Final Day - Sunday

Well that's it, our final day in Phnom Penh has come and gone. All started off innocently enough with an early morning trip to the Jubilee church building. Their main meeting starts @ 9am which is preceded by an 8am prayer meeting. We were somewhat delayed for the prayer meeting as nurse Hannah, our dispenser of all round sensible advice, spent the second half of the night practising her skills in projectile vomit ting. According to husband Paul she is now quite accomplished. The first half of Hannah and Paul's night had also been entertaining for them as they had the good fortune to find a rat scurrying across their room in an attempt to surreptitiously return to his hiding place under the fridge. Some people get all the fun. Lunchtime was spent with the whole team (except Hannah) and the leadership team from PP and Eden & Faye from Manilla at the local KFC. They have seriously small portions over there. Mind you it did not make much difference to me as I decided to trip up the stairs and throw my lunch all over the floor. Not such a bad idea really - I've had KFC before. In the evening we took Steve and Midge to a tourist hot spot, the Foreign Correspondents Club. All very civil. Unfortunately there was a street vendor outside selling deep fried vertebrae. It was as though he had a Han Na magnet hidden in his cooker. She was drawn irresistibly to the poor man. One purchase later and our deepest fears for Alison were realised as she gamely tucked into deep fried cockroach and beetle. I had a grub - surprisingly tasty but a bit off putting as once you bite through the firm outer shell the squishy inside squirts on to your tongue. Our activities attracted a small crowd of locals who offered constant advice and encouragement about the benefits of our chosen delicacies, although I noticed none of them were actually eating any. No one, it would appear could be persuaded to eat the whole baby frog found somewhere towards the bottom of the bag. So with the cries of 'I'm a Missionary get me out of here' ringing in our ears we make our way back to the airport to start the long journey home.

Day 10 Saturday

Well the news is Paul's radical bad tummy treatment via a vindaloo at the local Indian didn't work. However, we have now managed to go a full 24 hours without Gemma passing out in the middle of the street. So we have some improvement. Han-Na has continued with her challenge to eat absolutely anything as long as it is bought from a dodgy looking street vendor with a moto and bad teeth. Alison is showing worrying signs of joining her in her quest. In the meantime we had a party for about 65 students last night. Many were visitors to the church. Gave testimonies, prayed for healing - brilliant.

Day 8 Thursday

A second day of teaching emglish, computers and leadership training in the morning followed by evening classes for some university students in the evening. We follow the same pattern again tomorrow. The traffic here seems a little calmer than last time we came out. This is very relative and probably to do with perceptions rather than reality. At this stage last time I had seen a number of people have minor accidents on their moto's. This year we have not seen any. As you can see from the photo, the traffic remains manic. There is a strange mixture of large 4x4's - mostly Lexus and Mitsubishi , large saloons - almost exclusively Toyata Camry's, and moto's. There does not seem to be any small to medium sized cars at all. We have a tuk tuk driver who insists on keeping us safe. When we asked to visit a shop yesterday he had to stop on the side of a the main wide dual carraigeway street in the middle of their busiest time for traffic. With the shop on the opposite side of the road he insisted on escorting us across the road I'm not sure why! Maybe it is a health and safety clause on his insurance policy? Or perhaps he has lost too many passengers in the past and knows that once they are squashed they don't pay? Clearly we westerners cannot be trusted to cross the road by ourselves. Mind you most of us would not have even contemplated attempting such a crossing normally. Most of the team have now had some minor upset tummy problems. At lunchtime today Garry, Mike and Paul decided the best option was to take one of the more unusual traditional cures and went for a hot curry at the local indian restaurant. The girls and I politely declined such a great opportunity....

Day 7 Wednesday

Today was a day of taking the team right out of their comfort zone. We started a programme that will take the same format for the next three days. In the morning we went to the church's building. Andrew and Paul held a leadership training session with two of the Khmer leaders - Polly who is a student currently taking 2 degree's and holding down a part time job, and Savath who works 35 hours for the church and also has a part time job teaching English. Alison led a teaching English session with half a dozen or so locals who come most days for English practice. Garry oversaw a session of the computer club with again half a dozen locals who call in most days to improve their computer skills. The afternoon was time for a rest then in the evening we started an outreach programme. The church has invited local university students to spend three evenings attending "classes" run by us! There was a great turnout with between 30 & 40 students many of whom were at a church event for the first time. After a couple of ice breaker games - they love playing games we started the sessions. The classes were each an hour long with three running concurrently over the first hour and the rest during the second and consisted of: Photography - Garry, How to be a gr8 teacher - Mike and Alison, Healthy lifestyle - Hannah and Ha-Nah, Relationships - Andrew and English conversation - Alison. Amazingly enough we all managed to run a one hour session that the students enjoyed and seemed to understand!