More Ben cuteness

Tonight the kids and I were sitting around eating leftover brats and kraut from our Sunday dinner. It was a generally pleasant experience, and we all were just chatting about our day. Ben told us that he needed to go wash his hands, and then he would tell us a story about when he had put five thieves in jail. So he went ahead and washed up, then told us his tale. Here's my best attempt to recreate it.

Ben: One time, when I was five, I saw this thief, but he wasn't a thief, he was the thief's daddy!
Me: What happened then?
Ben: Weeeelllll..... the thief said come here.
Me: Did you go there?
Ben: Weeeelllll..... yeah! I goed there!
Me: You went there?
Ben: Yeah!
Me: And then what happened?
Ben: Weeellll.... he said come here Ben, and I said my name isn't Ben, I'm Robin Hood!
Me: And then what happened?
Ben: The thief said I'm Maid Marian!
Me: So then what happened?
Ben: We got married!

Clearly we have seen the Robin Hood Disney movie recently. Well, not so recently, but the kids really latch onto movies.

Jen and Nathan's Weekend Getaway to Kampot

A few weeks ago, Nathan and I spent a lovely weekend away--sans kids--in Kampot, a charming river town about 3 hours from Phnom Penh. Our lovely alone time was courtesy of our good friends Cullen and Vanessa, who volunteered to sleep at our house and be in charge of the kids while we were away, and Sinen and Somany, who helped Cullen and Vanessa and kept the house on its normal routine.

Our accommodation was this guest house outside of town that does not advertise and was billed as "the best place to stay in Kampot." We quickly learned that it deserves that appellation mainly because there are no great places to stay in Kampot. Our spot was more reminiscent of summer camp, with bungalows with no A/C, no hot water, and lots of bugs. However, it did have a lovely view and the staff was friendly. Also, at something like $30/night, we certainly got what we paid for.

View of the Teuk Chhou River from our guest house.

Kampot is one of those terrific second-class tourist destinations--the sort of place that foreign tourists here to see the temples would never make time for, but that offers a nice change of pace for those of us resident in country. Its principal attractions are several good restaurants along the riverfront, beautiful setting, and not being in Phnom Penh.

Here's one example of the French legacy you often see in Kampot and other provincial capitals.

We had a fun time crawling through one of the many local caves...

Jen with our tour guides at the cave

...and, after much searching in the beautiful countryside, finally found the pepper plantations the region is famous for.

Jen with the proprietor of the pepper plantation where we bought pepper as late Father's Day gifts for our dads.

Pepper plant, after the pepper has been harvested

We also drove to the small resort city of Kep, which was the vacation spot of the elite in the 1960s and only recently has really made a comeback.

Beachfront at Kep

Kids playing on the beach at Kep

As our time in Kampot drew to a close, we decided to take an informal tour of the mangroves not far from Kampot. (Mangroves are really cool and important from an ecological standpoint. Liz is probably an expert in this already, but here's a few good basic explanations from the Queensland, Australia government and wikipedia.)

First, we passed by the salt flats, where sea water is allowed to dry in the sun so the salt can be harvested.

Stunning coastal scenery. (This boat was identical to ours, and the man rowing our boat was an amputee with 7 kids. Needless to say, we paid him well for his time and effort.)

Father and son fishing in the Gulf of Thailand

School is in!

And I am out! The kids are happy to be back in school (particularly Ellie, as she is now in the top class there), and I am happy to have them back. I have now officially stopped being the manager, and have started up with a small bit of consulting.

I've been getting lots of encouragement on that front, and have started working on getting projects bigger than home PC repair. Although with the international group of folks here, I must say that it is more challenging than most places. I yesterday delivered a computer that had taken a while to fix, partially for technical reasons, but partially because it was the Norwegian version of XP! Sadly I can definitively say that the lessons learned years ago in Norwegian camp have entirely faded. On the other hand, I can now recognize "open", "close", "next", "cancel" and a number of other words in Norwegian.

Oh, and we'll have more photos up soon. I hope tonight.

Walking tall (and normally)

Thank you all for your sympathy/empathy regarding the back problems. I have continued with the therapy, and am pleased to report that in the last two days I have had no pain, and no need for ibuprofen. Lovely feeling.

I may wind up taking a trip to Bangkok at some point for the MRI, but for the moment at least all is much better. The kids are certainly happy about this, since I've been much less grumpy with them than before!