The Cambodian school year is over and my daughters are officially on vacation, and we've started things off with card games and spicy pasta.
It's UNO Time ⏰
The school year was slate to end on Wednesday, but as things go in the Cambodian public school system, change happens without warning. The girls arrived back home from school today (Tuesday) and said school was over, so I guess Wednesday was scrapped after seeing the condition of the school today. Monkey-B's teacher was busy giving birth across the border in Trat, Thailand, and didn't show up, so I guess it makes sense to go ahead and end things for the year.
UNO is one of Monkey-B's favorite family activities, and she can play for hours without getting bored. It takes at least three players to truly have some UNO fun, but four is even better. It's rare that Monkey-B can convince all family members to play at the same time, but on this special day she succeeded, and was obviously very pleased with herself.
Arrabbiata Is Just Angry Sauce 🍝
Most people know marinara sauce, something that works just as well on pizza as it does pasta, but marinara is not spicy enough for this family, so we tend to go with arrabbiata sauce which literally means "angry" in Italian. The anger comes from the crushed red pepper flakes and black pepper, but we are always quite happy to eat angry sauce.
It is rare that both @sakana and @srey-yuu want to eat the same thing, but if it involves pasta and arrabbiata sauce, they are both always onboard. Even this household's sole teenager nearly cracks a smile when eating this family favorite dish.
Our little neighbor boy Ah Boom wanted to try a bowl, and considering he doesn't eat vegetables, I was impressed to see him consume a little tomato in this form. After several bites he determined the dish was too spicy for him because he's used to eating very simple foods and flavors.
Finally, A Bamboo Breakthrough 🎍
A few months ago I saw a pickup truck full of super thick bamboo suitable for construction, and since then I have been asking around trying to determine where this bamboo came from. Finally we had a breakthrough, and my neighbor found a property attempting to convert from a bamboo nursery to a durian farm. It's a harvest-it-yourself operation, but for only 75 cents we can cut a bamboo that will provide about 9 to 12 meters of very thick and strong.
He brought a sample back for us to investigate, and it only took a few seconds to realize this bamboo is far superior to what we have access to for free in the forest. This stuff is super heavy and suitable for for furniture or bungalow construction, or in our case fence paneling. Our fence will be roughly 3 meters high, so one cut bamboo could provide 3 to 4 3-meter stalks, and after stripping into panels it will make a nice fence façade. My rough math calculations make me think it will cost around $400 to use this material as our fence paneling material. That's all for today folks, stay tuned for fence updates.....
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Interesting way to end the school calendar year by going to give birth 🤣 technically how long the school holiday last? In Malaysia is 5 weeks. So if the teacher originally have a 2 months worth of maternity leave, now she got 5 weeks school holiday and 3 weeks of maternity leave 🤣
OMFG, that stick of bamboo looks like a good material to stuff gunpowder into it and make it a tornado grade grenade firework 🤣
COVID kind of messed up this school year, so because many days were lost a lot of the mini breaks were cancelled and school ended later than normal. This year it's not even three weeks of break time before school starts again, and that sucks because that's just not enough time for us to do any serious traveling.
Supposedly December 20th is the restart date, and it's possible Srey-Yuu may have another girl here in the village that can take her to school on a moto together. The girl's parents were going to remove her from school, but it looks like if we pay the gas she'll allow her daughter to continue studies, what a wonderful mom, right? This will cost us less than the $200 we were giving our neighbor per month, and now that Srey-Yuu is paying 80% of her own transportation costs, she'll be happy about this too.
Being pregnant and/or a new mother is very easy in Cambodia because the culture is accommodating, so it's likely the teacher will just have a crying baby in the classroom when the school year resumes, and no students or co-workers will complain about this like they might in the USA.
I've got some plans for this bamboo, seems that it's meant to be. The property wants it all gone to become a proper durian farm, so we just have to calculate how many 3-meter long stalks the tuk-tuk can hold, and the fuel costs for each round-trip, then we'll know if it's a smart fencing panel material. I want to use it like in the picture below, weaving the bamboo so that air can pass through. I am afraid the high winds and 3-meter high fence will not work well with a fence that doesn't allow some rushing air to pass through. Perhaps something similar to the style below.
My heart melted when I see a blog like this. Quality time with family good food and good memories are the best. Their precious smiles say a lot. What a happy family worthy of emulating. Stay safe and God bless.
Thank you for these kind words. I am always to cook for and play with my daughters because I know these times will be precious memories they reflect on later in life.
Wow! I salute you for that.. Stay safe and God bless..
happy holidays have a nice day. and please eat spicy food and it's good for stamina but not too often because it will interfere with the disposal system👍
I think it can be said that I eat spicy food way too often, but so far it has caused me no problems. The only time I ever find food spicy is enough is when I am in Thailand where occasionally I can find a dish that is so spicy it provides instant involuntary hiccups 😁.
I love this play ✌🙂
Time spent my daughters is the best.
This game is really interesting and fun 😍 , I missed the moments with my friends playing this UNO Game last three years ago
It is so much fun, and I can see the look on my daughters' eyes when they have a +4 Wild Card 😁.
Whaha that's awesome really 😊
Didn't heard about UNO yet 😅.. Glad you spend quality time with your family
UNO is a really fun card game, I used to play it when I was young, so I am glad to share it with my daughters.
Perfect for a family bonding😍
😁🙏
That was a great bonding, I know UNO by name but didn't know how to play it haha
I grew up with UNO in the USA, but I've also seen it in a few other countries around the world. It's fun and easy to learn, and because of that a great family game.