tim started saying it weeks ago, and i quickly squelched any such words!  The ‘winter’ here has been like cool water in a desert…except it was cool air.  I didn’t remember that I could have so much energy when my body isn’t sweating constantly to keep from overheating.

but, the other day, i surrendered.  i moved the fan about 2 feet from my face and drank a iced lime juice.  tim returned from school and found me enjoying my new environment.  To answer his look of surprise, I announced, “It’s hot season.  It’s time to admit it and adjust.”

3 cold showers a day

1 afternoon rest time

Countless cups of water

Double the laundry

…yes, hot season is not for the weak.  we dread it at times.  but, i do realize that it tends to burn away the loads and loads of tourists for a bit and that is a welcome reprieve, tim is quick to point out it is also the sweet mango season!  sticky, sweet and juicy mangoes fill our home. each season has it’s strengths and weaknesses.  acceptance of those is my key to weathering the changes.

of course, some seasons are less easily marked.  some seasons hit unexpectedly and without warning.  some seasons are joy-filled and exhausting all in one.  we adjust.  we must.  and lately, my family is adjusting…again.

Solomon writes it more beautifully in Ecclesiastes 3

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,”

We wanted to take the opportunity to let everyone know that the violence has only affected us by limiting which parts of the city we can go to easily and making transportation a little more challenging as the sky train and the subway here have been closed down.

We’re following the news and keeping track of where the violent clashes are and which streets are closed. The only real concern we have is that traffic will be complicated when Jessica goes into labor and we need to get to the hospital. The hospital is not in the central shopping district (where the demonstrators’ camp is), but it is along a main street of the city.

This a skytrain station empty at 4 p.m.! A rare sight indeed. They closed the trains early on Friday and we managed to catch the last train out of downtown toward the area where we're staying.

The situation IS affecting the lives of many Thai people. I don’t understand the issues or the reality of the situation enough to make a judgment of which side is right or wrong, but I do know that there are thousands of people from other parts of Thailand who have been camped in the middle of downtown since April and many of them are willing to risk injury and death for their cause.

One of the ways we’re following the situation is on bangkokpost.com Check it out if you want more complete and updated info.

We had planned on renting a studio in the Din Daeng neighborhood, but changed our minds due to its location being in and area that it seemed could be more easily cut off from the hospital by the demonstrations. It turns out that was a good call as that area is now getting closed off.

Our plan B was to accept an invitation from Stuart and Debbie Hake to stay in their home. Debbie teaches at a nearby international school. School has been canceled for tomorrow. It’s the closest thing they have to a snowday, but instead of snow coming down, there is smoke of burning tires going up.

Even with the craziness the Hakes have been great hosts. Stuart even took me to Chinatown today. Again, we are doing great and thoroughly enjoying the time we’re spending with our hosts!

When we study at school, it’s to learn to read and write. We study from 9 a.m. to noon. We have two teachers. The second comes in for the third hour. After two hours of reading and writing Khmer script, it’s sometimes fun to have a little conversation practice. Also, the third hour teacher likes to tell us stories.

So, we’ve decided to share some of these stories with you, our readers. Enjoy!

One day, our teacher was telling us about broken bones and how they are treated in Cambodia. She included several wince-inducing stories about poorly set bones which had to be re-broken and doctors insisting a bone wasn’t broken only to later find that it was and now it was going to require metal screws to fix. In one story, she told us about her cousin who broke his arm. The family called the kru khmer (local witch doctor) because they didn’t have the money to go to the hospital and anyway they had lost confidence in the doctors at the hospital after several experiences there with botched treatment.

The kru khmer made a compress to wrap around the broken arm. As he was working on it, a chicken with some chicks scurried by and the kru khmer snatched up one of the chicks, threw it in his mortar with the other compress ingredients and smashed it up. Then he wrapped the whole compress including every part of the smashed up chick around the broken arm.

Our teacher said this is a tried and true remedy for broken bones. Any of you medical people have any ideas what a chick that’s just gone through mortar and pestle treatment could do for a broken bone?

Well, our English vocabulary anyway. We’ve been absorbed in Khmer language study since the end of January, and while our Khmer vocabulary seems to be growing slowly, the opposite seems to be happening with our English vocabulary.

It’s bad. Like Jessica asks for a fork and Tim hands her a plate. Or Tim is telling a story in English to some new expat friend and he gets stuck in the middle of it because…”uh…I can’t remember, Jess, what’s the word? Um….eh….oh yeh, calendar.”

The thought of trying to put together complete sentences in our mother tongue and in an order to make a coherent story has lately seemed beyond our grasp. We expected this to happen. In our linguistics training last summer, we were taught that it’s a natural side effect of learning a new language. But, it’s still been a bit frustrating. Some days we feel like we can speak like a three-year-old in two languages, but like an adult in none.

But, we’re pressing on.

We’ve gathered a few stories from the past couple of months and we’ll be releasing them here over the next few weeks. In the mean time, we’d like to let our readers know that language study, despite it’s devastating effects on our English vocab, is progressing and our neighbors have proved to be eager language helpers.

We’ve recently begun learning to read and write and the children in the alley behind our house are having great fun teaching us our “ABCs” or in this case “Gaw Kaw Gos.”

The fun part about learning to read and write is that mostly we’re learning words that we already know how to speak. So we’re learning what Khmer sounds make each word – which ones we’re pronouncing correctly and which we aren’t. This should help us reduce our accents when we talk to people.

Having an understated accent can really pay off. Tonight, when Jessica went to the market to get stuff to cook for dinner, one lady panicked when Jessica stopped at her shop. She started calling for help so she wouldn’t have to play the exaggerated charades game you have to play when foreigners stop at your shop and want to buy something. Jessica pleasantly asked her in Khmer how much her mushrooms were per gram. The woman’s face suddenly assumed this expression of deep relief from an unspeakable fate and they went about the transaction.

So that’s where we’re at. Stay tuned for some stories!

It’s New Year’s Eve in Phnom Penh. In Cambodia, there are at least three New Year celebrations – (World) New Year (Jan. 1), Chinese New Year (Feb. 14) and Khmer New Year (Apr. 14).

I remember in 2006 in Battambang, we had people over to our house to play games and ring in the new year. I’m not sure we actually made it to midnight, we should have had some high school students over.

Anyhow, then, we were the only ones in town celebrating the new year. Our neighbors were all sleeping long before the clock struck 12.

Not so this year in Phnom Penh. I just took a photo of the traffic outside our apartment – people heading to Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh’s version of Times Square.  It’s near our apartment and our neighbors have been talking about the celebration there all week.

It’s interesting to see, at least in this city, Cambodians racing to connect with the wider world.

Jess recently got copies made of keys to the gate of our building, keys to the door of our apartment, keys to our balcony and keys to our post office box.

It’s interesting how such a simple task can say something about our values. For many of our neighbors here in Phnom Penh (and even more so out in the provinces), it would probably seem completely normal to have just one set of keys for a family residence.

But we who value our independence need more. We can’t wait around for the holder of the keys to get home.

Upon further investigation I found out that because there’s a market and also a night market in this neighborhood, local police patrol here pretty regularly. Since we’re going to be living here, they want our passport numbers and phone numbers when we get them.

I had just signed the rental agreement with our new landlord, paid our deposit and bought some bananas from one of our new neighbors. It was the end of a search for housing that (like many things in Cambodia) lasted a bit longer than we had planned.

Our search was long, but not because of a lack of housing in Phnom Penh. On almost every street of the city one can find the white and blue signs advertising an apartment for rent and the phone number of the landlord. And if, for some reason you can’t seem to spot the little signs, just ask someone on the street, they’ll have you talking to a family member or friend in less than five minutes with at least one or two options on the table.

We took a long time choosing partly because we were traveling around the country for a wedding and meetings for the first two weeks, but mostly because we wanted to choose well.

We were looking for a neighborhood where it’s easy to meet people, easy to practice Khmer language, easy to learn the rhythms of life here.

One of the challenges of living in Cambodia’s capital instead of the provincial capital of Battambang where we lived for our internship year, is that there are more foreigners (like us) here and more Cambodians can speak some English and like to try to practice with us. That makes it harder to spend the intensive hours of speaking only Khmer.

So, we scouted out neighborhoods with apartments for rent.

Our new apartment is right beside Psar Chas (the Old Market) on the northeastern side of Phnom Penh, near the riverfront. Besides the market, there are several parks nearby and an alley neighborhood, which will provide ample opportunity to meet people and practice our language exercises.

We’re anxious to get started. Since we have some basic skill in the language here from our internship year, our first lessons will likely be the phrases we need to furnish our apartment and do everyday shopping in the market.

Stay tuned for photos of our new home and stories as we begin our studies.

The older couple sitting at a table in the middle of the restaurant stopped their conversation and, in unison, turned their eyes toward me. Their stares told me that I had stepped off a flying saucer before coming in the door.

I smiled and waved, said good evening as I walked by on my way to a table in the back corner. They didn’t acknowledge my greeting, but their eyes continued to follow me to my seat. I sat down, pulled my computer from my bag and set it on the table in front of me.

Jessica and I were here for the cheap food and wireless internet access. As I plugged in my computer and turned it on, I noticed a kid. He looked about eight years old. He was also staring at me getting closer with each zig zag. Soon, he was just on the other side of my screen, so I invited him to take a look at the screen and wave hello to the friends I was talking to on Skype.

Over the past few years, I’ve become used to this type of scrutiny. When Jessica and I spent a year in Cambodia, we had this identical experience almost every day. It’s part of being a foreigner. This particular time, though, it was in a Wendy’s in Covington, Virginia.

Lately, I’ve been trying to prepare myself to re-enter life as a foreigner.

I’ve been reading Genesis, the part about Abraham and his family and how they lived as foreigners in a new land for much of their lives. In fact, when I read their stories, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the family was that they were often moving, always learning to live in places that were not their home and adapt to new conditions, cultures and customs.

Readers get glimpses of the family’s character through the ways they respond (honorably and dishonorably) to their relationships with God and the cultures they move in and out of. Abraham’s father, Terah, moved the family from Ur to Haran, then Abraham moved them to Shechem, then Egypt, then Bethel, etc. And that was just Abraham. His son Isaac and grandsons and nephew all moved their families in and out of new towns, kingdoms and cultures.

This summer at MTI, we talked a lot about the ways we measure success.
I remember one of our trainers asking us to think about what things we would need to see happen to consider our time in the countries we are moving to successful. Then he asked us if we thought that was how God measure our success.

He floated the theory that perhaps the reason God was taking us to new places was more about us than the people we would be serving. He asked us this: “If God showed you ahead of time your entire ministry in the country you are going to and you saw everything that you tried to do failed. There was no measurable fruit. No one responded to the gospel. The people there were still sick, starving and unredeemed. And God said, ‘I’m still asking you to go there.’ Can you honestly say you’d still go?”

His point was, that the best thing that would come from our ministry, the thing that would bring the most honor to our maker was not our work; it was how we honored him and how we lived as families in a new land.