Merry Belated Christmas!

Well, we've given up on trying to upload our Christmas video, it just won't work! Suffice it to say that we missed our family and friends over the holidays.
We spent Christmas in Ratanakiri, the northeast remote corner of Cambodia and had a fantastic time. It is really beautiful there and we did some hiking, saw amazing waterfalls and spent quite a bit of time at a gorgeous volcanic lake. We got there by dirt bike, which was such a fun, though a little soar after a while, way to travel around the country. We saw a lot of it!
On Christmas day we relaxed and reflected and felt like it was really a holy day. We also found a guesthouse that had a Finnish sauna, so we enjoyed that for a while, too (very random). Christmas dinner was Swedish meatballs and Wiener Schnitzel. A different Christmas, for sure, but it was great.
We miss home now that our adventure is over, but plan on attending a big expat party at a club tonight for New Year's to take our minds off it.
I posted more pictures of our trip on Facebook as well.

On Monday we had our Chab Dai Christmas party on a sunset cruise on the Mekong! We ate and talked and sang much karaoke and danced to the karaoke. It was really fun getting to know the staff even better. We had a great time.

We visited the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary on our day off last week with a few friends. Most of the animals there have been rescued from poachers.

MTV EXIT Concert

MTV put on four concerts around Cambodia to raise awareness among youth about trafficking. We attended the one in Phnom Penh at the Olympic Stadium. After four hours, much waiting, many speeches, one very bad DJ, concrete seats digging into our bottoms, and a few Cambodian pop singers, we gave up and went home at 8:00. Apparently the English band finally came on at 10:30 after an hour of sound check... oh well, you win some, you lose some.

A Picture a day: Aerobics at the stadium

We live right near the Olympic Stadium, and it is the site of many different sport and exercise activities. Basketball, football (soccer), jogging, tai chi, etc. What has surprised us, however, is how popular aerobics are here! Everyone does aerobics, both men and women, of all ages and sizes. And they are mostly public classes, where anyone can join. It's pretty refreshing to see all kinds of people comfortable enough with their bodies to go all out to pop music, following a (usually) male instructor who can do high kicks in jeans!

A fraction of life in a few pictures

We've been all talk, talk, talk, so here are some pictures of around our place.

Evening view from our flat

We got Christmas stockings made by a tailor in the Russian market; of course, they turned out just a little "off"!

Shredder, our cat, just "hanging out" (hehe, I'm so punny)

We're loving our evening chats in the hammock after work.

Training of Trainers in Phnom Penh

I just finished up a two day training of trainers on child abuse prevention with Chab Dai! We had 25 participants from 15 organisations! We delved into many aspects of child protection, including our biblical mandate to protect children, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, definitions, types, and symptoms of abuse, screening and operational procedures and abuse response protocol. This training was in English, so most of our participants were foreigners (from Canada, the U.S., Europe, and other Asian countries), but having some Cambodian participants was very helpful when discussing cultural issues. The Khmer training will take place over three days in January.

Through the activities and discussions, we were able to confront difficult issues, such as cultural practices that are potentially abusive, and a real sense of cooperation emerged, giving some organisations encouragement that they don’t have to face these issues alone. Chab Dai is a coalition, a learning community, where organisations working to end child sexual exploitation and trafficking, can learn from each other, lean on each other for support, and share knowledge and resources. Child protection is just one of the issues involved in this fight, and I hope this training was a big step in the right direction!

Child protection in Cambodia is very different from child protection in Canada. In Canada, if one of our staff reports an allegation of abuse, our main responsibility is to report it to the police and social services, and to extend compassion and facilitate healing for the victim. In Cambodia, where social infrastructure is still lacking, police and social workers severely underpaid and overworked, and significant levels of corruption exist on every level of government services, organisations are mostly left to investigate and substantiate abuse themselves. There is still much work to be done in this area, both in helping NGOs and churches do this aspect of abuse response, as well as challenging and helping government services to improve and respond effectively and without prejudice.

Keep Cambodia in your prayers!