Rich and Ronda Dolan

This past weekend, our landlord had a mother's birthday / housewarming parties at the house. He had the house built and it is divided down the middle with his family living on one side and we are on the other. Our front courtyard,however, is not divided although we each have a gate. So Saturday morning early, about 20 or so family members from the province came in and began to work on setting up, decorations, shrines, etc. These sweet little old ladies from villages came in and looked in our windows (they were open) and smiled with beetlenut-rotted out-teeth smiles. Not being here before, they didn't realize that they were on 'our' side of the house, so one came in the back door and went into the bathroom. You should have seen the look on Rich's face(he was getting something out of the refrigerator)!! The first picture i s the traditional khmer instruments that were played for the mother's birthday party. It was a Buddhist party with the monks blessing her and ...

Like I have told you before, I could take 20 pictures every day like this - of vans and motos just loaded down. This is a minivan that was on the highway. You can see the tailgate that is up and all the stuff stacked on top. We have also seen 5 motos standing up on top of a minivan. It is amazing how much they can keep on vehicles. The bottom picture is a little hard to see, but I never can seem to get a good picture when I see these - which is probably at least once per week. Anyway, the moto in the front has live chickens tied upside down to a rack on the back of his moto. This was out on the highway, but we see them in Phnom Penh all the time. I'll try to get a better picture of them. Today, coming back from the post office (and getting Alicia's package - we were excited!), we saw a moto with 2 piglets in a basket on the back, going down one of the main streets in town. It is truly a fascinating place! You need to come visit! Keep us in your prayers. Know that we love you ...

I thought these boys were just too cute. I'm sure they are solving the world's problems. We got a couple rechargeable bug zappers (looks like a tennis racket) today to kill the mosquitos in the house with. They are quite cool! When they hit a bug, it shocks them and sparks fly! We feel so powerful! It's cheap entertainment and kills mosquitos at the same time. You can't beat that! The students all went upcountry yesterday and will be back tomorrow. One of the church's had a 'house warming'. They were all quite excited. We opted to stay in town this time, since they were all going to the same place; we didn't want to add an additional burden. The 2nd and 3rd pictures are taken as we drove back from Sihanoukville at Christmas time. I took the last pictures because you have to realize that we are on the main road...the only road between Phnom Penh and the coast. But of course, the cows have to get from one pasture to another regardless of what...

These pictures were taken as we drove back from the coast at Christmastime. It is now harvest time for the rice so these are pictures of them harvesting. They do it all by hand. They bundle the rice in bundles, cut it and stack it. When they get a cartfull, they take it to the house. In front of their houses, they spread out tarps and beat out the rice by swinging a bunch and hitting it onto a wooden boards that are slanted down. The rice breaks off, slides down and lands on the tarp. Then it dries for awhile before it is sacked up. According to the papers, the crop this year is quite good. Now for language...and any boys reading this might be careful. Anyway, Rebekah and I laughed and laughed at this one. When you are talking about females, the common ending is 'sray'. Friends are called 'pbookmac' or 'mutpac'. They will shorten the word 'friend' sometime to be 'mut'. So the other day during services, an illustration was given and...

Some of the 'boys' at dinner when the Carmen's were here. They are always thankful for a meal since they take turns cooking. They cook a week at a time. I have been told, by one of them, that when they first become students, some aren't very good cooks. But they learn. We are in Level II of language school. Our teacher is making us do dictations and a lot more homework; which is really good for us. He also speaks only khmer and we have to figure it out. I sometimes wonder what it is like to be a teacher and have a room of people looking at you totally clueless! We are also doing a lot more conversation. Also above is a close up picture of some of the lobsters we ate at the beach. They are somewhere between a lobster (like you are thinking) and a prawn. Very very good! This lady carries this loaded platter around on her head! I imagine that it is pretty heavy. We are just humming along doing our daily stuff. We think of you all often and pray for you. Continue to pray t...

It occurred to me that I totally skipped over our trip to the zoo just before Christmas. Here are a few pictures. I figure you know what the animals look like so you are getting people shots. The first picture is our van just before taking off. We put 19 people in the van and headed south. It is obvious that the funding is a little different between this zoo and the ones you are used to! There were a lot of monkeys - they are easy to come by here! After we walked around and looked at most of the animals, we ate lunch. Navy, Tawn's wife, cooked some food and brought some more to feed everyone. There were people who would cook a meal for you there as well. Hopefully you can see all the hammocks in this picture. They are in between every pole and you just find a free one and relax while you're waiting for lunch. I think in the last picture you can see that we ate on a boarded slab that is about 2 -3 ft off the ground. Then they just spread the food all out, sit or squat and have...