[This post refers to events that took place about one week ago. Sorry for the delay posting.]
We don't have any milk. Not the Spande family. Phnom Penh. Out of milk. The whole city. All they have is soy milk and those little tiny single serving boxes of milk. Those work fine for Ellie, but trying to make something and cutting open three or four of those things gets kind of annoying. Eventually more milk will come, I am sure, but that could take a while. It has already been several days, and since the Water Festival shuts down almost everything, we can safely assume that we won't have any for several more days.
This is one of those events that makes me really remember where we are living. Some days it feels almost normal here. We can get most foods that we are used to, we listen to NPR and in the evenings watch Desperate Housewives or The Daily Show. And then the city runs out of milk. Ah, Cambodia.
[Note - we have milk again. The Great Milk Shortage of 2005 lasted for 5 days. We now have extra milk always on hand in the pantry.]
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Don't take my Kodachrome away
In Mexico, I kept talking about painting some of the walls in our apartment and never got around to doing it. This time, I vowed, would be different. So last week we hired two embassy maintenance guys to paint some walls in our house for us. My friend Sumali helped pick out the colors. Two were a huge success--a beautiful sage-y green on one wall in the living room which goes perfectly with the tanish, greenish chairs and the Mexican painting we have there, and a wonderful pumpkin color in Ellie's room (sounds weird but looks good). Another one was sort of a wash-out--this nice cafe-au-lait color which doesn't really show up as so different from the three white walls in the room. I guess the lighting isn't as good as we thought.
But there's one that I'm afraid we might have to redo. We chose what we thought was a nice, sunny yellow for one very long wall in the family room. Now that the paint is on the wall, it doesn't look like sunny yellow. It looks like fluorescent highlighter yellow. It's somewhat better now that we have furniture against the wall again, and Ed thinks it will improve still further once the pictures are up, but I'm not so sure. On the plus side, it could make us more productive. No more need for naps or early bed time--just stand facing the neon wall for a few minutes and we'll be instantly refreshed!
But there's one that I'm afraid we might have to redo. We chose what we thought was a nice, sunny yellow for one very long wall in the family room. Now that the paint is on the wall, it doesn't look like sunny yellow. It looks like fluorescent highlighter yellow. It's somewhat better now that we have furniture against the wall again, and Ed thinks it will improve still further once the pictures are up, but I'm not so sure. On the plus side, it could make us more productive. No more need for naps or early bed time--just stand facing the neon wall for a few minutes and we'll be instantly refreshed!
Defending Thanksgiving
Our last experience of Thanksgiving overseas was a rather miserable Thanksgiving buffet at Marie Callendar's in Mexico City. The food was pretty good and the company was amiable, but overall I found the experience of eating in a restaurant with a group of acquaintances united mostly by our lack of other plans to be thoroughly depressing. Those of you living near family are so lucky to know that you will have a place to go for the holidays. In any case, we were determined not to have a repeat of that experience this year. Not knowing what others' plans were for the holiday, we decided the only way to make sure we had a nice Thanksgiving was to organize it ourselves. So we did. It went well, but not without some serious hard work defending the holiday from several threats:
1. Football--An extremely nice and helpful new family heard our plan to play board games after the meal and kindly offered to bring a tape of a football game that someone had recently mailed them. This was really nice and very well-intentioned, but they seemed rather shocked when I explained that we were football-free by choice. In the end, everyone had a great time chatting and we never played board games. But thank goodness we didn't have to talk over the noise of a football game.
2. The Plague--OK, so maybe it wasn't the plague exactly, but some sort of stomach bug has been going around the embassy recently. When the family that said they would co-host the event with us got sick and said they couldn't make it, we were worried. But when they insisted on sending over the desserts and turkey they had made anyway, we got really worried. I imagined 30 people getting sick after dinner at my house and Ben and Ellie battling the dehydration and other side effects of gastrointestinal illnesses that can be serious in little ones. Much debate followed about the infectiousness of this illness. Was it a bacteria or a virus? Could a virus spread on food, or did it need a live host? Hadn't the colonists killed the Indians with small pox-infected blankets? In the end, it took a lot of persistence, tact, and a call to the local clinic, but eventually I ascertained that the desserts had been baked before anyone got sick and were probably OK, and I convinced them to let us bring the defrosted turkey to our place to cook here so that they wouldn't be handling cooked food. Three days later, no reports of illness.
3. Too many people--When we were thinking about who to invite, we started with our closest friends here in Cambodia, and then added other people who were nice and who we thought were at risk of having a depressing Thanksgiving--either because they were new or single. We ended up with a long list, but figured we could invite them anyway because surely many of them would have other plans.
Then people kept saying yes. And other people kept asking if we could invite other folks who wouldn't have a place to go for Thanksgiving. And then one person apologized for having already invited some folks who wouldn't have a place to go. And so somehow our already somewhat overwhelming invite list ballooned further to 35 adults and 11 kids. How were we going to pull this off?
Fortunately, then people started to say no. And then lots of people cancelled at the last minute. We lost 6 people to "the plague", one to work, and one to a boss' Thanksgiving party that ran late. And, in the winner of the "lame excuse" category, lost one to someone who got so tuckered out golfing that he fell asleep and missed our Thanksgiving party...all five hours of it...without calling to let us know. So then we ended up with 22 people, which was just about right. Still a little bit big, but everyone had a terrific time, and so many people told us how glad they were that we invited them and how long it had been since they had a real Thanksgiving dinner with a family. And, in the end, I'm sure we could have squeezed in a few more.
1. Football--An extremely nice and helpful new family heard our plan to play board games after the meal and kindly offered to bring a tape of a football game that someone had recently mailed them. This was really nice and very well-intentioned, but they seemed rather shocked when I explained that we were football-free by choice. In the end, everyone had a great time chatting and we never played board games. But thank goodness we didn't have to talk over the noise of a football game.
2. The Plague--OK, so maybe it wasn't the plague exactly, but some sort of stomach bug has been going around the embassy recently. When the family that said they would co-host the event with us got sick and said they couldn't make it, we were worried. But when they insisted on sending over the desserts and turkey they had made anyway, we got really worried. I imagined 30 people getting sick after dinner at my house and Ben and Ellie battling the dehydration and other side effects of gastrointestinal illnesses that can be serious in little ones. Much debate followed about the infectiousness of this illness. Was it a bacteria or a virus? Could a virus spread on food, or did it need a live host? Hadn't the colonists killed the Indians with small pox-infected blankets? In the end, it took a lot of persistence, tact, and a call to the local clinic, but eventually I ascertained that the desserts had been baked before anyone got sick and were probably OK, and I convinced them to let us bring the defrosted turkey to our place to cook here so that they wouldn't be handling cooked food. Three days later, no reports of illness.
3. Too many people--When we were thinking about who to invite, we started with our closest friends here in Cambodia, and then added other people who were nice and who we thought were at risk of having a depressing Thanksgiving--either because they were new or single. We ended up with a long list, but figured we could invite them anyway because surely many of them would have other plans.
Then people kept saying yes. And other people kept asking if we could invite other folks who wouldn't have a place to go for Thanksgiving. And then one person apologized for having already invited some folks who wouldn't have a place to go. And so somehow our already somewhat overwhelming invite list ballooned further to 35 adults and 11 kids. How were we going to pull this off?
Fortunately, then people started to say no. And then lots of people cancelled at the last minute. We lost 6 people to "the plague", one to work, and one to a boss' Thanksgiving party that ran late. And, in the winner of the "lame excuse" category, lost one to someone who got so tuckered out golfing that he fell asleep and missed our Thanksgiving party...all five hours of it...without calling to let us know. So then we ended up with 22 people, which was just about right. Still a little bit big, but everyone had a terrific time, and so many people told us how glad they were that we invited them and how long it had been since they had a real Thanksgiving dinner with a family. And, in the end, I'm sure we could have squeezed in a few more.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Oh Burma!
As if being a pariah wasn't enough, Than Shwe and the other members of the "State Peace and Development Council", aka the ruling military junta, have decided to show the world how crazy they truly are. With only 48 hours notice, they moved the capital from Rangoon to Pyinmana, a small town in central Burma. Civil servants were told they would have to move or be prosecuted as traitors. Oh, and they can't bring their families.
Why did they do such a radical thing? Well, most people seem to believe it was on advice of the astrologers who serve the junta. That's right, the psychic hotline folks told them to move the capital, so they did. Another theory is that the junta is very concerned that the US might invade. As if anybody in the US even could find Burma on a map. I mean, come on folks. The whole scenario is both sad and comic. I suddenly find myself looking in the papers here for news of the latest shenanigans from Rangoon... I mean Pyinmana. Of course, living in a brutal military dictatorship isn't funny, but you have to wonder if all those Burmese folks in Rangoon aren't breathing a sigh of relief. At least the ones who didn't have to leave their families behind or risk being executed. Yeah...
All this leaves me feeling slightly better about the state of affairs here in Cambodia. Sure the government seems intent on locking up anybody who looks at Hun Sen funny, but at least we're not likely to see a move to some tiny village for fear that we are next on W's hitlist.
Are we?
Why did they do such a radical thing? Well, most people seem to believe it was on advice of the astrologers who serve the junta. That's right, the psychic hotline folks told them to move the capital, so they did. Another theory is that the junta is very concerned that the US might invade. As if anybody in the US even could find Burma on a map. I mean, come on folks. The whole scenario is both sad and comic. I suddenly find myself looking in the papers here for news of the latest shenanigans from Rangoon... I mean Pyinmana. Of course, living in a brutal military dictatorship isn't funny, but you have to wonder if all those Burmese folks in Rangoon aren't breathing a sigh of relief. At least the ones who didn't have to leave their families behind or risk being executed. Yeah...
All this leaves me feeling slightly better about the state of affairs here in Cambodia. Sure the government seems intent on locking up anybody who looks at Hun Sen funny, but at least we're not likely to see a move to some tiny village for fear that we are next on W's hitlist.
Are we?
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Off to KL and back
Well, if you've read Jen's Ben and Ellie post, you've perhaps noticed that we just got back from a few days in KL. That's Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for those who aren't familiar with the lingo. It was our first real expedition from PP (Phnom Penh, expats here like initials for complicated city names), and went quite well. We had a bit of an inauspicious start, when I left our camera in the back seat of a taxi on our first full day. Luckily, I guess, we hadn't had a chance to shoot any pictures, so we didn't lose anything that can't be replaced.
KL is an incredibly modern city, developed and still cheap. The developed part was obvious from the beginning. A very nice airport, then driving into the city you see Petronas Towers, two of the largest skyscrapers in the world. The other striking thing is how clean the city is. PP has a problem common to much of the developing world - trash. Many people have no trash cans, and so just cart bags, or piles, of trash out to the street to wait for the garbage truck. This means that, among other things, there is almost always at least one pile of trash on every block, along with bits of trash that missed pickup, or blew away from the main pile. It isn't overwhelming, but it is always there. KL, at least in the parts we saw, was nothing like this. Amazingly clean. Lovely. In addition, many of the taxis there run on natural gas, which made the air so nice to breathe. The taxis took us all over, for basically $2.50 a trip. A darn good deal.
It has been said that Malaysians have two great loves - eating and shopping. We tried a bit of each, and we certainly had some very good food. We also enjoyed the shopping malls, although we bought almost nothing. The mall nearest us had a movie theater, which was showing Corpse Bride, the newest Tim Burton film. It was lovely being able to see a movie at all, and having it in English was even more of a treat. There was also a Border's bookstore, where we picked up a few new books for cheap (including Freakonomics, which Jen highly recommends).
Ellie liked the swimming pool at the hotel, but she loved the enormous playground with wading pool in the public park nearby. She went there three times in our four days, and would have liked to stay longer to play more. We also went to a fantastic aquarium, and an impressive bird park, which had the best set of birds I've ever seen. The bird park is enclosed by nets, meaning that there was even minimal fear of avian flu, since there is no contamination from the general avian population.
On a more adult tourist theme, Jen and I took advantage of the kids napping to see the National Mosque and the Islamic Art Museum. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, but they are very moderate and tolerant of other religous groups. There are several Christian churches in KL, along with Hindu and Buddhist presences, thanks to the large Indian and Chinese communities.
Part of our goal in visiting was to scope it out as a potential place to serve later on. I think we are both extremely impressed, and if a good job popped up we would try for it. A great city, and a nice place to be able to go to get back to that northern Virginia feel of intense heat, tall buildings, and strip malls. It sounds odd, but after living in PP for a while, the sight of a strip mall is oddly comforting.
KL is an incredibly modern city, developed and still cheap. The developed part was obvious from the beginning. A very nice airport, then driving into the city you see Petronas Towers, two of the largest skyscrapers in the world. The other striking thing is how clean the city is. PP has a problem common to much of the developing world - trash. Many people have no trash cans, and so just cart bags, or piles, of trash out to the street to wait for the garbage truck. This means that, among other things, there is almost always at least one pile of trash on every block, along with bits of trash that missed pickup, or blew away from the main pile. It isn't overwhelming, but it is always there. KL, at least in the parts we saw, was nothing like this. Amazingly clean. Lovely. In addition, many of the taxis there run on natural gas, which made the air so nice to breathe. The taxis took us all over, for basically $2.50 a trip. A darn good deal.
It has been said that Malaysians have two great loves - eating and shopping. We tried a bit of each, and we certainly had some very good food. We also enjoyed the shopping malls, although we bought almost nothing. The mall nearest us had a movie theater, which was showing Corpse Bride, the newest Tim Burton film. It was lovely being able to see a movie at all, and having it in English was even more of a treat. There was also a Border's bookstore, where we picked up a few new books for cheap (including Freakonomics, which Jen highly recommends).
Ellie liked the swimming pool at the hotel, but she loved the enormous playground with wading pool in the public park nearby. She went there three times in our four days, and would have liked to stay longer to play more. We also went to a fantastic aquarium, and an impressive bird park, which had the best set of birds I've ever seen. The bird park is enclosed by nets, meaning that there was even minimal fear of avian flu, since there is no contamination from the general avian population.
On a more adult tourist theme, Jen and I took advantage of the kids napping to see the National Mosque and the Islamic Art Museum. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, but they are very moderate and tolerant of other religous groups. There are several Christian churches in KL, along with Hindu and Buddhist presences, thanks to the large Indian and Chinese communities.
Part of our goal in visiting was to scope it out as a potential place to serve later on. I think we are both extremely impressed, and if a good job popped up we would try for it. A great city, and a nice place to be able to go to get back to that northern Virginia feel of intense heat, tall buildings, and strip malls. It sounds odd, but after living in PP for a while, the sight of a strip mall is oddly comforting.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Ben and Ellie Tidbits
Ben
After several weeks of being content to just roll where he wanted to go, Ben has mastered the commando crawl. Crawling around pulling your body behind you is so inefficient, he can't move all that fast. We've read that babies often start off crawling commando style and then graduate to a more traditional crawl on their knees.
Ben loves to stand up. He can't quite grip the coffee table well enough for that to be really effective, but if we stand him up in front of a baby gate (which has long vertical slats) he loves it. He's surprisingly strong--he can hold himself pretty steady, and even managed to hang from a monkey bar for a few seconds in KL a few days ago. (With mom's hands just waiting to catch him when he fell, of course.)
Ben had his first haircut on Monday. Nothing fancy--just a little trim around the ears and cutting off the few super-long strands that made him look like a baby with a combover. His hair has lightened a bit since he was born, and it's more dirty blond now.
Still no teeth, but he likes soft fingerfoods like pumpkin bread and dragon fruit. He's lactose intolerant (as was Ellie) so he's on soy formula.
New nicknames: Tutto Benne, Baby Benana. He also hears "No Ben!" from Ellie so much that he probably thinks that is his name.
Ellie
Ellie is amazingly verbal--in fact, her brain can't quite keep pace with her tongue, and she ends up saying really silly things. After hearing me shout for my husband umpteen times, she now things that "Hey, Ed!" means "Attention, everyone!" and often shouts "Hey, Ed!" when she wants my attention. When we were on vacation, we taught her that we had left Cambodia and were now in Malaysia. But a few hours later, when we asked her what country we were in, she said "Hotel!" She also loves using the computer, or as she calls it, "piccuter". And she's started unconsciously throwing our language back at us: "We'll see" and "Maybe next time" are things she's heard so often she uses them on us!
Along with her verbosity, Ellie loves to sing. But songs that end by repeating the first line--like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star--really confuse her. She can never figure out where to stop, so she just keeps going and going! She often sings herself to sleep.
Ellie has a good memory for names and faces, but not surprisingly she can't really separate out the important people in our lives from the strangers. So after striking up a conversation with a stranger in the grocery store, she'll still be asking about them 3 days later. Standing in line to board our flight back to Phnom Penh, she recited her own full name, and then our full names, and then asked everyone around her for their names.
Ellie got a brand new "kid potty" on Monday. We were worried that she would be afraid of it, but in fact it was quite the opposite--we couldn't get her to leave the bathroom. One accident seems to have dampened her enthusiasm and she requested diapers rather than training pants this morning. Could be a long process.
Ellie is just getting in to imaginative play. Just now she put her doll down for a nap before she went to bed, and lately she's been telling us that her stuffed animals and Gumby need to have their diapers changed. The three stuffed animals she sleeps with (we call them her "sleepytime friends") have now become a dad (a ghost) and two kids (a bear and a dog).
Routine is all important to Ellie, down to the last detail. Bed time can often be a battle, and she will dictate that we do things exactly the same way each time, down to where we stand next to her crib and who hands her her water glass.
After several weeks of being content to just roll where he wanted to go, Ben has mastered the commando crawl. Crawling around pulling your body behind you is so inefficient, he can't move all that fast. We've read that babies often start off crawling commando style and then graduate to a more traditional crawl on their knees.
Ben loves to stand up. He can't quite grip the coffee table well enough for that to be really effective, but if we stand him up in front of a baby gate (which has long vertical slats) he loves it. He's surprisingly strong--he can hold himself pretty steady, and even managed to hang from a monkey bar for a few seconds in KL a few days ago. (With mom's hands just waiting to catch him when he fell, of course.)
Ben had his first haircut on Monday. Nothing fancy--just a little trim around the ears and cutting off the few super-long strands that made him look like a baby with a combover. His hair has lightened a bit since he was born, and it's more dirty blond now.
Still no teeth, but he likes soft fingerfoods like pumpkin bread and dragon fruit. He's lactose intolerant (as was Ellie) so he's on soy formula.
New nicknames: Tutto Benne, Baby Benana. He also hears "No Ben!" from Ellie so much that he probably thinks that is his name.
Ellie
Ellie is amazingly verbal--in fact, her brain can't quite keep pace with her tongue, and she ends up saying really silly things. After hearing me shout for my husband umpteen times, she now things that "Hey, Ed!" means "Attention, everyone!" and often shouts "Hey, Ed!" when she wants my attention. When we were on vacation, we taught her that we had left Cambodia and were now in Malaysia. But a few hours later, when we asked her what country we were in, she said "Hotel!" She also loves using the computer, or as she calls it, "piccuter". And she's started unconsciously throwing our language back at us: "We'll see" and "Maybe next time" are things she's heard so often she uses them on us!
Along with her verbosity, Ellie loves to sing. But songs that end by repeating the first line--like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star--really confuse her. She can never figure out where to stop, so she just keeps going and going! She often sings herself to sleep.
Ellie has a good memory for names and faces, but not surprisingly she can't really separate out the important people in our lives from the strangers. So after striking up a conversation with a stranger in the grocery store, she'll still be asking about them 3 days later. Standing in line to board our flight back to Phnom Penh, she recited her own full name, and then our full names, and then asked everyone around her for their names.
Ellie got a brand new "kid potty" on Monday. We were worried that she would be afraid of it, but in fact it was quite the opposite--we couldn't get her to leave the bathroom. One accident seems to have dampened her enthusiasm and she requested diapers rather than training pants this morning. Could be a long process.
Ellie is just getting in to imaginative play. Just now she put her doll down for a nap before she went to bed, and lately she's been telling us that her stuffed animals and Gumby need to have their diapers changed. The three stuffed animals she sleeps with (we call them her "sleepytime friends") have now become a dad (a ghost) and two kids (a bear and a dog).
Routine is all important to Ellie, down to the last detail. Bed time can often be a battle, and she will dictate that we do things exactly the same way each time, down to where we stand next to her crib and who hands her her water glass.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Halloween in Cambodia
Happy Halloween from Cambodia's Cutest Dinosaurs!
Phnom Penh really knows how to do Halloween right.
I'm sure that comes as a surprise, but the Halloween we experienced on the 28th was one of the coolest I remember. A local American expat--who comes from a part of DC known for its over the top Halloween celebrations--organized trick or treating and a pizza party afterwards. She solicited volunteers in our largely expat neighborhood to hand out candy, and then produced a map showing all the houses that were participating. She also lined up a fleet of tuk tuks (small motorcycles pulling a passenger compartment--sort of similar to a golf cart) to ferry trick or treaters around from one house to the next.
Riding in the tuk tuk with Jeevan, another neighborhood kidIt was terrific! I went out with Ellie while Nathan and Ben stayed home to hand out candy. Ellie was afraid of the tuk tuk at first (it was her first time) but warmed up to it quickly and really enjoyed it as long as she was sitting on my lap. We went around with an acquaintance and her son. Ellie loved seeing all the kids in costumes. And back at home, Nathan and Ben received lots of trick or treaters who they all thought Ben was adorable in his dinosaur suit.
Ellie tended to hang back and not even make it up to the candy bowl many times (which was fine by me). Jeevan really took her under his wing, and by the end, he was slipping her his candy!The pizza party afterwards was a bit loud and chaotic for our little ones, but the fireworks (which were really in honor of the first anniversary of the king's reign) really stole the show.
In contrast to that well-organized event, the embassy trick or treating, which happened on Halloween itself, was a bust. It wasn't scheduled to start until 6, with a pizza party starting at 7--too late for us and many other parents. Then the bus that was supposed to ferry us from one embassy home to another was 25 minutes late. As it was, we walked from the starting point to one other embassy home to go trick or treating there, and then went home. Nathan was disappointed he didn't get to take the kids trick or treating more, but Ellie didn't know the difference and we both agreed it was most important that the kids stick to as normal a schedule as possible. And as it was, Ellie still was 45 minutes late for bed.
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