Chuckle

As I found myself chuckling out loud several times on Monday, I thought I should share a few of those things that made me laugh and that remind me that we live in Cambodia.

• The appointment: Carolyn and I had scheduled a meeting with our landlords for Monday morning. We were going to sign a new 2 year lease on our house. We were ready at 8:30 to sign and move on with our day. Well our landlords showed up a few minutes late. They were customarily well dressed and overly enthusiastic with their traditional greetings. We returned their greeting and proceeded with the pre-arranged appointment. There was a moment of awkward silence as we waited for the lease documents to be presented...it was then that our landlords asked us when we would like to meet to sign our lease...What?  Inside Carolyn and I were both laughing, outside just smiling. Isn't that what we had arranged this appointment for? We meet again on Friday. Hopefully that works out.
• Power: After the nearly futile appointment, I had to go home for a Skype appointment. I got home in time, got some coffee and had the computer all set. Literally within seconds of receiving the text that we were ready to begin, the power went off at home. Not to be discouraged, I packed up my computer and took off to a coffee shop to Skype and work. I was able to Skype but the power went out at the coffee shop soon after so I needed to find another place to continue working. Then I packed up again and headed to Logos, Asian Hope's largest school. I sat down, opened my computer and guess what happened...yep, the power went out. Really. It did return 20 minutes later but I did have to laugh, or else I would have probably said things that I wouldn't want to put in this post.
• Meddling Kids: During my Skype time at the coffee shop I saw a group of 7 Cambodian teenagers walk in. I was thinking they were probably going to be loud and unruly. When I looked up at them 5 minutes later, they were all engaged in a game of UNO. UNO? I just had to laugh out loud. Certainly not what I expected from a group of older teens out for a good time together.
• Diligent: Later that day, we had an absolute downpour. I was completely drenched when I made it home on the dirt bike. When I turned down our flooded street, I saw on old Cambodian man in front of his house just across the street from us. It wasn't until I stopped that I realized what he was doing. During super soaker downpour, he was using a small container to diligently scoop water out of the gutter and pour it on his plants. Maybe he didn't think they were getting enough water with the rain.  
• Frisbee: I was playing Frisbee in the rain with Alex and some of the guys from House of Hope (Asian Hope's Boy's home). At one point I had to go out of our neighborhood to grab an errant disc. When I walked out, I noticed an unnerving site. During the heavy rain, I saw an aluminum ladder leaning up against some electrical wires where workers had just been working. Nearby there was a large electrical box on a pole with the door open letting the rain run in.  Maybe that has something to do with our power outages.

Although there are many things that we still look at daily that remind us of how different our lives are in our new culture, we do enjoy life in Cambodia. Laughter just makes the day go by easier sometimes.

I'll leave you with a hilarious sign we saw in Thailand a while ago.  We see many like this in Cambodia as well.  Makes you laugh.

Thanks for translating into English...but what does it say?