Merry Christmas from Phnom Penh

Sending warm holiday wishes to all our friends and family.

Love, Ben, Jennifer, Ellie and Nathan (the willing photographer)

Playdate du jour

One of our favorite new ways of socializing is to host playdates. (How completely pathetic does that sound to you childless folks out there?) We get to talk to other adults while also spending time with our kids, Ben and Ellie love having new kids to play with, and their friends enjoy playing with some new toys and new kids for a while. The hosting demands are pretty low, too: coffee and juice, pumpkin bread and fruit, and you're set.

Here are a few pics from the playdate du jour:

Ellie and Erik take turns on the slide.



Ben and the other kids really loved being in the playhouse this morning. Note the protective Mommy arm steadying Ben, who isn't yet standing on his own. (I promise I'm making silly faces at Lucca, not preparing to bite his fingers off.)

Buddhist Blessing of the New US Embassy

Last weekend we moved in to the new embassy, a lovely, modern building that is quite chilly due to AC problems but otherwise a great place to work. Our previous embassy was the fifth temporary location during the 55-year diplomatic relationship. It was just a collection of old houses jerry-rigged together. (Getting to my office required walking up the exterior staircase on one building, crossing a makeshift bridge from one balcony to another, and walking up another metal exterior staircase.) One of my Cambodian staff members told me that when she enters the embassy, she feels like she's left Cambodia and entered the US. (She assured me this was a good thing.) Another said that he finally feels like a professional. It's been a good change for all of us.

In fact, the new embassy is so lovely, it's become a popular spot for Cambodians to pose for wedding pictures.



This Friday, we had a Buddhist blessing for the new embassy. In Cambodia, Buddhist monks are often asked to bless new organizations, corporate ventures, and buildings. We think that we are the first embassy to have a Buddhist blessing, and we see it as an important sign of respect to Cambodia and to our Cambodian colleagues.

The VIPs on the move: Sharon Mussomeli, Protocol Assistant Naroat Hoy, Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, the Governor of Phnom Penh, DCM Mark Storella



Making sure everything is ready for the monks.

Monks are highly honored in Cambodian society. Everyone has to remove their shoes and kneel when they approach (note to Mr. Blue Shirt: next time choose less ventilated socks), and you even have to use a special vocabulary when speaking to them. The embassy leadership offered them gifts before the blessing.

The senior monk.

Although some Buddhists do commit their lives to the monastery, being a Buddhist monk or nun is not typically a lifelong calling. Many Cambodian men spend several months or years as a monk as young people--a coming of age time similar to college or compulsory military service in other countries. Monks take a vow of poverty and give up their possessions and shave their heads as signs of humility. Every morning, they go begging for food to feed themselves. (In Phnom Penh there's recently been a scandal involving fake monks who beg for food to feed their families.) Monks also take a vow of chastity, and women are not permitted to touch them.



Ambassador Mussomeli makes a few remarks.

The actual blessing at the embassy Seal.

Friends in my Christmas Stocking

The other day, I figured that it was time I sit Ellie down and tell her about Santa Claus.

Think for a minute about how bizarre that is. Every other American 2 year old has surely been pointing to signs of the jolly red and white guy and asking who that is, and clearly understands that Santa is the one who brings the presents. And for sure, if Ellie were in the US, that is exactly what she would be doing. She is obsessed with knowing everyone's name--people standing in the checkout lane at the grocery store, people in ads in magazines, all of the minor fish characters in Finding Nemo. But here in Cambodia, there is no Santa, there are no Christmas decorations, and there are definitely no holiday sales. Christmas exists to the extent that we and our friends create it.

So, anyway, it was time to explain to Ellie, from scratch, who Santa was. I don't think she got much of it. "Presents" is a concept that she understood, but "chimney" and "reindeer" were way beyond her. She understands that specific actions are good or bad, but classifying her behavior as a whole as either positive or negative is way to abstract for her. I kept going with this explanation, knowing that Ellie really wasn't getting most of this, when I got to the consequences of being bad. What preschooler has any idea what coal is? Heck, I think I can honestly say that I've never seen a lump of coal in my life and I'm--as Ellie says--"firty".

So I explain about coal, expecting a look of total bewilderment, when Ellie pipes up "And Sam and Nina, too!" because to Ellie, "coal" = her 8 year old friend Cole Buford. And as long as Santa is putting Cole in her stocking, wouldn't he put Cole's siblings in there, too?

Al Dente Hair Solutions

Suffering from premature hair loss? Let Al Dente Hair Solutions help add fullness and luster to your locks! Our patented product is quick and easy to apply, biodegradable, and tastes great with Marinara. Best of all, daily use of Al Dente Hair Solutions costs just pennies a day and won't damage your existing hair. Call now...operators are standing by!

We have a camera!

OK, I know most of you don't visit this site for our insightful commentary or our witty stories. Thanks for sticking by us during the photo drought of 2005.

Our replacement camera just arrived and, in celebration, here are some photos from tonight:

Ed and Ellie toast their G&T's to celebrate the conclusion of another hard day of play

"Good construction technique, little bro"

"I love climbing on things so much I don't care if I bonk my head when I try to stand up!"

Elderly on the loose!

Do you recognize these folks?


Me neither. This was one of the photos on our new, used camera which Dick--the man with the bargain connections--got us used for a good price. For just $100 plus a new $70 memory card, we bought back the model we used to have!

Anyhow, our thanks to these good folks (who Ed tells me are from Ascension Lutheran Church in Albert Lea, MN) for passing on their camera to the camera-less. Don't they just look delighted at having done such a great deed?

Got milk?

[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.]

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 kid

It 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.

Water Babies

Our new Sunday morning routine is to head to the swimming pool. The embassy worked out a deal to get us free access to the pool at a local hotel. We often have the pool to ourselves--there's a nicer and more popular one nearby, but we'd have to pay something like $15/morning just to get access.

Yesterday Ben got to his use his baby boat for the second time. We bought it for Ellie, but she hated the water when she was little and would never go in it. Ben loves it. Sometimes Ed and I take turns using Ben and his boat as a kickboard and do a few laps up and down the length of the pool. Gotta get a little bit of activity in somehow.




Ellie tested out her water wings for the first time yesterday. She was so excited to have them she had been wearing them at home. But actually using them to float in the pool was both thrilling and frightening. She clutched my finger and as I pulled her around slowly, she kept saying "Little bit scared...little bit scared..."

Baring it all

Couldn't help sharing this classic pose. Nice bum, little guy!

Job update

Well, Monday was the interview with the director of Yejj, and overall it went very well. I think there's a good chance that I will wind up doing a bit of teaching for them, and probably a bit of consulting with some of their clients as well. The money we talked about was even quite good, at least by Cambodian standards. He clearly is impressed by my credentials, and I don't think I looked like an idiot in the interview either.

Now is the hard part. He's got a million things going on, and I have just the kids. I check my e-mail constantly. I have no idea when exactly I'll hear more, so I just want to know NOW. Ugh. Oh well, I'll keep you posted.

Early Morning Self Portrait

Ben Photo Gallery

There were a plethora of Ellie photos recently and I've gotten several requests for more Ben pics. I'm happy to provide them, but let me add a comment here from my guilty conscience. It may seem like Ellie gets more coverage in the blog, but trust us, that's not because we love her more. She's just at this age where she does so many cute things. Now, don't get me wrong, Ben is also adorable. But Ellie is the one who puts on silly hats, had her second birthday and first day of school in the same weekend, and told us tonight at dinner, "You're driving me nuts, Mom!" (She also grabbed Ben's hand and pumped it up and down saying "Nice meet you, Ben.") For now, Ben plays on the floor, puts toys in his mouth, and blabbers. It's adorable, but just doesn't make for a great vignette or photo the way some of Ellie's antics do. But I'm sure he'll be stiff competition for Ellie in a few months...

So, with no further ado, some Ben shots...

"Don't Make the Voices Go Away"

This is what Ed said to me the other afternoon. He may be suffering from child-induced schizophrenia, but in this instance he was actually referring to the voices of NPR. Yes, NPR, all the way out here in sleepy Cambodia. Thanks to a WorldSpace Radio (thanks, Beth and Dick!), a subscription, and some wireless speakers, we now have NPR. Ed is beyond excited. When we finally got the password needed to use the radio, he bounded out of the computer room and lunged for the radio. I think the last time he was so happy was Ben's birth--and NPR requires no night time feedings.

We get the NPR feed mostly live, which means Morning Edition in the evening (it's wierd winding down to their pep-you-up music), All Things Considered in the morning, and then ATC again in the afternoon. Which is a lot of ATC. Which is why Ed said not to make the voices go away. He thinks they're soothing, even if he has heard the show four times already.