Language bliss & blunders: At the hairdresser's (April 2012)

My all time favourite... !

From DJ Tales 3.4 (April 2012)

It’s like leading a cow to watch a movie. That’s the Khmer idiom to describe my (Jess) recent haircut experience.

The hairdresser I went to 2 months ago was busy, so I went to another salon instead. There were 3 girls, presumably all hairdressers. Not understanding what I wanted with my hair cut, the girl that I spoke to initially got frustrated & called for another girl to attend to me instead. The 2nd girl started asking questions but I couldn’t understand her either!

It was rather discouraging, even more so as I had received assurance from my teacher the week before that I was progressing very well & understanding a lot. What made it difficult was the wide use of ‘slang’ words & expressions, so I couldn’t understand as they sounded so different! (e.g. ‘gonna’ vs ‘going to’ in English).

I tried chatting with the girl cutting my hair, but each time I asked a question, the other 2 girls added in many comments & made jokes, all which I couldn’t understand. They also mixed in some English words, but they sounded so unclear that I thought they were speaking Khmer!

This was the conversation after the hairdresser (Hd) was done.

Hd: Nih ban eh?
       (Is this OK?)

Me: Urm…
       <hesitating>

Hd: Nih K’chood! K’chood!
       (It’s k’chood (?!)

Me: Urm… k’chood? K’chood ay gey?
       (What does k’chood mean?)

Hd: K’chood! S’at!
       (K’chood! Beautiful!)

Me: K’chood mien ney ta s’at?
       (Does k’chood mean beautiful?)

Hd: K’chood! K’chood!
       <bewildered look, repeats more intensely with the other 2 girls joining in>

I made a mental note of that word & asked my teacher the next day. To my surprise, she said, “K’chood? It’s an English word! It means beautiful.” After wrecking my brains, I now know what it is:

“CUTE”!

<Cow bangs head on the TV set…>

Language bliss & blunders: Similar sounding words (March 2012)

It's about a month till our language assessment in November! Thought I'd post up some of our LANGUAGE BLISS & BLUNDERS from our past newsletters just to remind ourselves how far (or not!) we've come!

From DJ tales 3. 3 (March 2012)

Words that sound alike but have different meanings can be quite confusing (not to mention a source of great embarrassment!)

HORSE vs. STUDENT

Jess has made this mistake – calling a student, a horse instead!

(dog) BARK vs. BOIL

A dog boiling? We’ve had that thought a couple of times about the one disturbing our sleep!

The mistakes we REALLY don’t want to make:  

APPLE vs. FART

CAKE vs. URINE

We’re really glad that OMF wants us to learn the Khmer alphabet & pronunciation well. A little hard work now will certainly save us a lot of miscommunication & embarrassment in the future!

IV Drip on wheels

Spotted on the streets of Phnom Penh.

The lady on the motorbike is holding a drip which is connected to the scalp of the little boy sitting between her & the driver.

Drips are readily available at local pharmacies here in Cambodia. Commonly, people who fall sick tend to ask for a drip. It's thought to help the body get stronger. Many report to feeling better after having a "drip treatment".

Doctors who give "drip treatment" are generally considered good while those who don't may be deemed otherwise. In general, the more medications and injections one receives from a doctor, the better the service is thought to be. Hopefully this mindset is slowly changing with education.

Water bill - just in time?!

Our water bill... Due today!

We haven't been checking our postbox frequently because we don't really get mail sent to our house address except for the electricity & water bills. Just so happened that David decided to look into it today, and behold!

Hopefully they won't be so efficient to cut our water supply by tomorrow morning though. 

Thank God for prompting David to check the postbox just in time so that we can make payment tomorrow (albeit it being one day late). Otherwise, it might have been a whole weekend of having our water supply cut off!

"To see how ugly you are!"

"Why are you looking at me?" I asked David.

"To see how ugly you are!", he replied.

Now, you're either cheering him on for being so bold to say such a thing to his wife... OR you're totally disgusted at how insensitive his words were.

In order to help you make a better judgement, I should give you some context.

Recently, I met up with a friend who's also expecting her 2nd baby. It was inevitable that some pregnancy stories came up during our time together.

When she was pregnant with her 1st child, she had many older women (urm... they were Chinese / Asian in Australia) tell her that she was definitely expecting a boy. Why? Because they could tell by looking at her face! These women claimed that the facial features of women changed during pregnancy to reflect the gender of the baby they were carrying due to the hormones - i.e. testosterone if a boy, estrogen if a girl.

In other words, if a woman was carrying a girl, she would look... more like a girl / female. If she was carrying a boy, she would look... more like a boy / male.

In my friend's interpretation however, it meant that "If you're carrying a girl, you'd glow & look more beautiful. If it's a boy, you're more manly, which basically means you look uglier!"

Being a Malaysian Chinese who's lived in Australia for most of her life, she didn't take offense at those words as she could understand the cultural context of these women. Her Caucasian friend however, felt so insulted when she was told the same thing! What's acceptable in one culture may not be the case in another!

Well, did my friend have a boy in the end? She did! So did her Caucasian friend. Although they sometimes wished they had girls just to prove the women wrong! :)

So... David certainly hopes that I look ugly... The uglier the better!

Robbery... but God provides!

Sarah (not her real name) had her bag wound tightly around a hook on her motorbike. She was on her way home when 2 men on a motorbike rode next to her and started pulling at her bag!
It took a couple of tugs before the robbers managed to get the bag. And then they sped off!

Not only did she lose cash, cards & her phone, she also lost the bag itself which was a valued possession amongst many other precious things that were in it.

That night, Sarah had a headache and wanted to reach for her pills, but then realized that they were in the stolen bag! Different items came to her mind as she moaned for her losses, particularly a favorite key-ring that she had.

The next day, she went to the OMF team center, and guess what she found in the mail for her? A new key-ring! A friend from the UK had sent it to her 3 weeks ago, way before she knew what had happened!

Another great praise story: After learning about the robbery, Janet (not real name), another missionary friend here offered to give Sarah her handbag that Sarah really coveted (liked). Sarah asked Janet to consider it carefully as she really did not think she could bear to part with the bag should Janet change her mind!

Some days later, Sarah was thrilled to find that bag in her pigeon hole. Janet had decided to give it to her. Amazingly, on that same day, Janet later found out that she had received a parcel from the UK. Guess what it contained? A spanking new bag of the same brand that she had given to Sarah!

God's provision is so amazing & timely!

Theft: 1 motorbike, 4 bicycles...

Just a day before I posted about God being our ultimate security, our neighbour's front yard / porch got broken into for the second time. The thieves took a total of 4 bicycles & 1 motorbike over two separate occasions, one week between each.

Our house is joined to theirs & we actually share the same front yard. So our motorbike could have well been stolen too if not for the fact that it was parked on the other end, blocked by both families' cars. It's likely that the thieves may not have seen our motorbike in the darkness of the night.

Side & main gate on the left are on our side of the house. The neighbours have identical gates & their bikes were parked on the their end of the front yard

The thieves had it easy the first time (as the gate was unlocked in the evening). But the second time, they had cut the padlock on the gate. They then hung the broken padlock over our neighbours's door to prevent them from getting out of the house to stop the thieves!

(Before adding the extra security features)

Side gate, view from the outside - there's a hole to allow securing of the padlock on the inside from the outside

(After adding the extra security features)

Side gate, view from outside: a metal piece that covers the hole, installed to prevent thieves from accessing the inside padlock

Side gate, view from the inside: a little latch on the metal piece that can be padlocked at night

Main gate, view from the inside: the black, badly soldered piece of metal prevents thieves from lifting the metal pole that anchors the gate to the ground

While we do thank God for our landlady who has been very prompt in installing extra security features on the gates, we're reminded again that our trust cannot be in these things, as much as we need them to some extent. God is still our ultimate security.

There'll be times when we will experience His miraculous covering and protection. Yet, at other times, He allows us, His children, to be victims of evil perpetrators. We're not immune to the effects of evil. It is part & puzzle of living in this fallen world.

So please pray that we continue to look to God for all things - security yes, but more so, to His enabling & keeping of our faith when bad things do happen.

Video: Learning Khmer - vowel sounds

Video taken sometime in January.. to help with differentiating the sounds of a couple of easily confused vowels. See if you can notice the difference in their sounds?!

The day I couldn't be a backseat driver

It's rainy season. You'd think that I'd have the common sense to pack in a raincoat in my bag... but No...

So it rained last Friday just as we were going back home. Thankfully David was more prepared than I was. So at least we had one raincoat to share between the two of us...

I'm a backseat driver. Especially when the driver is my husband. Even more so when we're in crazy-traffic-land, i.e. Cambodia. Frequently, I have this urge to scream out "Watch out! Car coming!" or "Slow down!" or "Motorbike!"

Even though I'm slowly learning to refrain from commenting, I still feel the obligation to "lend my pair of eyes" to watch out for the traffic. As if I can somehow control the driving just by my looking.

So... it was a rather... urm... faith-testing (& nerve-wrecking!) experience to be riding home under that raincoat without being able to see anything apart from my own two feet! You bet I was clinging on tighter than usual!

Maybe that's why God sometimes keeps us in the dark about where we're going in life. So that we can stop being backseat drivers trying to tell Him what to do? So that we can learn to trust & cling on to Him more?

When our windows of security were removed

Wrote this post in May, but only got around to posting it up now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When our “windows of security” are removed, we’re forced to remember God as our ultimate security.

This was our ‘literal’ experience  during our Field trip to the Royal Ploughing Day Ceremony here in Cambodia.

We had arrived early at the OMF Team Center with another family, waiting for the others to gather. David had wound down the (automatic) windows from his driver’s control panel so that we could all get some fresh air while we waited in the car with the engine turned off.

As we were about to begin our journey, each of us pressed our own control button to wind up the windows, but the windows wouldn’t go up except for the one at the driver’s seat. David tried from his ‘master control’ but nothing happened either with the 3 other passenger windows. We even tried turning off the car engine in hope of “rebooting” it (just like a computer perhaps?)!

Shrugging it off as one of those problems you get with an old car, we travelled through the dusty streets of Phnom Penh, occasionally moaning about the fumes that were getting into the car because of our open windows.

It was not until we arrived at an open-space car park that it suddenly struck us – our car was now an easy target for car-thieves! We parked right in front of the little hut where the guard was, but guess what? He was asleep! That certainly didn’t give us much sense of security!

So we prayed. There was nothing else we could do. Right there & then, we realised that all we could do was to trust & depend on God to protect the car & its contents.

Yet, it was also eye-opening to realize that, we wouldn’t have thought twice about depending on God when the windows were working!

But isn’t that faulty thinking? Who ultimately holds the security of our car, our possessions, even our lives? The multi-faceted locks on doors & windows? The security gate? The state-of-the-art alarm system? The insurance policy?

The security hedges we build around us sometimes do hinder us from experiencing the amazing loving hand of God holding, sustaining, protecting us from harm or loss. Sometimes, it takes the removing of some of these ‘security items’ before our eyes can see beyond toward the true hedge of security, toward God our fortress.

As it turned out, our car & everything in it was safe & intact when we got back to it after the ceremony. God was watching indeed!

Videos: Hannah {the drinking episode}

Drinking companions.... they drank a lot that day...

Was that water they drank? Or...?

Videos: Hannah

She loves the swings! Counting (in English)
1,2,3,9,10 is how she usually counts, though not in this video.

Her love for motorbikes! "Poot Poot!"

God knows our desires!

Was literally just thinking about how much I miss this biscuit yesterday, & look what I found in my pigeon hole today! (from a malaysian missionary who's in Cambodia for a few days)

God DOES know & provides even for our 'insignificant' desires!

Photos & Videos: Hannah

Hmm... perhaps she might start riding a motorbike before her mum would!

We learnt this song at the Khmer Sunday school 2 weeks ago & Hannah loves the actions! "This is the day"  (Khmer lyrics have almost the exact meaning to the English version). 

Take 1...

 

Take 2...

Please pardon the noise in the background (should have turned off the fan when taking the video!)

 

Slide action at LOGOS school (Hannah is almost 20 months at this stage but has been climbing up those steps since 2 months ago):

Love this photo of Hannah & her Dutch "sister" at Ta Phrom in Siem Reap :)

Check out their almost identical shoes / sandals!

Playing together at LOGOS school - those shoes again! :)

Ant invasion: a lesson on hoarding?

Recently, our house was infested with ants. We haven't had much problems with ants in the past few months, but one day, David started noticing long trails of ants along our wall.

He followed the trail into Hannah's room, & to his horror, he found them all over the (unopened) boxes of cereal we had stored in her room!

Due to our earlier experience of the cereal suddenly disappearing off the shelves of the supermarket, we decided to stock up our new substitute in bulk. We ended up having to throw away 5 out of the 14 boxes as there were just too many ants in them. A real treat for the ants & a real shame for us! :( Not to mention the hassle it was to sift through all 14 boxes to check which had been affected.

Our "ant cupboard" (we have 2) in the kitchen, i.e. cupboards fixed with little green cups that contain  water (+ salt to prevent mosquitoes breeding) that acts as a moat to prevent ants climbing into the cupboard.

The 2 ant cupboards were full, hence this is our temporary makeshift moat for the cereal we managed to salvage... 

Perhaps a paraphrase of Jesus' words in Matt 6:19 to fit our situation...
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures of cereal, where ants destroy... (own words in italics)

Could this be a lesson on not to hoard "stuff", including what we see as "necessities", but to trust God to provide other substitutes should we need them?

Having said that.. since we've bought more "ant cups", we've started hoarding again...

Video Update: 6 months in Cambodia (May 2012)

We've compiled a short (8 minute) video update of our past 5-6 months here in Cambodia.
You can view it at:
https://vimeo.com/41903899

Spotted on the streets of Phnom Penh: skinned animal on motorbike

What are they? Piglets? Chickens? Ducks? DOGS?!

Videos: Hannah

Hannah's very generous "sister" :)

Playing on the slides at LOGOS International School before our swim!

Do you understand what she's saying?!! Neither do we!

Comic for language learners

Cultural exchange: Food

It was black. I picked it up. It had a bit of a 'bounce' as I squeezed it between my fingers. I had a sneaking suspicion what it was. But I couldn’t tell for sure.

So I took a bite. I chewed. I swallowed. I took another bite. And then I decided, “No thank you. I think I have enough of this & don’t want anymore.”

She laughed, “That’s OK.” She laughed again. “Maybe you should try the sweet one? You might like it better than the salty one.”

OK, so I gave it another chance & took the ‘sweet’ one. Filled with honey, apparently. I bit, swirled it around my mouth to try to taste the ‘sweetness’, chewed, swallowed. It tasted just like the one before! Where’s the honey, honey?

“Sorry, I have to give up on this one too.” She laughed again.

“That’s so funny!” said my Dutch missionary neighbour. “It’s funny how when we’re not used to the things we grew up with, food can taste so weird!”

The German friend replied, “Well done Jessica! You’re so brave to try it even though you don’t know what it is.”

“Well,” I said, “I never quite thought that ANY Western food would be yucky. I thought only the Asians had a reputation for disgusting food! I won’t have the guts to eat the Khmer delicacies here – e.g. fried spiders, locusts, duck foetus in egg etc.”

Do you want to know what it was that I tasted?

LICORICE! 



OK, so it’s not quite that disgusting – depending on who you are! But it obviously did not go well with my palate. Our Dutch neighbours had received boxes upon boxes of these “sweet” treats from home recently, and they love every morsel of it. Apparently, they come in all kinds of flavours too! But I bet they all taste the same to my untrained (& unappreciative) palate.

“Well, next time, I’d like you all to try my favourite fruit….

 DURIAN!”

To which the German lady (who has been in Cambodia for 6 years) gasped… “NO WAY!”

One man's meat is another man's poison.... I guess!
(or in Cambodia... one dog's flesh is another man's dinner... !! like, literally...)

Privacy intruded?

Few days ago, Hannah threw a tantrum during lunch. She's done it a couple of times before, refusing to eat & crying very loudly. So we decided to let her cry in her seat until she calmed down while we continued our lunch.

If you have ever heard Hannah cry, you would know how absolutely deafening her screams can be. And how persistent & long too.

We ignored her cries, hoping to teach her that she could not have her way. That’s when the neighbour's house helper (who also works for us in the afternoons) walked over. She was at our front door, and we could hear her saying "Oh Hannah... you're crying so loudly!"

Immediately, a sense of annoyance welled up inside me. "Leave us alone! It's none of your business!" I thought in my head. I didn't verbalise them of course, but I was annoyed at the fact that our privacy was intruded, especially at such a time.

David opened the door, but she quickly said “It’s OK. I just heard Hannah crying & thought I’d come over to see what happened.” My level of annoyance subsided. She wasn’t trying to interfere – she was just concerned for Hannah!

This experience reminded me of the story that Marilyn Schlitt told in her book “Deprived or Privileged?” Following is an excerpt:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Raising children in a different culture than one’s own brings its own set of difficulties. One day Amy seemed to be having a particularly bad time. Nothing was going her way, and she resented that. As I had an errand upstairs, I put her in the playpen for safety. Her screams could be heard for several blocks, I knew, but I decided that I would attend to her when she had calmed down.

All of a sudden her bellowing stopped! What had happened? Had she hit her head and gone unconscious? I raced downstairs. There stood my neighbour from across the street, holding Amy with a pleased look on her face. “Your baby was crying, Ate [big sister], so I came in to help!”

Amy was no longer mad, but her mother sure was! How dare my neighbour interfere like that! Didn’t I have the right to raise my child the way I wanted to? The book, Have We No Rights? by Mabel Williamson, helped me.

I always thought I had the right to privacy and to raise my children as I thought best. Or did I? Was my way always the best or right way? Was I so perfect as a mother that only I knew what was best for my child? My neighbour had feared that something was wrong and came to help only out of concern.

This was the beginning of the release of my tight hold on my children. Yes, God had given them to us to care for and nurture. We do have that awesome responsibility. But does that mean we alone are to be the sole teachers and guides? Can our children learn and benefit from others?

Marilyn Schlitt "Deprived or Privileged?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Change... so soon?

This sounds ridiculously trivial – but I never thought I’d feel disorientated to find that Lucky supermarket (a supermarket chain in Cambodia) has suddenly stopped selling 3 of our most frequently used products – all within the same week!

When we first came to Cambodia, we expected that we’d either not be able to afford our usual brands or that it would just be unavailable. So it was with such an expectation that we went to the supermarket for the first time, 3 months ago, to figure out what substitutes we could get.

Breakfast cereal & fresh milk is expensive here. UHT milk is a cheaper alternative but we managed to find a brand of fresh milk that was not too costly. We’ve also gotten used to a raisin bran cereal which was half the price of the others. And the baby wipes were the cheapest we could find - & they were of good quality.

To suddenly “lose” all 3 of these things in one week was a bit of an unexpected blow – not disastrous, but enough to cause a small sense of loss at what was beginning to feel familiar.

I guess the missionary life is one of frequent change, but I wasn’t expecting change to happen that quickly. And I certainly wasn’t expecting that change in such a tiny aspect of life to cause such an emotion. Perhaps it’s because there are so many changes that we have to adjust to, & to have to adjust YET again in such a short time to something so trivial makes it even more wearisome. OR, perhaps we’re just not very flexible after all?

Video: Hannah 'counting' in Khmer

Well, only the number 3 (Bey) at the moment. She can't count in either English or Mandarin yet!

Sunday school

 

Video of a “Sunday school” lesson. I “THINK” they’re reciting the fruit of the Spirit? Just guessing from the picture of the tree & I thought I heard the word for "love". Not entirely sure as I don’t understand what they’re saying!

(Spot the really tall "kid"(?) I think he is at least 15 years old)

Learning the Bible verse from Mark 16:15. 

" He [Jesus] said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation."

I couldn't follow the recitation as the words were very unfamiliar & it went too fast for both my ears & eyes!

Our neighbourhood

A local grocery store:

The local market:

Vegetables overload!

Cows on the go

Thank God for our 2nd hand car
1996 Toyota RAV4 that has been modified into a 2WD - a very common thing to do here in Cambodia