rya'n'daphne

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a baby update

By now it is entirely impossible to ignore the little human being within me.  A trip to the Prey Veng market has become an event.  An event in which I am the superstar, or the circus act.  

For example, let's take a quick trip to buy some bananas.  This should take about 5 minutes.  A bit of looking over the bunches, a bit of chit chat with the sellers, and a bike ride home.  This trip has now escalated into a 30 minute event. 

First, I must walk the gauntlet of folks buying their daily produce, staring, and calling out to each other:

"big stomach! big stomach! almost due! almost due! swollen feet! swollen feet!"

(p.s. folks - I can hear you!)

The women flash their knowing smiles.  And then the questions begin:

"How many months?  Oh, I thought you were almost due!"

"Fatter than before!  Have you gained weight?  Do you eat a lot?"

"Will your child be Cambodian?"

"Do you want to deliver naturally or by c-section?  Well then you should take some pineapple leaves, and make a hot tea..."

"Do you have breast milk?  You should check now so you know..."

"Is it a boy or girl?  It's a girl, I can tell by your stomach!"

"How much do you weigh now??"

Even Ryan gets told he's fatter than before...because he's happy : )

Most days this is kind of fun.  It's definitely a great conversation-starter.  Some days I crave some anonymity, but that should come soon enough when we leave for Bangkok in just 2 1/2 weeks.  Of course, I can only imagine the caos that will ensure when baby girl returns to Prey Veng!

And for those of you who like the full update: we had our latest ultrasound about 2 weeks ago, and she is head-down.  Ready to go.  Mama and baby are both healthy (despite my massively swollen feet, which are a circus act in and of themselves).  Yes, I have gained weight.  That's normal, right friends?  ECHO folks will be pleased to know I've started adding moringa powder to my food for extra nutrition.  Baby girl still moves around like crazy, and enjoys daily hiccup episodes, although she's definitely feeling more cramped in there.  I personally am I bit envious of her temperature-controlled environment.

I've also been collecting fascinating bits of Cambodia wisdom on traditional neonatal and postnatal care.  More on that coming soon!

showered

Have we mentioned how awesome our friends are?  They threw us the greatest baby shower, with the cutest pink foods (seriously - check out Daniel's watermelon baby!) and super fun games...including hacking through a onesie frozen in ice : )

Thanks Amanda and Grace for organizing!  We are blessed indeed.

battambang

Yes, we had another extended weekend recently. The king's mother's sister's birthday, or something like that.  This, naturally, meant another weekend to explore another corner of Cambodia!  And so we headed off to the north-west town of Battambang with our awesomely adventurous friends Steve, Aime and Aya.

Some reasons why Battambang is so awesome: ancient Angkorian temple ruins, Cambodia's only winery, the bamboo train, Cambodia's only circus, the most picturesque streets lined with French colonial buildings, an abandoned airport to race on, incredibly delicious coffee shops and American food, and bright flowers planted in front of nearly every house.  Well done, Battambang!

bamboo train

Riding the bamboo train has been on our bucket list of things to do for a long time.  When we first found out about the option of coming to Cambodia, we of course immediately looked up youtube videos about this place we'd never considered.  And one of the first to pop up was Battambang's bamboo train: a mode of transport in which old train tracks were made usuable again by building simple bamboo lorries atop sets of dettachable wheels.  When another train approaches, the one with the least number of people just hops off, disassembles their train, allows the other car to pass, then pops the train back on the track and carries on their merry way.

Here we go!

 

the long forest

Cambodia is a place of so much beauty and so much pain, side by side. 

I can think of a thousand examples.  The lovely smile and grace of an old woman, who lost her husband and children during the Khmer Rouge.  The crystel clear ocean waters, edging sandy beaches trashed with plastic bags and old syringes.  The hope of one new baby born with better medical care, and the despair of a mother who has no money for a doctor when her baby is sick.  If the doctor is even at his office at all.  This period of peace and economic growth after so much conflict, yet marked by land-grabbing and sex-traffiking and continued abuse of those most poor and vulnerable.  The unfathomably lush and endless forests, and the massive (and often illegal) deforestation of huge swathes of Cambodia's land.

Prey Veng actually means "long forest"...a name that evokes images of endless trees and natural resources.  But in case you haven't noticed from our pics of Prey Veng, such is not the case.  Most of it has been chopped down for rice paddies.  Which isn't necessarily wrong, since folks need space to farm, but it has resulted in more droughts, more floods, more dry wells due to dried-up groundwater.

During a recent trip up noth to Cambodia's Mondulkiri province, we were reminded of what a long forest might be like.  Mondulkiri is ridiculously lush and beautiful, with its "ocean of trees" vista, and a seemingly endless supply of passion fruit, avocadoes, strawberries, mangosteens, mangoes, cashews...

Yet even in Mondulkiri the signs of "development" are painfully evident.  Enormous stretches of once forested land, all chopped down for lumber.  Or to plant foreign investors' rubber plantations.  Tiny new wooden homes errected along the sides of the highway, a reminder of the thousands of Cambodians who have been evicted from their homelands in the past few years.

And just last week, a prominant anti-logging Cambodian activist was shot and killed by military police.  My desperate hope is that this would be investigaed.   That the government wouldn't excuse and ignore such cases as they so often do. 

Sometimes it's very hard to have hope here.  The pain overshadows the beauty, even while they co-exist.  And yet as I look back over our photos of Mondulkiri, and as I see the smiling faces of the ladies back in our Prey Veng market, it's hard to not retain some hope that the beauty of this place can win. 

{ a few photos of our Khmer New Year vacation to Mondulkiri }

our prey veng office

Check out the MCC Cambodia Blog for a recent post on our Prey Veng office, complete with a photo tour!  Basically, the bottom of the house is where we work, and the top is where Ryan and I live.

Contrary to popular belief, as might be misconstrued on this blog, we DO actually spend the majority of our time here in Cambodia in this office...sitting at those computers...

...although we did just get back from a staff retreat at the beach : )

baby carriers: cast your vote!

Poor American babies.  They get crammed and buckled (and buckled again) into restraining car seats, all in the name of safety.  Not so in Cambodia.  Babies are liberated from these confines!  There are so many alternative options for carrying your baby in Cambodia. In preparation for our own, we spent the afternoon testing out some of the most common options.

And now ladies and gentlemen: cast your vote!  Which option should we use to carry our baby girl around Prey Veng?

 
Option 1 (left): Baby in bike basket.

Option 2 (right): Baby in moto basket.

 
Option 3 (left): Baby on bike seat with adult peddling from rear rack.

Option 4 (right): Adult on moto props baby behind him and holds with one hand.

Option 5: Baby on adult's lap.  Adult operates moto and cell phone.

Option 6: Baby swings in a krama hammock tied between bike handlebars.

Please comment below with your vote!

odov

One of the main partner organizations I (Daphne) work with in Prey Veng is ODOV.  With the help of another MCC volunteer, we were able to launch their website several months ago!  Check it out to see some of the projects this organization is doing, and read about the impact they're having in rural farming communities...

she's a she!!

...or an alien??

 

prey veng preggo

I would like to say I'm the kind of person who can go through pregnancy with grace and patience. The reality is: it's the hottest time of the year, in one of the hottest countries in the world. It's 95 degrees as I write this. And still, our neighbors continue to burn fires outside (seemingly) all day long. While the smoke no longer makes me throw up as it did during the first trimester, I am far from accepting it with grace.

I suppose the hot season (April & May in particular) always feels this way. Not our favorite time to be here. Even last year I felt "pregnant" for a month or two: fatigue, swollen feet, general apathy. I'm inspired by several friends here who are attempting to get through this year's hot season by focusing on grattitude. And I am indeed grateful for things like mango season, and ice cubes, and the occassional trip to an air-conditioned locale.

Despite all that. Being pregnant in Prey Veng is kind of fun, too. If we didn't get stares before, we certainly do now! There are words of wisdom from Cambodian moms: take it easy, drink coconut water, no lifting, no eating fish with red tails, be careful riding the moto on bumpy roads, eat green mangoes to curb the morning sickness, don't wear tight clothes or they'll strangle the baby.  (You may guess that I'm adhearing to some of these more than others.)

And then of course there are the lovely ladies who just straight up tell me I'm eating too much rice, or have a fat stomach : )

It's a learning experience for sure! My hope is that even in these next few months of hot season oh-so-inconveniently coinciding with the upcoming 3rd trimester, God would be gracious in allowing us to savor this time of anticipation. But for now I honestly can't wait to get to our air-conditioned apartment rental in Bangkok come June...and greet our little one!

      
                        {like}                                                                  {dislike}

urban (?) homestead

I've been on this total kick recently after reading a book on Urban Homesteading. It's one of those books that talks about growing your own food, making your own cleaning products out of vinegar and baking soda, baking your own sourdough bread, energy efficiency, and the list goes on.

i LOVE it.

Part of it makes me so eager to return to the States where this sort of stuff is, well, pretty uncommon. Revolutionary, as some say. The ironic thing is that so much of it is just the way life is here in Prey Veng. If we want bread (or pickles or salsa or hummus and the list goes on) we have to make it from scratch. Yes, we could always lug home more things from Phnom Penh's grocery stories. But there is something so enjoyable about rooting through the Prey Veng market to come up with an entire Mexican meal.  Or enjoying homemade bagels with homemade cream-cheese (just hang out some yogurt to drip) on a Saturday morning. Plus, this kind of stuff actually fits in our budget.

So while a piece of me wishes to have our own little "homestead" back who-knows-where in the States, I am quickly reminded that what has become a bit of a trend at home is just...the way life is...here in Cambodia.  There is so much to learn from this stage of our life!

And freshly baked sourdough bread made from wild Prey Veng yeast is SO unbelievably delicious!

{ sour dough bread experimenting }

clean water

Our co-worker Michael recently put together this video about some of the flood relief supplies that one of our partners distributed through our MCC relief funds.  Check it out for a glimpse of Prey Veng, MCC's work, and an old Khmer man with Ryan's voice!

 

getaway

Cambodia really really spoils us sometimes. Which is a good thing to remember when we're irritated by the heat, or the constant garbage-burning smoke (my arch-nemesis during pregnancy). But we also get to enjoy being outside year-round, eat fresh mangoes for every breakfast, bike wherever we want, bring home loads of cheap vegetables from the market...

...and take sweet weekend trips to the beach. Where staying in a little water-front bungalow is the price of 2 beers at home. Not that we do this often, but since it had been quite a while (2 years in fact) since we'd payed a visit to Cambodia's largest beach town of Sihaounkville, we figured it was time for a trip.

And so the list of benefits of living in Cambodia continues: warm ocean water in mid-February, the best shrimp and squid with fresh green Kampot peppercorns, cheap buses and moto rentals to get you where you need to go, and friendly folks all along the way.

poon hill * nepal

One of my favorite parts of traveling - especially when it involves any sort of hiking or treking - is the people you meet along the path. I love that you can talk about culture and travel and development and politics with a practical stranger.

In our case in Nepal, the people we met were super generous in taking some photos of us. So many of them had actually had cameras lost/stolen before and were absolutely willing to help us out. So, here at last are a few of our pics from a generous mate (seriously, he's from Australia) atop Poon Hill, the highlight of our trek in the Annapurna region.

So much beauty!!

how to be cool overseas

So you know how missionaries have that reputation as being so un-cool?  I'm talking plaid jumpers and stuff.  I don't really know where I picked up the stereotype, since my own cousins who grew up overseas always had WAY cooler clothes than I ever did.

Anyway, times have changed. Thanks to the internet (and to bootleg movies that show up in our markets before they're even out on DVD) you can now easily keep up with all the latest trends, even when you're living in a rural part of Cambodia. And this we know for sure: the latest trend is ANGRY BIRDS. How do we know this? Every market in Cambodia is filled to over-flowing with every type of angry birds clothing and paraphanalia imaginable.  Seriously, everything: flip-flops, pillows, underwear, jeans, and of course fake iphones on which to play the game.

So our trendy friends Steve and Amie decided to host an Angry Birds party, because what else do you do with all this paraphanalia.  Ryan and I scored some matching angry birds matchy-matchies (pj's) from the Prey Veng market for the occassion. 

We will be ready to return to America in a year for sure!

as if cambodia wasn't interesting enough already...

...this little peanut should provide some entertainment!

*

and now

our top 10 responses to the top 10 questions we've received so far:

(1) the baby is due in mid-july.

(2) we'll go to a hospital in bangkok (with its own starbucks) to deliver.

(3) yes, you read right. the ultrasound pic does say FOETUS.

(4) no, we don't know if it's a boy or girl.

(5) nope, don't know that either.

(6) yes, "morning" (i.e. all-day-long) sickness is miserable.

(7) yep, daphne will likely have the hugest stomach in prey veng.

(8) no, you cannot eat red-tailed fish if you are preggo in cambodia.

(9) we are indeed seeing a doctor monthly in phnom penh.

(10) and that's about all we know, folks.

nepal

how exactly do you summarize a trip that included both the taj mahal and the himalayas? 

and reconnecting with friends and crisp weather and fifty cent plates of momos and spicy chai and ancient cobble-stone streets and pagodas and temples and terraced rice padies and lakes and beads and bangles!

[insert superlative here]

this being my third time back in nepal, and ryan's first, we had an amazing 2 weeks discovering and re-discovering this place i love so much. it remains as intruiging as my first visit. the sacred and the mundane so intertwined that it's impossible to distinguish a tree from a temple. the ancient and the new side-by-side: a 7th century buddha nestled in a side-walk next to a coca-cola vendor. the massive himals and imposing stupas towering over and yet somehow not overshadowing the tiniest most intricate wood carving or bright red drop of a bindi.

a highlight was our short 4-day trek in the annapurna range, which included a morning walk up to Poon Hill ("hill" here meaning 10,000+ feet) to watch the sun rise over the himalayas. ryan and i agreed it's probably the most stunning site we've ever soon!  (and we're hoping that the friendly couple at the top with the nice camera will send us a few photos...)

{ view of poon hill & phewa lake with a dinky disposable camera we found }

and the kathmandu area is a gem...besides all the pollution...and the haze the blanketed the sky most of the time we were there.  other than that, love it!  a few pics we snapped on one of our final days with a new camera...

 { ancient creaky crooked architecture of kathmandu }

{ bouddanath stupa }

{ till next time! }

giving thanks

we just finished up the leftovers from our first thanksgiving feast in prey veng! we are thankful for some awesome phnom penh friends who made the trip out for the weekend, for loads of delicious food, and for the innumerable other blessings God graces us with every single day.  i am also thankful for ryan's delicious turkey, which was oh so successfully delicious and juicy, without an accurate oven temp or thermometer (he guessed) or roasting pan (we made a makeshift one) or string to hold the bird together (we used...thumb-tacks).

{ featuring: michael & lisa's stuffing and babaganoush and tropical sangria, steve & jodi's corn casserole and sweet potatos with roasted marshmellows, aimee's pumpkin biscuits, ryan's turkey and mashed potatoes, mok & seyha's cambodian rice wine, lisa s.'s cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, alex's salad, my apple crisp, and caleb's nuts&choc ice-cream }

{ final family foto thanks to steve chee }

india

After months and months of looking forward to our trip to India and Nepal, it is suddenly over.  Normally at this point, I would be obsessively looking through photos and selecting just which ones to load on the blog or facebook or whatever.  As you may have heard, our camera was pick-pocketed while we were in Nepal, so we just have a few pics of our last day or so in Kathmandu.  And none of the India that I had so much wanted to see again since my family lived in Pune when I was just 5 years old.

And so, instead of madly sorting photos, I suppose I now have the opportunity to actually reflect on all we were able to see and experience.  To paint some pictures with words (thanks for the reminder, Andrea).  To appreciate beauty even when it can't be captured in a 4x6.  As if it could be anyway.

India.  What I remember from when I was 5 is: spicy smells, garbage smells, bright colors, dirty streets, women with hair so long it dragged on the ground, different people, different religions, cow dung, train cars, bells ringing, incense burning, tiny shacks, and the one time I vomitted in the middle of the street and a woman walked right through it barefoot (sorry, graphic, but it's one of my most clear memories).

Our first morning in Delhi was surprisingly chilly.  I even got a runny nose and sore throat (which maybe proves more about how hot Cambodia is rather than how cold India is).  We stepped out into the littered street and - SMELLS!  If you know me well, you know I have a pretty good sniffer on me.  Probably too good of a nose.  Anyway, I've heard that your sense of smell is the first sense to fully develop, so I suppose it's no surprise that the smells of India are what I most remember from when I was a child, and what first struck me returning as a 30-year-old.

Our noses led us to an incredibly delicious warming spicy breakfast of aloo paratha at a nearby stall.  Hot spices first thing in the morning?  Yes, please! 

From there we had a whirlwind tour of Delhi (thanks to an awesome gift from Rachel & Shane).  What a wealth of history and diversity.  The mingling of ancient Islamic floral inlay and script, of Mughul architecture, of Hindu temples, and even a Bahai place of worship in the shape of a lotus flower.

Day two of our 3-day transit visa consisted of a trip out to Agra.  You may have heard of the Taj Mahal?  Even after seeing it in so many photos, Ryan and I concluded that the Taj Mahal is definitely not over-reated.  It is breath-taking.  Which sounds cheesy, but it really is that stunning.  You must see it for yourself.

(By the way, we were pretty popular at the Taj.  Approximately 13 different groups of people approached us to have their picture taken with us.  So, I suppose someone out there has a pic of us at the Taj.  If you are friends with any groups of Indian teenagers on facebook please look for our photo.)

India is as intense as I remember.  We definitely got *almost * scammed a number of times.  But no money lost, no detour trips taken, and all in all we had a fabulous time.

The morning we left we enjoyed another delicious spicy breakfast of puri, served up in a leaf bowl.  As our one souvenir from India, we took a rikshaw to Asia's largest spice market, and bought one bag of hot hot chilly powder.

Which we are now enjoying in Prey Veng.