glad tidings we bring

Ok, so I wrote this a few days ago and I am only posting it now. Please forgive me. We've been really busy here. I'll update more about my Christmas day tomorrow hopefully.

That's Kong and our sunset in the pictures

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I can barely believe that today is Christmas Eve. It’s been such a normal day, nothing special. I woke up late (ugh) taught my children, made a few phone calls to Canada, finished marking exams and filling out report cards, wrapped some pens with the other teachers, did some laundry.

Seriously, it’s Christmas today?

I can’t complain though. I’m happy. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and our big Christmas program. Rachha and I are the MC’s. He’s very nervous. I think it’s cute. I still have to write that “Christmas in Canada” speech. I better get on it.

I had the best weekend! God totally knew that I needed it, and I am so happy He gave it to me.

It kind of began on Thursday. I had to catch a bus to Phnom Penh at 8:15 am. It was a good time in the big city. I stayed with Rachel for the night. In the morning we caught the 7am bus for Sihanoukville. It was a nice relaxing afternoon. In the evening I had to give my final exam. It went well. Saturday morning we decorated the chapel for Christmas. In the afternoon Kong, Seyha and myself went for a walk up the mountain behind our home. It was not quite what I expected, and that’s ok with me! I was under the impression that there was a little road we would walk.

Not.

At certain points I was actually rock climbing, a first for me. No net, no support straps. Just me and nature.

We eventually made it to the top. It didn’t take that long. We took a short cut, that’s why I was walking through grass that was almost as tall as me. I prayed so hard that there would be no snakes or landmines.

Eek!

We hung out at the top of the mountain for about half and hour, maybe more, before we went back down. When we made it back to SLM Vothanak joined us in our adventures. They were far from over!!

We all went to the beach to watch the sunset. It was so much fun to just go and goof off with the boys. At one point we were throwing Vothanak’s sandals as Frisbee’s.

Hey, you work with what you’ve got…

It was too cloudy, so the sunset wasn’t as spectacular as it could have been, but it was still good.

From there we drove around for a long time. We went to a few different places at the port. Finally we returned around 8:30pm. In Cambodia, that’s pretty late.

Sunday was equally as good. Rachel, Tongpang and myself went out for breakfast at a very western type place. It was good. They had very good coffee.

We walked home and stopped at a music store. I bought a Christmas CD and a Khmer wedding music CD. All together it cost $2. I love Cambodia…

I corrected some exams and got ready for church. After church the staff of SLM were invited to a few different church Christmas programs. So we went to two different churches. After when we came home Vothanak let me drive his motto around the yard! Yesss, I have now officially driven a motto!

Sweet!!

And this week when we have some time off, he’s going to take me to some lesser travelled roads so I can really learn! I am very excited!!

Ok, I better go and finish wrapping Christmas presents and prepare that speech of mine!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CAMBODIA EVERYONE!!!!

Christmas talk

I need your help. Rachha and myslef are hosting our Christmas program here at SLM on December 25th.

That's not what I need your help with...

I am giving a talk about Christmas in Canada. I am finding it very hard to say good things that are unique to Canada. As of right now all I can think of telling them is that North America is a selfish materialist place, we have long forgotten the true meaning of Christmas and it has become nothing but a comercialized holiday.

Now, I know that if I look deep down inside of me, that's not how I really feel. But I am having a hard time writing anything.

This is where you come in.

If you can think of anything special about Canadian (or North American) Christmas, could you please pass it on to me? I'd like to say something that might be interesting or inspiring to hear.

Som au-kun (thank you very much)

PS. I decorated the Christmas tree for SLM today. It's such a Charlie Brown tree, it's not even funny. It's small and fake. It took about 5-10 minutes for me to decorate. And I'm talking lights, tinsel,decorations, evertything!

Shoot, I could really go for the smell of a real Christmas tree right now...

I see Stars =)

The past two days have been crazy!!

On Monday morning Jonah called me out of my nursery class at around 10:30 and told me I had to go to Phnom Penh that afternoon and pick up my Visa. The bus would leave at noon.

“Okaaaayyy“. I thought.

So I got ready and was on the bus. It felt like no time before I was in the capitol city. The quickest 4 ½ hours of my life! Anyways, I got off the bus and some tuk tuk drivers and motto drivers haggled me to go with them for outrageous prices. Finally a motto driver said he would take me to the Long Beach Plaza Hotel for only $1.

I am getting much better at bartering. =)

The travel agency that had my Visa was in this hotel, and then after that I would go to Rachel’s for the night. As it turns out the travel agency was about a 5 minute walk from Rachel‘s house! It was great!

It was a great evening of fellowship, girl talk and just being able to be myself.

Now, I should mention that I had specific instructions from Jonah. If my Visa was good for at least 1 week or more, I was to come home the next day. But if I only had a few days I was going to get on a bus/taxi/van thinger and go to Ko Kong where I would travel to the Thai boarder. Jonah said he’d meet me in Ko Kong.

My Visa was only good until December 19th, and it was already the 17th.

Looked like I was going to Thailand.

I told Rachel and her house mates about my plans and they all strongly advised me not to do it. That Van thing wasn’t the safest (or most comfortable - think 25 people crammed into a regular sized van, People spilling out the windows and sitting on the roof for 5-6 hours) way of travel. Plus the boarder is sketchy. There’s a lot of drug and human trafficking going on there. They told me I should think about flying into Bangkok. It was safe and cheap. Turns out that a round trip was only $69. So I decided to do that. But unfortunately you can’t book flights online within 23 hours and 59 minutes of a flight (apparently). So I woke up at 5am and made my way to the airport (and more good bartering was done for the ride there!). There was a flight to Bangkok in less than 2 hours, and they had room!!

The kicker: it would cost me $79. One way.

Have I mentioned that it’s exam week and I was supposed to be at SLM doing a review with my students?

Well, in light of the situation I just took it. I had to be back in Sihanoukville as soon as possible.

I had a delicious sandwich for breakfast. And a latte.

God bless airports…

Before I knew it I was sitting alone on an airplane heading for Thailand.

Say what?!

Me. Little Brianna going to Thailand all alone, no agenda, no one to help me. Well, that’s a lie. God was there. Like, completely!! At every terminal and passport control counter and security search I went through I prayed for God’s blessing and favour on me wherever I went, and boy did He put His favour on me! It was great!

Anyways, back to Thailand…

They have STARBUCKS!!!!!!!!

God bless Thailand…

There was no eggnog , so I had a peppermint mocha instead. I don’t even like Starbucks mocha, but this was delicious!

Anyways, I hired a taxi to take me into the city. All he did was take me to the enormous mall. I bought all my Christmas presents there, so that was good. I made it back to the airport in time for my flight home (did I mention that once in Thailand I bought a ticket home? For too much money again, ugh.) and even had time to eat Burger King before flying out!!!

I’ve never enjoyed Burger King so much…

I was in Thailand for about a total of 5 hours. I met an Australian guy named Michal at my gate. He was 24 and really nice. We ended up sitting together on the flight home (rush seating). Once in the city my problems/adventure was not over….

The guy wouldn’t give me a 1 year multiple entry Visa on the spot. I have to go back tomorrow and get it at 3pm.

Ugh.

BUT!!! My sweet bartering skills were put to the test even more once out of the airport!! I needed to either hire a taxi to drive me home, or I could crash at Rachel’s again. If it wasn’t exam week, I would have crashed, but I can’t do that to my students. I love them too much. Normally you can hire a taxi to take you to Sihanoukville for $30. But gas has gone up so they were asking $80! I said “NO WAY!” I told them that just because I am white that does not mean I have lots of money. That was just too much. So then I had all these men surrounding me trying to get me to go with them in their tuk tuk, motto or taxi to the city center. One guy spoke really good English and we were chatting up a storm. He wanted me to pay $7 for his taxi, and from there he was going to take me to his brother, who was driving a taxi to Sihanoukville that night. I had to clarify with him a few times, but it was a lot of fun talking to him. He was a funny guy, and I’m a funny girl. We had all those men around us cracking up with laughter! I think they were impressed with the little white girl that was so firm.

=)

Anyways, I went with this guy and his brother took me home to Sihanoukville for $25. There were others in the taxi, but I was more than ok with that. I was soooo exhausted!! I just wanted to go home.

And home I went!!!

But now I’ve been stupid busy all day and I still have to teach for a few hours tonight. Then first thing in the morning I’ll be on a bus again heading back to Phnom Penh. I’m probably going to stay with Rachel Thursday night, and then she’s coming back with me to Sihanoukville on Friday morning.

Alright, here we go!!

7 more days...

I did not go to Thailand this weekend. I will be going either early this week with Jonah, or on Friday with the Secretary of State. This poses a problem. It's exam week. I am supposed to be going over a review with my students to prepare them for the exam on Friday. Friday. How can I go to Ko Kong when I am supposed to be conducting an exam? Jonah said he'd cover it for me. But I adore my students. I want to be there for them!



This is frustrating...



I preached another sermon today. I talked about how God uses regular ordinary people to do great things. I used Mary as my example and talked a lot about her. I also threw Noah in there for good measure. I talked about obedience and how these people had a choice to let God use them. God doesn't promise that life will be easy when you obey Him, but he will be with you through it all, and He will bless you because of it.



Kong is home!!!



He went away to Phnom Penh for the past 4 days and I missed him greatly! It was funny, he said after the first day he wasn't happy and he wanted to go home. Now, I should tell you that Jonah and Tongpang were also in Phnom Penh, but none of these people traveled together. Kong did however get together with them at one point, and after that he told me all he could think about was how his sister was at home alone (which I wasn't really, Rachha and Vothanak were home as well). He said he wanted to go home immediately. Everything in the world would be perfect once him and his sister were back together.



I feel so loved. =)



Tonight I finally got behind the stove and cooked a meal for my boys! It was OK. It was harder to cook here for several reasons. One being that I didn't have the same utensils, or the same ingredients (I threw in a bunch of things that I didn't know what they were) and I didn't have my spices!! When I cook at home, I use like a dozen different spices! But!! There was garlic. I used a little too much I think...



Does an entire bulb sound like too much...?

The highlight of my weekend was talking to Nick for hours on msn!! I love that boy! (not romantically, of course..*ahem*coughcough*pulls collar to side*uhhhhh*)

=D

fact

I found an article through my student Nin. It's from The Cambodia Daily. I can't seem to find it online so I'll give you the gist of what it talked about....

The title was "Phnom Penh Listed Among Least Livable Cities".

A study was done on the living conditions of 132 cities around the world, and Phnom Penh (the capitol of Cambodia) was listed in the top 10.

We rank #8. Out of 132 cities we came in 125th.

We are right below Bogota, Clolombia (123) and Tehran, Iran (124) and above Dakar, Senegal (126). Algiers, Algeria was listed as the least livable city.

We are below Iran. Oh my....

The study is based upon standard of living, traffic, crime, poverty, cleanliness, etc...

There was also an article that said Phnom Penh was getting a KFC. This will be the first major fast-food chain to enter the Cambodian market.

I'm not excited about that...

Much has happened since my last entry. I don’t even know where to begin. Umm, I guess I’ll begin with my sickness.

I was sick.

I came down with a nasty flu last week. It came upon me Thursday evening right after I went to Kong’s fathers 7th day party. I came back to the school to teach my classes, and half way through the 6:30 class, I felt very hot and weak. Then I became very disoriented and confused. I had a high fever. I had a headache. My body screamed at me in pain. My skin was very sensitive and sore, while my muscles and joints felt like an extreme case of arthritis. My head felt like a balloon and I had trouble speaking to anyone. Tongpang covered my last class for me and I went to bed feeling terrible. I awoke in the morning feeling a bit better, but not well enough to teach class. I spent the day in bed drifting in and out of sleep. I felt pretty ok, fever was down, I had a little bit of strength. That was until around the exact same time Friday evening. It hit me again but this time it was even worse. My body was so extremely hot, it hurt to touch the skin on my stomach or back it was so hot, my face was on fire but I was shivering, I was under blankets in this plus 30 degree weather. I also had the pleasure of almost no sleep because I was hit with some bad diarrhea . I was up running to the bathroom every15-30 minutes from 1:30am until about 7-8am. It was terrible. I was also sweating excessively. I had all the symptoms of malaria. I was scared. Very scared. Jonah told me that I had to go to the hospital that night if I wasn’t feeling much better. One of my biggest fears is getting seriously sick in Cambodia. The hospitals here are terrible. People in Canada should never complain about our health care system. I cried Friday night when I was trying to go to sleep, and I called out to God for some serious healing here if it was indeed malaria. Kong also told me about someone in his school who had some type of fever with all the same symptoms I had, and he died. I was beyond scared.

After a few days I felt better and I didn’t go to the hospital (praise God!!). Now a few more days later and I’m coming down with a cold. I can’t believe how sick I get here. It’s ridiculous!!! I am never this sick! Ugh.

Now, fast forward a couple days and I received the most amazing blessing!! I received TWO packages from home on the same day!! One from my mom, and the other from Nick (and many other friends). I am terribly home sick right now, getting the packages was such a joy! There was a card in Nick’s package from people from my church and a bunch of small notes.

I cried like a child. It was beautiful.

As I was opening the packages Jonah came into the room to tell me something. He told me he just got off the phone with the Secretary of State and he had some good news and some bad news.

I knew what it was before he even said it.

It turns out he couldn’t get me the one year visa. Instead, he is travelling to Ko Kong this weekend and I am to travel with him. It’s a 4 ½ hour boat ride from Sihanoukville, and once I get there I have to go a little farther on land to the Thai boarder.

Yep. I’m going to Thailand.

Here’s the kicker: I’m only going for a few minutes!!

I’m just supposed to get the stamps saying I left the country and come back in to get my business one year Visa.

Boo.

I do however, have the option of staying in Thailand for a few nights alone. I’m brave, but I’m not sure if I’m that brave (or stupid) to do that. I will however see if I can stay in Thailand for a few hours, maybe even spend the night. I don’t want to make that journey in one day. Who knows, the boats might not even run that late in the day for me to get home. Plus, if I stay for a few nights it will cost me at least $100. Probably more knowing me.

Please pray, this is all very nerve racking. I’m still weak from my flu, I am supposed to preach on Sunday, and need to write my sermon still, and I have to create the final exam for my English students this week. I am supposed to go to Crocodile Hole Village for some ceremony stuff, and Phi Run specifically asked me out for Saturday evening. We have not spent any time together in a several weeks. I was really looking forward to going out with him. He always takes me to the best hidden little places in Kompot Som (Which is the Khmer name for Sihanoukville). Oh, and I think Alila is coming to SLM this weekend to stay for about a month, and she’s staying in my room. I still have to clean out half of the wardrobe and dresser and get everything ready.

It’s already Wednesday.

BAHHH!!!

It’s ok though. I’ve been incredibly bored and restless lately, so now I have non-stop excitement, right? This is good, right?

Eek…

WoOOow!!

Today I accidentally taught my nursery kids the word, "wow".

It's so funny, they lift their work in the air and yell WOW to get my attention. I always say things to them when they show me their pictures. Like, "very nice"good job"that's great!"beautiful"lovely"wonderful" And I'll throw in the few words I know in Khmer, like "sa-aat" which means beautiful, or "la-or", or"som la-or" which means good or very good. It even stands for nice.

Today Darith was drawing a picture of something (I'm really not sure what it was..) and I said "Wow! Thats's great!" He he mimicked me. Well, it wasn't long before the whole class had caught on to the wow craze! It's great! I love it!

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Tonight I saw Kong. It was really good. I was finally able to give him a great big hug! In Khmer culture it's very taboo for a girl and boy to show affection to each other in public. Even if you're married. But Kong is a Christian, and alot of Khmer culture comes from the buhddist monks around. So Kong likes to hug. Which is great because I do not get enough hugs around this place. At his home and the funeral I wasn't able to give him a consoling hug. It was almost too much for me. Seeing him cry, and being all alone, and I had to keep my mitts off. I broke the rules a bit though. I rubbed his arms and linked arms with him briefly.

It was very scandelous...

He's doing good. We were able to talk about some things this evening. I am invited to the seventh day party that will finally end the mourning period. If you're rich, this party business could last up to a year, with having a party every month or so (I think..). This will be the end for the Lee family.

Kong told me that he was going to come over to my home Saturday morning and ask me to come with him to the hospital to pray for his father and to help him share the Gospel with him. His family had been keeping the seriousness of his illness from Kong. They told him Friday night how serious it was. But he was too late. His father passed on around 4am on Saturday. He never got the chance to go and say goodbye. Friday night the entire family went to the hospital to see him and take care of him, but someone had to stay at home to take care of things, so Kong stayed. He was the only one who didn't get to see his father. =(

He has a positive attitude about this. So that's really good. We even laughed and joked tonight. I'll never forget the words he said to me at the funeral on Monday. I couldn't believe how grown up he was. I am so proud of him. He is being a great example to his family.

I really love this boy. I wish I could take him home and keep him.

I guess 5 years is too close to adopt him, huh?

A very merry not-unbirthday to me!!

This past weekend was interesting. It was my birthday on December 2nd. Now, if you know me at all you know how much I love my birthday. This is the first time I’ve ever been away from my family at birthday time. This is also the first time I’ve ever had no snow. It’s hot and sunny out. How can it possibly be my birthday?? Alas, the calendar says it’s true. My birthday has come and gone. The big 2-1. How did I spend my weekend you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked…
Saturday I was supposed to go with Kong for a walk up the mountain behind my home.

Unfortunately on Friday evening he told me that he had to cancel because he had to take his father to the hospital the next morning. His dad has been sick for many years now. They are a very poor family and don’t have much money to pay for doctor bills.

So I ended up spending the better part of the day alone in my bedroom, with the exception of the hour and a ½ I went to watch my boys play football (soccer). We tied, 3-3.

On Friday my evening students told me to be ready for a birthday party at 5:30 on Saturday.

So, 5:30 rolled around and I went down stairs only to find out that I had to wait in my bedroom for another 40 minutes.

So I danced alone in my bedroom. =)

Finally someone came to get me. I went down stairs and there were most of my students with a cake and fruit and presents!! They sang happy birthday to me and gave me some presents. They also silly stringed me after I blew out the candles. We spent the next couple hours eating cake, throwing cake at each other, taking pictures and just hanging out. It was a lot of fun! I really enjoy my students.

When the party was finished Rachha pulled me aside to explain why Kong didn’t show up to the party.

His father had died earlier that morning.

My heart stopped. I held back tears.

My poor Kong and his family! My heart was broken for them. I love Kong so much! He is a very special young boy. I have met his father, along with most of his brothers and sisters. There are 8 of them in total.

Sunday morning I woke up and didn’t even realize it was my birthday until after I had showered. That has never happened to me before. I was preaching that morning at another church. It went over really well. The translating went smoothly. Then we had a medical clinic.

After church Jonah, Tongpang, Rachha, Vothanak and myself went over to Kong’s home to pay our respects.

At 3 we had church at SLM. During the service Jonah had three announcements to make. The last one being that it was my birthday, and he then continued to produce a cake for everyone there to eat! At 5:30 we headed over to Pun Leu’s birthday party. It was nice. There was good food, good people, and Karaoke! I did not sing. Surprise, surprise…

Monday morning we went to the funeral. I never thought I’d be able to say that I know what burnt flesh smells like. Basically we all drove slowly down the street following the coffin. We went to the Pagoda where Mr. Lee was cremated. It was a sad sight to see his Kong’s mother and little brother’s and sisters crying their eyes out.

That was my birthday weekend. It was the strangest birthday I’ve ever had.

Plus, I was homesick. =(