Living in Cambodia, we’ve grown old eyes for a place we now know much better. Having a visitor helps us remember what it was like to be new and share a little bit more about the basics of our life. One of our next blog series comes from Jenny Kemp’s visit to Phnom Penh in 2022. She asked Sam some questions to help our family, friends and supporters back in Australia better understand what our lives are like in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. These are the first two questions. 

Jenny: Tell me a bit about where you live and what it’s like. 

Sam: We live between the Phnom Penh Bible School and Hope International school, each are a 7 minute drive. We live in a housing complex called a borey, which has a guarded boom gate at the entrance. Our borey has 6 streets, with many Cambodian, Chinese and expat families. We have lived here for 6 years, and there are many more Hope families here now than when we first moved in (American, NZ, Aussie, UK and Danish). The houses are mostly 3 storey brick villas, with 4 bedrooms, each with an ensuite. We have a tiled front yard with a gate. The houses are only 10-15 years old, but they are not well built, and things seem to break frequently. The borey has a grassy area with a dilapidated playground, trees that are great for climbing and there’s corner store at the gate. 

Jenny: What’s a typical shopping trip like?  

Sam: My shopping list is complicated. I miss Coles and Woolies where I can buy everything I need for my weekly shop. Here I ride my bicycle to the supermarket near our house and buy some of the items, and ride home with about 3 bags, either in the basket or dangling off the handle bars. This is the supermarket pictured below. Then Craig or my house helper will buy fruit and veg from the market. I like to buy meat and dairy from an online store which delivers on a motorbike, either the same day or the next day. We buy nuts in bulk which also get delivered by moto. Every few weeks I try and go to one of the other big supermarkets to get the extra items on my list, eg probiotic yoghurt, vanilla essence, jars of sauce, shampoo, multi vitamins. The prices of identical items varies from store to store, so I also try to be thoughtful about which shops I go to first. The range of products available in each store varies month by month, so I need to be flexible in what I want to buy. It is a complicated process every week. I still have not had the courage to buy meat from the wet market! 

Hello from Australia. This post coming to you from Corks in Australia.

Just prior to leaving Cambodia our looming transition felt like a tidal wave coming towards me of which I could do nothing about. This is not meant to be negative description of my experience, but more that it highlights the bigness of what was coming and how quickly it was coming. Quite a few sleepless nights also testifies to the size of the change that was coming.

Then as we arrived, whiplash; like landing in an airplane with your body squeezed to seat as you land and you can’t do a thing. Pre-leaving Cambodia had been this frantic dash to the finish. But on arrival there was a necessary slowing from that frantic pace. In that slowing you realise how quick you’d been going, even if you didn’t fully realise it at the time. We went from doing many things in a day to one thing a day (not dissimilar to when we first arrived).

Then as we’ve begun to settle in, there is the feeling of floating above your body (an out of body experience). The reality of what has just happened sinks in. We have just spent the last 3 years in Cambodia and now we are back in Australia for our first home assignment. Having been away there is now a distance associated with our home culture and so with those changes that have occurred in us and in Australia, we take some time to process, hence the out of body experience.

Thus as I try to reconnect my body to myself floating above, I’ll be taking a break from blogging over Christmas, while we settle in. However, I aim to start again early 2020 with more reflections on our first 3 year term in Cambodia, reflections on being back and thoughts as we head towards our second term. If first term was about language learning (even though that was through teaching), the second term could well be characterised as primarily ministry (teaching) although still language learning (life-long learning).

In order to catch me when I start blogging again, sign up on email to be notified when I begin again or like our Corks in Cambodia facebook page.

You could say I’ve gone postal …

With the mission series finished, I’ll be taking a short break from blogging, into the New Year, while we prepare to and then actially move countries. I hope to start back again shortly after we arrive. 

My first series will be on Proverbs-biblical proverbs. My reasons here are firstly, I’ve been loving getting into the book of Proverbs over the last few years. Secondly, missiologically they carry great insights into culture. So as I learn how to mine the OT culture, I hope to gain skills to later doing a series on Cambodian proverbs and even Aussie proverbs at some stage.

Cya in 2017.