On Wednesday, Katie, Stacey, and I explored the city of Phnom Penh with a list of activities to complete as a way for us to bond and get to know our new teammates.
We did a number of things: sang “I’m a Little Teapot” with a globetrotting Brit (and published author), played shuttlecock and hack-a-sack on steroids with some locals, danced for a small crowd in the arcade, prayed for the sweetest little old lady (read more about her on Stacey’s blog: The day I went to pray with the king instead I sat with a beggar), and so on. By the Lord’s blessing, we were in the right place at the right time to see the king of Cambodia pass by, and pray over him as he passed.
One of our activities was to eat something strange. Katie and I decided that we would try fried crickets. Now I can say that I’ve eaten a fried cricket. That is about the extent of that experience.
But that was not my final run in with a cricket in Cambodia. Logan and I are visiting Team Poaday this week. The team is staying in the sanctuary of the church, so they cleared some space and said that we could set up our tents. We asked what the tents were for, since we were inside, and they had said that mosquitoes are not bad. The response: bugs. The tents were to keep the bugs away. But rather than set up two tents in an already crowded space, Logan and I decided that we could share my tent. We got it set up and snuggled down for bed (and by that I mean we figured out how we could lay down without touching since we both already were sweating). About the time I started to doze off, Logan sits up and turns his flashlight on. So I start looking around, “what are you looking for?” “There’s a cricket in here!” I’m sure the girls got a kick out of hearing a couple of grown men trying to find, catch, and evict a cricket from their tent. Every time we found him, he’d jump and we’d lose him in the darkness. After a few minutes, we managed to get him outside and slam the zipper shut behind him. As we settled back into our sleeping pads, I asked Logan, “how’d you find that?” “He jumped on my face! That’s how I found him.”
