Odds and Ends

This morning started new classes at CBI.  In the mornings, for everyone but Bunthai, Jerry Lundy from 

Broken Arrow is teaching online.  He is teaching the Characteristics of Christ.  Rich is teaching Bunthai the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. Bunthai only lack a couple classes to finish.

Then in the afternoons, Bunthai and Mai are studying Work of a Preacher with Rich.

This is a stalk of bananas straight off of the school landlord's tree.  So incredibly good.  I wish you could have the opportunity to eat bananas right off the tree.  However, it does make it hard to eat bananas in the US.  

 

Saturday, one of the Christian young women got married in Kampong Thom.  For those of you that have been here,  Kampong Thom is the halfway point to Siem Reap.

We decided to go during the day instead of the usual nighttime activities.  We left the house at 7:20 am and arrived at 11am.  We had rice and soup for lunch and then at 12:45 headed back to Phnom Penh, arriving about 4:10pm.  Rich posted a couple pictures on his facebook page.  This is the blessing ceremony.  They have several traditional parts to the ceremony during the morning time.
 

With all the fun COVID stuff, I thought you might like this picture.  This is in a grocery store here.  This machine at the door takes your temperature ("measure the heat") and then will spray your hands with alcohol.  They have these in several places, but the funny thing is that at many of the places, there isn't anyone there to notice if your temperature is good or not!  

As of this week, all of schools are back in.  There are still masks being worn, but there are less every day.

I thought I would give you a quick Khmer (Cambodian language, pronounced "k-my") lesson.  Due to the normal toilets here are just a hole in the floor and they squat to use them, when they ask if you need to go to the bathroom, they actually say "Do you need to bend legs(squat)?"

Also, they use a lot more classifiers than we use in English.  That enables them to use the same word to mean different things.  For example, 'pboah swy' is purple ('pboah' is the classifier for colors); 'ply swy' is a mango ('ply' is the classifier for fruit).  Or if you use another classifier on the front, 'swy' is syphilis.  Fun, huh?!

Last week, during my English class, I asked the students to describe their village or house.  One of the students said that he had 2 butter trees.  I thought I probably just didn't understand him clearly, but no...he said 'butter tree'.  Come to find out that the word for 'butter' (which is 'buuh') is also the word for 'avocado'; just with the classifier for 'tree' or 'fruit' added to the front.  As I don't like avocadoes, I haven't bothered to learn the word for them.  He knew that 'buuh' was butter, so he therefore thought that the trees were 'butter trees'.  

We currently have 17 students; 10 boys and 7 girls.  We had another students but some of his family members are sick and he needed to go back and help take care of them.  We aren't certain if he will return or not.  Please keep them in your prayers.

Much love,

Ronda