Hello, wonderful friends and family!
Man, the days are running together already…or maybe that’s because I’m as far off my internal clock as I could be! I do know that I boarded a plane in Houston on Thursday afternoon, made a pit stop in Moscow some twelve hours later, arrived in Singapore twelve or so hours after that, and finally landed with all my luggage in my possession, unscathed, and intact (!!!) Saturday morning (local time) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. With the help of some very friendly conversations and massive amounts of really bad airplane coffee, I actually made it through 30 hours of traveling with only a couple hours’ sleep. Whew! Now that’s what I call grace. :)
So, here I am sitting in my own apartment in Phnom Penh at the beginning of my third full day in-country, seriously jet-lagged but already full of stories after just a weekend in Cambodia. However, since I’m still having a little trouble constructing coherent sentences, I think the best way (as usual) to share my first impressions of Cambodia is with a “You know you’re in _____ when…” list of fabulously vague events and insights. So hold tight to your chopsticks, and I hope you enjoy a whirlwind tour of halfway across the world (without the inconvenient day of travel).
You know you’re in Cambodia when…
1) Seeing cowboy hats in international airports makes you tear up (or is that because I’m so tired?) and gives you immeasurable quantities of warm and fuzzy feelings.
2) Your plane knows how far it’s taking you, so it assumes you’ll run out of iPod, Kindle, and laptop battery – and provides you with outlets to charge all three. Ah yes, it’ll teach you forty languages as well. Hey, you’ve got time.
3) Signs have all these pretty loopy designs on them…oh wait, that’s Khmer.
4) You start to make way too many comparisons between the capital city to the jungle town of Iquitos, Peru.
5) The tallest structure in all Cambodia currently under construction will be a whopping 42 stories.
6) A cup of coffee means three shots of espresso with an inch of sweetened condensed milk. Ah, and the beans are roasted in lard to give it a chocolatey flavor as well. Hey, it does the trick.
7) You “catch” a mouse downstairs on your first morning in your new apartment.
8) You can get an hour and a half massage plus a full hour of steam for $12.
9) “Hair washing” is normal – only $2 per head.
10) You meet the KING OF THE MONKS when you visit a Wat (Buddhist temple) on your first Sunday here. (No, really, he’s like the pope of all monks – we even saw him get into his equivalent pope-mobile! YES, I have evidence – pictures to come!)
11) Beans are made into a sweet soup that’s served as dessert.
12) Wedding tents take up literally half the street, and they last for three days.
12) You try for the first time a fruit that’s banned in most hotels and hospitals in Southeast Asia: “durian.” Its scent is described in a multitude of very appetizing ways…smelly socks soaked in turpentine, old vomit mixed with tobacco…understandably, I’m not a huge fan!
A more detailed description of what I’ll be doing here for the next four months, who I’ll be working with, and what God’s doing in Cambodia to come! In the meantime, enjoy your week and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!!!!!
Many blessings,
Stephanie
