In Deep Water

From e-mail dated 21 October 2008
lotus man is doing alright; he's gone for a week to his home province working a bit in the fields for some money, and a lucky thing, too. there have been torrential rains recently and floods...big floods. i've been proselyting in knee-deep water for two days now. all of the streets in sen sok are covered in a couple feet of water, and when places like this have problems like that, there's nowhere for the water to flow...we're already at sea-level. it's a lot of water, and it's septic, too, which is fun...i never heard anything like that in the primary songs about missionary work: "i hope they call me on a mission, so i can walk in feet of water-poo." yeah, that's not in the songs. someone needs to do some editing. :)

Rice-Rice-Rice

From e-mail dated 12 February 2008
food is good here; all of it is eaten with rice. it's funny when people ask what i eat in america to get so tall and be so white (they think it's from food...or medicine), because food to them is rice. when i answer that i don't eat all that much rice, they ask if i eat bread. i don't know how to answer because at home, we eat everything. it's so different. food here is a dish you make to eat with rice, and that's it. food at home is a dish...no rice. rice is eaten to fill people up, and the dish is to make the rice taste good. at home, all we do is fill up on the dish and skip the rice. people here don't understand that very well, and it's hard to describe, though i hope you can understand through my rudimentary english (it's hard to write and speak english these days). as far as the question about what i like; there are some really good stir fry dishes here, and i really like a soup here, which would translate to "boiled vegetables and beef." i know how to make lots of the food here, as i have the Khmer elders teach me. i'll be bringing plenty of recipes home in my head. Love, Ben the elder

From an e-mail dated 28 September 2008
i've been loving rice and food here more and more recently and have found that i can no longer eat an entire hamburger. it's nice, really, the thing didn't even taste any good to me (it was at a decent place, too); i'd rather have a soupy stewy something or a fry and some rice. i can make a ton of food now, including desserts and all sorts of good stuff, but it's sad that i'll only get to enjoy this whole thing for another 10 months (that number is ever-shrinking). going back to the freeze dried and packaged supermarket will be a change, good and bad. it won't have the stench of rot like the open fresh markets here, but then again...they're not open and fresh, which freshness i've found tastes way better than not...fruits, veggies of sorts that i couldn't even really describe if i wanted, mostly all things that i will never be able to find at home unless at an asian market, and then it'll be packaged and not fresh. alas, 'tis the bittersweet return to which we asian-goers are fated and which my sister could attest. :)
Love,
BG the EP