like a drink of cool water

Angkor Wat





Mom, Dad, Chris Clouzet, Tim Mathews, and the rest of the mission group from Collegedale all came to see ME over the Christmas holiday. Below is a brief summary and (probably more interesting) pictures.


orphan child, siem reap

We spent about 7 days working at the orphanage in Siem Reap. There was a dental clinic and a kids program. But I mostly worked on construction of the new dormitory laying brick with my brick-laying veteran father. We also visited the temples for two days (top). We took a boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh on the Ton Le Sap River/Lake. We spent two short days in Phnom Penh eating, shopping, checking out Toung Sleng and the Killing Fields, and restocking my apartment (with food from the motherland,--thank you all). Then I flew alone to Singapore via Bangkok, Thailand. The group followed and we arrived about the same time on Thursday afternoon. We stayed in Singapore almost on the Equator till Saturday night when Collegedale flew back to Tennessee via Frankfurt and New York City. In Singapore, we walked around the modern city, shopped, visited Little India and Chinatown, and the boys and I went to the movie 'Eragon'. On Sabbath we took the skytram to Sentosa Island and went to the beach where we got sunburned in just two cloudy hours (hellooo, the equator is hot I guess).






at the temples (t. mathews)

After we said goodbye Saturday night, I walked back to the hotel with Rhonda (one of the group going on to Hong Kong) then Jonathan, a former volunteer at CAS (Cambodia Adventist School) picked me up and I stayed at his house that night (as Singapore is rather pricy). In the morning, Jonathan drove me to the airport in Jahor Bahru (over the border/water into Malaysia) where I flew to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. My connecting flight to Phnom Penh was there but I stayed for about a day. I wandered around the city of Mosques and Muslims to the KL Tower, a tall communications tower and went to the top. I wandered some more to a square I had seen from the tower and wrote and sketched the interesting buildings. It would have been a nice spot to see the fireworks that night but I became weary of sitting and walked back to my hotel.


chris in the light and shadows of bayon temple (t. mathews)

There, I sat and finally fell asleep thinking I would rise before 12. I didn't. The next day, January 1, 2007, I walked to the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest twin towers and the 2nd tallest building in the world. I also went up this piece of architecture to the skybridge that connects them. After more aimless strolling, I took the monorail to KL Sentral where I took a train to the airport, then a bus to my terminal and a plane to Phnom Penh.


a temple at dusk

My local family (Tim, Fay, Michelle, and Lindsay) was there to pick me up and we had ice-cream at the airport Dairy Queen. We had supper together that night and talked about our different trips. Now it's exciting school again.







It was so refreshing to see my parents and my good friends Chris and Tim. It was awesome actually. I had been looking forward to it for months! It was great to laugh heartily again and just be with people who truly know me and understand me and love me. (Yet suprisingly and unfortunately, we realized we have few good pics of us together. Nevertheless, we had a blast.)


The sun and the moon. What?