Saturday, April 21, 2012

Our Trip to Cambodia Part 1: Phnom Penh

We have been waiting for and praying for this trip for a LONG time (it seems!) now! We had been looking forward to going to Cambodia for several reasons:
1) We wanted to get away from the big city and enjoy some R&R by the beach
2) We wanted to seek the Lord for direction for our future
3) We wanted to see if we could live in the city of Phnompenh, the capitol!

Yep, you read that last one correctly. We've been praying about moving to Phnompenh! 
 We are excited with how God is directing! This post (Part 1) is about our visit to the capitol going through houses, exploring supermarkets, and most importantly, meeting directors and teachers at the Bible School we were praying about working with.

Most of you already have seen these photos, but thought I'd post them anyway.
Thanks for praying with us as we made this trip!

Here is the sleepy family on the plane...the direct flight from Shanghai to Phnompenh and back again is only late at night, so I was thankful that Wes slept okay! (Joe too, since he had to work the next day!)


My baby is getting so big!

We enjoyed visiting a church while we were there...

...trying out local foods...




...relaxing by the pool at our hotel...


...and taking tuk-tuk tours throughout this VERY diverse city!
 


haha, we loved this mode of transportation! Nica loves the wind in the hair, and Joe wants to get his own tuk-tuk to use as a family vehicle! lol



Here is a little video clip of our tuk-tuk ride through the city. 
I added captions so you could hear what we were talking about since the wind really picked up on the video clip!


The city has a lot of interesting architecture. I'll let Joe do a blog post sometime soon giving you some history about the country and where they are at today. It's a developing country, but so beautiful and unique!




breakfast in our hotel! We were glad to have brought along Wes' little chair. He eats so much better with a secure place to sit!

And here is the beginning of the tour of Phnompenh Bible School!
Joe will be replacing this lady, Rose Ellen, as director of the English Department, English curriculum developer, and Bible instructor (in English) the rest of the Bible classes are all taught in Khmer.

Here are some of the buildings on the PBS campus: 
classrooms & library (above)
chapel and dining room (below)
There is so much grass! Nica is excited to have a place for Wes to be able to run and play, kick a ball, try to catch the little lizards, and just do boy-things! Shanghai makes it a little difficult to do these things, so we're excited!


Here is the inside of the chapel (above)
and the outside of the beautifully renovated chapel (below)


Rose Ellen and her husband Dan were nice enough to get us connected with some people so we could go through homes in the city so Nica could see if this is actually a place where she could see herself living and working and raising our family. We were pleasantly surprised with the homes here and that the cost of living is SO much cheaper than Shanghai!





This is a street that we (realistically) could be living on in the near future! It's SO close to the Bible School. Below is one of the villas currently for rent. We're praying that we can find a furnished villa to move into so we don't have to spend tons of money on furnishing these BIG four-bedroom, 5 bathroom homes! We've already decided we're going to turn the car-park area in front into a potted flower garden with a little splash pool for Wesley!



Nica had to work hard to get Wes to smile for a photo on the grass. He didn't like it very much!

Here is another home for rent that we went through...the villas all seem to have similar layouts, so we feel like we've got a good idea of the type of home we'd be living in. What an upgrade from our current cozy little apartment!



Each of the four bedrooms has a full, private bathroom. We'll have lots of room for guests!! :D

This is another street we could live on (see below)
We like this location, not as close to the Bible School, but REALLY close to the church, a big, beautiful supermarket, a gym and pool, etc. So, we'll see!

Lest you think this city is SO beautiful, we need to post some photos of what other parts look like. 
Not all streets are beautiful.

this is the supermarket. I was pleasantly surprised! It is so much newer than where I shop here in Shanghai, and has a LOT more foreign products without the sky-high foreign import taxes tacked onto the prices. Nice!


typical sights on the road. Entire families on scooters! Don't worry, we will not adopt that practice. ;)


Lest you think all we did was tour the supermarkets and go through houses, do not fear, we did play tourist, too. Here we are at the beautiful National History Museum:







Wes & Joe enjoying the fan. It gets REALLY hot here!


There are lots of local markets to explore and enjoy! 
And one interesting thing is that they use USD here! So I won't have to get used to a new currency. 
Language, though,... aaauuuughhh... one of the downfalls of leaving China...




So, this was a little glimpse into our trip to the capitol city of Cambodia, Phnompenh! 

We spent about 4 days here and then skipped down to the beach for several days of enjoying the beach, resting, and praying about our future!

J,N&W

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