fail

Last day for seniors today. I was numb. I was more sad about it at the beginning of the week. I can't believe it is actually over.

Do you know what it is like to have students fail your class and because of it cannot graduate. I do. It hurts to see the kids that I have come to love bawling cause they failed my class. It hurts.

oh time went by quickly.

wow! another blog a week later! :D

Updates on events.

Drama went decent. Could have been better, but they did much better than expected and it drew some of the non-christian parents to church, so I am praying that they were impacted by it :D. Afterwards they all came over for lunch and we had made daal and beans for them with Sumairah's help. They were very respectful and we did not have to kick anyone out. Actually a surprise but a very good surprise. I'm happy with the day. I have not sweated so much in my life. but a good day.

Science fair went very well! The kids did a pretty good job and it actually looked like a science fair. A lot of people were impressed. Next year it will only get better. I'm glad that we started one, cause now the kids actually have an idea of what one should kinda look like. And the kid that won was the one that I talked about in the previous blog about how he failed but now he is trying. :D I have the biggest smile about that.

so just wanted to let you know that prayers are being answered. Now for making final exams....

amy

Photos updated:

Beach: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=168732&id=735963980&l=66437459fa

Vietnam: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=168724&id=735963980&l=0437cd7ba5

Parents: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=163202&id=735963980&l=88a1dbf217

Randoms: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=168738&id=735963980&l=84973899fc



If you have facebook please look up Cambodia Adventist School

also the school website is www.cas.edu.kh

UPDATE!!!!!!

I alot has happened in the past few months... I don't even know where to start. So this blog may be a little random as I try to remember the highlights. :D

April:
- My parents came!!!! Yeah!!!! I was able to show them around Phnom Penh so if you see them ask them how it went. :D I think they had a good time. Phnom Penh was stark empty because it was Khmer New Year so all the people leave the city to go to their provinces. I know NO ONE from Phnom Penh originally. Everyone has a "homeland" that they go to.
- The next weekend for holiday I went with the other SM's to the beach Kom Pong Som. We had a blast and we went snorkeling at an amazing island where there was basically no one there except us and the locals. The beach was white and empty. Gorgeous. God has created some amazing things. We saw lots of fish and sea creature thingys... haha... that I have no clue what they are.

May:
- My birthday! I had a blast. It was 3 days of fun :D On friday I had a surprise party with Tim, Fay, Gary, Sharon, Kristie, BJ, and Whit. On Saturday it was Sabbath and I had a fun time at Game time. Finally at the end of the day the boys let me win rook. When ever i play with them, they always bid rediculouly high and so I never can get points but finally they let me bid :D Then on Sunday some of my students led by Rosa threw me a little surprise get together. Now that was a surprise... I love them all dearly :D :D :D :D
- This weekend Kristie, Sumaira, and I went to vietnam and we did all our souvenir shopping. Apparently all things touristy is made in Vietnam so all the tourist things that you can get here and are made in Vietnam are a lot cheaper to just buy in Vietnam... :D Plus I got to eat Pho where Bill Clinton ate. And I got to see the tunnels were the North Vietnamese fought... and I saw the Reunification Palace where South Vietnam surrendered. Pretty cool stuff. It's fun to see that history is real. :D


So those are the major events. Now for some news....

-I only have one more month of school left. Not even. I think I am im panic mode. Already some of the Loas kids went home and I wasn't able to say goodbye!!!! I don't know what I am going to do. Breathing literally gets hard when I think I will be saying good bye soon. I'm gonna cry majorly. I'm going to warn all my students.

-The first science fair ever for CAS is this coming Sunday... we'll see how it goes...

- On Saturday Drama presents for church. PRAY FOR US PLEASE.... I am in panic mode. The kids are not. They are SLOW!!!!!! It doesn't help we have only had one class all quarter cause of all the holidays. Please pray that I am not pessimistic... but seriously I am WORRIED! I am praying that it will go well. On the plus side, because we are doing a program for church I have been doing worship with them every morning for the past month to prepare them for the program so they understand the message they are trying to get across and it is cool to see so many of the students interesting in Christs story.. I don't know what they have been learning so far but some of the kids didn't even know Jesus felt pain for them. Interesting conversations going on there. Pray that they all continue searching.

- 8 students may not graduate. Pray that they get there study boots on and get serious!

- Good news! I had a student who had given up on life... last straw was failing my class and so he was thinking about commiting suicide. BJ found out and so he talk to the principle and I talked to this student and made a deal that if he made up the work he would pass with a 60% (which is barely passing) and he had to prove he would try harder. Now he is one of the better students in my class, trying really hard, taking baptismal classes and he says it is because 2 teachers never gave up on him, and have shown him patience and so now life is worth living. I love happy stories!!! Pray that his interest in Jesus is not just temporary and that he continues searching. He is asking to be baptized. :D YEAHH!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!! (p.s. I have other student who failed were given the opportunity to make up the work and are now trying harder as well... pray for them, and pray for those who do not take up the gift of mercy... now I know how Jesus feels....)

- Please just pray for Cambodia... lots of exciting things can happen, but only we the Holy Spirits help.

Well gotta grade... as always.

Love ya all!!!!!!

snapshots

Two days ago it was so hot that when I took a shower I couldn't get it cold enough. I enjoyed getting out of the shower into A/C. Then yesterday is rained. The rain that starts at 2am and goes to 5 pm. Pouring. Now today I took a shower. I couldn't get it warm enough. oh the irony of life.

This morning I forced Kristie to get up and look at the clouds. There were actually nice fluffy clouds. Usually we either have a dark curtain of clouds meaning it's raining or no clouds. Since January we have had basically no clouds. It's suppose to be dry season.

Last week was the week or prayer at school and this week it is the week of prayer at church. School week of prayer went well. It was student run, so I was proud at how much the kids worked to make it special. It was a little unorganized here and there, but overall it was a success. We had many kids wanting prayer or more bible studies at the end of the week.

What I love most about being here is relationships. What stinks is I am becoming closer to the students so classes are a little more difficult to handle, but now I have so many kids coming up to me and telling me there secret problems and asking me for advice or prayer. It makes my days. I'm afraid that when i leave it's gonna be like when I left the U.S no communication really anymore. Made me cry yesterday when a student told me that. Although he is a person who can get up move to a different place make new friends and can move on. Very independent.



My English is going down the tubes. I starting to speak like the students. Lots of incomplete sentences, forgetting vocabulary. You think I had a difficult enough time saying my thoughts when I was in America, you should hear me now. All the SM's can speak some Spanish so we try to speak to each other in it. It's gets really funny cause we starts saying stuff like this... "Ate, tengo mien.." Which is No( in Khmer) I have (Spanish) have (Khmer. Whitaker is the worst cause he knows the most Spanish and Khmer so he really gets the words mixed up. At the beginning of the year we had the opposite problem. I would go to the market and I would think Spanish words. Now we try to speak Spanish and instead say Khmer words.

Happy Pi Day!

Today I went to S-21 Prison. It is one of the prisons that Pol Pot opened in Cambodia. During his reign people who were thought to be against the regime were charged and brought to this prison to see if they were traitors. Basically, one had to confess or be killed. Or not confess and be killed. It more depended on how much torture one could survive through. Most of those who were sentenced to go to prison were educated people. Pol Pot wanted to create a state that was all one class—labor workers. Phnom Penh was basically evacuated and either forced to work at labor camps or killed if they were of higher class. It is so horrific what the human race is willing to do. It is also sad how it seem the world continued on without realizing what occurred to Cambodia. What is also truly horrifying is that the U.S helped put the Khmer Rouge in power. In Cambodia they have excavated around 20,000 MASS graves. not 20,000 normal graves of people during this time, but 20,000 MASS graves. The time period that this occurred in was around 3 years long, maybe 1976-‘79. They had a list of some of the graves that they have excavated. Each grave had any where around 100-30,000 people in each grave.
It was a place that was just hauntingly silent. The rooms were plain, not much in it except the bed that the prisoners lied in when being tortured along with a box that they used as their toilet, but it was just inexpressible seeing the pictures and reading about what was done in this building. What is remarkable is the prison was a high school before being turned into a prison. So in the rooms there are still chalkboards and little sayings etched in the wall about teamwork and good communication. Two very opposite uses of a building that contrasted greatly.
In the pictures of those that were killed and tortured some looked to be just 5-7 years old. Those who did the torturing were anywhere’s from 16-30 years old looking. Pol Pot trained a very young army. Boys who were only waist high carried guns. There is a pastor here who tells that when he was forced to carry a gun it would drag on the ground because it was bigger than he.

Anyways… to more happier thoughts.
Today the ninth grades did a fundraiser as well and so I did face painting at it. I had fun. I let Chea face paint my face for 5,000 reil. It looked quite interesting. He tried to turn me into a guy with a mustache and beard along with some random other designs all over my face. I then turned him into a tiger… or what was supposed to be a tiger :P haha
On Friday I celebrated Pi day with my 12 graders. I made apple pie, banana cream pie, and mango cake for them. (Yeah our oven works now! ) What surprised me is that they actually ate all of that. I thought I would have left over’s. They enjoyed it. 10th graders on Friday had to do their skits. Decent but still needs more work. I am having difficulties motivating that class to go beyond expectations or to at least make expectations. It’s a slow process. Elementary did very well. I think that it helped that I let them speak Khmer… then I felt bad though, because then I was promoting it is okay to speak Khmer in school. It’s hard. I want chapel to be something the kids can learn from and so if they are going to get something out of it, I feel like it should be in the language that they can understand, but yet they are at our school to learn English and the only way they are going to learn is to be exposed to it all the time. Next time I think I will do it in English though. Give it a try.

Yesterday I did scripture reading for Church. Pisith recommended to the Pastor that I read it … I was confused why until I found out that I was reading the genealogy of Christ. I think he was secretly laughing to himself as I tried to pronounce all the names…. actually not, but yet I wonder…

I lost and found my bible this week. I NEED my bible and I was seriously lost without it. But Kristie found it :D Yeah for a good roommate!
I was told this week by a student that she is trying to be like me… What a scary thought. I told her to only see the good things, but it made me realize how much the students are watching me. I need to be extra cautious about what I say and do so it reflects how God wants me to be.

I have been having lots of interesting talks with people about the trinity. It is something that I forgot that I do not truly understand. I’m not sure if I should except that it is something that we as humans cannot understand, or as humans, are we making it more difficult than it really is? Something I’m trying to figure out.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151910&id=735963980&l=8a7cbbbac9

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150747&id=735963980&l=9c022f2754

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150489&id=735963980&l=715b10cae6

Sihanoukville-- Ex-Pat Retreat

This weekend was filled with fun! :D

Ann's church donated money towards any project of her choice here in Cambodia so she and Mark planned a retreat for all the SDA ex-patriots (foreigners) that are here in Cambodia. We drove down to Sihanoukville to do so, which is the touristy beach area of Cambodia.

It was cool to meet all the people that are in Cambodia and to get to know them better. I have decided that all the coolest people in the world have decided to live in Cambodia and work here (and for some reason they all seem to come from Walla Walla too, where are you Andrews?), because frankly they are just plain awesome. The stories they have to tell and what they have done, and what they have lived through is just incredible. I feel like what they must talk about is not real. They are the people you read about in Mission books. Secretely I want their autographs lol ;D but seriously...


For the retreat they brought in Mr. Scott Griswold who is in charge of Buddhist Ministries. He was a SM for a year in the refuge camps at the border of Cambodia and Thailand, went back to America to finish school, came back a few years later and has stayed in Southeast Asia since. He now lives in Thailand with his family. But the ex-pat here have stories way back. Alot have been here for around 15 years, lived through the end of Pol-Pots reign, lived through the coo (i don't know how to spell it) and seen how Cambodia has developed.

We got to talk to Ben Davis alot cause his family is in Australia right now and he has so many stories to tell. He was telling us how when he was in Sihanoukville, the Khmer Rouge was posted right over the mountain (large hill with jungle) so he went with the loggers that would go into the jungle and he talked and hung out with the Khmer Rouge. The general showed him around the area and the jungle was filled with monkeys, deer, elephants, there were waterfalls and lots of trees. A few years later when the governement pushed the Khmer Rouge out of that area he visited the government camps and there were no animals, all had been killed to be sold, and the area was being logged clean. It is sad how the suppose to be "good guys" really actually caused harm. He was telling how corrupt the government was at that time and a lot of the trouble was caused by government troops. He was actually shot by government troops who were trying to steal his motorcycle. So many stories I don't know how to write them all.

In Montokiri there are a missionary couple that are the first to learn the language of the tribe and they are developing a written language for the Pnong people since there language is only an oral language. They were saying explaining how the people view sin and it is a concept that we should all try to understand. The people do not think of sin as something you do, but something you already have. When they leave a home of another person, they offer a sacrifice to get rid of the sins they (either those at the home, or those leaving) may have commited at the home and brush the blood around the door. Very similar to passover story. Gives me the shivers.

What is also intersting, is that before Pot Pot times it was a common belief across cambodia that there was one God who created everything. It is so cool how God can show up anywhere. Now that belief has died out because Pol Pot basically destroyed all beliefs. Even buddhism here is not really buddhism. Its a buddhism, hinduism, and lots of spirituallism all mixed together and everyone believes something different. Difficult to understand cause it is such a mix of things.

While we were there we also did some touristy things. I got a fish massage were fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I spent most of the time trying not to move my feet and laugh since it tickled so much. :D

Kristie, Sumaira, Ben, and I also did a ocean water park were we played on these blow up coarses. We had fun. My shoulders are now very soar from pulling my self up. We had a pool at our hotel so we swam some in that as well. My camera took lots of pictures in the water. I'm gonna try to post them soon, but internet is not cooperating with me right now.

I must say the ocean was very very warm. Like swiming in a bath tub. We kept on swimming out hoping it would get cooler... it never did.