Today we are all adjusted to the time change for the most part which is a big hurdle. The last several days some of us would wake up early and some of us would sleep longer.
This day we went to some village homes to visit and spend time getting to know the families of some of the students here. Our first stop in the morning was the family of a little boy in the Kindergarten class. We all went out with Joshua and Sothee who translated for us. I took some pictures along the way of the village but did not take any at the house or of the family out of respect.
Here are the couple houses across from the Heart for Wisdom School that is run by the orphanage. We stopped here to pick up Sothee. You can't see in but there is no front wall. These are the simplest three walled structures with a few raised wooden platforms for sitting and eating on. Lots of hammocks are hung for sleeping and napping.
This is a scene from driving on the main road in the village. It never really expressed what it's like. Basically it's a free for all on the road. The bigger vehicle gets the right of way, you use the horn to tell the smaller vehicles that you are coming and they need to get out of the way. People walk along with bicycles, and motos transporting more than 3x their size of goods, animals or whole families. And we don't use seatbelts.
At our first home visit, there was a woman who has 4 sons and her husband. The oldest son is in University, the second son who is in the 8th grade was home using an old stone hand rice grinder. She had said he isn't doing that well in school. Here, if a student doesn't pass the 8th grade national exam they usually drop out and go to work in the factories. Many factories have moved in to use the cheap labor of the poor people here. These are factories of name brand clothes and shoes that we buy for exorbitant prices in the States. The workers are loaded onto a truck in the mornings and work for about $150 a month. They work 5-6 days a week and are still just trying to keep food on the table of their 3 sided houses. We invited her to church and prayed for them. Kit will keep contact and make multiple visits to build a relationship and support for the family.
The woman has two younger sons. The youngest is 7 and in Kindergarten at this school. However when we asked him how old he was he didn't know. The other thing common to Cambodia's poor is that they don't know when their birthday is. They might know a season but not the month or day. The second youngest son who was 12 does not go to school. He helps around the house and helps to take care of the youngest brother. The woman sells snacks from her bicycle around town every day to pay for food and the youngest son's schooling. Her husband sells manure and also sets up tents for weddings sometimes, sort of like a handyman. They also had a pig as big as a small car! It was huge!
We visited for a while and we told the youngest that we would visit him at his class in the school. So later in the afternoon we went over to see if we could find him in his classroom. He was waiting with some friends, hanging out the window and as soon as he saw us step out onto the grass he was yelling "Hello". This is the little man!
And of course, we went back for their play time :) Took more pictures which they love, and played patty-cake again.
These barns and storage sheds sit on the back corner of the Orphanage property. Their total property is 2 acres.
This is a view from the top of the guest house to the corner where the barns and sheds are in location to the younger school. All the animals have free roam of the property. The chickens, ducks, dogs. They do have a few bunnies in the barn where the girls are standing. They have some pigs in pens across the street in a neighbor's yard and two cows that stay in the barn until feeding time in the evening.
This is a picture of the Orphanage building and the guest house where we are staying is to the right of it behind the palm trees. The first floor is completed with ability to build a second. The guy's side can house 10 and the girl's side can house 10 in the guest house.
The main Orphanage building has the three floors. The bottom floor has the kitchen, the main gathering room where the kids eat, meet, play games, do homework, have parties, etc and an apartment for another missionary family. The second floor is the dorms for the guys and girls at the orphanage. The top floor is Kit and Ream's house/apartment.
This is the inside of our guest house. It is very nice! They have done a great job giving it everything that a team would need. This is the kitchen.
And this is the main bunk room. You can see the kitchen part in the background in this one. And this picture cracks me up because of the fun loving group in the foreground and then obviously I made Alfven and Joseph stop something for the picture and they posed :)
This year we go down and eat in the room with the kids for the meals. It's fun to be with them but it's interesting because we get much finer food than the kids. They have a lot of rice with vegetables in big pots. We have meat on our platters. We also have fresh fruit. Last night the littles guy, Dara came over and sat at our table after everyone had left. We were still visiting and nibbling on the Muncuot which is the purple skinned fruit with green stem in the picture. Dara joined us and I peeled them and he ate them, one after another. It was so cute! He seems to seek us out a lot. He enjoys seeing the pictures in the blog too :)
After lunch came the Pringle Wars! We had bought two canisters in the city after our flight, then when we arrived Kit had some more canisters on the fridge. Well, we were down to our last canister and Benjamin started doing the math on how many days we have left and then the ruckus began! It was a brawl but in the end Alfven won and ate his Pringles before passing the others out!
In the afternoon we did another home visit. This time we went to the house of a 1st Grade girl who lives with her mother, younger sister and grandparents. Her father died a few months ago. The uncle was also staying there and while he was recovering from a moto accident. He was in a neck brace with spinal injuries. He used to work at a factory but can't any longer. The mother works at a shoe factory to support the family. She shaved her hair off as is the Buddhist custom of grieving and it was starting to grow back. We had a nice visit and enjoyed getting to know them. This was actually the schools second visit to the home. We prayed for them and asked if they had any needs we could help with. We invited them to church. The uncle said that he had gone to church many years ago but had gotten out of the habit. The mother was very happy with her daughters education at the school.
When we got back it was chore time as the kids returned from school. Benjamin helped to burn the trash. There is no trash pick up here. That is a huge problem. As you move around the village there is trash piled up in yards and along the roads. Here they burn the trash in the back. There is also a young lady who recycles the bottles and cans so that she can put herself through school. So there is an extra collection for that.
This is one of the cows that gets taken to the field in the evening. I love these guys. The other night when we were playing baseball the cows were running up and down this path right near where we were playing with no fence in-between. It was just humorous to me to be in the outfield watching the cows running around the field.
Grace went out to help in the gardens again. It's peaceful work but hot! It's hot and muggy all the time but we actually have gotten used to it, or used to being sweaty. Nights cool a bit and the guest house does have air conditioning and fans. Everything else is not air-conditioned like the schools, dining room, kitchen, etc.
Another picture of the garden area.
I thought this was a pretty picture of the kids doing their chores.
After dinner Alfven taught their Tuesday night Bible study. We went up to the boys dorm and gathered around on the floor. Alfven did a great job and taught on Romans 12. He started it and will conclude it during their Thursday night Bible study.
I'll end with the picture below. It's one that I just loved! The group of kids today kept asking for pictures and I took a ton. This is one in the bunch that I just shot on the fly but there is something about the expressions that makes my heart smile :)
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