The Exodus Begins

Both kids quietly listening to a story on Mommy's lap?? That almost never happens these days!

Chef Ben has become very fond of the potato masher and the whisk

This was the last week of school, which means that the expat exodus out of Phnom Penh is about to begin. Stay-at-home spouses and kids tend to go back home for the whole summer, with working parents joining them for as long as vacation balances will allow. Families seem to be trying to squeeze summer birthday parties in to these last few days--Ellie has been invited to 5 in 2 weeks!

We'll be here all summer, and will hang out with the few other kids who will be around Phnom Penh. Ellie has two weeks off of school, and then a month-long summer program, and then Ben and Ellie will start up again in late August.

Made in the USA...Sort Of

The State Department released it's annual Trafficking in Persons report on Monday, ranking how various countries around the world prevent the modern-day slavery of selling men, women, and children for forced labor and commercial sex work. Cambodia was lifted from Tier 3--the bottom ranking, and one that meant that some types of US aid to Cambodia were suspended--to Tier 2 Watchlist, leading to a collective sigh of relief. At the release, Secretary Rice said, "Human traffickers prey on the most vulnerable and turn a commercial profit at the expense of innocent lives. The State Department's efforts to end this evil trade exemplify transformational diplomacy. We work with international partners to secure the freedom of those who are exploited and call on governments to be effective and accountable in prosecuting those who exploit."

But while we're patting our backs for our good work overseas, we've turned a blind eye to sex trafficking and forced labor in our own backyard--the Northern Mariana Islands. This US territory isn't protected by US labor or immigration laws, and is notorious for trafficked sex workers and for factory workers who work for less than minimum wage or in forced labor to produce garments that are then labelled "Made in the USA" and enter the mainland US tax- and tariff-free. For years, Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff blocked attempts to pass laws to extend US immigration and labor laws to the territory. Let's hope that a recent effort by Democratic leaders to bring this territory's practices in line with US standards can help end our hypocritical approach to the "evil trade".

International Day

As you might imagine, Ellie goes to a pretty diverse preschool. They celebrate this every year, and Friday was this year's event. The kids all grouped up by country and came out to say the name of their country. Ellie was one of the only ones who not only said the name, but also said it clearly enough to be understood. Here's the action shot.

After all the countries were introduced, the kids got together in their class groups and sang songs. This is Ellie's "Little Gecko" class singing "If You're Happy and You Know It", or at least doing the actions while the parents and teachers sing. See if you can spot Finland, Estonia, the UK, Sri Lanka, South Africa, China, Canada, and of course Cambodia in the photo.

Ellie Takes the Throne

After a few different efforts to introduce potty training over the past six months, we've made a big push over the past 10 days or so. We had days and days of no success, but a few days ago Ellie seemed to turn a corner and now she's really getting the hang of it. I think she'll be ready to switch from diapers to training pants this week. And hopefully she'll be ready for those Elmo panties she's so excited about in the next few weeks.

Ellie's Swim Day

Ellie's swimming classes had a big exhibition about a week ago, and I was able to take a little time off work to come support Ellie and see her progress. Nathan, who goes to swim lessons with her every week, has been giving me upbeat reports, but I was more impressed to see it with my own eyes.

Ellie hated water as a baby and I had to get in the tub to give her a bath until she was about 18 months old. And when she started swimming lessons, she was very afraid of the water and would cling to mommy or daddy whenever we went swimming. Now look at her! I predict she'll be starting to swim by Christmas.

Ellie takes a deep breath in preparation for blowing bubbles underwater while her teacher holds her up

Ellie eyes the deep end...

And then pulls herself across the width of the deep end on two ropes. This teaches her to become familiar with not being able to touch the bottom of the pool and, as the rope sags in the middle of the pool and she has to work a bit to keep her head above water, gets her comfortable putting her face in the water and kicking her legs

Trip to Phnom Chisor

Well, three day weekends are often a good opportunity to load up the family, grab some friends, and head out to do a little exploring. I think our Memorial Day weekend trip to Phnom Chisor, an 11th century temple about 1 1/2 hours from Phnom Penh, was our best one yet. The ruins themselves were more impressive than Oudong or Tonle Bati, and after 412 steps up to the top, you really felt like you accomplished something by the time you reached them!

The family after a hot and sweaty walk to the top

Ben checks out a Naga (many-headed snake) sculpture

Ellie and Lucca enjoy climbing on the ruins

Beautiful carvings that have endured ten centuries

Our tour guide, one of many children who accompany tourists to the site while their parents sell food and drinks

Ellie's favorite part of the trip--the goats that we found grazing on the way back down!

Blue Baby

Well, Ben's first fingerpainting session actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but we haven't had a chance to post the photos until now. Thanks to Aunt Liz who gave us a great bottle of non-toxic, washable blue fingerpaint way back when we were still in DC!

Paint fun

And the clean up

Colors, Floods, New Teeth, and Surprise Guests

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.