Tooth Fairy Story

On Friday, Evan pulled his tooth while I was delivering backpacks. Cherith was at the house with him and he just twisted it out. It was really just barely hanging on, so it wasn't too big of a deal. It's his second tooth to lose (he lost one while I was in Cambodia).

Anyway, Aaron took the boys to his parents' house this past weekend, so Evan put his tooth in a ziploc baggie and said he would see if the tooth fairy would come at Purty's house. Evan woke up on Saturday morning and his tooth was still under his pillow without any money. (I think Aaron forgot.) So, Purty got a $5 bill and went to the room to "look for the money" and she "found it" behind the bed. Evan was super pumped! At our house, they get $1 for each tooth. I was a little worried about the price of teeth going up to $5 each! ;)

So, Evan gets home on Sunday evening and he's excited because he's going to put his tooth under his pillow again at our house to see if he gets any more money. On the way to church, Evan says, "I wonder if I'll get another $5 for my tooth?" Payton says, "I don't know, Evan. I've never gotten $5 for my teeth. I just get $1. But, I think the Wheeler tooth fairy must be richer than the Clyde tooth fairy." I laughed hysterically on the inside -- there is some truth to that!! ;)

Sunday night, Evan puts his tooth under his pillow and this time I forgot! He got up yesterday morning and I saw him walking to the bathroom with his tooth in the ziploc bag! I hurried and got a dollar out of my purse and went to his room to pretend to look for the money in his sheets. I "found it" and gave it to him. He was a little confused why he hadn't found it before, but I told him it was way under his covers and he just laughed and said, "Well, I wonder why my tooth was still under my pillow, but my money was under my covers?" AHHHHHH!!

He gets even more excited and says, "I wonder if I'll just keep getting money if I keep putting it under my pillow?" I'm thinking this game is going to break the tooth fairy!! So, last night he put his tooth under his pillow again, but this time I remembered. I got it before I went to bed, but I didn't have any more cash. . . I guess that's ok. $6 for one tooth!! I think that's plenty!

Motorcycles, Sewing, & CDC

I'm going to throw all of these together in this one blog post. The safe haven was supposed to have the grand opening this past Friday. I'm waiting to see pictures, but I can hardly wait!!

In Cambodia, most children are required to work to help provide for their families. This is how the sex trafficking rings are successful. Parents need their children to work and people prey on that offering their children "jobs", but they end up in these rings. So, CHO (Cambodian Hope Organization) has these schools to give kids a trade so that they can earn money for their families.

The first one is a Motorcycle Repair School. These kids come to this school every day and take the motorcycles apart and put them back together. On the way to the school, we passed by several sweat shops where Wayne said there were kids sewing away inside these metal barn kind of things with I'm sure no air circulation. The kid in front is 14 years old. There is a kid that is hidden in the picture that is 8 years old. He is learning how to repair the motorbikes. It was amazing how clean they were. When Aaron is working on a project in the garage, tools and nuts and bolts are spread all over the place! These kids had a pan that they put EVERYTHING in -- their tools and whatever they took off of the motorbikes were in their pans.

The sewing school is another way that kids can learn a skill. This boy is 10 years old and he has been in the sewing school for 1 year. Their sewing machines are the footpedal kind and his little feet were just flopping away. One of the older boys said he could sew 10 pairs of shorts per day and they would sell them for 35 baht each on the Thailand side market. This is about $1 per pair. So, if the boy made and sold every pair, he would make $10 per day.

They also have an agriculture project where they help people start a business. The people are responsible for renting the land and working the garden. CHO provides the seeds, fertilizer, and a watering can. A CHO person checks in with each farmer once a week. They have 125 farming families. The gentleman who oversees this project is 25 years old. He looked like he was 16!! Their land does not have a lot of square footage, so they grow most things on a trellis system. Their cucumbers and watermelon grow off of the ground! It was interesting!

This is the lady whose garden we went to see. She gets the water for her garden from that river/water in the background. She walks down (just kind of a steep hill) with her watering can on a stick balancing across her shoulders. She fills it up and walks it back up to her garden.This is her hoe. . . pretty pre-historic looking.

Long beans in the garden
Their trellis system



Here's a picture of Cambodian school children. You notice them because they have the white shirts and the navy pants/skirts. I'm not sure what is on their face, but when I got home, I heard something about talc powder because it helps cool you off. Could have been, but I'm not sure.
I took this picture at the CDC (Center for Disease Control). This is the AIDS and TB hospital. The first time I went, we went in and walked around talking to people and just looking around. We talked to a woman who had been their 6 years. Her daughter sat on her bed and they told us she had been there with her mother since the beginning. . . the girl couldn't have been but 14 or 15 years old. I didn't take any pictures inside because I didn't feel like that would be respectful, but that had to be the hardest part of the trip for most of us.
The lady on the left (with the blue shirt) has AIDS. That is her son standing in front of her. They told us that she will stay there until she dies. Her son will stay with her. the lady on the right has TB and that is her son sitting on her lap. TB is very contagious, so when you think about it, these little boys are just sitting in a very contagious environment, but there isn't anything they can do about it.

Like I said, the first time I went to the CDC, we went in and walked around. There was another lady on a bed who was just a skeleton. Laying on the bed with her were 3 little kids. Her husband stood by her bedside. We prayed for a few of them and Steve laid his hands on some.

A couple of days later, I went back with Trish & Dr. J. They wouldn't even go inside!! Dr. J put his phone inside the door and took pictures that way. They talked about how contagious TB was and how they weren't going in. I panicked for a second -- we went in and Steve touched people! But, I think we're all fine. . . ;)

One last tidbit about the hospital. Chumno's wife has a restuarant that the workers eat in. Her and her girls did a fantastic job feeding us!! They make 3 meals a day to take to the hospital patients. How amazing is that? Their kitchen isn't very big. She had just a few pots and pans. But, she's using what she has to bless others that people might just want to discard. That blessed me!!

So, there's my trip. Trish got some good pictures of some kids that I'll probably post next. . . . might show a few from the Angkor Wat temples.

School

Welcome to School on the Mat -- Cambodia style. This is the CHO (Cambodian Hope Organization)'s school that they do in villages. Most Cambodian children do not go to school because the have to have the proper paper work (birth certificate, etc) and just because education is not a priority. If you know anything about Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge killed all of the educated people in the 70s. It's really a crazy thing to read about, but even crazier to be there and see these fields where you know hundreds, if not thousands, of people died.

Anyway, we visited a school on the mat and I think it was one of my favorite places. CHO has 15 teachers that teach 5 classes/day with 10-12 students in each class. So, they have over 600 students in their schools!!

CHO has devotions at 7:30 am and then everyone hops on their mopeds and heads out to their job. These teachers spread a tarp out on the ground and set up their whiteboards and have school . . . yes, outside.

This is one class. On the far left side of the mat, you see the little girl in the yellow shirt? She is little. . . not sure how old, but her older sister is on the left of her (out of the picture). Her sister's job is to take care of her all day while her parents either work or they are just not there. Her sister was called up to the front to read from the board and the little sister followed her. But, the little sister sat so quiet on the mat. That is a house in the background (the blue building).

Yes, this is a monkey that was at the school/house they were in front of. It was the family pet. . . yes, that was weird.

The lesson that day was about obeying your parents. These kids are role playing. The kids on the left are brothers and the kids on the right are mom and dad. The "brothers" were fighting and Dad stepped in and told them to stop. The kids thought this was pretty funny. When she announced who was mom and dad, all of the kids giggled.

Taking your shoes off is the appropriate thing to do before you go into a building in Cambodia. I really started to like the whole idea and walking around barefoot! So, the kids take their shoes off before they get on the mat. So, around the mat are all these shoes. This pair of flip flops caught my eye. Notice that the back of the shoe is gone. Both of the shoes were like that.

The boy is reading something off of the board and the class is repeating him.
Wayne sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" with them. They know that song pretty well from different English speaking teams that come through because it's the easiest song to "translate". You point to whatever you are saying, so it also teaches them a little bit of English.

Here's a video of them singing "This is the Day". It was too cute!! First, they sing in English and then they sing in Khmer (their language).

These kids followed our van down the road to the school. These kids aren't in school, but they acted like we were celebrities. They stared and pointed and talked with each other. The little girls fell in love with Joel.

I thought this little boy looked like Trip. He rode his bike down the road and hung out for a little while.
As we were driving away, this laundry was hanging out to dry. See that nasty water in the background? That's the washing machine!! ;)

Back to Cambodia

So, I'll post a few more pictures of my trip. I'll have to admit that it's been hard. I want everyone to see all 487 pictures and I want everyone to hear all of the stories behind them. But, I feel like people are tired of hearing about it. I'll spare you all 487 pictures. I think I'll just blog about the safe haven, the school on the mat, the motorcycle school, the CDC, the sewing school, and that's about it. . . sounds like a lot, huh? Don't worry. . . it will be over the next few days but what happened to me in Cambodia really did change my life.

Here's the gate to Cambodia. It was quite a difference between Thailand. The Thai side is paved and nice and then you hit the border. Dirt and that's where we saw most of the begging children. This is one of those moments that I think will be etched in my brain forever. We are almost ripped off with our visas. Kind of a long story, but a strange man had my passport, my picture, and all of my information. That might have been the only time I was scared on that trip. I was afraid I wouldn't get it back. It was a rookie tourist mistake, but he finally gave it back and we went on our way.


The thing I will remember, though, is the begging kids. We walk around the corner in the market and these girls are lined up with umbrellas. They come out to greet you and shade you and they want to carry on a conversation with you. But they want you to pay them for shading you at the end of the road. You just have to keep telling them, "No."

Then, there's the little girl with the messed up hair who I think I remember her carrying a baby doll that was disgusting. She was filthy. The doll was filthy. She was crying and begging us for money. I think Dr. J gave her a quarter or something. She followed us for what seemed like a long ways. She was pulling on our pants and just crying. It made you want to just pick her up and take her with you. But, when I made that comment to Wayne, he said, "Yeah, but I guarantee you that she could take care of herself if you tried to take her." This little girl was a little taller than Jaxon. . . probably a little older, but probably not 3 years old yet. Made me sad that she had been trained so well and that she had to already know how to take care of herself.

This is how we got our luggage across the border. In the Thai market, we stopped our van and all of these guys surrounded it! I was a little nervous because I was sitting by the door and I wasn't sure what they wanted. They wanted us to pay them to carry our stuff across the border. Wayne told us to take anything that we couldn't absolutely live without on the rest of the trip. This kid pushed the cart for us through the streets. Every once in a while, he would look over at us (we were walking along the sidewalk and going through the buildings for our visa stuff) and smile and wave. It was pretty funny. ** Forgot to say in my original post that the crazy thing was that if this guy decided to make a run for it, he had all of our stuff with him! This cart was pretty heavy and full, so I don't think that was much of an option for him, but crazy to think that he had everything we had brought with us. **

Here's a picture of the safe haven from the entrance. The 3 houses on the left are where the kids will live. The house on the right is the guest house for people that come and want to spend 6 months living at the safe haven and working there. See those piles of rocks? We had to move those to make a driveway and sidewalks.

Here's a truck going down the street of Poipet. It was amazing how they would stack stuff on these trucks and tie it down to move it. This highway had recently been paved, which everyone said made a huge difference!

This is a house that is a pretty good picture of how they live. Most houses don't have that tarp stuff as walls. It's actually a pretty nice house too because it has a real door.

Here's the front gate/fence to the safe haven. It's crazy to think about how they built this thing -- remember, no machinery and only 1 wheelbarrow on the whole property. They made the brick. They dried the brick. They moved the brick and stacked the brick!! CRAZY!
This is their fish pond. They have a tank where they can breed these fish and put them in this pond and raise them. At the safe haven, in a few years, they will be completely self-sufficient. They have chickens and fish on the land right now and will have pigs soon

This is Emily & Kathryn, the girls from the UK. We had a lot of fun with these girls while we were there. They are in Cambodia for 6 months, with 2 months down. In this picture, we are painting the bricks in one of the safe haven houses. Our scaffolding was a little scary, but you got used to it after a while.

This is the greenhouse at the safe haven. They are able to grow fruit trees to put around the safe haven and they grow fruit trees for the Cambodian government schools.
Here's a picture of the school at the safe haven. It wasn't finished yet, but it's still pretty amazing. It was awesome walking around thinking about how kids would be walking around that campus in a few weeks . . .
I'll leave you with these final pictures and video. The last day we were working at the safe haven, they threw us a little party and then Chumno told us that we were going to set the water tower up. So, everyone got around it and moved it.

This ditch will be for the water lines going from the water tower to the houses. They had to step over this ditch and dodge power lines . . . it was fun, though!!

In this video, you can see how they raise it up. You can hear Steve yelling "Pull!" At one point, it looked like it was going to fall over the other way, which would have been a disaster, so the guys stopped pulling. But, it put all the weight back on the guys who are walking it up. So, Steve is yelling "Pull! Pull!" But all of the Cambodians are yelling to stop in Khmer (their language). It was a nerve wrecking point for a few seconds, but it finally sat down just fine. The perfect way to end our stay there. Sorry it's sideways. . . It's not sideways on my computer, but it is on here. . . oh well.

My Car Has a Mind of It's Own

Yesterday morning, I went and delivered backpacks and then went to pick up the kids at Cherith's (thanks so much, Cherith!) I had told them that I would go to the doughnut store before I picked them up, but it was too late, so I decided to take them to Sonic for lunch instead.

So, we're sitting in Sonic waiting on our food and Payton leans his seat back and all of a sudden, the alarm starts going off!! I can't figure out why and I can't find my keys with the little clicker thing on it. I saw it when we pulled into Sonic, but it seemed to disappear into thin air! The alarm was so loud and it's echoing and Sonic is FULL! I can't figure out how to turn the silly thing off or figure out why it came on! I punched the code into the door and it kept beeping!! The kid came out with my food and it just kept beeping!!

Finally, I tried to start my car and it started and the alarm went off. It was still a mystery why it came on and why I couldn't turn it off!!

So, I'm on the phone with Krissy driving home and my doors start locking and unlocking. I am really frustrated that my car seemed to have a mind of it's own. Krissy starts telling me that the same thing went wrong with her car and it was in the computer of the car and it had to go to the main Ford house to be fixed and they had a hard time fixing it, how expensive it was, etc. Meanwhile, lock unlock lock unlock lock unlock.

We pull into KLF Downtown so that I could get some Easter eggs to take home to fill. When I go to get Jaxon out of his carseat, he has my keys in his hand that has my clicker on it!! He was the one who kept pushing the alarm button on the clicker at Sonic. He was the one that was locking and unlocking my car while we were going down the street!!! It was hilarious! I'm just glad it didn't cost me a lot of money to fix my car!!

Cambodia -- The Accomidations

I'm still in the processing stages of the whole trip and I haven't had much time to edit more pictures, so I'll share with you some of the pictures from our hotels. Nothing too terribly fancy, but I'll share them anyways. They are interesting!!

This was my hotel room in Bangkok. I loved the painting on the wall. It cost roughly $25 a night.

It had a little vanity area. There were a ton of snacks on the table, but they weren't free. They sure were tempting, though!!

Here is a shot of the bathroom. That spray thing by the toilet is a bidet -- what you're supposed to use instead of toilet paper. Luckily, I never had to use it . . . just didn't make sense to me. I did make good use of it washing my feet off at the end of the day!! The shower is to the left of the toilet. While you took a shower, the toilet got all wet. Weird engineering for sure.
This is how you turned the shower on. You set your hot water level and turned the knob. Again, interesting. I was just glad there was hot water at that point. . . wasn't quite ready for the cold showers.

This is our hotel room in Poipet, Cambodia. Nothing spectacular. Felt like a dorm room. It costs $15 USD/night. The beds were very firm, but at the end of the day, I don't think I cared very much. I crashed!! The room key had a little plastic thing on it that you had to put into this slot so that your electricity would work. I wish I had gotten a picture of that. Every time you left the hotel, you had to take your key to the front desk, so your electricity was off. The good news was that our room didn't take too long to cool off at the end of the day. The good news about the key thing was that there was only one key and if your roommate came back before you, they could have access to the room. That's the a/c up on the wall. The girls from the UK are living in this hotel for 6 months. They celebrated their 2 month anniversary of being there the day we left.

Here's the view from our 5th story "lobby" window. There was a little sitting area outside our doors with giant windows. I did a lot of people watching from this window. I fell in love with a little boy under that blue tarp thing of a "house" in the middle of the picture. He's actually outside in this picture, but you can't see him. He is the first character in my book.

Again, toilet & bidet or foot shower in my case.

Straight across from the toilet is the shower. No walls, just the shower head. There wasn't hot water here. We had it a few times for about 2 minutes, but it was so hot that you couldn't stand underneath it. The water wasn't extremely cold, though. The water tanks sat outside and I'm sure the heat warmed the water so that it wasn't freezing like it would be here in the US. You would think that red knob over there would mean something to do with the hot water, but it doesn't. I'm not really sure what it's purpose was.

A picture of some kids from our hotel room window. I was really zoomed in, but they have plastic sacks with plastic water bottles in them. Again, I loved watching the people from our hotel room. I was so glad that we were on the 5th floor so that I had a little secret "hideout" to people watch from!!

This is a video looking out our window. I think you can see a volleyball court in it (at about 10 seconds). There were always kids playing volleyball over there! There was even a rain storm that came in one afternoon and it was pouring down rain and it didn't seem to bother them at all. At the end, you can also see my little boy. He's outside sitting on that log thing. He's still far away, so you can't see him very good. My only regret? Not going down there and getting a picture of him.

I have pictures of the hotel in Siem Reap (the touristy parts of our trip), but they're on my phone. I'll have to e-mail them to myself and then put them on here. You really won't believe how amazing it was!! I'll try to get them up soon!

Cambodia -- The Food

I've been back a few days now, but it's taking some adjusting. Time wise, while we were there, it seemed like everyone woke up about 4 am. I thought when we got back, that would be fixed, but it hasn't. Same thing-- I've been waking up at 4 am and can't go back to sleep. Plus, I've been having a hard time staying asleep. . . oh well. I've been told that it will all work itself out over the next few days.

I absolutely loved it there. I wouldn't want to sell everything and live there, but I could see myself going back and staying for longer periods of time. What they are doing over there will blow your mind. More on that over the next few days.

I thought I would break up the trip into a few parts so that my blog isn't forever long and you don't need an hour to get through it. So, I thought I would talk about the food first. I'll put a few pictures at the end of just random things, but I'm not finished editing and turning all of my pictures, so I'll post some of what I have done so far.

In preparing for this trip, I was warned about all kinds of weird foods -- squid, fried fish eyes, etc. I actually was going to try the fried fish eyes if someone got some. I thought I should go all out on the whole experience. I wanted to experience Cambodia, so why not?

So, as we were standing in line to get on the plane in Minneapolis, Joel laughed and said, "Say goodbye to all normal foods, dear." I was a little nervous. ;)

Well, I didn't get a chance to eat any fried fish eyes, but here's a list of a few of my food experiences:
* Cashew Chicken (no surprises there, but it was good)
* The most amazing coffee shake on the planet (yes, better than Starbucks)
* Really refreshing watermelon shakes
* Really amazing coffee
* Fried eggs & toast (I think this became my favorite breakfast while we were there)
* Fried rice w/ chicken at a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. This was on our drive from Bangkok to Cambodia. It was all open, as in no walls. There were chickens walking around. I'm sure the chicken I was eating was walking around there once, too.
* Squid (yes, I ate it but I wasn't fond of the texture)
* Raw tuna (again, terrible texture, but I got it down)
* The thickest and yummiest and biggest pancakes ever
* Ate an ENTIRE meal with chopsticks (I had never used any before)
* Barbecued goat (again, texture got me on this one. . . good flavor, just a little too chewy for me)
* Fried potatoes (some kind of yellow potato, not white ones)
* Fried bananas (the girls from the UK loved these)

So, there is the beginning of my Cambodia posts. I know everyone is wanting to hear all of the other amazing things, and that will come, but I was shocked at myself for even trying some of these things and it is the easiest post to start out with.

Dr. J & Steve at the CHO restaurant where we ate almost every breakfast and lunch. This restaurant fixes 3 meals a day and delivers them to the AIDS & TB hospital for the patients there. See that watermelon shake on the bottom left? YUM!! I bet it was mine!

Trish & the UK girls (L to R: Nicole, Emily, Hannah (blue shirt), & Kathryn)
They had a train of massages going at one point. We loved hanging out with these girls. (By the way, their new year is like next week or something. That sign wasn't from January 1st)

Here's that coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. I'm not kidding. We were driving down the road and there is NOTHING. Then, all of a sudden, we pass this place. So, we turned around and went back for lunch.

These boys were at the school on the mat. They aren't in school, but they followed our van down to it. They just sat and watched what was going on in the school (outside, of course) and they watched us.

These girls were at our children's outreach. You can tell that they are probably sisters. People think that they have highlights in their hair, but it's actually a sign of malnutrition.
One afternoon, I was in my hotel room and I heard a pig squealing and squealing and squealing! At first, I didn't want to look because I thought they might be butchering it somewhere, but when I finally go the nerve to look, this is what I saw:
Yes, that's a live pig on the back of a motorcycle. Interesting, huh? Wayne said he saw a cow on the back of a moto later that afternoon.

As we were driving into Siem Reap for the touristy part of our trip, we saw this:
Another interesting thing. I think these chickens are alive. We would see them move their heads every once in a while. Funny how when you see a cattle truck going down I-20 full of cows, you don't think of it as tomorrow's lunch. But in Cambodia, that's all I could think!

And, my favorite picture of the whole trip. We were invited to a village by the assistant village leader (comparable to one step up from mayor, I think) and this baby was laying on a bed under their shelter (again, no walls). The grandma was so proud of her! Every time the camera would flash, she would laugh and smile really big. I absolutely love this picture!! Makes me feel like Angelina Jolie! ;) (Thanks, Trish!)