August 10 marked our One Year Anniversary in Cambodia. We celebrated by splurging on lactose free ice cream with sprinkles, dried fruit, and a banana.
Category: Daily life in Cambodia
Summer 2020 General Update
I wanted to give you all a quick update before getting into more specific details. YAMEN Departures: In my last post I shared that Moudy, our volunteer from Indonesia, made it home safely. Last week Jonathan and Victor, our volunteers from Kenya, made it home safely. There were a lot of COVID-19 challenges to navigate…
Home Alone (Well Almost)
For the first time since early March our family is home alone. Well, almost, we do have one returning IVEP participant doing her mandatory two week quarantine in the downstairs bedroom. But, given that she’s in quarantine, we don’t see her except to deliver meals. It was a blessing to have a full house during…
Sundays during COVID-19
It’s 7:15 on Sunday. We’ve been up for a few hours already, though we had a lazy snuggle with the girls in the pre-dawn light. The plants are watered, laundry put away, compost turned, breakfast cooked and eaten and girls dressed. I’m preparing to wash the floors before our isolation pod arrives for coffee cake…
COVID-19: Because they feed the poor
In my last post on COVID-19, I suggested that perhaps we are in our positions for such a time as this. I ended that post by sharing photos of generosity from North America that I’d seen on social media. “Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor.” Proverbs 22:9 (NLT) Since then…
6th Birthday
Charlotte turned six last month. Per her request, she had fried chicken for her lunch (at school) and spaghetti for dinner. The Area Directors were in town for our first country program review and joined the festivities. As parents, we enjoyed that Charlotte asked for birthday gifts like yoga mats and bean bag chairs. (Okay,…
COVID-19: Outline & Update
The first diagnosis of COVID-19 here came in January. Cambodia made news around the world later in February when it allowed the MS Westerdam cruise ship to come to port here after four countries turned it away. Initially, the official response to COVID-19 here was to focus on maintaining a positive relationship with China. There…
ផ្លែស្វាយ | Mango
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… Ripe mangoes from the Cambodian countryside have started to show up in the market! I was fairly ambivalent to mangoes before traveling to Việt Nam in University. That’s when I discovered that the mangoes that I’d been eating in North America were poor representatives of their species….
Christmas Duck Disaster
We had the YAMEN participants over for Christmas day dinner. We have two volunteers from Kenya and one from Indonesia. I had planned to roast duck (my first) for dinner…but it did not go so well. As I roasted two ducks for dinner one of them began to emit a putrid stench. This became worse…
Flowers of Cambodia 2019
Following up on Flowers of Cambodia from ’06 – ’09, here’s a compilation of flowers we’ve seen since returning to Cambodia. I want to highlight a few of these. I think this may be the tallest Orchid that I’ve ever seen. It was at a restaurant in rural Prey Veng province. This was on a…