Phoebe's Pool Contribution

We all took the girls swimming at the hotel where we are staying. It was kind of interesting seeing the differences between the US and Cambodia in one regard. Phoebe had an accident (number 2) which leaked through her swim diaper a bit. In the States the pool would have shut down, "shocked" with treatments of gallons of chemicals, checked and rechecked and after several days of closure reopened. Here, the attendant who hands out the towels poolside giggled a bit, and appeared to seem obligated to do something since we had told him about it. He gave the top of the water a couple of scrapes with a half-chewed up kick board in one place and then we were ready to go. 

The people here have all been very welcoming and friendly to us. One neat thing is with the pedestrian traffic lights here. In the US you generally get a bland white stick figure who stands motionless. Well here, in the land of neon lights, the man is green and walks (in motion) slowly while the number of seconds you have counts down. But after you get down to ten seconds or so left, something happens, then man begins to kick into high gear. He actually starts running and by the time the clock nears zero the man looks as if he is desperately crossing a finish line/scrambling for his life. It is rather amusing and we enjoy watching it every time we are at a crosswalk.

We have been running Vesta, our German Shepherd that we brought, each morning and she has been doing well. She didn't even flinch when we ran past the elephant going down the street the other morning. This time the elephant had a handler though so we felt relatively safe. She was terrified when I took her to the potty and the roosters crowed unceasingly behind our hotel. That was a first for her, being a city dog and all. She has started to overcome her fear of them now one week in. When we landed, the airport security had placed her in her crate on the conveyor belt and she had made an estimated five rotations until a soon-to-be colleague of mine rescued her. It was pretty funny to see her circling the conveyor belt though. Later.