Probably some of you did not know or you may have forgotten… But we have just started the New Year! No I am not crazy I am dead serious! And since I can hear you saying “you’re out of your mind, New Year was 3 1/2 months ago”, I will attempt to describe New Year as it happened last week.

Even if you had never heard of New Year before you would have known that something unusual was afoot if you were here 2 or 3 days before it hit us. When I went to the market last week there were so many people that it was hard to get in, and when I went to buy the usual veggies, I found that they were nearly double the normal price! Now this didn’t bother me so much because I know that it only lasts about a week and prices are normal again, but the thing that really gets nerve-racking is the constant boom boom boom of the drums and the dance music coming from the pagoda. Not only does it start at unearthly hours of the morning but it goes on and on and on until around 11 or 12 at night.

Now I am not one to join in on the dancing and stuff, so managed to stay clear and unnoticed until Sunday morning… On Sunday morning however, Khen’s brother who knew that I wanted to learn to drive the cow motor (looks like a big rototiller), asked me if I wanted to learn right then so I quickly said yes and we got going. We went straight for a while and then he said turn right so I turned right and pretty soon he said turn left, and so we went zooming along (at a snails pace) with me not really paying much attention to where we went… and then he said “stop”, and so we stopped. It was at this point that I figured out what he had in mind. He had told me to stop in front of the speaker rental place. Well pretty soon he had loaded up the cow motor and we were on our way back to the house. What followed next was your worst nightmare of a drinking dancing loud music party right at the front of the house. Now when Khmer people are drunk, it seems that the only thing they want to see a foreigner do is dance with them! Now it is my policy once I know I can’t do any good by staying to leave. And so that is what we did, in the end we went to the lake where there was no one dancing and no one playing loud music.

So yes we survived New Year, and we managed to enjoy it too! May we each continue to show the love of Christ, and teach those around us a better way throughout this next year.