1. Your kitchen heat sources are an electronic tea kettle and one burner on a tank of liquid propane and your knives are a dull butcher knife and a hunting blade. It’s practice for Cut Throat Kitchen.
(Sam cooking tarantulas. Photo credit: Beth Crenshaw)
2. Half of the lights in your living space do not turn on including the lights in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms. Showers and cooking after dark require headlamps.
(see previous photo)
3. You realize that the “crack” on the wall is really a line of fire ants, and that you have a few million extra roommates: mice, geckos, beetles, spiders, ants, and various other bugs. Between the heat and the ants it is often unclear if it is an ant or sweat running down your back.
I lost my Pringles to the ants. 🙁
4. The market ladies get to know you because stopping at the market for water and fresh produce becomes a part of your daily routine. They begin to charge the locals’ price, start assuming you understand the prices in Khmer, and offer to find your team Khmer husbands so you can stay.
5. You feel like a highroller after exchanging USD or spending money anywhere. The exchange rate is 4000. A flat of eggs (30 eggs) is 15,000R!
6. Riding in a car feels foreign and luxurious. We rode in tuk tuks or on motos everywhere. Tuk tuks are carriages with two seats facing each other pulled by a moto, a scooter. Moto rides were always two of us with one of our contacts. Motos are used for almost everything, including transporting cattle.
(Center photo credit: See Eun Kim)
7. Ministry involves play: volleyball, water fights, Uno. The kiddos were always seeking us out to play games. Dance parties as well are super popular and even the teenage boys were willing to dance.
8. It’s dry season and everything is coated in a fine layer of red dirt and driving requires a face mask.
9. You get to take your kiddos out for a day of roller skating and a bounce house. Pure joy and laughter for them and us. Even when they fell they smiled and got right back up.
10. You learn the dangers of feeding wildlife. On an adventure day to see a temple at the top of a mountain we were surrounded by monkeys. One large male took a banana out of See Eun’s hand and scratched her back in the process (thankfully it was surface scratches). Later another group stalked us as we were worshiping and praying out on the rocks and finally chased us out of the temple.
11. Even at 32 you are the oldest person in church. EMOD holds church service Saturday and Sunday nights at their English school in town. The congregation consists mostly of the teenagers from Wings Home (EMOD’s home for students) and the students from EMOD. The worship leader is in his late twenties and the singers are all teenagers. There is no set pastor so EMOD pastors take turns. Our last Sunday, Sam, one of our translator/guides, preached and as I looked around I realized I was the oldest in the room by at least 4 years. It is awesome to see a spirit filled church full of teens and twenty some things.
(Rebecca squared. Rebecca is EMOD’s worship leader)
Sometimes in Cambodia God grows you because of challenges, because of joy, because of heartbreak, because of laughter, because of teammates, because of kiddos, because of bugs, because of online isolation. Because He has a plan and a purpose, because He made you go with the flow, because you said yes.
Sometimes in life a month can look unpleasant on paper, yet be so good you want to relive it over and over.
