This week of ministry adventures started on Monday morning when we received a text from our host informing us that our plan to get our visas renewed had been canceled. A Cambodia Visa is only good for 30 days, and we were on day 28, planning to cross the Thailand border, since we were only 30 minutes away, and then cross back with a new visa. We were told that our host was in contact with the Phnom Penh office (which is eight hours away) and that we may need to make a trip down there to get our visas taken care of. Not ideal. Either way we knew we had a big day ahead of us so we quickly ate breakfast and got ourselves ready. By the time everything got settled, we were able to go to the Siem Reap office to get our visas renewed, which was only two hours away. This led to a spontaneous road trip where we had 2 taxis come and pick up the team. In my taxi, halfway to Siem Reap we were offered a bathroom break, which we then declined as we would rather have just kept going. Regardless, the taxi pulled off at the next rest stop and the driver got out and opened the hood to let the engine air out. Mildly concerning, but we took advantage of the rest stop and got ourselves a sprite and other fun roadtrip snacks for the rest of the drive. About 20 minutes later we stopped again. The driver gets out of the car and leaves it running while he goes into a shop to grab an envelope. He then gets back into the car, goes down the road some and pulls over on the other side of the road. A man approaches the window as our driver leans over the passenger seat to hand the man the envelope he just picked up. Such a weird experience as we believe there was something not so great in the envelope but we have no proof, just speculation. He then finally drops us off at the office to get our visas renewed. Thankfully this was a super smooth process and didn’t take more than 30 minutes in total. However, since we just drove all the way down to Siem Reap, we went out for lunch as a team to a cafe called “The Source”. The food was SO GOOD! I got a banana smoothie and it was phenomenal. Of course we couldn’t leave Siem Reap without visiting “The Muffin Man” either, which is our favorite muffin shop. I got the apple crumble muffin and it was absolutely delicious. It’s an Australian owned company, where we got to speak to the owner because he spoke English which was so fun. It hadn’t really occurred to me how close Cambodia and Australia are, but we were told that a lot of Australians will actually come to Cambodia during their school breaks and holidays because it’s just a short airplane ride away. Finally it was time to head back up to where we are staying for ministry and get ready for the remainder of the week.
In ministry this week, we have been working on teaching the kids the alphabet and introducing them to phonics to help develop their reading skills. We also have set up a game where we have different sight words according to each letter we’ve learned so far placed around the room. We then bring two kids up to the front of the room and say one of the sight words. The first student to run and be able to touch the correct sight word is the winner, and gets to play again against another student. We have one little boy, Vana, who is about 5 years old and is absolutely obsessed with this game. He will stand up out of his chair and just slowly walk towards the caller with a bubble in his mouth and his hand raised in hopes of being chosen next. This means when he is chosen, the excitement is overwhelming and is celebrated through a victory dance. Vana loves this game, and he's also really good at it, which leads to every time he's the first to touch a sight word, he also does a victory dance. All of Vanas' dance moves are impromptu and super creative. We’ve started to make it a part of our nightly routines to attempt to recreate these dances but none of us can quite do them justice.
On Saturday we had an adventure day! Eliza, one of the team leaders, stayed in Battambang and did ministry there on her race, which was five years ago now. She was still in touch with her ministry host and was using this weekend to go meet up. She and her team rented a bus, and picked us up along the way as we all drove out to Battambang. There, we got to see a little bit of the town and try one of their cafes. I got to split a waffle with Sophie, one of my teammates. Afterwards, we all went out and got to take a ride on the Battambang Bamboo train! This train was a flat platform, made out of bamboo with cushions on the top of it, and a little motor attached to the back. There were 4 of us per train, so I got to ride with Sophie, Megan W, and Emily, which is the same group from Angkor Wat day. The bamboo train got up to 30 mph and we got to see cows hanging out along the tracks. At the end of the ride out, there's a series of gift shops set up with fun t-shirts, pants, skirts, bracelets, and other trinket items. I bought a shirt and a bracelet which they took our train off the tracks and got it turned around. Then we all got back onto our trains and headed back to the main station. It was such a fun experience and such a fun day! This was such a great opportunity to see how meaningful these connections we are currently forming are, and gave me hope that maybe I’ll be able to return back to Cambodia and get to catch up with my hosts again as well.
November 13 - November 19