month 10 is here folks, cambodia it is for this fine october!
for the past 2 weeks team ampersand has been living in a village called prey veng about 2 hours outside of phnom penh. it has been fantastic. isolated, beautiful, really amazing people… it's also super duper hot, but it's worth it. my team is working with an orphange. the center is currently in the end stages of construction and startup of a church/orphanage/clinic to get to know the largely unreached people in the village.
here is a little run down of what our days have been looking like:
0600: wakeup! army crawl out of mosquito net and brush teeth.
0630: morning devotionals, group or solo.
0700: breakfast. "bobo" every day, aka pork/rice/egg/vegetable soup. it's pretty delicious and also hearty.
0730: get to work. most days involved painting of some sort… scraping off old paint, or slathering on new stuff on the gates and lanterns and windows and doors of the church & center. if i never see orange paint again in my whole life, i will be happy. morning hours are prime, they are MUCH less hot than the afternoon, so we try to get as much done outside before lunch as possible.
[painting, always painting]
[view of the church from across the street on the orphanage balcony. note the bright orange gates]
1130-1300: lunch & break. maybe take nap sprawled in front of the fan, maybe read aloud to each other from the chronicles of narnia, maybe play with the neighbor's puppy that frequently wanders over for some love.
1300-1700: keep on workin friends. hideout in the shade if possible, sweat your face off if not.
1700-1800: kid's time! there is a long-standing english class that happens between the hours of 5 and 6 pm that we took over while we were there. we taught some fun english like numbers, basic phrases, body parts, directions, and then mostly did activities like teach volleyball dance basketball, have a water balloon fight, play field games, and have an epic tug-of-war, adults vs. kids style (the kids won, easily, in case you were wondering).
[water balloon fight, boys in the middle, obviously]
[minimally assisting chelsey teaching self-defense to these precious girls & women]
1830: dinner time. some of the fine delicacies sampled this month included: ant & larvae omelets, dog (yes, dog), fried frog, and duck fetus… don't worry, we also had plenty of more "normal" khmer food, including ginger pork, curry, chicken/potato/carrot soup, often followed by apples & grapes for dessert.
[baloot — duck fetus… a delicious snack in cambodia… exactly how it looks]
1900: shower time. by the end of a sweaty, painty, grimey-handed-kid, play sports and run around day, you could say we were all pretty sticky. shower time was usually uneventful as all 7 of us plus the 5-10 locals would line up for the 2 showers… although some days things were a little more interesting if our practical-joke-loving contact daniel was around… all i'll say is there were a few bullfrogs, crabs, and crickets casually tossed into the shower via the upper vent windows during a few people's unassuming showers…
1930-2100: team time in the princess palace. affectionately known, justin/kyle/joey's pink & purple beds shared one giant bright pink mosquito net that took up half our room. "the princess palace".
[the one, the only, the princess palace]
2130: watch an episode of friends or read or brush your teeth or go to sleep. early nights here we come!
[team pic on a super cool tree we found]
cambodia is a crazy place, but i dig it in a big way.
bonus photo: the boys dunking me with the water leftover from the balloon fight. chelsey owen, you have some mad photo taking skills 🙂
