Christmas in Siem Reap

Thursday was Christmas Eve and we were fortunate to go along with the missionaries to a house church for Christmas Eve service.  Because Christmas is a celebration, the service actually took place in a large tent in a field, with satin covered chairs, musicians with loud speakers, dancers, a drama of the Nativity story, and a sermon by our missionary friend.  The service lasted about 3 ½ hours and was entirely in Khmer, so we smiled and clapped on cue.  This was an answer to prayer for us as we’d really hoped to be part of Christian cultural celebration of this special holiday while in a country that is not a primarily Christian country.

Dance performed during Christmas Service

The actors for the children's play

After leaving service, the missionaries left for a week vacation so Mom and the older boys met with Pam and Sophie, one of the English teachers, to come up with some ways to make teaching English to the students more engaging.  Our oldest actually ended up helping in an English class again while we were at the Dream Center for our meeting.

For Christmas Eve dinner we went with Pam and John to Marum, a restaurant that teaches underprivileged kids cooking and serving skills while giving back to the community.  We enjoyed a plethora of tapas and even tried a traditional Khmer dish of beef, rice, and fried ants!

Traditional Khmer beef & fried ants

On Christmas Day we woke up and were able to talk to our cousins over the computer.  Then we finished up Jotham’s Journey (our Advent book this year), and the reading for our traditional Advent calendar (even though the kids were SO disappointed mom didn’t pack the calendar itself), and sang our Christmas songs and Happy Birthday to Jesus.  We gave the kids their gifts (a chocolate egg wrapped in a piece of notebook paper so they could “unwrap” something), and a thoughtful card Grandma and Grandpa put together for each of us (THANK YOU!). 

Christmas morning

This was quite different from the plethora of overwhelming stuff that we don't need but somehow happens year after year and made for some good discussion. Then we had breakfast and all of the guys had a 30 minute back massage – this was a first for the boys who enjoyed it but had a hard time not giggling as they tried to keep from passing gas!

G's first massage

Christmas afternoon we went to another government school that the missionaries are connected with and were able to share with them our Noel Advent Calendar reading and songs that are our Christmas tradition.  We were delighted when our interpreter sang Joy to the World in Khmer after we had sung it in English, it was the first Khmer song we’d recognized the tune to!  We then were each given a group to lead in a Samson, lady, lion game that was similar in purpose to rock, paper, scissors.  The kids had a blast with this!  We handed out some candy for their Christmas treat and a slip of paper that the students collect and can return at a monthly market to purchase necessities in return for having attended the religious class.

Students singing a song for us

Game we played with Ampil school students

Students praying

These were the only sweet thing Mom could find to resemble a Christmas cookie, so we
"re-enacted" our Christmas & cookie drive with carols as we rode home from the school.

Christmas night, Dad and our middle son, who are competing for the longest hair, were both thrilled to wear their hair in pony tails to dinner!

First Father-son ponytail

We ate at a restaurant up the street from our hotel.  When we initially made reservations our daughter thought the host was a Jedi – ha!  Which of course she loudly asked right in front on him. Christmas dinner was a set multi-course meal but the courses were served in order of appetizers, salad, main course, soup, a second main course, and dessert.  We did not understand that it was 2 main courses, we thought it was either or, so by the time the second main course came out, we couldn’t take another bite!  The same 10 songs played over and over on the speaker, stopping half way through Joy to the World to start the loop over again.  However, they had a Christmas tree and we had a sense of humor, especially when the waiter kept calling our daughter Salami!

Merry Christmas!

We returned to our hotel and were able to connect with both sets of Grandparents, more cousins, and Ray.  Then we went to bed as it would be a short night before the next morning’s adventure began as we were getting up at 4:30am to bike to Angkor Wat temple to see the sunrise!