Waterfest

Cambodia has more holidays than any other country I know of. I think they have about 23 days a year, and everytime it falls on a Saturday or Sunday they take the Monday off…and most commonly they also take the Friday off and make it into a four-day weekend, what can I say... smart people. This week waterfest is going on, celebrating the end of rainy season and the change of course of the river. It’s a big party going on in Phnom Penh and we are taking turns to bring the children in to see it during sat, sun and mon.

I am sure you have all heard about the terrible stampede that happened here yesterday. Panic broke out as people thought the bridge was breaking and at this point from what I've heard 400 people have died. Cambodia does not have the capacity to take care of that many people unfortunately and it's a huge tragedy here. I am ok and so are all our kids. We are lucky to have had no children around at that time and so far we don't know of any friends or relatives that have been hurt either.

Kelsey and I went with them on the sunday and it was so nice. It feels strange now that this is what I wrote in my notes, but it's nice to just get into town and experience the atmosphere with so much people and music playing everywhere...and best of all is the excitement of the kids who loves these little changes to their everyday life in the village. They have a boat race going on, so we went to the river to watch for a bit, but the kids were more interested in getting to the big playground that they have in town and we went off to play with 40 very happy children. However, bring them around in the city and crossing the streets is a moment of terror though. It's not like at home where we go to the crosswalk and the cars stop for you, here you're bringing yourself and the children across the street while cars are swishing by both behind and in front of you...a little bit scary!