Well, it's been a busy few weeks, and I can see that the kid photo devotees of our blog have not been getting their fix lately. More pictures coming in the next installment! It took us a while to get our act together after our big trip back to the US, and then we proceeded to spend one long weekend painting the walls of our house. Bye, bye boring white...hello tan, brown, spring green, cerulean, boardwalk (ie gray), spicy curry (ie red), whispers of summer (ie blue) and even...gasp....purple! The purple I'm not completely sold on, a whispers of summer turned out to be more of a shriek than a whisper, but overall I think our house of many colors is a success.
We've also had a lot of trouble staying connected recently because the rainy season has begun, and our internet often goes out after big storms. Actually, it often goes out even after small storms. At a good time, it will take a day to fix. On the weekend, it's more like 2-3 days. And I think this is the first weekend in three weeks that we've had internet all weekend (well, fingers crossed, it's not over yet...) Last week, not only did we first lose internet, but then our phone line got cut, so we were completely cut off. Anyway, such is life in a developing country.
So, what's new with us? Well, along with the first rains came the first flooding, and the discovery that the area around our new embassy floods really, really bad. On Tuesday I just happened to park in the very worst spot, and when I waded through flooded streets and a flooded median, I found my car in 23 inches of water (seriously, I measured the high point later at home). And this wasn't even an unusually bad storm, just the worst storm drainage system and a low point in the city. I managed to open the door, and saw a lego and a stuffed animal floating in about five inches of water inside the car. Fortunately for us, the car did start and I was able to drive home, albeit in a traffic-jammed and water-logged route, with my feet and the gas and break pedals submerged, and with a big wave from the back seat rushing around my ankles everytime I stopped. Ed and Somany worked to bail out the car, and we took it to the best mechanic in town the next day. As it turns out, we got off lucky--the car made it through more or less OK after they dried out all the wet mechanisms and replaced some fluids, and mechanics in Cambodia are pretty cheap so the whole thing just cost us $78, when we were expecting several hundred.
Ben is working on two new teeth this week, which means he's not terribly happy. And we're not always so happy because he's been waking us up at 4:45 or 5:30am when his ibuprofen wears off. But now he has six teeth in his grin and hopefully the worst of it should be over soon.
Ed and I have started a new tradition of going out to a coffee shop and reading every Saturday afternoon while the kids sleep. (Somany is here while we're away.) We both find that kids take all our "spare" time and energy, so it's nice to block that time off for ourselves.
Yesterday Nathan stayed home from church with Ben while Ellie and I went. It was relatively peaceful...I could concentrate on most of the sermon...I even left feeling happy and recharged. Completely different than our typical church experience where Ben runs around trying to stick his fingers in sockets and we chase after him, and then he wants all the toys that Ellie has. Trying to get all four of us to church is just too stressful to do everyweek. I'm hoping that we can leave Ben with Somany most of the time and the three of us can go to church, and then we can bring Ben once a month or so. When we all go, none of us get anything out of it and we leave angry and frazzled and wondering why we bother. And we know that Ben will grow out of this phase in a few months.
We also have some unexpected guests this weekend. Our adopted Marine, Mark, just got back from 3 weeks of travelling around Asia with his friend Jackie. He made a late-breaking request to let two of his friends stay with us for the weekend, and we said yes. They're nice young people, a young woman who just graduated from NYU and is travelling before she starts working at IBM, and her brother who is studying at PennState. After all the friends-of-friends I've stayed with overseas, I think it's good for our karma to host them.
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1 comment:
The story of you driving with a flooded car was truly amazing. I really didn't know you could do that and still have the car work. It was also neat to read about finding a solution to going to church and finding a way to have time to yourselves. Very creative problem solving in a time of necessity!
Love,
Mom
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