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.

At last...

Some photos from our recent visit to the US!

Ellie loves helmets, and somehow managed to convince Grandma Phyllis to take the big one, while reserving the more modest bike helmet for herself.


Ben enjoyed browsing in the market.

While in Albert Lea, we went to vist great-grandpa Earl every day. He and Ellie got along extremely well, as you can see here.

We also made ice cream and


blew bubbles.

Finally, we all enjoyed the ability to go for a walk without melting. Here's my favorite walking shot to close off the post.

Not so smug anymore

Cambodia has a big problem with corruption. Not a few corrupt officials here and there, but a whole society based on the rich and powerful getting away with things that they really shouldn't. Cambodia debuted on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index this year at an appalling 130 out of 159 countries. So as an expat, it's easy to feel rather cynical about Cambodian society and rather smug about the relative fairness and transparency in the good ol' USA.

Or, at least, it was. What's been happening to corruption in the US lately? From halfway around the world, it seems like there's been an explosion of bribery, paybacks, and fraud lately. First there was Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, then the conviction of former Illinois governor George Ryan seemed to indict not just the governor, but the entire state's style of politics. After getting used to the easy availability of fake IDs and other papers in Mexico and Cambodia, I caught a disturbing story on NPR about how easy it is to get fakes in Los Angeles. And this morning I read that current Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher has been indicted as well.

What is going on here? Seems like the land of the free and the home of the brave has been turned in to the land of the free to line your own pockets and the home of the bravely offering bribes and accepting paybacks.

A pretty good day

I know that you are all hoping for photos, but those will have to wait for tomorrow, I'm afraid. I just needed to write about my day today. First of all, I got a job this morning. Some high-end consulting with Yejj, the company I wrote about months ago. The owner/founder contacted me a week or two ago with a slightly new proposal, and today we met and talked details. I need to get official approval from the embassy, and they need to write a contract specifying the things we talked about, but I think I'll be starting in a week. The basic deal is around 20 hours or less a week, a decent hourly rate, and interesting work for some very good organizations. You can check out the web site for the specific places, if you care.

A few hours later, Jen came home with the possibility of a contract with the ILO doing some interesting software work for them, very short term, but it could be a good deal. So I now have more work on offer than I have time for.

For dinner this evening we had bratwurst and kraut. We visited our local German butcher, and he turns out to be a really great guy, very friendly, and he makes excellent brats. We can get canned kraut at Lucky Market, so we are all set. Jen also enjoyed a glass of wine (I of course had beer with the brats) from our new wine store, a little shop that is even thinking about working out a way to get diplomats wine duty free. A good way to learn about wine, good fresh sausages now and again, and some friendly folks to enjoy them with. What more could we ask for?

Goings On

It's been a busy week around here--or rather, I continue to be amazed at how personal time vanishes once you have kids, so every week feels like a busy week. We still haven't posted photos from our trip to the US, but I'm going to leave that for Ed to do when he has a chance.

Ben is now so good at walking that it's tough to get him to sit down. He loves to play chase. He also has developed a real obsession with using silverware to eat, and often tries to feed himself with a spoon in each hand. And sometimes he insists on using our spoons, too. He also likes to smear food in his hair, which means that he often gets an extra shampoo after meals. I think he's taken training in baby passive resistance. He's learned to go limp when you pick him up so he's harder to carry. Send him out to the protest!

Ellie had a tummy bug this weekend but seems to be over it now. She's doing really well in her swimming lessons and this week even put her head under water--a real accomplishment for a child who has been a waterphobe from the start.

She's given us some real zingers lately...She's created a new category of parent--"best mom" and "best dad"--which are similar to a best friend we think, though we're not sure who the competition is in either category. When she likes you, she'll say "You're my best mom". She just went through a mommy phase, which meant that Nathan was getting a bit of a cold shoulder. Sometimes she would tell him "You're not my best dad, but you're still my dad." Once she even told him, "You're not my dad." Ouch. But Nathan just laughed it off. And yesterday when I came home for lunch, the first thing she told me was "I want you to get hit by a bus." Apparently they were playing a game where you got hit by a plastic bus and fell to the ground. Then Dr. Ellie fixed you up using the therapeutic laying on of lego.

Nathan made his acting debut yesterday by volunteering to do a voice over for an Oxfam video yesterday. He also is going to to talk to the consulting folks tomorrow about doing some consulting for them. Work has slowed down a bit for me, which means that it's just busy instead of super busy. A nice change, really.

Jetlag Blues

I just got a very sweet email from our friends Alex and Charmagne in Saudi Arabia checking in with us since we haven't posted for a looong time. Well, as those of you descended from the Spande or Pleuss bloodlines know, we've just returned from nearly a month in the US. We had been planning to go back in July, but Nathan's grandmother was very ill and so we decided to move our trip up. Nathan and Ellie left on Monday, March 27 and went directly to Albert Lea. Ben and I stayed an extra five days so I wouldn't have to take so much time off work, and we left on Saturday, April 1 and met Nathan and Ellie in Madison.

As it turned out, Nathan just missed seeing his grandmother one last time. She died while he was en route to the US. But he was able to attend her funeral and to lend emotional support to his dad and grandfather. Everyone really appreciated having Nathan around, though perhaps they appreciated the comic relief and distraction provided by Elena even more. Halfway through the funeral, the pastor stood up and approached the pulpit to deliver the sermon and Ellie said in a very loud voice, "Is that guy going to talk again?" leading to some much-needed laughter in the family pews.

Ben and I had a terrible time getting to the US. He caught a stomach bug just before we got on the plane, and managed to throw up on all but one of our four flights. He didn't sleep hardly at all on our overnight at Bangkok, and the one-bedroom suite I had booked for that night got mistranslated into a regular hotel room. Not wanting to turn on the lights while he was failing to fall asleep, I ended up eating my room service dinner in the bathroom with the plate balanced on the lid of the toilet. Then at 3:40 am, it was time to get up, get packed, discover that Ben had a fever of 103, and leave the hotel by 4:30 am to make our 6:40 am flight. Ben cried the whole way in the cab, while the cabbie refused to use his meter and tried to get me to pay double to normal fare. The city was dark, the streets were abandoned, and I thought that the route he was taking looked like the way to the airport, but I wasn't certain. I held my ground and he eventually turned on the meter--losing out on the cash he would have earned had the meter been on from the beginning.

At the airport, I struggled to push a luggage cart and stroller simultaneously while Ben fussed and refused to sleep. After check in we paced the terminal in hopes that the motion of the stroller would lull him to sleep. It did, finally....about 10 minutes before boarding. We were able to pre-board and I found a friendly gate agent who agreed to keep an eye on Ben at the jetway for a minute so I could install his car seat and then transfer a hopefully still sleeping Ben into his seat. But when I came back to get Ben two minutes later, the gate agent was gone, the stroller was gone, and Ben was gone. It felt like a seen from a movie. When it sunk in a few seconds later that this was real, I was of course rather upset, and the poor Thai flight attendants were completely at a loss as to what to do with this western woman showing so much emotion and speaking so quickly. Fortunately, a very nice American flight attendant stepped in and led me to Ben, who was right where I left him--on the other jetway that led to our plane.

The rest of the flight was less eventful (well, aside from Ben periodically getting sick). I'm not usually a worrier, but the combination of sick child, lack of sleep and long journey had me concerned. Ben still had a fever, was completely lethargic, and was having trouble keeping even liquids down. I really wondered if I shouldn't stop in some city and have him looked at by a doctor. But fortunately I met a wonderful nurse from Wisconsin who was on both our Bangkok-Tokyo and Tokyo-Chicago flights, and she reassured me that he would be fine for the rest of our trip. So we arrived, cranky, two hours late, exhausted, and with Ben still sick, in Madison. Things could only get better.

We have lots of photos from our time in Wisconsin and Minnesota that we'll try to post in the next few days, so I'll save those stories for later. Suffice it to say it was a very busy time packed with visits to family (the kids saw 4 grandparents, 3 aunts/uncles, 3 great-grandparents, 14 great-aunt/uncles, and 9 cousins by my count), shopping, and lots of time at playgrounds and other kid destinations.

Now we're back. The flight back was not terrible, but I've learned that the harder part comes in adjusting to the jetlag. Nathan is like an anti-jetlag superhero. He can will himself awake until a normal bedtime, get up with the kids if necessary, and fall asleep whenever he needs to. For the first four nights back in Cambodia, Ben and Ellie would take long naps in the afternoon, be really tough to wake up, fall asleep at dinner, and then wake up at about 3am. I was usually up anyway, having my own jet lag issues, so I rebuffed most of Nathan's offers to watch the kids and stayed up with them myself. Last night they finally slept until 5:30am, and just woke up at 5:30 today. Close enough to normal. Hopefully that last hour of sleep will come this week. Now, if I could just get on a normal schedule! After staying up until 9:30pm for the first time since we returned, I woke up just before 3 and haven't been able to get back to sleep. Argh!

Big Talkers

Before you become a parent, you think that a baby's first word is pretty cut and dried. One day the baby is babbling, the next day the baby looks up at you with a big smile and a chubby pointer finger and says "mama". Case closed. The truth is more complicated. For weeks, Ben has been saying "arf" when he sees a dog...or a cat...or an elephant...or basically any reasonably sized mammal. A week or so ago, he also really got the "uh-oh" concept and started throwing things on the ground so he could say "uh-oh". (This was also Ellie's first "word". Should we be worried that these kids start by talking about destruction?) Do those count as first words? I don't know. However, for the past few days Ben has been saying "ball" and he clearly knows what it means, so I think we can unequivocally say that he is talking.

Ellie, meanwhile, is a little sponge with an enormous vocabulary. Give her two more years and she'll blow the lid off the SATs (but still probably be afraid to walk in a puddle and intimidated by big goldfish in a pond...go figure.) Today we had NPR on, as always, and there was a story about how Democrats are coming up with more nuanced positions on abortion to capture moderate voters. Ellie caught on to one particularly juicy quote and repeated back to me "baby holocaust". Great, 20% of U.S. pregnancies end in abortion and now my daughter can tell you it's a "baby holocaust". And I thought sex would be tough to explain...here I was facing abortion and the holocaust in 2 year old terms??? Fortunately, she seemed pretty content to repeat the phrase a few times and not worry what it meant. Now, if only she'll forget that phrase as quickly as she learned it...

Bangkok

So, part two of our trip to Thailand was about five days in Bangkok. Everyone raves about Bangkok, and we've never really understood what the big deal is. Granted, our first time through we were completely jetlagged and grumpy and not at all excited about exploring. This time, we came with a considerably better mindset and enjoyed ourselves far more. The Thais really are friendly, wonderful people (just like Cambodians, I might add), the food is terrific, you can find any sort of food, clothing, or other item for purchase, and they have great entertainment options. But despite these attractions, it still can't hold a candle to Phnom Penh in our minds. Give us our small city with its short commutes, big housing, and small and friendly expat community over the polluted, clogged, busy, and mall-laden Bangkok anyday!

Chez Doyle
Over the weekend, we stayed with our friends Andrea and Chris Doyle and their son Max. Andrea was in Khmer language training with Nathan and me, but she uses her Khmer skills in Bangkok doing Cambodian immigrant visa applications. (Cambodians have to travel to Bangkok to apply for immigrant visas...don't ask why.) While Chris and Andrea love Bangkok, we're all disappointed that we're not in the same city since we really hit it off during training. But we had a nice time catching up over the weekend. And Ellie and Ben really loved being in a bigger space with some toys. Max, who is 1 1/2, loved having some other kids around to play with.


Grand Palace
The must-see tourist attraction in Bangkok is the Grand Palace, a complex of buildings including the ornate former royal palace, Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), and other elaborately constructed and decorated buildings.

The sites were really impressive, but the experience was somewhat lessened by the heat, throngs of people, and rather impatient children. Touring the Grand Palace was the only adult-oriented thing we were going to do all day, and I desperately wanted to get the audio guide so I could really learn about what we were seeing, but with two kids in tow I knew that I'd never be able to listen to enough of it to make it worthwhile. Good news is while we may not make it back to Chiang Mai, Bangkok is such a hub for everything here that we'll almost certainly spend more time there at another point.


Dusit Park
This lovely, manicured park seemed practically abandoned when compared to our experience at the Grand Palace the day before. I got to take a tour of the Teak Mansion while Nathan fed the kids a snack, and we all wandered around the grounds. One hidden gem was the exhibit of the King's photography. He is really quite talented, and seeing pictures of his young family from the 1960s was like seeing the Thai version of the Kennedys. We ended our time at Dusit Park by walking through the beautiful former Parliament hall, pictured below.


Travellin' in Style
As we schlepped around Bangkok in the tropical heat (note to readers: March is not the best time of year to visit Thailand) our kids remained cool and aloof. Ben relaxed under his sun shade while Mommy and Daddy hoisted his stroller up and down stairs, through turnstiles, up and down impossibly tall and narrow sidewalks...and that was in the parks! Trying to use the Sky Train and a stroller to get around town proved to be impossible, and we resorted to cheap but very long (due to bad traffic) taxi rides.

Ellie, meanwhile, was Joe Cool in her hat and shades "you don't know me" look...


Lumpini Park
Our last stop was Lumpini Park, the "Central Park" of Bangkok. (This, by the way, is one of those terribly overused travelogue cliches for any large park in the middle of a big city, just as any big city with culture and good food becomes "The Paris of.." and any metropolis with a canal system is "The Venice of...". Forgive me.) Lumpini offers a pretty lake, some paved walking trails with occassional shade, and a nice (but hot!) playground funded in part by the Rotary Club of Brooklyn Park, MN. Thanks, Rotarians! I think this was the first time Ben got to play on a real, US-style playground, and he had a blast.

Chiang Mai

We spent the first five days of our Thailand vacation in Chiang Mai, a great small city in northern Thailand. Chiang Mai was built as a walled city in 1296, and the center of the city is still surrounded by a wall and moat. Historically, Chiang Mai was an important stop on the trade route from southern China to the Burmese port of Moulmein, and today it boasts one of Asia's largest outdoor markets.

I think Nathan and I have both come to the conclusion that we're small city people, and Chiang Mai had great restaurants and terrific things to do while still being very manageable in terms of traffic, travel time, etc. There's a US consulate in Chiang Mai, and I had a chance to meet the Consul General (ie head) at a conference in September. Bea Camp, I want your job someday! (Unfortunately, so do lots of other foreign service officers!)

Wat Prathat Doi Suthep

On of the north's most sacred temples, this wat was established in the 14th century on a mountain about 16km outside of Chiang Mai. According to legend, the temple site was chosen by an elephant carrying a holy relic. Originally the relic was to be enshrined elsewhere, but it split in two. The second piece was placed on the back of an elephant which proceeded to climb Doi Suthep mountain, stopping twice. After three days the elephant finally reached a level piece of ground, circled three times, knelt down and then died. A hole was dug at the site for the relic, which was then covered with a chedi (stupa) over seven meters in height.




Wat Phra Singh

There are 300 temples in Chiang Mai--almost as many as in far bigger Bangkok. One of the most impressive of the temples within the old city is Wat Phra Singh, which dates from the 14th century and is a perfect example of the northern Thai Lanna style of architecture.


Chiang Mai Zoo

Well, you can only spend so much time looking at temples, particularly when you're travelling with two kids under three. So we deviated from the standard tourist route and went to the Chiang Mai zoo. The zoo itself was great, but on a Monday it was virtually empty and the bus system ran so rarely as to be an impractical way to get around. So we pushed/backpacked the kids throughout the hilly and step-filled zoo in the 90 degree heat. It was frustrating for us (particularly when we got lost at the end and just wanted to get out!) and we saw less than we would have otherwise. Still, it was a fun morning and the kids loved seeing all the animals, especially the pandas.


Many kids give up their morning nap at around 12 months, and just nap in the afternoon. We were really hoping that Ben would be able to do this on our vacation, because it would make getting around a bit easier to schedule. The zoo trip was our first of many indications that Ben just wasn't ready to give up his morning beauty sleep.


River Cruise and Orchard Visit

One morning we took a lovely short cruise down the Mae Nam Ping river. It was a relaxing way to get a new look at the Chiang Mai area and to give our aching muscles a rest at the same time. About 45 minutes outside the city, we stopped at an orchard for a tour and a snack. Our city kids loved seeing how food is grown and then chowing down on some delicious fruit and juice.



Around Town

Some of the highlights of our time in Chiang Mai were the small things that don't make it on to postcards. In one day, Nathan managed to both enjoy a coffee and a book at Starbucks and eat Haagen Dazs. I got two massages in one day--a half hour foot/leg massage in a public park that only cost $1, and my first Thai massage, complete with legs bending at improbable angles and the masseuse walking on my back. The kids got to go swimming several times and to play at an outdoor playground. And we got lots of naps. For Ellie, just taking a tuk tuk to and from our destinations was an adventure.

While we enjoyed some great Thai food, what really had Nathan and I head over heels was amazing middle eastern food at Jerusalem Falafel. After all, there are lots of places in Phnom Penh that have good Thai food, but where can we get homemade pita, hummus, or baba ganoush? I'm ready to declare their falafel the best I've ever had, and Ben loved the hummus...and covered himself in it. Maybe it's good for the skin?

Well, there's the run down on Chiang Mai. If you've made it this far, you must either be family or have some big project you're trying really hard to avoid. Anyone willing to admit to income tax procrastination? Either way, it's nice to have you with us. We'll have pics of Bangkok up when we get a chance.

Trip to Tonle Bati

Well, it's been about 2 1/2 weeks since our last post and I'm sure some of you are really dying for more kid pics...I mean, looking forward to news and photos about the whole family. We just got back from a 10 day trip to Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Thailand. We had a good time, though now I understand why every other family with small kids just goes to the beach on vacation. After you get through 3 meals, 2 snacks, numerous diaper changes, 1-2 naps, slathering on sunscreen, and a temper tantrum or two, there is just isn't a lot of time to see stuff. But we did manage to do about one big thing each day, and we spent the weekend in Bangkok with some Foreign Service friends. I hope that Ed or I will have a posting about it up over the weekend.

But, here are some pics from before the Thailand trip. We went to visit Tonle Bati, the site of some ancient Khmer temples and a nice spot for a picnic lunch, on Feb. 19th. We went with our friends, Daniel and Susie and their son, Lucca, and with our "adopted" Marine, Mark. Here are some pics:

This is the Yeay Peau temple--artifact of a strange Oedipal temple-building legend. According to legend, when a young boy named Prohm discovered that his father was the king, he left his mother, Peau, to go live with his dad. Years later, he ran into his mother again but did not recognize her. Struck by her beauty, he insisted that she marry him and didn't believe her protests that she was his mother. To settle the matter, they decided to have a temple building contest. During the course of one night, the men would help Prohm build a temple while the women would help Peau build a competing temple. After many hours of temple building, the women tricked the men into thinking that the night had ended by sending an artificial morning star into the sky. Exhausted, the men went to sleep thinking it was dawn, while the women kept working and won the contest. Prohm admitted his defeat and gave up his attempt to marry Peau.

Detail from the temple

Susie, Daniel, and Lucca. Lucca was being rather difficult, so if they all look a little frazzled, we've captured the moment.

Mark with the kids. Despite his protestations that hanging out with us is good birth control, Mark is really great with the kids.

Jen's trip to Western Cambodia

At the beginning of the month, I took a work trip to the western Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Banteay Meanchey. Battambang province is home to Cambodia's second largest city, also named Battambang, and seems like a lovely town from my quick stop there. This old and stately building housed the provincial state capital.



Poipet, which is the largest town in Banteay Meanchey province, and has been described as "the armpit of Cambodia" is a more interesting if less attractive city. Poipet sits right on the Thai-Cambodian border, and ten years ago was nothing more than a dusty border crossing. Today, however, it's a quickly growing casino town, boasting nine places where Thai visitors can lose their money to the house. (With few exceptions, gambling is illegal in Thailand, so Poipet is very popular with Thais who make the 2 1/2 hour trip from Bangkok.) There's a 3 or 4 block area where the glitzy casinos with their manicured lawns look like something out of suburban America.


This quickly gives way to a more middle-class Cambodian sort of feel...



and within blocks from the casinos the city has transformed itself into a large slum.

I met with the governor of Banteay Meanchey during my visit, and he described Poipet as "heaven for the rich and hell for the poor". It certainly seems like an apt description to me. Poipet attracts tons of economic migrants, many hoping to land well-paying jobs in the casinos. Most, however, end up barely eking by. These two work as porters, ferrying goods across the border to the market just on the Thai side of the border.

Poipet is home to many poor and vulnerable children. Part of my portfolio is looking after US-funded programs to end child labor, so I did a bit of checking into the situation of working children in Poipet. Local government officials took us under the bridge spanning the Thai-Cambodian border, where we found these homeless children.



We also saw many children, like this boy, who work as child porters--smuggling clothing and other goods across the Thai border so sellers in Thailand can avoid paying customs duties on the clothes. A typical child porter might walk 12 miles a day just to earn $1.50, and if he is caught and fined by the police, he will be forced to pay many days' wages as a punishment for his illegal activity. Despite the risk of fines, child porters operate openly and we saw many children ferrying clothing back and forth along the banks of the river separating the two countries.


Perhaps saddest of all are the children who have been trafficked into Thailand to work as street beggars or street vendors of gum, candy, and flowers. Some are knowingly sold by desperate parents who can not feed their families, others are turned over to traffickers after parents are tricked into thinking that they will be given a better life by a good Samaritan. And some are kidnapped. In Thailand, they sleep on the streets of Bangkok and are controlled by organized gangs, who take their earnings.

This girl was trafficked into Thailand to work as a street beggar, but was deported by the Thai police and taken in by a local shelter for trafficked children called Damnoek Toek, which is partially funded by the US Deparment of Labor. Unfortunately, there are far more children who are repatriated to Cambodia than Damnoek Toek can accomodate. Few social services are available to repatriated children, and many end up living under the bridge or being re-trafficked into Thailand.

Uncle Larry comes for a visit

One of the great things about the Foreign Service is that you just keep running into people, sometimes in the most seemingly random and out-of-the-way posts. Some of you may have met Larry Blackburn, a good friend of ours who was with us in Mexico. He and I did language training together in DC, and arrived within a few months of each other in Mexico. We then proceeded to have lunch three or four times a week, go to movies together, and just generally hang out a lot. When Ellie was born, he just very naturally became Uncle Larry.

He has been in a bit longer than Jen, and wound up retiring out of Mexico. Despite that, he then went on to get a job with State in DC, working in the section that manages all of the overseas properties of State. He's now the DC guy in charge of things in much of SE Asia, and as part of that he gets to travel here on your nickels. He did just that, arriving Feb 13th, and spending both the evenings of the 13th and 14th with us. It was great to see him again, and the kids just loved him. Well, at least on the 14th they did. We had a bit of a Daddy error on the 13th, which wound up meaning that both kids were not adequately napped on the 13th, which of course is never, ever, ever a good thing. So Ellie had a 20 minute fit, and Ben was just a bit sleepy and grumpy. But Larry is such a good friend, he came back the next night. Or maybe he just didn't have any better offers...

Enough chatter - here's the photo.

Ben's Belated Birthday

On Saturday, Feb. 11--three days after the actual event--we finally celebrated Ben's first birthday. Ben's birthday fell in the middle of everyone being sick, and Ben himself was on a water-only diet on Feb. 8, so delaying the celebration wasn't a decision we had to think too hard about.

We had originally talked about hosting a play date with some of the other one year olds, but given that we were all just getting over being sick and Ben's expectations around his birthday were pretty low, we decided to skip it and just keep this a family celebration. We had cake Saturday night, which Ben enjoyed immensely.


And, just as you're supposed to do on your birthday, Ben managed to get frosting and cake in his hair and all over his hands and got an unscheduled bath.


We opened gifts on Sunday morning, and opened a few more during the week as they arrived. Thanks to everyone for the nice gifts! We'll send thank yous individually.

Ben keeps getting closer and closer to walking. Now instead of relying on tables and other horizontal objects, he can put both hands on a wall and follow it around. He can also walk just holding one hand with mommy or daddy, but this is still quite shaky. And he now has three teeth. He also loves putting small items into a container and taking them out again, and clearing surfaces (eg dumping all the papers on the coffeetable to the floor, pulling all the books off the shelf). We're hoping that soon he develops a real passion for dusting, vacuuming, and doing our taxes.

Opiods for Elena

One of the great things about toddlers is that they learn to repeat exactly what you say. When she was sick, Nathan and I would discuss whether Ellie needed ibuprofen. She quickly learned to say "I-bee-pro-fen" because she loves the taste of the children's version so much she learned to ask for it by name.

In some ways toddlers serve as your mirror--showing you what you're really doing instead of what your intentions are. I knew we had given up on the absolutely no TV rule, for example, when a few months ago Ellie started asking, "Watch lilbit TV?" That's clearly adult rationalization speak for "A little TV won't hurt you if it keeps me from going crazy!" She's also very good at "No, Ben!" and "That's your big sister's water". (Ben likes to grab Ellie's sippy cup.)

Similarly, Ellie has started adapting the sympathetic parental language we use on her when she has trouble sleeping. When she woke up in the middle of the night, we'd sometimes say, "Do you need some cuddles?" Now when she wakes up, she'll sometimes tell us that she needs cuddles. A few weeks ago she also started waking up and asking for morphine, which was pretty darn puzzling. We were really quite certain that wasn't a word we had ever used around her. It's just not something that comes up in every day family conversation. A few nights later we figured out that she was just copying us again, and what she was actually saying was that she needed "more luvin'", just with a two-year-old's accent.

Job update

It has been a while since I've mentioned anything about this whole job thing, and I've gotten several queries, so here's an update for you all.

The company/NGO I was talking to initially seems to have lost interest, since I never was able to get anything from them more than a "we're interested, but haven't had time to do anything about it". I've more or less written them off.

The place I've been doing my Cisco exams, a private university here, has expressed some interest in having me teach said Cisco stuff for them, but at the moment it seems like they don't actually have specific plans for a course, so I'm not going to hold my breath. They asked if they could call me if they get a course together, so I said sure, but again, I'm not counting on it.

I am actually doing some somewhat interesting odd jobs for the embassy now. I did a short article for the State Department's magazine, which should be published in the Feb. issue. I also am redesigning the internal website, which has turned into a project that allows me to develop some web skills. Not my main interest, but not a bad set of skills to have. I'm also coordinating the revision of our emergency action plan, which is the document describing what we do if various Really Bad Things happen. That lets me put my natural tendency to think about the worst possible scenario to use, in a way that is useful to others rather than a frustration to them. So that's not too shabby. This deal with the embassy is pretty good, actually. I get to accept any project I want, decline anything I don't want, and I get paid an American hourly wage. With the exception of some parts of the emergency action plan, I even get to work at home if I want to.

Which brings me to the final bit of job news. I worked one morning at the embassy a while ago, and hated it. I felt awful the whole time I was there, since I was missing out on my Ben time. I went while Ellie was in school, which is the only time I have to be really totally engaged with Ben. I just couldn't help feeling that the work I was doing was not nearly as good as being with Ben. So I've decided to just not look for work right now. I have as much as I want from the embassy, perhaps more, and I think spending time with Ellie and Ben is just what I need to do now.

Plague house

Daddy is at the very end of his rope today. This is my third week of dealing with sick family and staff, and I am exhausted. It all started with a cold, which Ellie probably picked up from somebody at school. Runny nose, a bit of a cough, no big deal. Ellie started it, Ben got it, I got it, and somehow Jen seemed to be avoiding it. That wasn't so hard, I just napped when they did, which isn't a real hardship, and life went on. Then at some point, it got really nasty, and Ellie stayed home from school, since she was running a bit of a fever, and we didn't want it to spread any more. Then Jen went on a trip, during the worst of the colds for the three of us, and Somany got the darn thing also. She was going home early for a few days, then she stayed home for a few days, while Jen was away. Talk about timing, huh?

Jen returned, and of course immediately started coming down with the worst of the cold as well. Ellie at least had gotten over the thing by then, and I was well on my way out of it. Ben was still sniffly, but he didn't seem to mind so much. Then... we went out to eat on Saturday, and when we came home Jen had an upset stomach. That night she and I both had really unpleasant stomach issues, lasting well into Sunday for her. We attributed it to something at the restaurant, until we learned that friends of ours were all getting something similar. Jen stayed home on Monday, and at 3AM Tuesday Ellie called loudly "my tummy hurts". Sure enough, within a half hour we were comforting her and cleaning up. Around 8AM it got Ben, although he seemed more or less over it by around 11AM. Jen had mercy on me and stayed home to help care for the munchkins, Ellie recovered pretty well, and today (Wednesday) she is seeming perfectly healthy. Ben is another story. Since today is his birthday (little guy turned one!) he decided to develop a fever and maintain nasty stomach issues. He celebrated by sleeping nearly all day, sometimes on Daddy and sometimes in the crib. We also watched the Muppets a bit, which may have helped him out. That's unclear. Tonight he seems to be on the mend, at least a bit, but birthday celebrations have been postponed until cake is kind rather than cruel.

At the moment the status of all family and staff is:
Mommy - sick, on the mend, back at work
Daddy - physically healthy, mentally exhausted
Ellie - healthy, back to school tomorrow
Ben - sick, to the doctor tomorrow if he's not significantly better
Sinen - sick, stomach bug, didn't work today
Somany - sick, cold bug, left early today

I'm actually looking forward to doing our taxes, as a bit of a stress reliever. Sad, huh?