Christmas Celebration and Freedom Hotel

Today I got up early, having gone to bed at a decent time last night and not being quite accustomed to the firmness of the beds.  I had a great breakfast by myself at the Freedom Hotel restaurant. This is a nice hotel reminiscent of British India from what I've seen in movies... lots of dark wood, wide staircases, stone floors and open balconies. The restaurant is open, by that I mean it is not enclosed with doors and windows. It is on the bottom floor of a large building and sitting there I look out on a central court with plants and orchids everywhere and onto the busy street.  I was the first customer this morning and watched the wait crew dusting, sweeping and setting up the tables. Unlike restaurants at home, our usual table of eight people gets meals one at a time as they are cooked and depending on how many cooks are working, things can go pretty slow.  I avoided all that, being here so early, and my meal was quite delicious; a large plate of fruit, a pancake with syrup, two scrambled eggs and  a coffee with fresh milk. The coffee is a bit different - very strong. The fresh milk (as opposed to the other choice of sweet milk) makes almost no change in color when you add it to the coffee and it comes in clear glass cups so you can see it not changing. I liked it. The fruit plate consisted of two small bananas, a wedge of mango, a wedge of pineapple, half an apple and a lychee. The lychee is sitting in it's own little shell which has hairy spines on it and looks for all the world like someone's eyeball.

We leave today for Battambang. I am back in the room now and I can hear hordes of children next door in Trish and Mike's room. Last night they came and visited all of us in our rooms and looked at all our stuff and watched my videos of their performances. Trish's room was full when I stuck my head in there and she was getting a massage from one of the house parents. They are such normal, happy kids and love to joke and laugh especially with Mike. Yesterday they went crazy over a bag of beef jerky that he shared with them and it was precious to watch them enjoy his attention. It is confirmation of how well they are loved and treated by their house parents.

The Christmas Celebration is probably the biggest event of the year for Asia’s Hope children and I could tell they must have had lots of practice time and much effort put into costumes and props.  We went to an auditorium close to the hotel. Someone had decorated ahead and it was very festive.  My little friend from the previous day’s fun evidently had been watching for me and grabbed my hand the minute I was in the door and guided me up to a seat she had saved – in the front where I could get good pictures, and right under the air conditioner, a good seat.  Each of the houses from Prek Eng and Battambang presented a song or dance and there was also a sermon from Mike and several scripture readings, so the program was pretty long but honestly, I never noticed. It was all very interesting to watch, and several times I was brought to tears by their moving presentations. It was the worship songs that they sang in English that did me in because I knew what they were saying. Words that I write don’t do justice to what it was like so the videos are going to have to make it into this blog.  We’ll see how that goes.

At the end of the program we helped Trish and Mike distribute the gifts they had brought to all the children and staff. They also had a gift for each of us foreigners – someone had actually chosen clothing that was a pretty good fit for each of us.

After lunch we went back to Angkor Wat for the “Olympics”. Hunsaders started that last year and previous to that the children had never done relays or competitive games for fun. This year they remembered what they had learned but it was still a major project to get them to stand in lines and take their turns when they were so excited. There was also a lot of relaxing, snacking and walking around in the beautiful grounds of the park. I got to try Grass Jelly Drink and that's where the kids got to experience beef jerky.

At the very end of the day, one of the house parents, Ravi, took us to Ta Prohm Temple which was on the grounds with Angkor Wat but out of the way. There were very few others there which made it almost like a private tour. The place was awesome with huge trees growing out of the ruins. I guess a movie (Tomb Raiders with Angela Jolie) was filmed there – I haven’t seen it yet. 

I am so obviously a tourist with my uncommon coloring and grey hair that the little vendor children  pick me out and work on me most everywhere I run into them. I avoided buying hats (this girl must have put it on my head at least 10 times to convince me how beautiful I looked with it on) buy I caved in and bought a bamboo flute from one little girl who couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5. Then I bought bracelets from another one way back in the temple ruins who looked too young to count but handled those dollar bills like a pro.  They teach them young here…