Our house

 I thought since my last post was about our street, I would show you our house.  (I don't think I have posted that before).  We live in a ផ្ទះល្វេង translated is a 'long house'.  Land here is extremely expensive but labor is cheap; so you buy a small plot and build up.  Our house is skinny and tall.  Each floor has 2 rooms and bathrooms.

We'll start at the street.  

As you can see, our gate sits right on the street.  Our street is the main street through the neighborhood.

This is the repairman, wearing a motorcycle helmet with face shield, while he welds the new part on the bottom of our gate. (Isn't that regulation eyewear for welding??)

You can see our new incline, so that we can get the truck and motorcycle in and out.  Before, it was too steep.  

This is the area between the gate and the "front doors".  The doors are accordion style so that we can open them up all up and get the truck out.

Also, many Khmers will run some kind of shop out the bottom of their 'long house' and then live on the upper floors, so they have these doors open during their business hours.

This area isn't long enough for us to park the truck.  You can't leave vehicles out on the street in the night; and our road is busy and if you park on the street in the day, cars can't go both ways.

Our ground floor is our garage/dining room and the kitchen.  There is also a bathroom in between by the stairs.

It is very common for people to park their vehicles in the house.  Like I said, you can't leave them outside because of theft.

It amazes me to watch people who have shops on their ground floor because at night, they move everything to the walls and fit a car (if they have one) in the middle .  

And the kitchen.  On the left side is 3 cabinets for dishes and food.  

The door goes out to a very small area outside and that is where my washing machine is.

You might notice that there is no oven.  For those of you who knew us in Broken Arrow, you know that I baked ALL the time.  I had 2 ovens that I used a lot.  Not having an oven for the last 17 years made me relearn how and what to cook!

As Cambodia is a tropical country, we have great fresh fruits and vegetables.  It is much cheaper to buy these in the open markets and eat healthy than it is to go to the grocery store and buy food that has been shipped in.

As much as I miss baking, we do eat a lot better since I can't!

The next floor (we would call it the 2nd floor; the Khmers call it the first floor as the bottom is the ground floor) is Rich's office and the guest room.

You can see the windows behind Rich's desk.  They look down onto the area where the truck is.  Long houses are built with every other floor being a half floor that looks onto the floor below.  So Rich can see the doors from his office.    

Rich's office, the guest room, and our bedroom are the only rooms that are airconditioned.  The rest of the house is fans only.

This is the guest room.  The bed isn't made since we don't have any guests now.  Our houses aren't sealed well and we have tons of dust that comes in every day.  That is why you have to dust, sweep and mop daily.  2 of our students clean for us.  They each work for 1 1/2 hours per day, 5 days a week and we pay them $10/week.  (They just got a big raise)

The benefits of labor being cheap!

The 3rd floor is my office and the living room.

My office is above the guest room and, if you look out my windows, you can see the building behind us.   Our landlord owns that 'long house' as well; it sits perpendicular to our house. This is the only floor that both our house's windows and the house behind line up.  There is a small balcony outside of my door.  From there, I can touch the house behind us.  

To give you an idea of size, it is 11 feet from my office door to the balcony door.

This is the living room...and yes, the living room in on the 3rd floor.  I should have turned on a light before taking this picture so you could see clearer.  There is a balcony out the door in here and it overlooks the street. 

This floor is the same size as the ground floor.

And the 4th floor is our bedroom, that overlooks the living room.

And another bedroom that I obviously use as our storage room.  There are no closets and no storage areas in our house.

This room is above my office.

Also, long houses are built so that people can rent out the individual rooms.  So each room has a bathroom.  That means that we have 7 bathrooms in this house!!

This is what our bathrooms look like.  Fancy, huh??

Our bathroom and the one in the guest room have hot water heaters.  Other than that, there is no hot running water in our house.  

You stand by the toilet and shower onto the floor.  Yes, the bathroom floors in Cambodia are always wet!  

You can't really see it be there is a hand sprayer by the toilet.  The Khmers don't use toilet paper nearly as much as we do.  They spray themselves after going to the bathroom and just use a small piece of toilet paper, if they want,  to dry off with.  However the sprayers are great for cleaning the bathrooms!  They really should be in all of your houses!

Then then we have the roof.  This is where I hang up the clothes.  The washing machine is outside of the kitchen, as I stated already, so I bring them up here to hang up.

This is a great area when it is raining to enjoy the rain and the lightening.  I love watching the storms!

I have taken pictures that I have posted from here before but this is the view from the roof looking toward the southwest.  You can see that the concrete stops after our neighbor's house.  

The road that runs perpendicular to ours is the street we walk down to go to the school every day.

And this is the view toward the north, with our newly paved road.  Like I said, this is the main street through the neighborhood and can get quite busy.  

Our house is in the southwest part of the city, so most of the city lays to the north and northeast of us.

I did want to post that now that the street is done, each landlord has to connect to it.  

It is really interesting to watch all the people out figuring out the best way to get their 'driveways' connected.  Some of the houses or business sit much higher than the street and are having, like us, to cut off some of their tile so that the incline into their places isn't too steep.

There are sights like this all up and down the street.  The majority of the people drive motorcycles, so don't need really wide driveways.  Some, like our landlord, is making a metal ramp that they put our in the morning and take back in at night.

They forgot to bring it in one night and it was stolen, so they are already on their 2nd ramp.

There you have it!  We have lived in this house for 14 years now.  It isn't pretty but it is efficient.  Our first house was a beautiful gift from God and we enjoyed it for 3 years.  But it was also quite a bit more expensive and we didn't need it.  Our rent here is very cheap.  The landlord is so thrilled to have us that she hasn't raised the rent once.  We did decide to give her $50 more a month ourselves.  We pay less than the Khmers pay.  But the landlady knows that we will take care of the house much better than a Khmer would, so she tries to keep us happy.

At the school, Rich is teaching Church Growth to our older students.  Khemrin is teaching Old Testament History II to our newer students.  

As the high school test was given this month and the results are supposed to come out on October 30th, we know of several that want to come to the school.  Please keep our students and potential students in your prayers.

Much love,

Ronda