Fortnight.

I wrote last time about discovering Java Café. If I come back here for a while I plan to frequent the place. I’ve been back a couple times and the owner guy now says to me, “See you tomorrow.� I say, "We'll see, but no promises."

I heard about Elsewhere, this other expat hangout where they periodically have free movie nights, and upon discovering that it was just around the corner from my house, I checked it out last night. They set up this big screen and have a projector out in this garden around a mini swimming pool. It was almost enough to make you forget you're in Cambodia, except for the fact that Scarlett Johanesson's voice was continually interrupted by the sounds of Karaoke wafting over from the place across the street. Elsewhere had been described to me as a place where folks with the Peace Corps and other young idealogue-types sit around, drinking, smoking, and talking about changing the world. I wouldn’t say that description proved to be very far off, although people mostly sat quietly during the movie. I was tired so I left when the credits rolled, but I'm assuming most of the others stuck around long enough to figure out what ails the world, even if they don’t remember any of it in the morning.

My time left here in Cambodia has now come within the two-week mark. It is difficult to know how to approach this from a psychological and emotional standpoint, not knowing whether I’ll be returning home just for a month or for the indefinite future. Do I scramble to do all I can during these remaining two weeks here, soaking it all in one last time, or do I kind of take it easy, with another two years coming up, which will give me plenty of opportunities to do all of these sorts of things? That is my quandary.

For those yet unaware, I’m in the preliminary stages of the interview process for a position here as Church Partnership Coordinator, which would basically mean keeping the lines of communication open between WR Cambodia and the six partner churches, and then coordinating all the trips people make here. The decision about this position won’t be made until after I return home, however, so I’m just taking it a day at a time and trying to make the most of my time here.

It has been a great two and a half months. It is embarrassing to even admit that I thought three months was a long time. My brother arrived here on Sunday and is spending this week a few hours from here with Engchy, where he is doing some computer training with the staff at the rural WR offices. This weekend I think we’ll go to the beach, and then after spending the first half of next week here around town, we’re off to Angkor Wat. This will pretty much be the exclamation point at the end of the trip for me. Josh will fly back that Monday and I’ll leave two days later.

A fortnight from now, I plan to be sitting around with good old friends in Lancaster, drinking coffee and catching up on each other’s lives.

I think they call this kind of time in life bittersweet.

24.

Today I turn twenty-four. I have never had a birthday before when basically everyone I know was on the other side of the world, but it has been a really good day all the same. Thanks to everyone for the emails, e-cards, text messages, phone calls, MySpace comments, IM greetings, and especially to whoever it was who arranged for them to set off fireworks this evening in Phnom Penh. I watched to my delight as the starburts lit up the sky over the river and the puffs of smoke came rolling past my balcony like those massive but delicate floats in the Rose Parade.

Around noon today the team from Tennessee headed off to the airport for their flight up to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. Also, Ming Visal and the family headed off to Sihanoukville for a couple of days, so I am on my own.

Since it’s my birthday and all, I decided to do something special. I thought I’d make history. Never before in my life have I paid money for a haircut. All these years my mom has been gracious enough to take the clippers to my head every few weeks, so I’ve never had need to pay a barber. But having now gone two and a half months without a haircut, I was starting to go crazy because my hair had gotten so long that it touched my ears, so I made a trip to the beauty salon a few blocks from the house. After a brief explanation of what I had in mind, the barber got to work and 15 minutes and three dollars later I felt like a new man. I had him leave the hair on top and taper the back and sides. Part way through the ordeal I feared it would end up looking like a crew cut but fortunately it doesn’t, even if a crew cut might have been fitting for Veteran’s Day.

This afternoon I went with Sina to his football game. Sina is a leader with WR's Hope program, and I got to know him a little bit at the retreat this past week. He, like me, is twenty-four, but unlike me, he is really good when it comes to Khmer traditional dance and he strikes me as one who is smooth with the ladies. Anyway, he’d invited me along to his game and I figured there was no better way to spend a birthday afternoon in Cambodia than to watch some soccer. He plays in a league comprised of ten teams from churches around Phnom Penh, and tonight’s game was on a field that apparently belongs to a Thai-run university in the outskirts of town. On the moto ride out there, Sina jokingly compared his game to that of David Beckham and Ronaldo. Losing two to one at half time, I tried to give him a pep talk, reminding him of momentum, the sports concept I taught him about earlier in the week when my volleyball team was looking to surge ahead and beat his, though we lost and he won that day. The momentum was not with his team today, however, and they ended up on the short end of the stick, by a score of four to one.

So now the day has just about come to a close, and I’m listening to Paul Simon and typing from Java Café, this cool expat hangout with good coffee brewing and art on the walls. They have wireless Internet access, and I am wishing I’d have discovered this place sooner. I’m wearing this snazzy blue Cambodian football jersey I picked up this morning. Tomorrow my brother Joshua arrives and he’ll be here for the next two weeks, so good times guaranteed.

(Sina is the guy on the right, stretching his leg.)

Leaders Retreat.

It had all the makings of a disastrous week, with me being responsible for on-site logistics and all the miscellaneous details involved with having 85 people at a hotel at the beach for a five-day retreat, where any of their problems were suddenly my problems. Depending on what happens, this kind of thing may be my job for the next two years, coordinating trips and staying on top of church partner relations, so it is a good thing that after this week, not only is the hotel still standing, but we sustained no human casualties (that is, none that I happened to notice).

Keeping the ship sailing this week, so to speak, has not been as daunting a task as I had thought. Sure you have to double check the price on every room, meal and miscellaneous detail against the prices they had originally quoted, but that’s all just part of Cambodia. I had to be forceful at first, letting them know I was no sucker without a backbone, vulnerable to their schemes, but after a while they stop pushing so hard and they actually seem to respect you a little bit. So then I try to be friendly and polite even while demanding double-A batteries for the third time, saying “we absolutely need them in ten minutes,� implying by the look in my eyes and the shaking of my fist, “or calamity will surely come upon us all!� Just kidding, it didn’t quite get to that. But close.

It wasn’t all details and logistics and headaches though, fortunately. For starters, the Operation Mobilisation ship Doulos was in port, making its first ever stop in Cambodia. We toured the place, bought some cheap books, and learned that it is the oldest still-floating passenger ship out there and something or other about the Titanic, but I tend to think anything mentioned in the same sentence as the Titanic, and especially anything having to do with a big old ship, is not a very reassuring thing, especially after hearing in church last week from the ship’s captain about how they almost didn’t make it to Sihanoukville. But thank God for the ministry made possible by this visit. Cambodian officials welcomed them and extended an open invitation to return, so that is a pretty cool thing.

There was also the boat trip I’d organized. We spent most of Tuesday in five wooden boats, visiting three islands, getting sunburned, snorkeling through schools of black-and-yellow-striped fish with coral reef and urchins below, gashing my foot on said coral reef and later bandaging it with a fun green decorative band-aid, eating BBQ barracuda, squid, and prawns, swimming, throwing things, and shooting the breeze. There were games and activities for the kids throughout the week, led by some of the folks from Second Presbyterian of Memphis while the adults had their meetings, led by the other (and more serious) half of the 2PC team.

There was time at the beach and a chance to play volleyball and to somehow be chosen as the team captain for the losing team, thus leading a group of teens and juvenile delinquents from both teams to gang up on me and collectively throw me into the pool. Fortunately these little rascals are not as sneaky when concocting a sinister scheme as are older folks like you and I, so I overheard their plan in enough time to hand my cell phone, my glasses, and my money to Sina even as the rest of them whispered in Khmer or Dutch to one another the very ruthless way they planned to treat me. I was planning on swimming anyway, so it all worked out, really. While in the pool I was a monster and the little ones, ages six and under, found it endlessly entertaining to risk getting close to me and then, if caught, to be picked up, spun around and sent plummeting into the water, all the while they are screaming and laughing. They were screaming, of course, because of the false sense of danger, similar to what you and I experience on a roller coaster. The laughing part came in to play because I happened to be a good monster that didn’t let their heads go underwater, so as to prevent any drownings.

The van Opstal girls have these matching orange shirts, and I told them it is great they all wear them as a tribute to me, even if they spelled the name wrong. They try to tell me the shirts are from this country called Holland where their mom is from. Sarah (pictured above) thought my last name was Hung Loi, which sounds very Asian and not very Norwegian.