Archive for February, 2012
This week in the garden… Leap Day edition!
Apparently, this is becoming a tradition… 2010, 2011, and now 2012. I provide an update on our flower bed on the last day of February.
Actually, it turns out that we’ve had such a mild winter in the Chicago ‘burbs that I could have provided the update earlier – a week ago or maybe even two. I almost walked out of the house this morning without taking the requisite pictures, but at the last moment, I grabbed my camera. Without further ado…
It’s all the usual suspects, you know?
And look at the weather conditions this morning when I left for work…
But I’m reminded that we are currently in that muddle of time between winter and spring. Since mid-day, a cold front has rolled through, the temperature has fallen from a high of 60 °F down to 35 °F, and we have winds gusting to 45 mph.
Ah… such is the midwest!
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Five for Friday… (More) Lenten haiku
Two years ago, I wrote some haiku for the Year C Lenten lectionary passages. I thought that I’d try again this year with the scriptures for Year B.
Week 1 (Mark 1.9-15)
He’s hearing voices
And living with wild beasts
And we call him ‘Lord’.
Week 2 (Mark 8.31-38)
I’ll have to forgive
Peter for thinking that death
was sub-optimal.
Week 3 (John 2.13-22)
Money-changers would
limit access to the ‘haves’,
But God loves the poor.
Week 4 (John 3.14-21)
Strange ambulance snake?
A sanitized reminder
of amazing love.
Week 5 (John 12.20-36)
Was the Greek request
Lost somewhere in translation?
Game of telephone
Ok – dear readers… it’s your turn. Do you have some Lenten haiku for one of these passages? Or would you like to pour your creative juices into something for Week 6? (It’s the Palm Sunday passage from Mark 11.)
Cambodia – Our Extraordinary Trip
That's us!
Three months ago, my family and my wife’s parents travelled from Chicago to Cambodia to visit The Guests Complacent (my brother-in-law’s family). We spent two weeks at the end of November exploring Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Mesang, and Kampong Som.
In the time that we’ve been home since then, I’ve had a blast blogging about the trip and remembering all the fun things that we did. Alas, I have no more stories to share, but I wanted to gather everything together, so that I can keep remembering. Here it is…
Pre-trip: counting down the days
- The Rainbow House of Learning goes global!
- Countdown to Cambodia… 20 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 19 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 18 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 13 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 6 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 4 days
- Countdown to Cambodia… 16 hours
- Countdown to Cambodia… we’re off!
Starting out
Phnom Penh
Siem Reap
- Part 7 – The road to Siem Reap
- Part 8 – Central Boutique Angkor Hotel
- Part 9 – Angkor
- Part 10 – On the Tonlé Sap
- Part 11 – Silk
- Part 12 – Beng Mealea
Phnom Penh (again)
- Part 13a – Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas: my pre-Cambodia thoughts
- Part 13b – Thanksgiving in Cambodia
Mesang
Kampong Som
Phnom Penh (last time)
- Part 18a – Returning to Phnom Penh
- Part 18b – Jackfruit chips, clothing factories, and Advent
- Part 19 – The final day in Phnom Penh
Coming home
Appendices
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Cambodia, appendix 3 – Favorite pictures
I took roughly 1200 pictures in Cambodia. If you throw in those that Ordinary Spouse and my mother-in-law took, we may have come home with 3000. Here are most of my favorites.
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Cambodia, appendix 2 – Maps and money
I didn’t have a good place to compile maps of our travels and images of currency that I picked up along the way, so that stuff is going here as I finish “scrapbooking” our trip to Cambodia…
Maps
A map of Cambodia showing the places that we visited outside of Phnom Penh.
A map of Phnom Penh and the places we visited there.
A map of the area around Siem Reap with some of the locations that we visited.
Currency
I tried to collect some Cambodian money, but there isn’t much here. (4000 Riel = 1 US$)
At our stop at Incheon on the way home, I also picked up a little bit of South Korean Won. This is slightly more valuable. (5000 Won = 4.44 US$)
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Today’s homeschool stories
Today, I arrived home to a meal prepared in the style of the Plymouth pilgrims by Oldest Daughter. As the father, I had been moved to the head of the table, which was a bit jarring, since I’m a creature of habit. Ordinary Spouse sat beside me, and the children had to sit “below the salt”. So we were all in the “proper” order.
Oldest Daughter prepared a menu and small rule book so that we’d know what to expect. The meal consisted of:
- Succotash stew
- Bannock cakes
- Whole, baked squash stuffed with apples
- Bearberry jelly
- Hot nuts (walnuts and almonds)
- Flat bread “plates”
And our rules included:
- Do use a clean knife to get salt.
- Do use your hand instead of a fork.
- Don’t scratch itches.
- Don’t dip your food in the salt.
- Don’t get your own food. (This is for children.)
There was a little verse to help the children remember the rules:
Put not thy fingers in the dish,
Neither in flesh, neither in fish.
Put not thy meat into the salt,
Into the cellar, that is a fault.
But lay it fairly thee before,
Upon thy trencher, that is good lore.- The Little Children’s Little Book
We had the hot nuts for dessert. I found a Valentine nut…
Valentine Walnut says, “I love you.”
And now that supper is finished Middle Daughter and Ordinary Spouse are reading about Babylon, Hammurabi, and his code – not because MD didn’t finish her schoolwork today, but because she wanted to do some more.
That’s the news from the Rainbow House of Learning for today. Now I have to go clean up the succotash stew. I wonder if the Pilgrim fathers would have done that…?
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Cambodia, appendix 1 – Tying up some loose ends
I’ve mostly finished telling the story of my family’s visit to Cambodia last November, but there are a few more things I wanted to write (this post) and a few more pictures that I wanted to show (the next two posts).
A word of thanks…
My brother and sister-in-law and nephew hosted our ordinary family of five and the parents/grandparents for two whole weeks. I know it was tiring, but we really appreciated it. As two months of blog posts should show, it was wonderful. Thanks!
Also, thanks to my parents-in-law for helping us to get there. 
What would I have done differently?
In general, I might have been a little less paranoid about what I ate and drank. Then again, my digestive system had two “interesting” weeks anyway. Nevertheless, those interesting weeks are nearly forgotten now (just like the sunburn/iced coffee incident from eleven years ago).
However, I have thought of three specific things that I would change:
- A group photo with my brother-in-law’s host family - One of my fondest memories is the meal that we ate in Mesang. Eleven years ago we took a photo with everyone, but this time we didn’t get one before we left. But family ties are important, and I’m sorry that we forgot to take that picture. This one ranks first on the list.
- Exploring all of Ta Prohm - While my family was exploring this wonderful and mysterious temple, I was looking for a geocache in one corner of the place. I wasn’t able to find the cache, and I missed seeing some of the best parts of the temple. Now it turns out that the geocache wasn’t even there anymore. (In some ways, that’s a good thing. I hate it when I can’t find something that actually is there.) This would be a bigger regret, but I saw the temple during our last visit before it was made famous by “Tomb Raider”.
- A visit to Tuol Sleng - Perhaps you may find this odd. Why would I want to visit this notorious prison? To be sure, I had no desire to take my girls there. But as for myself, I wish, in some small way, to remember the lives the were lost, both in the prison and also throughout the country.
What has changed in eleven years?
Ordinary Spouse, her parents, and I visited Cambodia in January of 2001. Many things were as we remembered them. For example, Phnom Penh has a distinctive smell all its own. I think it’s a mixture of prahok, cooking fires, incense, traffic, and other random hints of city life.
But there were a few things that have changed…
- The main roads were better – We could drive to Siem Reap this time. Last time, it was plane or boat.
- Cell phone coverage seemed to be everywhere – Even on Lake Tonlé Sap.
- Internet access is impressive (at least in some places) – The Guests Complacent have faster speeds than we do.
- “Lexus” is a status symbol – It seemed like everyone who could afford a car wanted to drive a Lexus.
- Siem Reap felt more “tourist-y” - Interestingly, Phnom Penh didn’t feel very different to me.
- The country as a whole felt a bit more stable - The last time we were there, the country was only a few years removed from some significant government upheaval.
Up next: A few more random bits
