Dangerous job

As many of you know, this has been an unusually hot, humid and long hot season. Because of the heavy usage it has gotten during these months of temperatures near or above 100 degrees we needed to have our air conditioner serviced. As part of the service, this guy is topping up the coolant in our unit. Because the air conditioner is on the second floor in our bedroom, the outside part of the unit is about 10 feet off the ground. Two guys came on a motorbike balancing a large metal case containing this tank, a compressor and some other very heavy equipment between them. I had only a stool to offer, so this guy climbed up to the top of the wall using only his arm strength, cleaned the whole unit and then hauled this tank up and balanced it on his knee while refilling the coolant. I have to think that if these guys were on some of the reality shows that involve physical challenges they'd have no problem.

Gabe and his little sister

March and April

I don't have any pictures of March. There wasn't much exciting happening in March. Hot season started and we just plugged away at work. Most of March is spent thinking about the long break in April and what has to happen before the break, then preparing. The 2nd of April we left for Thailand to attend our group mission conference. This is an annual get-together for the members of our regional group. It's always good to reconnect with members from other countries and to hear what God is doing. We arrived on a Friday night and were shocked by the traffic we encountered. We had planned that we would have 2 hours to get from the airport to the train station in another part of Bangkok. Our taxi driver pronounced this impossible and told us we'd be better off driving 2 hours north to the next train stop and embarking there. The heavy traffic volume was due to the large protests happening in Bangkok. Lots of people were coming into town to join the "Red shirt" protests. Thankfully, the traffic thinned out and we made it to the train station with one minute to spare. Then the train was 1 1/2 hours late:)

Conference was a really nice time and Eric, especially, enjoyed the chance to see some of his former students before they graduate. One of the sad realities of our life is that these students become sort of like family over the years that we get to know them and then we never see them again. It is rare for us to ever see them again once they leave to start life in their home countries. This was a particularly sad year as we said good-bye to a boy from New Zealand who lived with us for a short time. We have known him since he was 9, have gone on many vacations with his family and he was part of our family. It's hard to know when and if we'll see him again. Sad:( This year's graduating class also included our next-door neighbor and Gabe's favorite baby-sitter since he was 3 (the same person) On the plus side, these are some spectacular kids and it's wonderful to see the people they've become. We're excited to see what they'll do with their lives. Here's a picture of us praying for the kids at conference.

After conference we spent a few days in Chiang Mai and then headed back to Bangkok. We stayed down in the city center for one night. We were a bit nervous as we were in the heart of the protest area and just a few days before many people had been shot during the protests. However, it was the New Year holiday and everyone, including the red-shirts, was celebrating. Here's a picture close to our hotel. As you can see, it's water-play pandemonium. Poor Eric went to check his e-mail at a cafe and this is how he looked when he came back.

In past years Gabe has often been scared by the water fight, but this year he took is water gun everywhere he went and really enjoyed Songkran.

We returned to a quiet and steamy Phnom Penh 2 weeks after we left. It has grown steadily hotter as the weeks have gone by, but we now have only 5 more weeks of school until we can take a break!

February pics

Here I am, trying to get caught up on blog posts again. To summarize-February was a month of being sick with amoeba and other digestive diseases for the whole family. March was busy preparation for April, which is sort of like December in America. Khmer new year (in April) is the biggest holiday of the year and everything sort of shuts down during that time. Most people travel and even if you stay home, it's too hot to get much of anything done. So here's February. We did manage to enjoy many things that happened in February in spite of the illness: "Spirit Week"-It wasn't actually called spirit week, but it didn't really have a name, so Spirit week is the best equivalent of what it actually was. The entire week was a competition between three "houses" made of up of the students from preschool-12. The houses were randomly assigned and had kids from all grades in them. I assume that the idea of competing houses comes from the time when kids went to boarding school and lived in different houses. Anyway, school mostly went on as usual with competitions at the beginning of every school day. One was a crazy hair competition and Gabe decided to shave a mohawk. It looked pretty crazy and the next day we had to shave it all off because his hair looked like it had been cut with a weed-whacker.

The last day of the week was a sports competition day. Gabe won a green ribbon for his house in the long jump. This competition was held far outside of town at a college campus and many of the students spent a good part of their day watching the crazy foreigners run in the hot sun. I'm always amazed that the kids can put so much energy into competing when it's so hot. We did go through hundreds, if not thousands, of bottles of water that day. For this day, lots of kids who are part of Hope's distance learning program came in from the provinces to take part.



Also during February we had camp week. This week is designed for the older students to do the field work portion of their classes. However, they have programs for the younger kids as well. Eric went to Rabbit Island and Kep with his kids. Rabbit Island is beautiful, but very undeveloped and the accomodations were very basic. In spite of this, they seemed to have a really fun trip and I assume, got their work done. One of Eric's ice-breaker activities was to have teams design a rain-proof shelter and a sea-worthy boat for the 7 dwarves action-figures. Some went above and beyond and designed entire resorts for their dwarf.

Kep is a town on the edge of a national park known for its natural beauty. 100 years ago French colonialists built villas and plantations here and made it into a little Riviera for themselves. The Khmer Rouge hated that sort of thing and destroyed it. The ruined and blackened mansions tell 100 years of history very succinctly.

I didn't get any pictures of it, but Gabe had a great camp week as well. Preschool to year 3 stay at home for a day camp. They had a day of all art projects a day of all water play and at the end of the week, a year 1-3 sleepover. Gabe had a great time and it was one of the highlights of his year