Surprised again!

Friday, 3 December 2004

This afternoon, Phu's father brought over the bicycle they have been talking about, a bike for us to use around town. It's an old one, but they got new brakes and tires for it, so it works. Christy and I closed up the English Program classroom and office around our usual 6 pm, and headed home. Upon getting to our doorstep, I asked Christy if someone was in our house, as I noticed a few pairs of shoes that didn't belong to us. She said, "I don't know", and when I opened the door, I noticed our dining table moved, turned the corner, and saw bright yellow shirts (we all have these bright yellow polos in commemoration of the King's birthday on December 5th) gleaming in the pitch black darkness. Several people hiding in the stairwell said "Suprise!". Tik, Aw, her boyfriend Ray, Matt, and P'Pau put together a suprise party with flowers on the table and homecooked dishes (Ray came from a few hours away to be the chef, and Aw and Matt helped make some things as well) of fish, veggies, pork, soup, and a cake. No wonder why Matt asked if she could leave early today. I had no clue!

I was totally surprised! They gave me gifts (now I have another stuffed animal to add to my collection), including earrings, a cute pink sequins blouse, and a hanging paper lamp with swirlies from Laos. They sang "Happy Birthday" and P'Pau even made a special trip to get roti for all of us for dessert. The birthday cake they got me was hilarious, with "Happy Birthday Tanya" and three big fat pigs and a soccer ball (football here) on it. Go figure! Actually we had fun naming who the pigs were! It was such a wonderful surprise!

After dinner, we cleaned up, washed dishes, and then headed to a funeral at a nearby temple. One of our teachers' husband passed away from cancer recently. We dressed in black (everyone dresses in either black or white), and when we got there everyone was finishing eating dinner. Adorning the walls of the temple were about 25 blankets and about 30 wreaths of flowers given as gifts and displayed on the walls. While there, somehow we got into the conversation of what color underwear each other was wearing, whether it was white or black. Again, go figure! Since we came late, we were only there for ten minutes before everyone started heading home.

When we got home, I was cleaning up, and wiped down a chair, and I had another close encounter with the frog kind - the warty green thing was just hanging out on the chair, breathing its huge cheeks away. How it ended up in our house I have no idea, but a run to Tik and a shout out to P'Lek later, and the funniest thing ever happened. Imagine a short, rotund man with only a blue towel tied around his waist (we had pulled P'Lek out on his way to take a shower), attempting to catch this frog that just keeps hopping away in and out of the stairwell. He finally caught it with the help of a plastic cup and a bag. Tik and I were both dying of laughter. What a day full of suprises!