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.
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Dance performed during Christmas Service |
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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!
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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!).
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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!
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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.
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Students singing a song for us |
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Game we played with Ampil school students |
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Students praying |
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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!
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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!
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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!
I laughed a number of times at this blog post! Your kids are delightful and I love seeing how they are flourishing on this amazing trip of yours.
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