Some photos of Catherine being a big girl

Now we’re looking ahead to Catherine’s birthday in May and realizing that she’s turning the same age that Charlotte was when she moved here. There’s definitely some COVID-19 time dilation going on because it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. In any case, I wanted to share some photos of Catherine’s final months as…

The Season of Lent

For Lent this year, both Crystal and I have gone on a social media fast. You won’t be seeing us on Facebook or Twitter, unless we need to hop on for work, but instead we’re trying to redirect the time and energy we usually spend on social media towards God. At least that’s the intention….

Charlotte’s 8th Birthday

Last month we celebrated Charlotte’s 8th birthday in isolation. All four of us had COVID-19 at the time but, fortunately, the birthday girl had the mildest symptoms of the four of us. She had been hoping for a birthday party with her friends from school but, while disappointed, was completely understanding of the situation. At…

Gratitude

The flavors and textures of gratitude are many. There’s the quick and sharp relief gratitude that the red ant which got in my hair while sweeping the courtyard didn’t bite me. There’s the bone deep, breath-stopping gratitude of seeing pictures from my 16 year old niece’s car accident and knowing she miraculously got out with…

COVID-19 finally got us Two Years and a Month Later

The first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Cambodia on January 27th, 2020. It’s been a long two years of caution, disruption, and uncertainty. As leaders here, we’ve tried to walk the line between modeling appropriate precautions and being calm and reassuring. This month, for the first time in a over a year, we started…

Dog fights and culture fatigue.

I will admit that while there have been plenty of times of missing people, places, foods and the ways of doing things back home, I had yet to grow tired of Cambodia. Perhaps because of Covid my culture shock curve is doing strange things, but I continue to wake up every day amazed that I’m…

Several Vaccinations this week

This week Crystal and I received our first COVID-19 booster shot. We could have gotten it back in August but decided to wait until it had been six months since our initial dose. It ended up taking longer than that because we were vaccinated by the Military, not the Ministry of Health, and had some…

Mosquitos

Here in Cambodia, the mosquito we watch out for is the Asian Tiger mosquito. It’s identifiable due to black and white stripes on the body. The tiger mosquito is usually a little larger than other mosquitos and can potentially carry dengue and chikungunya, which we are all too well acquainted with, as well as zika…

Chikungunya and slow recovery

The Doctor said that it could take up to six weeks to recover from Chikungunya but I was optimistically thinking that meant that I’d be at 70% and improving for most of that time. That has not been the case and I’m still not at 100% eight weeks later. I am getting closer to ‘normal’…

Chikungunya?

I’ve been feeling increasingly under the weather this week with a sensation like the chills and aching muscle/joint pain. I thought I was stiff from taking the girls to school/study group on the moto everyday (they’re not small anymore) but yesterday afternoon I broke out in a fever and very quickly a rash spread across…