Life in Siem Reap

Hey everyone! 

We are just finishing our last day of ministry for the week so I figured I should share about what life looks like here! 

Our off days are Monday and Tuesday instead of Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday through Sunday we deep clean the guesthouse in the morning. We are cleaning rooms – dusting, sweeping, mopping, flipping beds, scrubbing walls, painting – and are cleaning any major things that need to be cleaned before the guesthouse opens on November 1st from the offseason. Some of my teammates scrubbed down mold in the outdoor showers and are cleaning out the outdoor smoothie bar. One of our projects involved tying hammock straps around a tree, slinging them over the wall, and me hanging on them so we could pull a tree up that had fallen over. The tree is currently still tied up by the hammock strap since we don’t have rope but hey, you have to get real creative when you’re on the Race. Hopefully the tree will learn to stand on its own. We are cleaning out the pool filled with algae and rain water next week which we are actually super excited about (mostly just so we can swim in it afterward). 

In the afternoon we have classes with Emily, who is a long term missionary here in Cambodia. She is teaching us more about how to talk to people about who Jesus is and what he’s about. We have also been going into town after that and talking to tourists (since we can communicate with them the best). It has been really fun to get to share about the Race and what we are doing here with people who are visiting Siem Reap. 

We have breakfast and lunch here at the guesthouse and then go out to dinner every night since we are in town and aren’t allowed to use the kitchen here. We are learning to thrive on our World Race food budget and have gotten really good at finding the cheap food places among all of the higher end and more expensive restaurants for tourists. The guesthouse itself is really quiet right now. We had debrief here with our squad where we took up every single bed in the house. So it is really strange and quiet around here now that they’ve gone back to Battambang or moved on to Kampong Thom and Kampot. We’re holding down the guesthouse right now and are excitedly waiting for it to open. 

When the guesthouse opens, we will be helping at the reception desk, teaching English classes to the staff and doing night security (locking the gates after all of the guests have made it back home at night). We will also be helping to serve breakfast in the morning and will do upkeep on the pool. 

We are really excited to get to live here in Siem Reap for the next two months. Our team is adjusting to being on our own really well and it has been a super sweet time for us to bond even more. God is doing really cool things in each of our own lives, within our team and all around us in the lives of people in Siem Reap. 

Writing more about life here super soon! Thanks for reading 🙂 

-Elena