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…

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…

First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Cambodia. We decided to wait and celebrate on Sunday so that the SALT participant in the province, Anneliese, could join. Despite spending most of Saturday at Visal’s Wedding Crystal still pulled together an authentic tasting Thanksgiving meal. We ended up with a full house – 16 people – for…

Charlotte and Victor Playing Chess

The Dengue fatigue hit me hard this evening and I’ve been up in the bedroom resting. When I came down to get some water I was surprised/delighted to see Charlotte playing Chess with Victor – one of the YAMEN participants from Kenya. I taught her how to play last year but never expected her to…

What are YAMEN and SALT?

I’ve mentioned Mennonite Central Committee’s YAMEN and SALT programs in a few posts. These are one year cultural exchange programs that send participants to countries around the world. The two programs are very similar with one core distinction – the sending countries. SALT (Serving And Learning Together) sends Christian North American young adults (ages 19-30)…