My ongoing relationship with mud

Rainy season has arrived. Sometimes more properly referred to as monsoon season. Torrential rains cover the land with 3-12 inches of mud. This makes travel and laundry monumental tasks. Khmer people have this amazing ability to walk on the surface mud. It’s like how Jesus walked on water, only it’s mud. I don’t know how they do it. I’m slipping and sliding and my shoes always get covered with mud. But they delicately pick their way through the mudholes that they call roads. When I go to the market with my host grandmother, she always makes me stop several times to clean my shoes. And the market is even worse than the road. Wooden stalls floating in the mud. My feet get dirty yet again, which embarrasses grandma to no end. But I can now walk without slipping. Much. I think that is an accomplishment. I really wish there were words to describe all the mud.

The cool thing about rainy season is that it is considerably less hot during a monsoon. I bathed in a thunderstorm the other day. It was pretty cool.

I now have some access to internet, which is exciting. The computers are limited and people have to do real work on them so I can’t sit around writing this blog all day, but I hope to be in more frequent contact with people. Woot.

This new world of internet today showed me that people are unknowingly buying repossessed meth houses without knowing it. This has caused them terrible health problems and is very expensive to fix. How terrible is that? Various states have laws concerning disclosure of a house’s history, and some also require cleanup, but the expense is prohibitive. Very sad story.

I was cheered by the arrival of an envelope, thanks Nanny Jan! Hope you are feeling better.
And then I nearly cried when I saw pictures of the food. And then I ate my tobasco jelly beans. And my emotional roller coster was up again.

Love and miss everyone!