Khmer Banks and Elder Hall's shared blog

Some days you might think we sit around and say, "What new thing can we do today?" Well, let us tell you abut our NEW items of today. This may not sound like much, but we made our first stop at an ATM to withdraw some cash from home. That cash was spent on another NEW event: going to a (different) bank to make a deposit for our car rent payment.  Banks here are a little different than in the US.  There are security guards around the ATMs and around the bank.  Elder Oveson stayed with the car as Sister Oveson went inside for the deposit.  Once inside, you receive a number for the order to be helped.  The tellers are behind a plexiglass screen, and of course there are more guards in the waiting area.  The tellers are watched over by a senior employee as well.  None of the personal space invasion opportunities here.

We did spend most of the morning at the office where we accomplished a great deal. Elder Oveson and Phanna worked on the upcoming PowerPoint presentation. They spent a couple of hours refining slides as well as rehearsing the actual presentation. We also have been putting the report together for Hong Kong, which we got sent off today.  We are not sure how soon they will be reviewing it, though, as their offices are closed this weekend for Easter. (No such holiday observance here in Cambodia).  Instead of Easter break here, we are quickly coming up on Khmer New Year.  That should be interesting!  We are told the city will be pretty empty that week as most people go home to the Provinces.


Tonight we had the opportunity of teaching an institute class at the Phnom Penh North Stake.  This class is the one Elder and Sister Vanbrocklin usually teach, but they had to go out of town with their Public Relations assignment.  We enjoyed getting to know four young single adults tonight. The lesson tonight was on Tithing.  We will be teaching the same lesson again tomorrow morning at the South Stake Center.

I have received permission to copy an entry from the blog of one of the new elders here.  Elder Hall was one of the missionaries we had meals with about 6 weeks ago.  Elder Hall has given a very good description of first impressions of Cambodia.  Here is a post from his blog:

“So there are also three main smells that I have seemed to mainly smell here in the city. 1. Rubber and tires 2. burning wood/ campfire smell 3. fish that are either being cooked or rotting. All of the smells that I have smelled here consist of one or two of these smells. In fact the rubber and campfire combination isn't that bad, and the campfire and fish isn't that bad either, but when you combine the fish and rubber it makes me almost gag. But it's all good...I have 2 years to get used to it.

"I have a whole new perspective on traffic lights and it only took 3 days. Right after my mission I'll probably rack up a few tickets from running red lights. But let me explain: There are basically three types of roads. Big, Medium, and Small. So when two big roads intersect they usually have a traffic light. Which most people obey and would be dangerous  not to, but the people that really need to be somewhere can make it across fine. And as the light starts to count down (they have timers, which if they didn't I feel like they would totally ignore the lights altogether) at about 5 seconds left everyone just starts going. So here is where I needed to practice because taking a right turn and going straight is super easy but turning left is tricky (yes, I may need to mention that the roads are just like the US, they drive on the right). SO here is what you do. you go left before anyone starts across the intersection coming from the other side, and you start riding into oncoming traffic (mom just try to imagine that the cars and motos are made out of pillows) so then once you are on the very left side of the road you wait till there is a break and you shoot over across however many lanes of oncoming traffic there are, and then you go all the way across the lanes that are going your direction to get to the very right side of the road and then you're good to go. Until you need to make another left turn."

 If you are interested,  you can find his blog (which he sends letters to his mom and she puts together the blog) at:  elderwyattjhall.blogspot.com