Its 6:00 a.m.. Six different alarm clocks begin sounding off, but all six alarms are rendered unnecessary. The roosters have been crowing, the dogs barking, the ducks quacking and the rats chirping for about an hour now…all at the same time, at the top of their lungs, incessantly. One by one, we slowly emerge out of our tent-like mosquito net into the dark, still chilled air. We get ready for another day in 
the
the Khampong Cham Province of Cambodia.
the mosquito dome
Today we are doing a Christmas program for one of the local churches in the area so we take special care in making sure we deck ourselves out in all the red and green we collectivley own on the World Race. Once everyone has been fully Christmas-ized we gather in front of our paper-snowflake ridden mosquito net in the tree house we are living in, and begin our day in worship. Every morning we make a point to begin our day in worship as a time to focus our day and our thoughts on Jesus. Today, a teammate shared an excpert from the book she was reading and we sang a few worship songs.
This brings us to 7:00 a.m.: breakfast time. We make the short trek through the forest to our contacts’ house and meet Utry, his brother Uee and their parents. Uee (30) is the pastor of the church we are staying in and he, his brothers and their friends have a huge influence in the Christian community in this province. We spend most of our time with the youngest brother, Utry (21),who we say walks with an apparent Camby land swag…the kid looks like he is working the runway wherever he goes. Although his “swagger” is most likely due to a motorcycle accident that broke his leg, we still like to think its just him. We love him. He is there waiting for us at the house, also wearing green and red, ready to serve us the rice that accompanies every meal. This morning, like every other, we have sliced, grilled pork, fried eggs and bananas served up family style. After breakfast we take a few minutes to grab our props and get ready for the hour long tuk tuk ride. We go with Uee, Utry (their 26 year old brother Umong usually comes with us too but he just went back to Phnom Penh), their cousin Sitai and friend Song to the Christmas program sight.
boys on the tuk tuk
Now, if you haven’t ridden in a tuk tuk on the dirt roads of Cambodia, this might be a little hard for you to fully understand. But I’ll try to explain. It is bumpy! Aside from the bumps that jostle your brain and compact your spine, there is also a constant swirl of dust. This dust turns the boys’ black hair a light brown and makes people like me look tan by the time we’ve reached our destination. When we finally get there, little, dirty faces immediately start inching towards our tuk tuk. They don’t come too close because they are still a little wary of us; most have never seen a foreigner before. Some are more brave than others, but they all start to warm up when the camera comes out. They love posing and getting to see themselves in the playback. They are all so precious.
10:00 a.m.: Showtime. We head to the front and introduce ourselves in Khmer, sing some American Christmas songs and put on the Christmas story play. I think we enjoy this more than the kids but at least we get our kicks. The guys play some games with the kids that result in prizes. At the end they hand out these Cambodian biscuit/cookie things which are like baby ice cream cones without the ice cream. They are pretty good! These are the villages where Operation Christmas Child delivers, so they are very excited for any kind of gift.
mary, joseph and donkey
We go home via bumpy tuk tuk and have a delicious lunch of rice, a pork and pumpkin dish and a noodle, bean sprout, beef type thing. We top all meals off with bananas and usually watermelon as well. Today, Utry and Sitai have a fresh honeycomb for us to eat. Fresh as in there are a few bees still swarming. They show us how to just break off a piece and pop it in our mouths. The honey is so delicious and the comb is saturated in it. This will definitely change the way we eat honey from now on! Typically, after lunch, we have the afternoon off and today is one of those days. Almost all of us immediately dive to the floor for nap time, some go for the shower and others use the time for reading their Bible or other books, writing blogs or going on walks. We are free until 5:00 and then we teach four English classes.
honeycomb
Amy and I teach a class of about 70 elementary age kids and they all know us by name, and always scream it upon greeting and leaving. Its fun 🙂 We have a few favorites, but this one kid, we call him Loverboy, comes in a sits down everyday and waits for us to make eye contact with him. He proceeds to smile followed by a wink and he does it to each of us individually. The kids got game! Needless to say, we have high hopes for him. We go through our lesson and they are all so cute as they answer our questions and try their best at pronunciation. By the time 5:45 comes the sun has gone down and the generator in our compound gets switched on, beginning the three-ish hours of electricity we get for the day. Th 5:45 time also means song time in our class! Last week we taught the kids the “Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!” song and tonight we’re working on “My God is so big! So strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do!” . We been at it a few nights, so we’re hoping tonight will be the night.
We sing through it a few times and they are doing so much better! At 6:00, the class is over and the stampede begins to leave the class. The chaos of leaving class is compounded by all the kids screaming “Goodbye Amy! Goodbye Kelsie!” and waiting until both Amy and I have made eye contact with each of them and said our goodbyes as well. The students from our class and the three others all ride their bikes to class; so begins the bike squeeze to get out to the road. Each of them wobble out while making sure to wave and say goodbye to us as they pass. As you might guess, there are some crashes.
bikes parked for Sarah’s class
The 6:00 p.m. time slot is filled by our last English class of the day. The students are 15-17 in age and there are only about 15 of them. We usually eke this one out in expectation for dinner at 7:00. Same goes for tonight. We finish up and head to dinner with the boys where we find our favorite dishes of sliced fried potatoes with beef and a pineapple, pork and onion dish and of course a heaping portion of rice with bananas for dessert.
After dinner we all head back to our church/tree house home. When I say all, I mean all of us. Utry, Uee and friends all sleep out on the porch of the church to make sure we stay safe. My team has our debrief session for the day. This is our time to bring up anything and everything on our hearts that we just want to share with the group or it could be things we need to address. Some nights we watch movies or play games but tonight is a talking night. After we wrap up our session it is close to 9:00 and we lose power. So begins the groping around in the dark for flashlights and ipods. We trickle back into our mosquito net tent and settle in to sleep through another night in this amazing place we call Camby Land.
Video to accompany this soon.
