One down

Stuffing my suitcases to 49.5 pounds, Walmart and Target runs for the last minute "necessities," and saying my last goodbyes. All this was a month ago. Tomorrow will be one month since I tried to hold back tears saying goodbye to my sister, mom, and dad at the airport. It's been a month now since I've seen my friends, those who I spent 90% of my waking moments with or talking to. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a month since I stepped off the plane for the first time in Cambodia, looked at the girl I was going to be spending the next 9 months of my life with and said, in reference to the ridiculous 10:30 pm heat, "I'm going to die."

In this last month, I've already began to change. I'm starting to relax a lot more and be more spontaneous. This last weekend, we took a trip to Sihanoukville, or locally known as Kompong Som, the beach town here in Cambodia, about 4 hours away from Phnom Penh. We were planning on coming back from our long weekend vacation Monday afternoon, but around 4:30 Sunday evening, we decided we wanted to go back to Phnom Penh. We had thirty minutes to check out of our hotel and one hour to be sitting on a bus that we weren't sure even had room for us. We made it, barely, the whole time praying that we would get on the bus and get home safely. A month ago, I would never had changed my plans so drastically, so last minute. 

Twenty-three ESL kids, nineteen Pre-Algebra kids, and seventeen Algebra 1 kids are now my life. I said after my first day of observing that these kids were going to get me through the next nine months. No matter how tired I get of asking them to quit talking or to sit down, it is still true. Victory dances from my students after receiving 100% on tests and teaching me how to count to 5 in Khmer or sing the Cambodian national anthem, Amber, and clinging to God's promise to always be there and never leave me are what get me out of bed every morning and give me the energy to keep going. Some days seem to never end, while others are easier, but when I signed up to be a Student Missionary, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. 

Month 1 is wrapping up. Here's to 8 more!

-Alex