Greetings from Phnom Phen!
That’s right – I finally got placed in a city! The capital, even. This month, Team Iridescent is working with the International Theological College and Seminary, which also happens to be home to Chom Chao Gospel Presbyterian Church. (After four months with only 2 Presbyterian worship services, now I get to go to 5 a week!) Most of our ministry this month is teaching English to the students, who range from 16 to 27 years old, which takes me back to the year I spent teaching in Spain.
But more on that later. For now, I want to rave about city living!
(Or, slightly outside of a city living.)
We’re about a 30-45 minute tuk-tuk ride away from downtown, longer if traffic is really bad. We live on the top floor of a four-story building – sometimes it still amazes me to see buildings that have more than one story after two months in fairly rural Africa. We have beds, a kitchen, real bathrooms, fans, and wifi!
If it weren’t for the spicy food and constant humidity, I would think I was at home.
Case in point: for our first off-day, my team and the two Squad Leaders staying with us went on an excursion to the mall.
A real mall. Complete with a food court, tons of shops, a bowling alley, a movie theater, and an ICE SKATING RINK.
I may or may not have squealed and jumped up and down when I saw the sign for that last one. (We’re going to go back to the mall in a couple of weeks to watch Mockingjay and I will definitely go prepared to ice skate afterwards.)
It was so relaxing to eat some delicious pizza (and cheesy garlic bread!), wander around, play the fastest round of bowling ever, and take team photos in a photo booth.
But it has also been very weird.
I think most of the weirdness stems from having only one day of ministry in the first 5 we spent in Cambodia. Going to the mall and being on a mission trip generally seem to be mutually exclusive. I had the exact same feeling after our debrief in Romania and subsequent journey to Greece. I get into a rhythm doing ministry and, while I like having a little break, it messes up my schedule to go from ministry to tourism/travel/rest. (Jet lag certainly doesn’t help!)
So that part, I’ve gotten over as we’ve started working.
I’ve also noticed that being somewhere that reminds me so much of home after two months in a place that felt very foreign has made me slip into old habits. Whenever we have free time, I am more likely to get on the Internet or read a book than I am to hang out with my teammates or read my Bible. That has not been the case for the majority of the Race so far and I have a lot of work ahead of me to resist those temptations to be lazy just because I have the opportunity to do so.
Hopefully, that just means the rewards for getting out of my mosquito net and interacting with real people will be even greater 🙂
