Thavy.

12/30/07-

I must apologize for the lack of updates for the last week; we have not slowed up at all, trust me. It has been more of a matter of getting Olivia up to speed on the ground with our projects. First off, was having her meet the new children at the Landmine Museum and meeting Mr. Togh and Mr. Meng from the school and a day with Sal our Cow Bank Manager.

We have had some amazing and dear friends arrive in Siem Reap today, Brian Janes and Gwen Hobbs arrived from California via New York back, across the west and over to the land of bliss. We are humbled to have them as part of our Advisory TEAM and look forward to getting them up to speed and sleeves rolled up as WE continue to forge forward!

We have spent the last few days checking out the various Universities in Siem Reap, finding out about cost structure and admissions. We’ve taken tours of classrooms and libraries and have been talking with current students on pro’s and con’s of each facility.


I was supposed to take Chet to Phnom Penh to get refitted for a new prosthetic leg; sadly I came down with a great case of something not so pleasant. So I reluctantly had to call and promise to reschedule our trip, I’m thankful he understood and wanted to make sure I was healthy before we went. There is a great little side story to this, Thavy is one of the daughters with whom we are staying with, and she is 10 and has a wonderful personality and charm. She faithfully comes upstairs and whistles and sings softly at 0630 to make sure that we are awake! It’s a really funny thing as she slides notes under our door to see if we are awake. So Thavy came in the afternoon to give Olivia and I our Khmer language lessons, Olivia showed her by hand signs that I was ill and not feeling good. Thavy had a confused look on her face and then said she would come back at 1700 to give us her lesson. She came back a few minutes later to say our lesson would have to be at 1800 as she was going to the Angkor Wat. This made no sense but we shook our heads in understanding, Liv told me she would cut the lesson short if I was not feeling up to it, I would give it try. Well imagine our surprise and wonderment when we hear Thavy and her older sister Chaen walking up the stairs with a tray of warm rice and fried fish. Young little Thavy never went to Angkor Wat like she told us, she went straight downstairs to start cooking us a simple dinner that would rest easy on my stomach. She changed the time of our Khmer lesson so she could prepare that beautiful dinner for us. This gesture my friend shows the beauty and compassion of this amazing family, country and culture! Thank you Thavy for your calculated act of kindness and compassion, you shine as bright as Kampuchea!