Cambodian Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday! I sure did! I will admit that I thought Christmas would be the hardest day. That I would miss my family and spend half the day crying. While I did miss my family, I did not shed a tear! I had an awesome Christmas, which I will get to, but first, the Christmas Bazaar!

So our Christmas Bazaar was awesome! I’d never been to a Christmas Bazaar, but you can think of it as more of a church picnic. That’s what it reminded me of at least. There were all kinds of games, foods, and performances, and I had a blast! My girls performed in the morning and they looked adorable. I helped do their hair and makeup, granted they needed very little help. Look how beautiful they are! 

 I am such a dance mom!

The girls set up all kinds of food stands for people which was also pretty eventful. As you may have seen on Instagram/ Facebook, I tried balut for the first time, which is boiled duck embryo. I was super hesitant to try it, but it wasn’t that bad and I might actually eat it again

You really just have to get over the feathers.

There were all kinds of games to try (even though I wasn’t very good) but my favorite was the Minute to Win It games. I was actually kind of good at this, which even surprised me! I had so much fun playing the games and I’m so glad the Laura Girls and Sr. Dory set the whole thing up. It was the perfect kind of game for so many people, though no one got past round 8. 

There was another game where the girls would trick you into being locked in jail. I’m still not sure how this game works, or how Maggie and I ended up in jail at the same time, but that happened. Here are our mug shots. 

I called for help and somehow Maggie ended up in jail with me!

Secretaries and teachers had a blast dancing and singing all afternoon! 

The girls had class on Monday where we exchanged gifts and they were out the rest of the week. The teachers had their own little Christmas party which was pretty fun. We got to dance, have lunch and joke around. Santa made an appearance and gave out candy and our dance party also included a bit of karaoke, because why not? Seeing everyone loosen up and be silly was nice!

Before I knew it, Christmas Eve had arrived. We attended a very large outdoor mass and shared desserts with the Sisters when we came back. It was nice to sit around the table with the Sisters and exchange gifts. We gave them the sweetest coffee mugs with their names on them and I think they really loved them. The Sisters gave us these beautiful Angkor Wat purses and necessities. Even though it wasn’t the Christmas Eve I was always used to, it was really sweet to be around so many lovely people. 

I called my family on Christmas Day, which I expected to elicit tears, but it was an awesome FaceTime! Of course we missed each other, but we had a nice time catching up! Maggie and I spent the day getting ready for the Christmas party which we were hosting. We were excited to see the Sisters from Tuk Thala and to spend Christmas with Clare and Sarah. We had mass, prayer and dinner and a talent show after! It was awesome to hear Christmas carols in 9 different languages and that was by far my favorite part of the evening. It was a beautiful part of my Christmas in Cambodia!

Maggie, Sarah, Clare and I planned a quick trip to the Strung Leoung Province in the northern part of Cambodia for a nature tour and to do some hiking and I was really excited (which is kind of a surprise if you know me, I generally don’t care to go hiking). The bus trip was supposed to be 7-8 hours which was better than the 12 hours I had told myself. I slept most of the way and read a few books, but I was getting a little restless. When we stopped in a city called Kratie, another 2 hours away from our destination, I thought I was going to lose it. We stopped by the river to drop off and pick up more passengers, but the river looked so perfect I was ready to leap of the bus. Still, I waited it out and we were back on the road. We had probably been driving for twenty minutes when we heard the bus hold its horn down and come to a screeching halt. 

We’d just hit a kid on a moto.

Luckily the guy behind me was an ICU nurse from Germany, who jumped off the bus and ran to check on the kid. I saw our driver running off, and for a second thought he was going for help, but quickly realized when he darted off into the field he was most likely not coming back. *Note: I asked my girls if this was typical behavior, to which they responded yes. Run. If people saw you, they may try to beat or kill you.* The boy had some scratches on his back and a huge crack in his helmet, but was mostly shaken up. Our ICU nurse said he’d be fine, and the people who live nearby started taking care of him and tried to soothe him. We stood for a bit trying to figure out what to do next. Here we are in the middle of no where, the four of us, no (working) phone, no bus driver. We decided to grab our bags and walk back to Kratie. The ICU nurse, Max, joined us and we talked briefly before catching a van that just so happened to be going to Strung Leoung.

You know those major rules you learn growing up? 

1. Don’t talk to strangers.
2. Don’t get into vehicles with people you don’t know.

Yeah, you can disregard all those.

We reached Strung Leoung, found our hotel and had dinner with Max, who decided to come with us to Ban Loung, where we’d be doing our nature tour. The next morning, we picked up Ben a guy from the U.K., who, like Max, was also doing a tour through Asia. The 6 of us spent the day finding waterfalls, meeting an elephant, and seeing this beautiful volcanic lake. We had an awesome day! Ben decided to stay in Ban Loung, but Max came back to Strung Loeung and had dinner with us once again. We all had a great time talking and got some good advice from a guy wandering through Asia:

“Don’t be afraid to live a little. Life starts once you go outside your comfort zone.”

Granted this life advice came when I was being peer pressured into drinking some mysterious tea punch thing, but I knew what he meant, and he’s totally right. It’s good for us to be uncomfortable sometimes. If you get too comfortable, you stop growing, and while I’ve kinda gotten better at this teacher thing, the girls are constantly keeping me on my toes! Even though we ended up meeting these guys under very odd circumstances, they made our little adventure all the more awesome. Ben and Max, if you ever read this, thanks for spending the day with us! 

Group picture in front of the most beautiful lake ever! 

Planning New Year's Eve music!

Everyone in Cambodia, or rather everyone I know/ all my students, refer to New Year’s Eve as “The Countdown.”  I linked the Europe song "The Final Countdown" here for you. You're welcome.
It sounds really serious, but really everyone goes down to the river to watch fireworks or has rooftop parties. Maggie and I helped plan the rooftop prayer party with American and Khmer hits from 2014. There were balloons and sparklers and sleepy unsuspecting first year students, as they were unaware of this tradition. We might have been a minute off on our countdown, but we had so much fun! There was dancing and singing and snacking. The girls would walk around telling each other happy new year and then force feed each other crackers. I assumed this was some Khmer tradition. No, my girls are just goofballs and this is why I love them.

This is how I started 2015, and I loved every minute of it. Dancing on a roof in Cambodia with the best girls I know. Of course, Maggie and I fell back into teacher mode very quickly. The girls just finished their semester exams, which they were working super hard on. The girls had 8 exams in 2 days! I’m starting to have them read children's books and we’re reading The Princess Diaries as a class, and when we finish, we’ll get to watch the movie! I think I might be a little more excited about the movie part than they are, but I’m sure they’ll like it.

This is the first year that I haven’t planned typical/ridiculous/ unattainable New Year’s resolutions. They typically look something like this:

1. Study harder
2. Be healthier
3. Stop biting my nails
4. Win Nobel Peace Prize
5. Learn to play the mandolin
6. Live in a tiny house

This year, I have only 2 resolutions. Have more patience and be more present. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog consistently (thanks for being so sweet), you’ll notice that’s kind of been a reoccurring theme. I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, and I wouldn’t consider myself an impatient person, however there is always room for improvement. Today was a little rough and my patience was definitely being tested with girls falling asleep left and right in class, but I kept my cool and I might have found a solution. I also want to work on being more present. I realized last week that my time here will end before I know it. These next few months will fly by if I don’t pay attention to the here and now. Do I know what’s in store for me next? No, but all that matters to me now are the girls and their success; working on getting them prepared for their future. I constantly think of how grateful I am that I can play even the smallest role in their lives. They’ll always be my girls… even if they do fall asleep in class.