The Frosts

Wow.

Well, I'm impressed to see it worked, so very briefly here's a quick
update. Still in cambodia, still have a slightly more round young lad
living with us, now have another poodle. yay. also, have a story to
encourage me (and all those others out there who wonder if anyone
actually reads their blog.) so. have started a new school year at
NISC, and was meeting all the new teachers, which was kinda cool. But
one of them kept looking at me going - "you are so familiar. Do I
know you?". I was pretty sure I had never met her before, but
anyways, after a whole lot of conversation it turned out that she had
spotted my blog when searching for info about cambodia and nisc, and
had read all about what I was up to over here. which isn't that
interesting now that i'm teaching full time, but still, earlier posts
were a bit more interesting. so that was kinda cool. will get some
more pics of my new puppy soon and post. hopefully in a few months
the two little dogs will do the rumpy pumpy and we'll have puppies to
show for it. small cute puppies.
Ah, chris is slowly but surely going crazy, he's still learning Khmer
and doing very well, but other than that there is not a lot on his
plate. Over the holidays we had a bit of excitement though. turned
out that his stomach ache was not just a tummy ache. a quick trip to
the Khmer doctor and low and behold, we a case of acute appedicitis.
So, our doctor recommends immediate surgery, and with much trepidation
we agree. no bangkok luxury for this trip to hospital. Still, Modich
took us to a very good clinic here, who did a very good job of removal
- no complications or infection after all. which was a relief.
their bedside manner was a bit shocking though.
anwyasy......so that was a brief update. will try next time and see if
i can email photos the blog.

this is my first test

Well hi. I see I should be able to email to my blog so i figure maybe
if i do, then i'll remember to update. so this is my first try, also
want to see if my signature comes up. which could be a problem.

What's destiny up to?

Well, there is the link to the website, but that's even further out of date than my blog, so i'll do an quick run down about destiny cambodia, and if you've not read it before, or want more details, check out the links on the side for other stuff.

Currently, Jaquie and Noel (who set up most of the Destiny Rescue Camboida) are back, and are doing a great job helping out. Their goal at the moment is to get the cute little children who are running around the village in the middle of the day into school somewhere. an interesting task, as most of the kids don't want to go, but hey. So they are working towrads that, and linking it in the with sponsorship program and some meetings, and looking at setting up some kind of pre-school to help create some of the behaviour patterns that these kids need to survive in school... ie the ability to sit still and not get up and walk out whenever they want to. So that is in the pipelines, but not firm yet.

DR also has a building it is renting, and another piece of land which it is starting to build a community on. It sprang from a group of 5 families who were being kicked off the land they were renting for various reasons, and had no where to go, they didn't want to move village and didn't want split up due as it would make them vulnerable to gangsters. So Pat rented some land and is subletting it out. There is also a goal somewhere there to help them create a healthy community, with community savings groups and and maybe a community project/business or something, but that is going to be a long process i think as there is a lot of work there. however it is starting small, and DR is getting involved in the community that is there and supporting it as much as she can without running it. while there are resources out there about working with people like this, it can be hard to find them or get hold of good stuff. but DR is doing it's best, and there is hope for the community that it might actually grow strong.

They also have a nurse and doctor from NZ here who have been doing some clinics, and they came at just the right time for one lady who appeared on Thursday morning with a large tumour on her leg. So they have buzzed her off to the hospital, and amidst drama got it cut out and her sent home. She is going back next week to see if she has to loose her leg, but hopefully not. Medical care here isn't the greatest though, as you can tell by the fact she was sent straight home from the hospital after having a tumour cut out under a local. Pat bought her some good strong pain killers.

what's chris been doing?

language, teaching, and recovering from dengue pretty much. he's teaching an hour a day, a friend's kid who needs some assistance and they're doing a special program for memory and numbers and stuff.....doing well. oh, and there's also the many hours of doing stuff for destiny. while he has officially resigned and his mother is now running it (and doing it very well), there are all sorts of things to do. So last week he was helping out with visitors who came over, they had been raising money for a clinic and so he took them around and checked stuff out and helped translate a bit here adn there. And then there is some computer work that needs doing, and a bookshelf to make. he doesn't get out to the village much at all anymore, but does lots of other stuff.

new job

only one week to go!! I am finding it very hard to believe that my time at Hope is coming to an end! It's funny looking back 2 years and looking that everythign that has been done in the preschool, and how it's grown from non-existence to a small role of 6, to a full role of 15 every day. It looks great and it's getting a great rep also. It is definately time to go though, and I'm confident that my replacement will do a great job and build on it well...anyway, enough dribble. My new job is at Northbridge school www.niscambodia.com teaching the 5 year old children for 3 months -it is someone's maternity leave and i'm filling in. very excited, nice flash school, with carpet and aircon - haven't seen carpet for the past 3 years, adn don't have aircon. It's also mostly cambodia children, from rich families, who are there to learn english and have a good education, so it will be a big change. not a lot of challenge for my slowly growing Khmer, but at least i can talk to the teacher assistant (in khmer not english which she speaks well) which will help me.

So...What have we been doing.

well, as a friend just emailed me their blog address it reminded me that I actually have this and should update it, so below are lots of pics of our new house. We've also had a few other things happen over the past month or so, so here goes.

well, it all started with a very small mosquitoe, but one with black and white stripey legs (yes, you can see the stripes on their legs). And the lovely little mozzie decided unbeknowst to us, to nibble on chris, resulting a few days later in a raging temperature, and a very sick chris. AFter about 6 trips to the doctor for various blood tests and then more blood tests they worked out he had dengue fever, and was getting worse and worse...so they airvac-ed us out to bangkok for medical treatment. I tell you what, it is the way to fly. if you've gotta be air-vacced out, your own plane and an ambulance to whizz you through the new bangkok airport is the way to go. anwyays, a week later, after a lot of tv watching and sleeping and visits in the middle of the night by the nice nurses he was declared good enough to get home, so off we toddle.

However, the drama didn't stop there, and when we got home we found out that our little dog (not the cute poodle featured so prominently a while back) was having convulsions and foaming at the mouth. The vet reckkoned it was poinsoning, probably from a toad, we reckon it had rabies, as it got quite agressive at the end. So we had to put it down, and then pat had to go get her rabies shots cause she had a cut on her arm that saliva had gotten all over. hmmm......no convusions or extra bizzare behaviour from her though..........so that's been the two big major events in our life.

Chris and I on a boat with the lit up royal palace behind. was a friend's engagement party.

front of the house, has a little veranda bit where we spend most of our time, can just see the edge of it. all in all, it's great.

Outside the side with our plethora of bikes. not all ours though. those are all fruit tress of varying kinds.

The cleaners kiddie trying to get the rose apples down. didn't manage it with the stick. it kept falling down.

Our road, we are behind the white fence directly to the left. when it rains, it's got big puddles.

The fruit tree - Jack fruit tree to be exact. We also have a (actually 3) mango trees, a lychee tree, a rose apple tree, and something else that i'm not sure what it is. Those things hanging form the tree are jack fruit. chris reckons when it gets bigger they will grow from teh branches of the tree. youdon't want one of those falling on you. they are spikey.

The lounge, with the tv room through the end, and then the kitchen to the left of that. It's nice, a bit plain but nice, and for anyone who has been in a cambodian house, it's not white and has no tiles on the walls and no bizzarely made stairs or pink floor tiles!!! YAY.

The Kitchen...has a fridge and gas stove to the left door and shelves to the right. not big but just enough. also not mosquito netting so in the morning it's a bit like running the gauntlet to get a coffee. Everywhere else is netted out.

The Destiny Rescue office, which was our garage but as they help pay some of the rent whose to complain. That's Pat (chris's ma) working hard there. or possibly playing solitare

Hope Preschool, there is another section to the left of the photo with a library and seperate sleep room and then art area and eating area, it's a big room, and we love the space, as you see it means we have lots of room to make a mess in.

Our latest addition. a bit moth eaten, and very very small, about 4 weeks old, but replacing the one that we had to put down cause of rabies. who would have thought?

Nightly fire show. Lots of people, lots of fire.

the cute purple poodle on the island. about the same size as ours, but ours isn't purple (yet)

another mummy monkey. this one picked out all the chocolate donuts and ate all the chocolate off the top first, she is about 2 ft from me here.

Monkeys!!! they were so cool.

This is part of the main beach, lots of boats to the left, resorts being rebuilt on the right, monkeys at the far end, but lovely soft white sand and gorgeous clear water. it won't be long though till there are people everywhere here.

feeding the cool tropical fish. These ones are great. we canoed out to the bay and dangled food in the water for five minutes, but there were no fish to be found so i jumped in the water and within about two seconds they had all arrived. they are very friendly and will bite you if you are in the water with food, not hard obviously. you can tell the tourist trade on this island is highly eco aware.

This is Phi Phi, we spent 8 days here, it was beautiful. it has gorgeous clear water and white sand (as long as you find somewhere where there aren't too many poeple which isn't too hard). It also has monkeys and fish and fireshows. the tourist trade is booming here, but everhwere there are reminders of the damage the tsunami wrought on this lovely little island.as you can see, it would have rolled right through as each bay is open to the sea.

He he....no literally. they offered to have a photo then ripped me for 100bht (2.5usd). and believe it or not, these are the decently clad ones.

Watched the soccor with a crowd of people supporting england, and well, the facepainting was free so hey...

Well this is where we started at Phuket, lots of gorgeous bays but fairly expensive and lots of people.

Len in his most natural position.

The new Frost Family.

People in our lives, Steve and Midge our pastor and his wife.

The Robbs, from NZ, well, some of the Robbs, the others were elsewhere at the time.

And last but not least, Glynn and Tory, our good friends from England - this is the couple who have 5 adopted children plus their natural children. They are great, and we love them.