Random interesting (?) things about our life here

1. We get The Daily Show three times a week. The current episode, or at least as current as anybody. At 9pm local time. On AFN. That's the Armed Forces Network. Yes. The US Military beams it via satellite not only to people stationed at military bases around the world, but also to EVERY SINGLE SHIP THE NAVY HAS ON THE OCEAN. We are sort of remote here, so we get the "Direct to Sailor" version of AFN. As Jen points out, this is why we love the US. Oh, and AFN doesn't have commercials, they just have public service announcements aimed at soldiers. They can be great fun.
   
2. Cost of living is low, sort of, but in strange ways. You expect things like food to be cheap, which it is, if you get it at local open air markets. Labor is also cheap, which is why we employ three people, two full time, and all of them earn well above your average Cambodian salary. Non-intuitively, cable TV is cheap. $100 a year. That's US dollars, but still. And we get HBO, Cinemax, Star Movies, and a channel where they just play DVDs all day long. Full movies, with either English, Chinese, or Thai subtitles. And we strongly suspect that at least some of the channels are pirated from the Thai cable company. But Internet. We pay $109 per month for 128kbps DSL, and anything more than 800MB of traffic in a month we pay extra for. Like I say, sort of cheap, but some things really will knock your socks off.
3. Most streets here aren't paved. Our street, for example, is not. We've heard that it will be paved soon, which is a mixed blessing, because it will mean an increase in traffic. It will also mean less mud, particularly during the rainy season, which is right now. Unpaved roads make walking with a stroller difficult, as do sidewalks that are not able to be walked along by even pedestrians larger than toddlers.
4. There are no Western fast food restaurants. There are, however, fast food joints. The biggest one is Lucky Burger. I'm not joking.
5. You can buy tortillas here, for something like $4 for an 8 pack. We haven't tried it yet, but eventually we may find ourselves needing a tortilla fix.
6. Jen actually saw an elephant walking down one of the largest streets in town.
7. Ellie now has a new food - Thai red curry. She ate three servings of rice with the curry for lunch today. She even tried fish because it had curry on it. She stopped short of the little round eggplant things, but still, I was impressed. "More curry! More curry!"