This week...MOLD!!!

Hello all and lots of love. Happy 43rd Anniversary to my loving parents, who are hoping they won't see another 43 married years together or we'll all go crazy! haha

October has started. Wow. Canadian Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Can I find a turkey here again this year? We sure hope to host a thanksgiving dinner next weekend, with all our canuck folk, but gosh darnit, we just have too many american friends that need to see what a good old-fashioned Canadian meal looks like! We'll see how the numbers turn out, but we'll let you know how it goes.

We started this week, with Julia home with a fever on Monday, only to have Steph arrive at lunch with a high fever too?!? I was able to stay home on my prep time, scooch out of a few duties and be with them for alot of the 2 days, but not totally. Sokhom was here, but it's not the same. The fevers were pretty high, and seeing as they both had it, that's a good sign, meaning it was probably viral or something else contagious. (aka not dengue or typhoid, praise God!!!) They had both eaten the same meal at a minorly questionable restaurant the previous Sunday, so maybe it was food? Who knows. (By the way, it's hard to avoid minorly questionable restaurants here! It's the severely questionable ones we don't go to! haha)

By Wed, they both managed to get back to school a little tired out, but also managed to both play in their basketball game afterschool. I really didn't think Steph would make it, but she was OK. Steph is the starting point guard for the middle school team, a good little ball handler (I emphasize the "little" part :)) and Julia saw the floor for the first time in that game. That is where she managed to huck up about 4 or 5 balls, 3 of which actually went through the hoop, to score the teams ONLY 6 points of the game. If you're cringing at the thought of having to sit through a 6 point basketball game,I welcome your sympathy. Actually, it was not that bad, as you can watch them improve from game to game. Logos is hiring refs this year, which is a tremendous improvement. It's been fun, and they actually had their first win yesterday (friday) but I (Lesley) was at bible study.

It was also Picture week, this week at school. Thursday was class pictures, and Friday was individuals. Ok, I know that may not seem like that big of a deal, but considering we have a kindergartener in our house, this was the week of supreme importance!!! For class pictures, the kids have to wear their uniforms. Making sure there were clean, pressed uniforms for three girls all ready to go THursday morning, was a bit of a challenge! Then, Friday for individual photos, it was a dress down day. Any dress down day is an exciting event at Logos. (Especially for the elementary principal who tries to get away with wearing shorts and sandals!) Well, if only you could have seen the line up of little kindergarteners, with their pretty dress, nice shirts and ties! There was even one little guy in a suit jacket! (In Cambodia, in the heat..) I saw his mom and made a comment about how nice he looked, and she said he insisted on wearing that suit, cuz the teacher had said to wear something nice! They are all adorable!

For the kindergarten class picture, the kids just weren't smiling--I think it's a little bit cultural to keep a stone face for pictures. Alot of kids have very bad, rotten teeth, maybe they're expected to look serious, I don't know. But what I do know is that every single person who was there watching, including the photographer (who spoke no english, only Korean) was trying desperately to get them to smile! With every jump, wave, funny face and exhortation to "smile more," you'd have thought that Maya needed to make up for everyone's drab faces with her own smile! ----bigger, bigger and bigger. She is just so joyful all the time, it's such a treat to watch! I never want to dampen that spirit!!!

It's Saturday today and we have Ang Booy hanging out with us since last night. Maya's friend Sophie is over to play AND, thank you Lord and Thank you Kim family, we've been able to borrow the loaned keyboard piano from the Dederts (Sophie's family) who were taking care of it for the Kim family, that is away for a year on furlough!!! Now we're inherited it for a while, to practice, as the Dederts will be leaving soon to go to Bangkok for have their fourth baby. Please pray for this family. They are good friends of ours, steph babysits for them a bit (Darryl is on staff at Logos) and everything has gone well with this pregnancy, so we hope to have a new, safe and healthy little baby among our logos community within a few months. Anyways, thanks to all this, we get the piano! yay! I'm thrilled to have something at home. We can buy one for about $600, but not sure how long we'll be here, so not sure if it would be worth it.

Tonight, we're having the Asian Hope girls over for homemade pizza supper. I've enjoyed taking it easy today, getting a few groceries, cutting up some veggies and making some salads for tonight. I was SUPPOSED to go with S & J to basketball this morning (7-9 at Logos, guys and girls scrimmage) but bailed--I knew Ang who is a university basketball player, would be able to go and I stayed home and rested. The older I get, the more I need my downtime Saturday mornings!

Typhoon news: We have had some people asking us if we were hit with this Typhoon that went through Cambodia, and no, we are totally fine. It didn't hit the city. We are south central cambodia, and the typhoon hit north central. It wasn't that far away, but other than some cloudy days (I miss not seeing the sun no matter how hot it makes us!) we had no inkling of poor weather. It's been fairly mild in fact and quite tolerable.

Well all, have a great Canadian thanksgiving! We will think of you all next week and hope you enjoy your gorging. We are hoping for pumpkin pie of some sort, some way, somehow. It is possible out here!

Final gross and strange event: I hope you don't get tired of hearing about all the weird things out here. Bugs, to animals, rats, sicknesses; we've had termites in beds and eating books, and and geckos, really big spiders. Just the other night, I noticed something I couldn't believe! I was in Julia's room sitting next to her at her desk, as she had a ton of homework to catch up on after watching tv and goofing off for 2 days with a fever, when I looked at the side of her desk. What was that, mold? Spores and spores of light green powder were GROWING all over the side of her wood desk! It was horrible, seeing as mold is supposed to be bad for you to inhale, etc. I mean, it's not rocket science how it could grow in this humidity if there's not alot of airflow in a room, but how could I not have noticed this before now? It seemed so obvious and gross? Julia acknowledge it as her "powder" that is on the desk--how long had she been aware of it?? Anyways, further investigation of the whole desk found it worse on the back, it was even on the inside of the drawers where all her stuff is! So, I went to STeph's room to check her desk (they're the same kind) and sure enough, she had it too. Not as bad, though, as she has more airflow in her room, at least that's what I've concluded! Anyways, I've washed it all off with a javex/water blend, and hope that we can keep a handle on that! I just never expected to see mold on a desk! I will have to check the other wood products in our house, although everything else seems made of a different type of wood. Just so strange.

Maya Cute Kid Quip: watching soccer on tv last night, Maya exclaims joyfully, "When I grow up, I wanna be a soccer ball!" Why Maya? "Cuz I'm good at Soccer ball!" She of course, is wanting to be a soccer player, but I think she'd be a good soccer ball, too!!!

Oh ya! Have any of you been watching the new Amazing Race? Now that we have a TV this year, I can keep up with my ultimate favorite show! Anyways, the season opener was on for us last Monday, where they went to Vietnam! Did you see it? It was SO similar to us! They had torrents of water in the streets--that's exactly how it is for us when these heavy rains come! And lots of people standing around, watching and laughing at the foreigners! So familiar! I am hopeful they'll get to Cambodia again for this show (they did last year.) We even had friends who were eating in a restaurant months ago, who saw an "amazing race" type event take place in the restaurant, so I'm hoping next show they'll get to cambodia, or at least close! Anyways, just wondering if any of you saw it, and were amazed at Vietnam--welcome to our world!!!

Ok all, by for now! God Bless.
L
:)