Christmas in Cambodia

This Christmas was the first one I have spent away from my family. I was nervous and a sad, but it did not really disappoint.

Christams Eve Eve started off with a bang. I was cleaning our room before heading to school and found this little gem, wishing us an early Merry Christmas.

I promptly called Hal, and made him come home to take care of it. Luckily the permethrin had already gotten to him and he was already dying. My host mom came in for a look and was poking him and touching him with her hands! Then she realized I was cleaning and swept out our room for us.

-Then my great start to a morning continued when I met two Japanese bikers who came to my school. They had ridden all the way here on their bikes from Portugal. Crazy!
-Then I met a student from my school who got a scholarship to study in Signapore. She's been there for 4 months and her English was amazing. It gave me great hope for my work here.
- The cherry on top of my Christmas Eve Eve? The post office called, our packages came! Hal went into town to get them. Ants were all over the big one, but he had to ride home with it on his lap. Best part? I can actually say he had ants in his pants!

The next day we had a Christmas party at my co-teacher's private school. It was like a kid's birthday party on crack.

 I'm pretty sure almost every child in the village was there. When I tried to take a picture with my host niece, and my favorite market girl we were just swarmed with children. It was insane. P.S. the bigger one is my host niece, isn't she the most beautiful little girl?

My co-teacher even got a Christmas tree! I was like a kid in a candy store when she put this up. I was worse than the kids who had never seen a Christmas tre before. I was practically pushing them out of the way to look at everything. It's my first Christmas away....that's my excuse.

The next day was finally Christmas YAY! My family was SO amazing and 2 of the 3 packages they sent came on time. They wrapped so many presents that it really felt like Christmas when Hal dumped them all in my lap. Sorry I don't have any pictures of opening them, we were too busy skyping with family.

Our families were SO generous in thinking of us this Christmas season. Look at what my family sent us? It was more than we could have ever hoped for, and Hal's parents bought us a toaster oven because they know how much I love me some baked goods. We were seriously blown away by love and generosity this Christmas season.

After presents we headed over to the party put on by the VSOs in our town. It was so nice of them to invite us.

We finished the night, by realizing that our family did want to celebrate the holiday, the only way they know how to celebrate... KARAOKE!

We finished our Christmas in Cambodia, with lots of khmer dancing around the living room pole and lots of tone deaf singing, which really is no different than an actual pop star singing it, so all in all it was fabulous.