Tuesday and Wednesday

Well the rain that started on Monday night continued and Tuesday was the coldest Cambodian December day I can ever remember.  Everytime I looked at the thermometer it said 20 degrees but I think maybe it is broken.  We woke up and it was absolutely freezing.  I dug out all our warm clothes and found some fleecy lined pants and a warm coat to wear which I didn’t take off all day long.  Amelie shivered through her school work and Jarrah was lucky enough to be able to curl up on the bed under blankets with some audio stories.  They were happy because in digging out the warm clothes, they found their monkey and unicorn costumes which don’t really work well here most of the year because it is too hot to wear them.  So they enjoyed wearing those all day long. 

 

 

After a lunch of lentil and pasta stew, we noticed some heavy walking on the roof – heavier than the normal squirrel steps.  Looking through the skylight we could see monkey feet on the roof.  It was stumpy – the one without the tail who had got loose.  Luckily she is the nicest of all our monkeys. A call to Ung, our guard and he came back early from lunch.  Although she wouldn’t let herself get caught.  We eventually gave up and as it was so cold, I suggested that we snuggle up with a movie.  So we spent the afternoon watching Free Willy 3 which I have never seen, and I quite enjoyed it.  The monkey got herself tangled in a branch at about 5pm and we were able to relax a little. 

 

After and dinner of leftovers we were lucky to have a hot shower (thanks Jo and Angus!).  We loaded up my bed with all our blankets.  Jarrah had put herself to sleep already so Amelie and I were able to read.  Jarrah complains when we try to read with lights on after she is trying to get to sleep.  It was freezing.  It was nice having Jarrah in my bed because she is a little hot water bottle.  As it was I had to find some thick socks to wear.  Amelie read most of Doctor Dolittle (again) and I was reading a book by Joni Eareakson Tada (sp??) and Ken Tada (the quadriplegic lady and her husband).  Amelie finished up Doctor Dolittle today.  She is becoming quite a reader – getting that can’t-put-down-a-book problem.  Jarrah is also enjoying her letter learning.  She has a few on her belt and is pretty motivated at the moment.  I’m trying to slow her down!

 

This morning, it must have warmed up.  I was actually able to get out of bed without too much effort.  Left the kids in bed reading and went for a 30 minute jog.  It takes me 30 minutes (actually 32 min, 25 sec) to run about 4.3 km.  That is a terrible time.  But I figure it is better than not doing anything. Came home, made breakfast of fried rice and cocoa for everyone.  Amelie did her chores and we started school at 8.30 am.  We have been trialling this new schedule with conditions.  She has to stay at the dining table and we work solidly till 11.30 – 12.00 and we are done except for the fun school which we can do in the afternoon.  So mornings we open with Bible from 8am to 8.30.  Then maths for an hour.  English for 1.5 hours and review stuff till 11.30 or so.  Afternoons we can do History, Science, Art, Music whatever.  This has been working pretty well.  Except Amelie freaked today about the solid page of maths problems she had to work through.  Once that was finished, we were happy again.  Not allowing her to go to the bed to work on schoolwork seems to have helped get things done faster.  She gets so distracted – anywhere actually, but I can keep better tabs on her at the dining table. 

 

This afternoon, I had to run into town so left them home with Pu Ung.  They were hard at teaching Jarrah how to ride her bike.  And by the time I got back from the market, we had a little bike rider.  The ball field is a great place to learn and she can now ride all over the place.  She is so proud of herself.  She only just started riding her bike.  We had put Amelie’s little bike away and never got it out till just at the end of November, when our friends with little kids came to visit and wanted to ride bikes.  So we fixed the tyres and pedals but didn’t put the training wheels on.  She learned in three weeks – not bad.  Oh, and while at the market, I got my hair washed.  It was getting a bit grungy after not washing it – it has been so cold at night time, I haven’t had the will power to wash it.  So paid someone 75c to wash it for me.  Nice.

 

And that has been our Tuesday and Wednesday for this week.

 

 

 

Our Monday

I thought I might write a short diary of our day to day life, to record for posterity!  So I can remember a bit about our life here in Rovieng before we move.  So I’ll start as of yesterday – Monday, 16 December.

 

Woke up at about 6 am with the roosters and hens.  The roosters actually start their jobs from about 5 am I think (or anytime during the night) but I am used to them now such that they don’t bother me until 6 when ALL the chickens (ALL 100 or so) start their morning routine.

 

Ben has been home over the weekend but will be leaving for the forest this morning.  I wait for the pitter patting of little feet coming to tell me they are hungry or that they didn’t wet their nappies (yes, still in nappies – I still have hope they will cease to be needed by the time she is 12 or so).  The whole family find their way to my bed and soon the “I”m hungry” cries force me out of bed.  This morning I need to go to the market to get the bunny trakuen (gazun-u-eh, or water convolvulus) – the bunny eats a lot and I end up having to go to the market every two days for greens.  Have worked out that we can keep a good supply in buckets of water and they don’t get withered so that has helped some. 

 

Oh, the night before it rained.  It has been dry season for over a month now and so rains are not expected.  I washed clothes the previous day and since I had to wait for Ben so that he could use the generator at the same time, I couldn’t get them finished till about lunch time – losing half my day of sun.  So by the end of the day, the clothes were not dry and so I didn’t bother to take them off the line.  That night it rained. Of course.  Because it is the one time for many months that I have left my clothes on the line overnight.

 

So the hungry one and I get up and head out to the market on the motorbike.  Because of the rain it is all muddy at the market.  We get a few snacks.  I found some fat bananas at the banana lady stand halfway to the market.  At the market, we get some waffles, some fresh bread and some leaves.  Lots of leaves.  A rice bag full of leaves.  We get some apples and some nice mandarins.  These are great at the moment, all from China no doubt but delicious.  We head home like an overloaded donkey. 

 

Ben is organising to leave.  Our house is a mess.  It is supposed to be a school day so once Ben leaves for his forest, the girls and I start to clean up.  I give up on school for the morning and we tidy and clean the house instead.  I really can’t function when our house is too messy.  By lunch we are pretty much done.  We eat.  I made a sort of Tom Yum soup with potatoes and carrots and beans.  I wanted it to be a Tom Kha but we have no coconut milk (and no chicken since Kha means chicken).  The girls ate it pretty well – seemed to enjoy it more than me.  We then spent the afternoon reviewing our memory work for our homeschooling program we are attending.  Amelie has tentatively decided to go for “memory master” which means she needs to recite ALL the information that we have covered throughout the 24 weeks of classes we have been attending (and not attending, in our case).  She has an amazing memory so I’m glad she has taken this opportunity to stretch herself.  She needs to work on her times tables and some of her English stuff but otherwise it is pretty much all there.  We get in one hour of maths work before it is dark.  I then tell the girls to clean their room.  This was not done in the morning and a lot of the junk cleaned out of my section of the house was dumped in their room.  And so for the next two hours you can hear me saying, “Are you done?” With more and more junk getting dumped on the floor as they decide to go through each of their toy boxes and organise.  I’m not sure if it is well organise and I hear them playing right now in the room so maybe it will look just as bad again tonight. 

 

While the cleanup is happening, I fry some potatoes and warm up the leftover Tom Yum.  It rains.  Finally they are done after I go in and intervene a little.  We eat dinner and then find out our water has run out.  Forgot to pump.  No problems.  We just can’t have baths or wash the dishes.  It is getting cold and we didn’t get too dirty.  The girls try to have a spit bath with a sponge and a bucket of cold, leafy brown rainwater.  I decline.  Teeth and Bed.  I get them to sleep in their cozy, tidy bedroom (usually when Ben is not here they pile into my bed).  So I get to go to sleep by myself with a book.  It rains again.   So much for dry season.

What we have learned

In 1789 the French Revolution began when citizens stormed the Bastille and fought for the declaration of the rights of man.  Later during the reign of terror the aristocrats heads were removed by the guillotine. 

 

This is a little bit of memory work the girls have been learning as part of our history studies.  They have learned a giant timeline from Creation to the current day.  And then they have short history sentences for a selection of these historical events.  So, the French Revolution is one of these events selected to remember.  The program we are using has put these to catchy tunes and this one in particular is very sticky in your mind.  So all day we have in our heads, “Later during the reign of terror, the aristocrats head were removed by the guillotine.”

 

We were discussing this reign of terror when Robespierre was in charge of “taking care” of the monarchy.  Jarrah then asks me, if that man was a “guilladine,” responsible for removing the heads of the “aristocats.”

 

So Jarrah has been memorising all this time, “.. the aristocats heads were removed by the guilladines.”

 

I then explained what a guillotine is.

 

Isn’t it fun studying history!