Day 4

This day was a bit different. We drove about an hour and a half to New Life For Cambodian Children, an orphanage in the province for children with HIV. Most of their parents have died from the disease or can no longer care for them. The place is huge with multiple housing buildings, school buildings, dining areas, a massive playground, a medical center stocked with all the medications for the kids, and then they do a lot of farming there for food and to sell to the markets. They have egg-laying hens, ginormous pigs, and lots of vegetables. I cant remember if they do rice, but rice seems to grow everywhere here. It's really beautiful, these massive fields of green. Anyway, we toured the orphanage and then they prepared us the best lunch. Fried chicken, french fries, rice, some kind of zucchini-like vegetable that was really yummy, a Khmer sour soup, and giant red grapes. I was a bit nervous because the kids were eating this stuff they called fish porridge and I thought I would have to pray that stuff down, but they were so sweet to cook things we would like. We joked and said we needed to open a KFC- Khmer Fried Chicken - and sell that stuff. It was so good!

After lunch we set up - you guessed it - crafts! There were about 150 kids so we divided them into a few groups but it was mostly mass chaos. :) They finished pretty quick so we had some time to just talk and play with the kids. They take English classes so especially the older ones were able to talk to us really well. I have some really cute pictures from here that I can't wait to share. I had one little boy that was my shadow, and he was a sweetheart. Orphanages here are a bit different because most countries have closed adoption with Cambodia (lots of fraud several years back) so they pretty much know the kids will be there until they are 18. The kids seemed mostly healthy though, and they talked about sending them off to university and jobs so their prognosis must be pretty good.

That took up most of our day, and then we moved from where we were staying to a hostel on the riverfront. I think the idea was that we would be able to minister to some of the girls in the red light district, but some of the rules have changed so we haven't really done that.

 I will have to write about day 5 later - it was my favorite! Today is day 6, and our flight home leaves very late tonight. We have one more ministry to visit, a place where they train girls to sew. Then we have some free time for shopping and Open Arms, our favorite. It is another ministry that trains girls to do beauty stuff. We went the other day and I had a hair wash, which is like 30 minutes of washing and head massage for about $4. Ridiculous. They use ice cold water and it feels sooooo good after being in the heat all day. Then it will be time to head home. In some ways it feels like I just got here and in others it feels like I have been here forever. I pray that this won't be the last time I get to come here. Definitely can't wait to see my babies and my hubby. Please be patient with me as I readjust to normal life and forgive me if 80% of my sentences for the next few months start with "when I was in Cambodia..."