A birthday party for Emmie

- a princess indeed!

A very Happy New Year to all you.  Thank you so much for your warm and well wishes through Skype, emails, phone … from the other side of the world.

Protecting myself against the 'harsh' elements ...

All is still very well with Kevin and I, except for a minor eye operation that I just had (shared with many of you), due to a persisting sty, swelling and dry dusty weather.   As a result, I did convalesce for a couple of days, which was very much needed.   I now have joined the rest of the ‘rural’ crowd here in MDK and wear sunglasses and a scarf wrapped around my head/face/eyes to protect my eyes from dust. I have even considered wearing goggles … especially when riding to the field.

Other news, during the holiday festivities, we went to a couple of dinner parties, had fireworks and joined our little VSO group to see the New Year in.  We had a great time.  

For Christmas, we went to an expat’s house for a communal dinner - with all the yummy trimmings included.  Everyone pitched in.  There was roast turkey, baked potatoes, gravy, quiche, pies, cakes and more -- with wine and beer 'to be merry' of course.  It was a real treat to have ‘Christmas’ cuisine right at your door step that we so much craved for and missed.  What was even more amazing is that Kevin and I left the party at 1:30 a.m., a rare event for us, as we are normally in bed by 7 - 8 p.m.  That's what country life in the highlands does to you ...  

The festivity theme continued the following eve when a group of us Mondolkiri expats who are regulars at one of our local restaurants –a.k.a. as the $100 dollar club, were invited to join the Khmer/Australian owners to celebrate their daughter's first birthday party.  Their daughter Emmie was fitted with a white princess dress and 'Ruby' sparkling red shoes.  Definitely a princess!  I must say we had exceptionally scrumptious food.  During the course of the evening, it was amusing to watch human nature unfold, to the expat tribe automatically gravitated toward each other and sat at one end of the room (together with the Australian owner), whilst his Khmer wife, her family and friends sat at the other end. 

For New Year’s Eve, we saw the New Year in with a few glasses of local champagne -it was very nice indeed.   At the airstrip, thousands of people gathered to bring the New Year in with fireworks, paper lanterns, music and more.  It was awesome to see the lanterns being lit, slowly being released in the air to join the countless shining stars.  By midnight the sky glowed with a 'cheer' -with lit paper lanterns and fireworks to mark the New Year… 

The next morning however, the morning we looked forward to sleeping in, we were instead 'abruptly' woken- up by the earth shattering sound of a wedding that lasted 3 days. And, by the way, the wedding tent was installed (literally) on our doorstep!  By day, other than escaping to town to run a thousand errands … Kevin and I spent our time lip reading with each other - straining our ears to hear -trying to hear what the other was saying, because the ear shattering sound was drowning our conversation.  By night, we either wore earplugs or escaped, to our local restaurant for a break in hopes that the pounding music had stopped by the time we had returned home.

Equally ear shattering, at the crack of dawn, we were further woken up by loud voices that travelled through the cracks of our bedroom floor boards; we were woken up by the spa down below us that the landlady had recently opened up (by what now seems to be a common theme in our little community), for a flow of, (what appears) incoming traffic -mainly women- who without a doubt come to socialize before a hard day's work....  Ah the sounds of la Vie Quotidienne in the neighbourhood … 

On that note, our darling daughter Léah is visiting for 6 glorious weeks - during that period of time she plans to travel to the neighbouring countries.

More later …