Wow, What a Week!

         This week has been a full, full week. There's hardly been a boring moment (much to my liking)! Mom and I talked to my school principal and got all of my classes figured out.  It was really nice to talk with someone and see the school. My classes are: geography, environmental sciences, mathematics, english literature and language, history, and hopefully khmer (private tutor). Not a whole lot of fun classes but I did hear that most of the classes only have about 10 people in them. Some only have 3! There's only 28 kids in my grade! The principal also arranged for me to meet 2 girls on Friday. They are both Cambodians whose parents are most likely rich, government workers. They took me out to lunch and then drove me around town showing me all of the good coffee shops! It was terribly awkward. I don't know how else to describe it. 

          So, funny story: last weekend I made a spicy tomato and egg drop soup. Well, it called for chili peppers and what I found out is that they don't only hurt your mouth. I seeded both chili peppers by scraping my thumb along the inside. Later as I was cooking I noticed that my thumb hurt really bad. I could barely use it because anything I did hurt it. It was like I had cut myself under my fingernail. Chili peppers didn't even enter my mind. Instead, I figured it must be from the shelled peanuts I had eaten because they kind of had a wasabi (ish), spicy shell. If I licked my thumb my tongue would flame on fire. It was crazy! And then I realized. Late that night I finally realized it was the chili peppers. Mom had me soak my thumbs in silver the next morning (as they were still hurting) and it turned my fingers orange! It was super funny!

 A rare patch of "normal" grass!

 Mom, Chantelle, and I walked to a small, circular park in the middle of a round-a-bout called Wat Phnom. It had a Wat on top of a small hill. Wats are basically Buddhist cathedrals only a lot smaller. The park was very beautiful with lots of greenery and cute shaded walkways with benches. The Wat was pretty too, although I had a weird and uncomfortable feeling as I was in it.

No doubt I need to stretch my hands a little more. :)

 These were some caged birds. I think it's like torture keeping all of them locked up like that. We thought they probably sell them for some kind of Buddhist ritual.

 Pioneer Day!! This is such a big holiday for them here because they consider themselves as the pioneers in Cambodia. They really go all out. Most of the districts had their party on Friday or Saturday. We went to 3 on Friday and 1 on Saturday. And yes, we dressed up! Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera on Friday so I don't have any pictures. They decorate the room with lights, ribbons, balloons, etc. (most had more than the picture shown). They did a lot of dancing and singing which was super fun, although I don't know that I ever want to hear " The turkey in the hay" song ever again. :) Two of the districts watched "Legacy". At first I was like "Oh yay! I love this movie!" And then I realized it was in Khmer. Oh well, I still enjoyed it, kind of.

Vietnam!

So, before I get to Vietnam, I thought I would show you some of the delicious food our cook, Sraat, makes us. I spend a lot of mornings just watching her and writing down what she does because I want to know how to make everything. Hopefully, now that we're back from Vietnam and can go shopping with her she'll start to cook real Khmae food. Lately she's just been doing a lot of fried meat and mom and I aren't loving that so much. For example, yesterday she basically just did hamburger meat with a couple slices of peppers to put on rice. Mom and I were hoping for a little more authentic food. Anyway, I shouldn't complain because it is good. She cooks us lunch, so that's kind of our dinner and then we just grab whatever we want for dinner. 

She always buys and cuts up these exact same fruits. It's kind of up to us to get a variety of fruits. The fruit here is to die for. I hated mangoes at home, but here they are my favorite fruit! 

 This is a chicken and ginger dish that we put over rice. So so so delicious.

 ...And this is Sraat's infamous CARROT salad. I almost started laughing when she made it. She puts barely enough lettuce on the bottom to be even with the bowl. Then she puts a ton of cucumbers and a ton of tomatoes on it, and last of all a mountain of carrots. She's very into presentation. It's basically a 4 layer salad. I always avoid being the first one to dig into it, because then you only get carrots!

 Now to Vietnam. This is the famous Pho noodle soup of Vietnam. And let me tell you, I now am in love with it. It's broth with rice noodles, chicken or beef, onions, bean sprouts, etc. I had it for breakfast both days because I loved it so much!

 These are just some overhead wires. We decided it would probably be a bad idea to be under one those in a storm.

 This is a video of traffic. No words are necessarily.

 Some pretty nice apartment buildings. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are a lot more advanced and modernized than Cambodia. They're really big cities, with a ton more people.

 Mom and I went walking around a park right across from our hotel one morning. I decided all parks should be like this. There were people doing the waltz, people exercising with big long poles, a huge group doing zumba/jane fonda, badmiton, people waving there arms randomly, and last but not least, some elliptical type things and some ab workout machines (both shown below). I felt like I was in a movie or something (the new Karate Kid).  You wouldn't think the things below would do that much, but my abs were burning and my legs were tired!

 In Hanoi, we stayed at an extremely nice, 5 star hotel. I'm talkin' like the nicest hotel I've ever been in.

 The one interesting thing about the rooms was that there was a window from the room to the bathroom. Hmm. Yea, kind of awkward. There was a little shade to pull down, but even then you could still see the shadow. Kind of funny!

 This was the view from our window. The motos and cars look like ants. It's complete organized chaos. It's like there's no rules and yet everyone just meshes together perfectly.

 This is the Eiffel Tower of Vietnam (the red and white structure). I love that!

 We noticed that in Vietnam people only sit on baby chairs. It's really quite funny. There are grown men sitting on these little stools eating lunch.

Tourist Day

Hello! So, on Saturday mom and dad took their preparation day to spend time with Chantelle and I. We decided to go see some popular tourist sites. To start the morning off though, I made Sweet Rice Porridge. I combined rice, coconut cream, honey, and banana and heated it all up. We all thought it was really good! Then we went to the Royal Palace. We got a tour guide, but after we agreed we could have seen more without a guide due to everything closing for lunch. We still got to see the main buildings though. They were absolutely stunning. One of the buildings-the Silver Pagoda has a floor made of entirely silver. The tree below is supposedly the type of tree Buddha was born under I think. It's hard to see, but if you can see the blue flag in one of the pictures, it means the King was there because it was flying. After the Palace, we went to the National Museum. To be honest, it was quite boring. I can only look at so many Buddhist and Hindu statues. Surprisingly it only took us 2 hours to see both, which we were not expecting. So, we went to a little Thai restaurant. Some of the dishes were good, but I thought mine was disgusting. We then went to the Russian Market. We've been to a couple of markets but this is the biggest and the most touristy one. It was fun, but by the end dad and I were done with the sticky, sweaty, stinky, crowded hallways. We were all pretty exhausted after and were sweating buckets...literally! It was a fun day and well spent! 

Mission Tour

Hey all!

So this past week or so we've been on the mission tour. I feel like I've now seen all of Cambodia! We went to each district and had Meet the President meetings with missionaries and members. We were able to meet and get to know each individual missionary which was really neat. We also met with a lot of the members who were so sweet and made us feel so welcome. I was able to bear my testimony in Khmae(cambodian language) at a lot of the member meetings. I can now piece together a lot of my testimony which is really exciting. We had two MTP meetings here in Phom Penh so we were able to stay home. Then on Friday we traveled for 5 hrs. to the province Battambong. It's a lot bigger than we excpected.  The next day we went to Siem Reap. This was my favorite place. It's also where Angkor Wat is so we drove around the outside of that. It's beautiful! I can't wait to go there for real! We stayed there Sunday and then traveled to Kampong Thom and Kampong Cham on Monday and Tuesday. It was a really long and tiring trip and I've never sat in so many of the same meetings. I now officially understand and appreciate the real meaning of a tour.

You don't see that everyday!

 This picture shows the lime green rice paddies (each blade of grass stuff has only ONE grain of rice!!!).

 A sneak peak of Angkor Wat!

 We stayed at a super nice hotel in Siem Reap. It's probably one of the nicest I've ever stayed at in my life! I had some fun dressing in a bathrobe and slippers to relax!

 The houses on the side were generally pretty poor, but to me it was strangely beautiful. Something about how the nature compliments the run down houses.

 It's kind of  hard to see but these white things are how they catch crickets. They put oil in the bottom of these tarps and then when it's dark they turn on the fluorescent lightbulbs above them. Kind of neat, I thought.

 These are rubber trees. They collect the sap from them and make rubber! Who knew!! The trees were beautiful and just went for miles and miles! I was really cool to see the raw producing of so many things we use and eat: rubber, lumber, brick, corn, rice, chickens, cattle, etc. I felt like I was in the game Settler's of Catan.

 This is the baptismal font at one of the branches. It's pretty typical to see because a lot of the buildings where church is held are rented.

It was a very fun trip that I really am glad I was able to go on! See ya next time!