Rich and Ronda Dolan

Dave Brockway was here teaching for 3 weeks. We appreciate his willingness to come and share part of himself with our students. We hope he had an enjoyable trip. This picture was taken when we were in Siem Reap. We went to the Cambodian Cultural Village. Dave thought it was funny that the designated a place for the foreigners to sit. It was probably because foreigners pay almost 3 times what the Khmers pay. Anyway, Dave found his place in the foreigner sitting. Rebekah is here and still speaks Khmer very well (it is a little on the disgusting side). Youth definitely has its benefits. Love you all! Ronda

OK. This picture has nothing to do with what I am going to tell you. I just wanted you to see part of what we see when we drive out of town. Now for the language problems...recently, we attended a wedding out our congregation between a Nigerian man and a Korean woman. They had requested our Khmer preacher to perform the ceremony. At the end of the service, our preacher said there was a song that he thought was great and appropriate. However...as we listened, it was all we could do not to crack up laughing. The song was "Please help me, I'm falling". The first line is "Please help me, I"m falling in love with you." Some of you may remember this old VERY country song. The problem comes in that the guy is singing to a girl that is NOT his wife...but he does have a wife and he is trying not to get into an affair. Not exactly the song for a wedding. Our preacher just thought it was a man telling a woman that he loved her, etc. It does show how easily ...

This past weekend, we took Dave Brockway to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I have put pictures of Angkor Wat and other temples on the blog before, so won't do that now. But in the afternoon, we did go to the Cambodian Cultural Village. Basically, you go from "village to village" and they show you some of their culture from different times in Cambodia and different customs. The first picture is of the peacock dance. At each place they had song and dances. We missed some of the shows as we started in the afternoon. At the end was a big finale about Cambodia history between 1150 - 1300. The last picture is from that show. We have enjoyed living in Cambodia and getting to know the people here; so it is interesting to see where they come from and different aspects of Cambodian life. Much love, Ronda

While Reuben and Rachelle were here, we took a trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Mostly we walked around the main part of the city, enjoying their parks, zoo, and the market. The first picture is Rachelle and Reuben in a Vietnamese restaurant that we decided to try; I think we all prefer Thai/Khmer food. Ho Chi Minh City is quite a bit more "progressive" than Phnom Penh, however, they speak less English there than here. They have beautiful parks so we enjoyed walking through those. Reuben is back in the US now and Rachelle leaves tonight. We hate it that their time was so short, but we understand having to actually work for a living. It was great to see them and we so appreciate all of you who helped them get here. The 2nd picture is of me, Reuben, and Rich in one of the parks. The 3rd picture is at the Royal Palace here in Phnom Penh. Rachelle hadn't been to a palace before so we went. Since the king is in residence there, a major portion of it is blocked off, but...

Haven't taken any pictures of Reuben yet, but he did make it. Sadly, the same can not be said of his luggage. His flight out of Denver was delayed 3 hours so they moved him to a flight that left 25 minutes after he landed...in another terminal. So he barely made the flight to Seattle and his bags didn't. We did get the news that the luggage did make it to Seattle, but hasn't gotten here yet. But we are thrilled that he is here! This picture is just one I took of the sunset. Unfortunately, you never seem to quite get the vivid colors in a picture that we get with our eyes. The pinks were beautiful. Come see us in beautiful Cambodia! Love, Ronda

Sorry it has taken awhile to finish this up. I got ready to do it and got some kind of virus and all my pictures on the computer disappeared. So I got to load them all up again, check the programs, etc. So, here finally is the rest of our trip. After leaving Maung Russey, we drove 45 more kilometers to get to Battambong. Battambong is known for their abundance of fruit and rice. This first picture where we ate supper by the riverside. It is really just a bunch of carts of different foods under big tarps. The food and fruit shakes were very good. The statue is one of many in Battambong. The city is not very big, but we enjoyed driving and walking around, going to the market and just seeing the town. We stayed in a nice hotel that was wonderfully inexpensive. Of course, the first night we were there, there were probably 100 military men also staying there on their way to the Thai/Cambodia border, many sporting machine guns,etc. We decided we were either really safe or really i...

For part of Khmer New Year, we traveled NW from Phnom Penh to a village named Maung Russey, just out of Battambong. We stayed the first night with Tawn's older brother and his family (2nd picture). They were so very kind and so worried that their home, food, bathroom, etc. wouldn't be good enough for us. They were wonderful! This is a picture of their home. We sat and talked and ate under the house and the bedrooms are up the stairs. This house is really quite large and Rich and I got a room to ourselves, as well as a bed. Normally everyone sleeps on the floor. The only bathroom was a squat pot outhouse, but it was clean. They fixed tons of food that was delicious. One of the best parts is when they went to the pond to go catch fish for dinner, we were told that we could swim. Well, I waited until they asked if I wanted to a couple times and then in the water I went! This pond was deep! Not only could I not touch, I tried to find the bottom and didn't ever hit it...