Oh Khmer Khmer!

we're all trying to learn the Khmer language over here.
Not just speaking but also writing and reading.
the characters all look like Sanskrit,
and they sound like little groans here and there.

There's one that goes "EEEERE" and then the oh ah arm or er ear om.
Sok San was sitting beside me yesterday during class when I sneezed and he looked at me curiously and asked me what Khmer character I was speaking.

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it's getting better.
we can now have mini conversations,
albeit meaningless ones.

like "thank you" - "no problem" - "ok"
and "you're pretty but smelly" - "you naughty monkey" - "you old green frog"
"are you married?" - "no" - "why" - "how about you?" - "i ask you" - "I answer you. how about you?" -"you smelly egg"
today we learnt how to say "xx and Sok son are good friends. when are they getting married?"

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the more Khmer we learn, the worse the standard of our English and Chinese.
We now realise that "together" and "at the same time" are sometimes not interchangable without causing misinterpretation.

Like "We don't have to sleep at the same time" and "we don't have to sleep together" has different meanings especially when it's a girl boy dialogue.

More recently, with the series of village blackouts we suspect we're causing,
we've been using the sentence "let's not bathe at the same time" a lot more.
more often than not you hear "let's not bathe together" instead.

"hmm...bathe together won't cause blackout. Bathe at the same time may cause blackout" I reminded them.
"bathe together won't cause blackout, but it'll cause other problems!" Pok pok added quickly.

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I was with the girls at the shop the other day when we asked for the price of the mop.
"moak pei mui dollar" was the reply we got, which meant $21.

As we walked on for about 5 min, I casually and with much satisfaction mentioned to Sau phea that we're begginning to grasp numbers a lot more quickly now, and that's great.
suddenly from behind, Pok Pok, who didn't hear what I said, exclaimed loudly "OH MOAK PEI MUI! I get it now!"

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Sau phea and I created a commotion at the wet market the other day.
She bought a bunch of veggies and the market auntie told us "dop prum boon puan" which is somewhat like 19 000 but they don't usually phrase 19000 that way.

So we got confused and asked again how much it was.

Somehow the market folks thought we were complaining that the veggies were too expensive, and some neighbouring aunties who could speak a tiny bit of chinese tried to tell us it's not expensive.

It's quite funny cos the other side kept thinking we were complaining it was too expensive while all we wanted to know was how much to pay!

It doesn't help that they don't use our number system (1,2,3 etc), they have their own set of numeral system so they couldn't read our calculator digits.

Finally, they took out every type of veggie we bought and told us how much every item cost.

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oh khmer khmer. :P

Or praid kun Prad on protein ah-ha/yerng ne perl ni. (Thank you Lord for blessing the meal/ us at this time)
ne kenong Prad-nim Prad Yeh Shu Kree, (In Jesus Christ's name)
kinyum art-te tan (I pray)
Amen. (amen)

Call Me Marta Steward

we've finally found a place to rent over here.
after weeks of house viewing and negotiating.
milestone moment!

the last week have been spent on getting the house tidied enough to move in.
it's very interesting watching the dynamics of the team and different personalities.
i'm quite fascinated.
on one side we have 3 true blue marta stewards.
the plus side is we do really have a very comfy place to stay in now.
but of course the non-marta stewards are getting bored to death cleaning and mopping and wiping stuff everyday.

My bro just asked what i do for entertainment here.
I told him my entertainment has been mopping, cleaning, washing plates, wiping cupboards, sweeping floors.
"oh just like the maid then" he replied.

i'm still ok now so far.
i'm a non marta steward but i try to find self entertainment in housework.
it's not everyday you get to squat in the toilet to wash plates because the kitchen sink is choked.
and halfway while washing plates squatting in the toilet the house blacked out somemore.

Blackouts are pretty common here.
all the time without warning.
we're beginning to see a pattern though.
we suspect we are the ones overloading the entire line and causing the blackout.
you can actually see the lights flicker as the electrical line tries to cope with our use.
and at some point it'll give up and either our house will trip or the entire village blacks out.

we now ensure only one person bathes at one time.

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sok khiang and I have been assigned dish washing duties as we absolutely find no joy in cooking.
we find no joy in washing dishes as well,
and our self motivating slogan when we wash dishes is "And on the 7th day, God rested."

it's ok though.
good natured complaining about dish washing while we are dish washing is our dish washing entertainment.

i think it's very interesting though how the marta stewards and non-marta stewards can totally not understand how the other views the world.
i'm fascinated by how pple see the world so i can understand and accept the marta stewards views even though i don't share their inherent marta steward joy,
the point is it's just interesting talking to both sides and watching how they really can't understand each other.

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Our first blackout was spent singing praises to the Lord.
that was so fun.
it was like Paul singing in the prison.

HJ and TH were bathing, KK was washing the kitchen, i was squatting in the toilet washing dishes, and JY was somewhere.

when the light went off we became like cockroaches wandering around looking for light.

it was actually pretty funny.

Good thing we've already bought a lamp,
so we all gathered round the lamp looking at each other in the living room.
no fan, no nothing.

since got nothing,
we took out our guitar and started practising the only Khmer praise song we knew.
and we started singing other songs as we got more and more high like some campfire session.
it was really really fun.

Having fruit gatherings round TH's room has been fun too,
as we started bugging him for Ah Gong's story time sessions,
and he told us stories of his college days.

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Sok Khiang has decided to change his name to Udom, which means Most High.
which of course means he'll never hear the end of our teasing.
Pok Pok decided to be Joy, which in Khmer is Umno.

now we have Peace (sok son), Gentleness (sau phea), Joy (umno) in our team.
along with Most High (udom).
and my name is Girl Girl (srey nien).

of course we never really use these names when we call each other.
we just call each other Khmer words like Old frog, naughty monkey, little dog, big dog, big bird, green frog, blue chicken and stuff.

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Sau Phea commented that day that the girls room,
where 3 of us are bunking together,
looks like Bangledeshi living quarters.

And Sok son's room is like the Wellness Spa center.
Japanese zen-ness.
no wonder his name is Peace.
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ok off to do translation and more cleaning.
I am Marta Steward!
and on the 7th day, God rested.

God's Blessings

Psalm 127:
Don't you see that children are God's best gift?
the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?
Like a warrior's fistful of arrows
are the children of a vigorous youth.

"Children are God's gifts to us.
They are like arrows in our hands.
Grow them up right, to love God in their hearts,
and when they become adults they will be like arrows,
shoot them out far to bless the world."
-Pastor Savun

Pastor Savun remains the most inspiring person I've seen over here so far.
An amazingly humble local pastor who lives in the same town as us.
A man who founded a church in the capital,
but his heart is for the villages,
and to date he has started 10 over church villages,
with free village schools for children all over the place.

He didn't even approach us to ask for funding or anything,
we asked to visit his village school as we thought we might be able to learn from it.
and boy were we in for a lesson.

Pastor Savun said he felt for this particular village because there wasn't a school,
and so some Australians helped build a simple wooden shack for him,
where he started free lessons for the children.

every morning he will be there at his school,
beginning the day with prayer and worship with his 3 teachers,
before they split to teach two batches of kids, the pre-schoolers and the primary kids.

He paid with his own money the materials for the children.
And he introduced us to a mentally and physically handicapped youth whom he helped pay for medical bills in the capital.
the youth has been joining them for prayers every morning since his operation.

The pastor himself has two kids and a lot more adopted children.

He is just an amazing guy.
And he and his wife has been helping us with the house hunting and everything.
it's just incredible.

we thank God all the time that He has placed Pastor Savun in our path.
He has been a great help, an encouragement and an inspiration.
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We were at another pastor's church in PP one sunday.
At the end of the service, the youths there decided to give a surprise birthday cake to one of the newer members.
Her face of shock and being so touched was one to remember.

I don't think they celebrate birthdays very much here.
she was truly deeply touched.
And all she could do was to hug her sister friends and cry.

I can only pause and reflect on what God's community means.
I think everyone needs this kind of love and acceptance, it's just how much we're willing to acknowledge this need.

For the first time in my life that day,
I met a family with AIDS.

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We've finally found a place to rent and settle down in.
We'll move in this weekend.

We've been to several places,
and this one seems so God-sent.

The landlord has been incredibly nice,
he not only agreed to everything we asked for, he is even going beyond, and building shelters and special filters on his own initiative.

Contrast this to a previous house where everything we asked for was rejected!

There was one house, the one just before this one,
that we liked a lot.
everything that we needed was there, and there was a kampung spirit which i was very attracted to.

The only thing is,
there were idol shrines guarding the front and back gates, which the owner refused to move.

After some discussion,
we reluctantly decided to let it go
(well actually Sok Klang wasn't reluctant. haha. He was adamant that there was no way we were living there if the shrines were there).

Somehow when you put God above all else (which we should always do, but it's easy to forget),
God honors that decision.

and in a way this house, with its super landlord,
a grandfatherly person who is very rich so he doesn't really nitpick on little details and is super generous,
(and in fact, he's giving us so much it's not even logical anymore),
may just be God's gift to us.

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I just received news that my former workplace department all kana retrenched liao.
That's some shocking news.
the whole department has collapsed!

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Time to go do translation.
God is good.

Proverbs 12:28:
In the way of righteousness there is life;
along that path is immortality. 

Day 9: I have a relationship with the tuk tuk driver

"Now that we have a relationship," the tuk tuk driver looked at me earnestly in halting english, "we can help each other no?"

And that was how all three of us found ourselves in the middle of a village wedding on a sunday evening.
Relationship.
Apparantly the term for "friendship" is substituted with "relationship" over here.
Many guys have told us we are having relationships with them,
so it's either my guess is right or we're going around being some super flirts.

I hope i'm right.
the breakups will be so messy.

But back to the wedding.
the tuk tuk driver's niece was getting married,
and the celebration is basically a makeshift tent, a huge one, with lots of round tables and plastic chairs in it.
something like, erm, our funerals.

this one is smacked right in the middle of the village,
on sand,
so your butt kind of sinks in at different angles when you sit down.
everyone just tries to balance at some yoga position you settle in with.

there's a small stage with a singer and band like those you see on "The wedding singer".
music is a little loud but not bad.

There's a makeshift kitchen somewhere close by where they cook (ala Malay wedding style).

The guests were all dressed to the nines, with hair styled specially for the occasion kind.
It was quite unbelievable given how hot it was.
Imagine wearing your prom dress and walking down little India in the day.

But they looked like they were all out to have a good time,
and that was nice.

The tuk tuk driver said we didn't have to worry about our attire,
so we went in the only attire we had.
shirt and jeans.

The only pple there that were dressed like us were the waiters and cooks.

Still, we didn't feel out of place at all.

Once the table was filled up, dinner can be served.
and once you're done eating as a table, you can leave.
so it's pretty interesting.
the number of guests is not really restricted by the number of tables you have.

we arrived at 5 and started dinner at 5.30pm.
the food came quickly, its serving speed restricted by how fast we could eat.
there were abt 12 dishes i think,
mostly chinese style.
like steam fish (finally a whole fish!), asam soup (yum) and duck. there's even some shisamo fish thing.

Just change the roast chicken with keropok dish to pigeon with keropok.

My first wedding visit in Cambodia!
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Everything here tastes like fish sauce!!!!!!!

It's now Day 8.
And the food here, which tastes really good don't get me wrong,
but after eating the same taste 2 times a day for 8 days in a row,
you kind of want to avoid fish sauce for the rest of your life.

it could be that we don't know how to order anything else,
but we are fairly sure there are no other forms of cooking we can order.
Especially when out of desperation we went to a more expensive eating place to order Spaghetti,
and it looks exactly like Spaghetti, with the mince meat and noodles and the oozing tomato sauce.
And then you take a bite and you'll realise no tomato taste.
FISH SAUCE!!!!
FISH SAUCE SPAGHETTI !!!!!

WHO EATS FISH SAUCE SPAGHETTI??????

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There is one tze char coffee shop round the corner which is the best in town.
and it really is,
if you like fish sauce.

You can order any kind of meat or vergetables, they're all fried with fish sauce so they all taste the same.
Anyhow,
on one of the days,
we were completely unable to communicate with them on what we wanted to eat (how to say kang kong?)
and they actually brought us into the kitchen and opened the whole cooler of veggies for us to choose.

we saw "xi yang cai", which they told us was for soup.
xi yang cai soup is delicious yes?

"Do you think they will put pai gu in the soup?" I asked sau phea excitedly.
"Don't get your hopes up." she said.

Turns out both of us were wrong.
They served us asam fish soup.

"Do you think they're frying our xi yang cai?"
"I don't really know what we ordered anymore", Sau Phea said softly as she scooped around the soup to find out where the xi yang cai went to.

"Come let's give thanks for the food!" Sok Klang beamed.

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More from the ground coming up.

Day 6

Blogspot is actually banned by the internet provider i'm using, for some reason.
by God's grace i managed to find out how to bypass their block! :P

so it's been Day 6,
and what a packed one it has been.
Sau Phea was just saying "finally it's close to a week!"
we've settled almost all our personal things like visa, bank and stuff,
the only thing left is to narrow down the places we want to rent.

We are very grateful that many things have gone smoothly so far.
I'm beginning to realise the "follow-the-book" procedure that singapore clings on religiously too has both its pros and cons.
while it can be frustrating sometimes when we try to find out something and it's a long meandering road,
sometimes it's good because a "no" may not mean "no".
just try with another person another day another time.
Flexi Boomz.

It's not hard to adjust to life here.
Possibly because we've been here before, but also generally it's quite close to chinese living.
Just turn back the clock a few decades.

Mom asked if the food tastes better than the maid's.
That's setting the benchmark quite low actually.
(The food is fantastic though! like seriously!)

You can still find the most advanced things here and there if you look hard enough,
but if you're staying here for long then don't bother because the local cost of living won't allow you that luxury item.
Like contact lens solution.

There are some really inspiring moments already like the new girl in a church we visited that was so touched when the rest gave her a surprise birthday celebration.
She was truly deeply touched.
And the village pastor with a heart for the village children.

More on those another day.

The low is the heat that i'm still struggling to adapt to.
it's 34 to 37 degrees here, it's crazy.
I got a fever one night where I was so internally chilled my fingers went numb,
i thought i might get frost bite.
Frost bite in cambodia! that's like heatstroke in Alaska!
and then of course there's vomitting and all to make it more fun.

The van handle ripped a small hole in my jeans that day.
I managed to sew it back.
Not the nicest stitch in the world, but it looks ok to me.
The star shape is not intentional, it just happened to become a star.

Sau phea thinks it's hilarious and insisted that i post a pic of it.

she thinks it'll last one week.