowing.  The jeep does fine, but it is a rough ride.  It is definitely beat up, but for this time and place, that is good.  We will include a picture next weekend hopefully. Ben is pretty excited about it. He likes old beaters like that. We need to get the oil changed and the tires taken care of today though, simple tasks that tend to take hours more than you would think necessary. 

As far as moving AGAIN, our team leader had to leave the country for personal reasons so his house, which was our landing ground on the weekends, is no longer available. For the next few weeks we will house-sit for our pastor and his family while they are in the states for Christmas.  Then we will be staying with a family from our church when we get back from Thailand with a baby.  They have kids already, and they are really great people, so it should be a good fit, it just means being uprooted again.  

I wanted to include a few random pictures, but the thing isn't working right now. My sister mentioned, as well as another friend, that they thought we were roughing it much more than we are. Cambodia is definitely still developing, and they lack the infrastructure that makes life consistent, but we have electricity and solid walls.  The disparity of wealth and poverty is the most shocking thing about being here.  You can drive past a Range Rover and into the countryside to our campus where we have no water for hours and days on end.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all, and hopefully you are enjoying your North American weather! We are missing it.

what a stud!

The Superstars of NPIC...

Well, we are still without the Internet at NPIC, and so communication has been a bit difficult.  When we come into the city on the weekends we are trying our best to post on our blog and send emails to all of you.  That being said, here is a quick recap of our week:

We made it back to the countryside Sunday evening, and relaxed a bit before starting classes again on Monday.  We are in our third week of teaching, and are finally hitting our stride.  Our students are wonderful, and we are regularly surprised with their command of the English language.  However, there are those few students who still stare at us with blank faces, which make it a little more difficult. 

Two events this week stand out as memorable, and consequently, both happened on Friday.  First, we had a small group of students over for lunch on Friday afternoon.  We made them Mexican food, which they had never had before!  It was a great experience.  Andrea and I handmade the tortillas, whipped up some seasoning for the beef, and splurged on some cheese.  All in all, I think they liked the flavor, but a few of the students found it just a little too foreign.  We had some great conversation however, and are thoroughly enjoying building relationships with our students.  They wanted to know everything about us, from what our friends and families are like, to how one eats a burrito, to why we celebrate Christmas.  Needless to say, we had a splendid time, and are really looking forward to our next gathering. 

Second, after our “Mexican feed,” we moseyed on over to the NPIC soccer field and watched the opening game of the NPIC soccer season.  It was the IT department versus the NPIC Superstars.  Why were the IT students playing against the Allstars, you ask?  Well, because the IT department has won the NPIC championship three years in a row now, so the University President decided to create an exhibition match so the IT students might experience the agony of defeat.  Hilariously, we were the guests of honor, so they sat us at the fifty underneath the shaded portion of the bleachers (imagine a medieval joust).  It was a great game, the students were thrilled that we were their, and the Vice-President of the university asked me and our team leader, Bryant, to play on NPIC’s teacher team, so…we’ll have to keep you posted on the NPIC teaches’ soccer season.  That being said, NPIC is beginning to feel more and more like a community, and we are slowly (oh so slowly) starting to view it as our home. 

In other news, Andrea’s pregnancy is moving right along.  We are buying tickets today for her flight to Thailand on the second of January (I will be shortly following behind her on the fifteenth), and each day we are able to make out the movements of our daughter a little more. 

Well, the rice patties behind our dormitories are being harvested, and that can only mean one thing: CHRISTMAS!!!  So, we put up a small Christmas tree in our kitchen room, however, no matter how many trees you see, or how much Christmas music you listen to, it’s a little hard to get into the mood when it’s eighty degrees outside.  But, the season is here, and all of you are increasingly on our minds.  As a matter of fact, tonight we will be going to a Christmas concert that a local high school is putting on in Phnom Penh.  It should be a good show, but it is still difficult being away from friends and family during the holidays.  We miss you all and love you, and we hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season.  Until next weekend…

Ben and Andrea      

We are finally teachers

Teaching is here and it is awesome.  (Ben is convinced he needs to teach his students the word awesome.) We have been teaching all week and enjoying the educational profession, Khmer students and our newfound pace of life (which is still very chill).  A typical day in the Cambodian countryside might look like this: we get up around 6 am, make breakfast in the room we have converted to a kitchen, stop by the office to pick up teaching materials, and head to our respective classes.  We both teach third year English classes but in different concentrations, I teach in tourism, Ben in electrical engineering.  The students all over campus know who we are and where we live.  We are the only white people around for literally miles and it is funny how they stop and stare. As we walk around campus students step off the sidewalk to get out of our way and always bow and say good morning or hello. In class they all stand when we come into the room and stay standing until asked to be seated.  Upon leaving class they will do the same thing. All classes in Cambodia have a class monitor who is in charge of bringing the eraser, erasing the board, taking attendance and opening the windows if that is what the teacher desires.  If something were to change in the schedule or all the students in class needed to be reached the class monitor is responsible for this, one of the only sensible things you will find in the Cambodian educational system.

After teaching we usually have an afternoon to ourselves.  We spend this either making lesson plans, grading, or reading in our little dorm room.  I am trying to befriend the children of the woman who cleans our dorm.  They just follow her around all day while she sweeps.  They are usually naked and quite dirty.  The three of the (mother, daughter and son) come up to our third floor landing to take a nap every afternoon and when they wake up I usually offer them a snack or try to talk to them in my limited Khmer and sign language.  I bought a small toy for both of the kids last week and I would love to develop a relationship with this family so the kids could play with me while the mom cleans, but that is a ways off I think. 

We then make dinner in our awkward kitchen and sit around talking after dinner for a good long while as a team.  Life in the countryside is slow and it makes you focus on relationships. We have time to focus on our marriage, our team relationship and getting to know students and staff.  They are a very warm people and easy to get to know. Everyone you meet in Cambodia is dying to learn or improve their English.  It is fun to be a part of something that is simple, but can make such a drastic difference in people's lives.  Thank you all so much for your support in sending us on this journey.  It is hard, but it is good, very good.

Unbelievable!!!

This morning I felt a real need to write about our experience because it was so ridiculous I had to share it. Try to visualize as you read because I am sure my words can only give you a partial picture of how this played out. In our room on campus we have a speaker on the wall. I never noticed it before, nothing has ever come out of it before, but this morning it spoke.
If you have seen the movie "Grease" then you might remember the little jingle they play on the zylophone when they make announcements in the morning. The same jingle woke me up at 5:30 and it was followed by a Khmer voice rattling something unidentifiable. Then another jingle. Then another announcement, then another jingle, then another announcement.
Fully awake I texted our teammate who speaks Khmer to ask if there was a fire or something. Surely they wouldn't make such a long announcement so early if it was not of the utmost importance. He said they announced to please turn the water off when you are done showering. Hmmmm. No fire.
The announcement would have been bad enough, it woke me up well before my alarm clock and it persisted far longer than it needed to, but to top it off the person on the other end of the speaker decided to play Khmer radio for the next 40 minutes. Forty minutes of Khmer music at 5:30 in the morning, with no possible way to shut it off. I got increasingly more angry and I finally got up to take a cold shower. It is mornings like this that make you feel like you are living some kind of candid camera.
It also makes me a little sad. The Cambodian people may have hated it, but no one would try to do something about it. They don't have a concept of their privacy being violated. They have had such a culture of doing what they are told and being unable to change anything that they accept whatever may happen, bad or good. In some ways it is more healthy that they can let things roll off their back, but it has also proven to be detrimental to them. For example, in our talks with college students, we have not found one who even cares what happens in the tribunal to convict the leaders of the Pol Pot Regime. They are completely ambivalent to it. I find that to be quite tragic.