I read over the comments about the lack of posts. So I'm going to try to make it up. We have a lot of funny small stories to tell, but it's been hard to get here, so here's one.

The four of us are riding in the backseat of a Land Cruiser. It's only made to sit 3, so it's a bit cramp. From right to left, it's Emily, Rocio, me and then Yvonne. Here's the conversation that happened at that moment:

Emily: Rocio, stop elbowing me.
Rocio: Why?
Me, Emily, Yvonne: *Puzzled look*
Emily: Rocio, stop elbowing me.
Rocio: Why?

It's much funnier when we talk about it.

We got a lot of talk about poop and other private stuff. We get some good laughs out of those. Yvonne and I have our private stories as well... But I'll keep them private.. :)

Hello from Poipet. I see that the blogs haven't been posting much. Well that's because it's hard to get on the internet. We haven't been able to go to the internet cafe's as much, and it's been painfully slow when we do go. So only the basic e-mail updates have been going out, cause that's all the time we've had to write.

Anyways, I've been working on computer stuff the last 2 days. And after working on these computers these last 2 days, I've come to realize how much I've taken for granted my nice computers and nice internet connections I have at home. I've been trying to install an external USB cdrom on a Windows 98 machine for the past 2 days, and I haven't been successful. It's been extremely frustrating. Not just because it should just work, but because it's so slow trying to test things out.

I've been on dial-up for much of the day. I always complained about my DSL at home which I only get about 850 kilobits a second. Now I'm on dial-up and I get about 8 kilobits a second. It took 11 minutes to download a 828 kB file. That would take me about 7 seconds at home. What's most frustrating is that it took me 4 times to try to download this file. That's cause the phone lines here in Poipet aren't that great and I get disconnected all the time.

Am I ready to live out overseas? Where I'll be using machines like this and internet connections as slow as this if I have access at all? I'm not ready yet. I've got a few more years for God to make me adjust. I may never get used to this.

I wonder how I'll adjust... a up to date techie like me living in a developing country with very little new technology for most of my life. I guess we'll find out in a few years hopefully.

Here's a story from last night at dinner.

We were sitting at an outdoor restaurant with the other teams. They had mentioned to us that there are a lot of beggars, and you just give them harsh "shoo" and give them the hand motion to make them go away.

So there were guys coming up to us throughout dinner. Little kids hitting us up. And there's this seat that's empty next to me. This one guy comes and sits next to us. I'm thinking this guy is pretty clean. And he's speaking English to us. But one of the other teammates starts telling to go away. After about 20 seconds of this, I do the gentleman thing (more like Yvonne telling me "You have to do somerthing. Stand up!"). So I get up and I tell him to go away. He grabs my water bottle, and starts saying something. And I grab it back and tell him to go away again. So he does.

Then another one of the team members saying that we were being kind of rude to one of the workers, as we all watch him walk towards the kitchen.

There's a moral to this story. You can think about it.

We're only 3 days away before we leave. Yvonne and I spent some time last night packing up most of our stuff. The both of us are actually carrying very little on this trip. I'm only carrying like 4 different shirts and 3 pants. I'm going to have to do a lot washing on this trip! I put all my essentials into one pile, and it probably all could fit into medium-size backpack the way it was looking. But I'm bringing a large backpack, and I could probably stuff a small to medium-size midget inside with the room I got.

Being married to Yvonne has its good and bad things. The good thing is she has me and the team well prepared. I'm pretty much packed by Wednesday night! That's non-sensical. I wouldn't be packed for my trip until Saturday night when I actually leave. I got hep-A, hep-B, typhoid and malaria stuff. Our team has met up numerous times for team training. The bad thing is that if it was just me leading this team, we'd be in whole different situation. Shots? Maybe. Malaria medicine? Maybe. Packed? Doubtful. Team-training? What's that? It just goes to show how unprepared I would be heading Cambodia if it wasn't for my wife. Got to love being married.

I got only a few days left to finish up work stuff. I need passport photos for my visa. And my brother's wedding is this weekend. Still much to do!

Welcome to our summer Cambodia short term missions blog. Keep checking this blog for updates.