February, March, April and Some May

Things are going really well here in Phnom Penh.  We are almost finished with the school year and will be heading home for about 6 weeks this summer.  The girls have settled in nicely and are really enjoying themselves.  As you can see from the photos below they do some wonderful things at their school.  Every month they have an assembly where they say hello to new students, goodbye to those who are leaving, have student performances and make general announcements.  At this assembly they they had Dragon dancers perform.  At one point they let the children "ride" the dragons.  Mattie is in the first photo and Emma is in the back peeking around the guy in the second photo. 

 

 

As in most schools they had their field day at ISPP.  Emma had been sick so she didn't get to do any running activities, but she participated in most everything else.  Mattie got to do her race around the track and of course she beat everyone.  She is one fast kid and I will say a tad bit competitive.   Emma, on the other hand, could care less.  She just wants to have fun!

As a Lousiana girl I felt it vital to have a Mardi Gras Party at ISPP.  It is an international school and Mattie's teachers thought it a great idea.  We had face painting and a Cambodia version of a King Cake and some games and cajun music. .  Everyone had a wonderful time.

Mattie and her teacher.

What happens when other children get a hold of the face painting crayons!

This is just a billboard for Angkor Beer.  We always find it amusing as the beer looks like spewing tar.

One of the very exciting things that happened to Emma this year.  Alas, no other teeth have come out, to her dismay.  She keeps pushing her teeth hoping to loosen a few more.  I think she just wants money.

This March we had the awesome pleasure of having one of our best friends, Amy Foster, come to Cambodia for a visit.  Of course we had an amazing time.  We did all the usual things like visiting Angkor Wat and the other temples and letting the fish eat our feet, but we also went to visit a floating village.  This was a first for all of us so quite exciting.  The photo below is of a school.

So as we are riding along in our boat we see this really cute little boy off to our left.  We think they are just selling drinks.  A few minutes before a kid jumped on our boat from another one, sold us some cokes, then jumped back on her boat.  You can see her holding her basket of drinks.  We are assuming the same thing, and maybe the kid was also selling cokes, but he was also attempting to get us to give him money to pet his snake.  Wow.  He was probably 4 years old and no more.

 

This is just someone's house. 

This is a woman taking care of her garden, which is on the raft behind her.

Another school

We thought this was really neat as this woman set up a hammock for her child in the boat.

                                                                       YUMMY!! 

This was (what we assume) a landmine victim.  He didn't have a boat and had to use the bowl and paddle it with one arm.  It really couldn't have been easy.

There are so many things wrong with the photo below I can't even believe it.  I mean really, this child can't be more than 3 and she's using a huge knife on the side of a boat.  One wrong move and she's cutting off her finger or is over the side of a boat.  Oh, no parent in sight!  The kicker is, she can probably already swim like a fish and chop veggies like Emeril. 

Just in case you wanted a little wildlife fix out on the water, just head over to the tourist boat with the crocodiles!

This is the church we went to as we went on a Sunday.  It was a little bizarre to be rocking during mass but it was all good.  We enjoyed the service.  We did get in trouble for not taking our shoes off though.Here comes the priest!

 

Here we are with the priest after mass.

Got a little story for ya Ags.  Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Cambodia there was an American family who had a visitor.  Thinking to show this visitor the unique culture of Cambodia the family took her to the Cambodian Cultural Village in Siem Reap.  One of the exciting things one can do is see a local performance.  We arrived at the appropriate  venue to watch this performance.  We really had no idea what it was about but the costumes were pretty so we were prepared to watch.  We weren't sure where to sit upon arrival but we managed all right.

We chose to be foreigners not nation.  It began with the King and Queen challenging a local warrior to pull the bow from the stone and win the heart of the princess.  After many a noble man attempted this seemingly impossible feat the royals decided to look to a foreigner to pull the bow.  They had no idea what they were getting when they chose Shawn

The other kind warriors who failed to remove the bow from the stone gave the Noble Shawn much advice.  

Shawn watched every move with a determined look in his eye.  Determined to win the heart of the princess he followed all advice given to him and then hammed it up even more.

He is alone up here now because Noble Shawn couldn't countenance another warrior sharing the podium with him so he shoved him off

Alas all the hard work paid off and Noble Shawn was able to retrieve the bow from the stone.

And win the heart of the princess

Off he goes to dress himself in robes of gold and jewels.  No man has ever been so lucky.

After what one can only assume was a desperate attempt to turn Noble Foreigner Shawn into a Noble Cambodian the crowned Prince and Princess return to the land to greet their subjects.

Singing and dancing were done in their honor.

Noble Cambodian Shawn ditched his beautiful, perfect American wife, stole their children and moved to a land far far away.  The youngest was not happy with this idea so used her magical powers to signal her mother so the girls could be rescued.  The mother found her children in the temples of Angkor Wat.  She took the mans wig and threw it in a latrine, took his golden bow for pain and suffering and flew with her children back to the land of air conditioning and Sonic.  The man quickly realized his mistake and claimed to be under the influence of a cute little puppy (Mattie wrote that part) and begged his wife for mercy.   Outcome to be determined.  THE END

This was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.  Shawn had the crowd roaring with laughter and on the video...I will be happy to make copies for anyone although I've been forbidden to put it on YouTube.  Amy and I were howling with laughter the entire time.  Shawn hammed it up and was yelling and rolling on the ground and using these exaggerated facial expressions and moving in slow motion.  It's a wonder he wasn't an actor.  The next day people approached us and told us they saw his performance and thought he was great.  He thinks he's famous now. 


Amy and I at the top of a temple

This is when we went up in a hot air balloon.  None of the Kohl's liked it at all.  Especially Mattie who sat down on the floor.  It was one of those that is on a big wire so you're tethered to the ground.  This should make you feel better, but it was all freaky.

Amy and Phoebe thought it was great.

 

       

After Amy left (very sadly) we were able to go to a Hollywood/Bollywood night.  Bollywood, in case you were unaware is the Indian version of Hollywood.  You could dress up in your Hollywood finery, or dress up in your Indian clothes.  A very good friend of ours is from India and let us borrow a Sari and clothes for Shawn.  She even provided me with a beautiful Bindi ( the dot,  although this was not a dot, but a jewel) This was our first turban attempt. 

Great night all around

The photo below is of Emma doing a reading during Mass.  She did an amazing job and we were so proud of her.

Phoebe got to bring up the gifts at the same service.
Emma's class at school on a field trip to the National Museum.

 

The girls and all the gifts they gave me for my birthday!

                                                                                 GRETA

So, I'm almost up to date with the blog.  Just need to add a few more things, and of course tell you all about the visit from Hilda and Shawn's cousin Larry who will arrive in Cambodia next week.  We can't wait for them to get here!  Hope to see everyone soon.

Cheers

Laos Part 3 - The END

After visiting the caves in Vang Vieng, and spending the night in the hotel with all the rules...see previous post...we headed  through the mountains to visit the Plain of Jars.  The drive through the mountains was beautiful, a little scary and actually cold when we got to the top.  Here are some photos of our drive through the mountains.  They may not be exactly on the road to Xieng  Khuang, where the Plain is located, but all are of the mountains through Laos.                                                                                                                                                                   

 

We were driving along and saw these young girls tossing a ball back and forth.  They are of the Hmong tribe of Laos.  They were very sweet and didn't mind us taking their photo.  Their clothes were mostly the same, but they had different styles of head dresses.

As you can see from the photo above, there was a lot of rice farming in the valleys.  Most of the crops were already in, but even so the landscape was amazing.

Driving in the mountains was a little dangerous, not so much because cars were going 100 miles an hour, but because there was zero curb.  We were all a little shocked by how closely the children played to the road.  So, you'd be driving along, enjoying the scenery, and LOOK OUT!!!  A two year old is playing on the S curve of a mountain road:

Needless to say it was a little freaky for us!  At the top visibility got a little dicey as well.  Dad and Shawn must have told our drive 100 times to slow down, and be careful and watch it and so on and so on and so on.  I don't think he (the driver) minded too much because he didn't speak much English so he couldn't understand them anyway.  Mom and I could though so that part of our journey was a little...stressful.  In all fairness you couldn't see hardly anything.

We did drive in this fog for about an hour. 





















Eventually we came out of it and made it to the Plains. No one really knows exactly what these jars were used for.  They are around 2000 years old, and there are various theories as to what they were used for.  Some say they were used as sarcophagi, or for fermenting wine, or for rice storage.  There are some lids lying around for a few of the jars along with vases that may have contained human remains.  By and large they are still a mystery and may be related to some stone megaliths nearby.  It's been difficult to study all of the jars...there are unexploded ordinances all over the place (UXO), or land mines, so needless to say people don't really want to stroll around the area or dig around the area to find evidence.  There are around 20 known sites but these three are the largest and the sites that are pretty much cleared of landmines.  We stayed ON the paths!

The fog here made everything look very eery.  The jars were huge as this picture shows.

The girls were not immune to having people want to take their picture...even at 6am in rural Laos!

This picture shows Mattie pointing in the direction of safety.  If you look at the stone or brick in front of her you can see one side of it painted white.  The other is painted red although it doesn't really show in this photo.  These bricks were everywhere and indicated the safe zone.  Basically, stay inside the white area.  Everything outside the red is not safe of UXO's.  The amazing thing about the Lao people is that they were very kind to Americans, even though all of these UXO's were our doing.  During the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped hundreds of bombs on Laos.  I won't quote the numbers because I'm can't remember exactly but the numbers made me want to start apologizing! 

 

Here we are at the top of the mountain eating diner.  We ordered chicken, and we got a chicken.  Look closely at Phoebe!  Yummy!

 

 

After we left the Plain of Jars and had chicken feet for lunch we headed to Luang Prabang to go on an elephant trek and see the surrounding area. 

Phoebe about to take off with Grandpa on her elephant ride

We got to ride our elephants in the river.  It was pretty amazing.

mom and mattie, dad and phoebe

mom and mattie

So we walked down the path and all was well.

Then we hit the steep part.  All I kept thinking was that I was going to die in Laos, death by elephant crushing.  Poor Greta probably couldn't breathe because I was holding her so tightly.  The elephants did fine and none of them slipped and plummeted down the mountain with us on their backs, so all was well.

Poor Emma was sick so they went to ride first, alone without the mahout.  Nobody else got to do that so it was special for Emma, but they were disappointed they didn't get to ride in the river.  Shawn took Emma back to the hotel.

Who needs an umbrella for shade when you can just pick a banana leaf?!?!

 

 This is the little girl who  you can pay to set the bird free.  From what I understand, the birds are trained to come back to the little cages and then visitors to the Wats (temples) will pay to set them free.  Absolutely no disrespect intended, but it's a Buddhist thing.

The little girl from the photo above this one was one of the children we saw while visiting Pak Ou Caves.  These caves are crowded with Buddhas and an impressive sight. You had to take a boat across the river then climb the stairs to get to there.

Luang Prabang has a long standing tradition that every morning the monks walk in a line around the city to collect alms from the locals and tourists.  The line went on and on and on and was amazing.  Mattie ended up participating as you can see from the photo below.  Some of the monks were very small boys, around 10 years old or so.  They live in the Wats and study.

 We were a little shocked to see this toddler wielding this knife.  I'm thinking a little later he probably starting to run with it. 

They were very tired.  Isn't Shawn just the best dad in the world?  Ok, it's a three way tie for number one. 

The photo below is my attempt at being a  Lao woman by carrying  Greta with the cloth thingy.  It worked awesome, and I could switch her from side to side and to my back and front.  Juli and Christy are probably laughing at me right now because they both used the awesome slings for their babies.  I forgot the Baby Bjorn though so we bought this from some Lao women selling their wares.

          Phoebe, without fail, put her shoes on the wrong feet every time!  Shawn was being a supportive dad.

We saw some kids on the side of the road all working in this building.  We decided to stop and see what they were doing.  We think what they were doing was bundling up flax or some other kind of crop.  They were so sweet and dad took his camera and took pictures of all of them and then showed them.  We took the photo below of the sweetest little girl...

This is by far my favorite photo of a little girl and the one below is my favorite photo of an old woman.

Now before you think we're perverts or something, we took this picture not because of the half naked men, but because of the way in which they were taking their shower.  All throughout the mountains they had these pipes that clearly trapped water so that the locals could have clean, running water.  It must have been freezing, but you saw people all the time bathing.  The men and the women would all be standing there, the women covered up with a sarong or something and the men in their skivvies.  You can see the pipe in between the two men in blue albeit very little blue. 

Back on the road again.   

glad I'm not this lady

Or these ones, although they are making roofs out of straw.  Definitely noble.

But especially this lady.  I find it interesting that she is chopping wood right next to her satellite dish.

Now these boys were having some fun.  It's not really evident in this photo, but they were playing soccer.  Instead of shirts and skins, it was CAUTION tape or no CAUTION tape.

This photo was just too sweet to leave out.

Phoebe adores her Bampa.

And of course they all adore their Grandma.

So we made it back to the capital where we took the plane back to Bangkok, Thailand.  We decided to hang out at the airport for most of the day instead of trying to navigate the city.  Dad and Shawn just couldn't help rearranging the children's toys.  They deemed it unsafe in various locations so they simple moved it.  Looks dangerous huh?

So that's all.  We had an amazing 10 day trip.  Thanks to mom and dad for being so awesome and so much fun on this trip.  Finally finished Laos 2009/2010! 
Sa-ba-dee (goodbye (and hello) in Lao)