Chloe in Cambodia!: Chicken Bojangles

Well, it finally happened. A lizard fell on me this week. I was just sitting down, minding my own business when I reached up to a shelf to grab a tissue and the lizard jumped off the shelf and landed on my knee. I think it was one of those "trials and tribulations" they talk about in the scriptures.

The second point I want to make is that I ate snails this week. That is all.

(I feel like I eat one new weird food every week that I have to tell you guys about.)

Anyway, I have a little more to write about this week than last week, so I'm hoping I have enough time. I've started to reach my breaking point with the phsaa and its hideodorous stench. (thats hideous, with the word odor thrown in - trademark Sister Homer.) I'm not even joking, I have been on the verge of tears some days when my patience is already low and I have to ride my bike past that place. Usually like 5 times a day. A couple days ago this very thing literally happened: We were going past the phsaa at about 3pm, smelling all of those delightful market smells of rotting meat and produce. And when I ride by there, I have to breathe through my mouth (but sometimes that doesn't even work. That odor is so pungent that even when you breathe through your mouth it still makes its way into your nostrils...theres no stopping it). So I'm breathing through my mouth and I see this guy smoking a cigarette on the side of the street and he's blowing the smoke in our direction. What is my t\first thought? "THANK GOODNESS!" No joke, I purposely breathed through my nose and took a huge gust of cigarette air because I knew it would cover up the smell of the phsaa and in comparison it smells like roses. That was a long paragraph to sufficiently describe the torture I have to go through. You don't even know. YOU DONT EVEN KNOW.

Anyway, lets get down to the nitty gritty: I now know for sure that I'm proud to be a missionary. I thought that before, but I proved it this week. The missionaries in KC all get together for a meeting once a week and then we have lunch together afterwards. So we went to this restaurant called Smiles that sells normal American food and therefore attracts foreigners pretty frequently. SO we walk in, and there are like 12 of us missionaries, and there's one couple sitting down and they were totally giving us the stink eye the whole time we were there. I would bet money that they were European based on the way they looked and acted. (I'm gonna go with German or French) Obviously Europeans (the same as Americans) have a different opinion of missionaires than Cambodians do. As in, they view missionaries as pests and avoid them at all costs. So anyway, it was clear to all 12 of us they this couple was totally hatin on us even though we literally didn't so much as breathe in their direction. We weren't proselyting or anything, we're just eating lunch and keeping to ourselves. Not a single one of us even made a motion to contact them. But regardless, I remember feeling like,. okay, they hate us and the fact that we're here. But in a weird way, that made me even more proud to be a missionary! I wasn't insecure or ashamed at all! I was just sitting up straight, speaking Khmer to the waiters and showing dem Europeans "hey. I live here. I do what I do. What of it?" Missionaries are cool, you guys. We may look like goobers with our bikes and nametags, but I swear we're cool deep down.

*********This restaurant Smiles has chicken fingers (sort of) and they call them "Chicken Bojangles". I'm not kidding. Everytime someone says it I crack up. I can't handle it. Bojangles??? Are you joking?

Differet\nt topic: I'm definitely losing my grasp of English. Elder Flint once made fun of me in the MTC when I said, "My grammar is the only thing I've got going for me." Unfortunately I was serious, and now I'm losing that too. Sister Kong is obviously learning Enlgish, so I help her with that as much as she helps me with Khmer. The most awkward and humbling experience of my life is when she asks me what a word means and even I DONT KNOW THE DEFINITION. I look in my khmer-english dictionary to pretend like im looking up a khmer word, but im really looking up the definition for an english word. I'm such a fool.

Highlight of my week: We were teaching a lesson to a recent convert, and at the end we asked her if she had any more questions or chngol (this word doesn't really have a translation: it means like "wonderings", things you wonder about). So she said, "No, but I just want to thank you so much for coming. I love when the sisters come to tech me. I don't always have time to study the Book of Mormon on my own but when the sisters come and teach me I get to read it and understand it so thank you, thank you so much." For some reason, this meant the world to me. I'm gonna be honest, lately I've been feeling like I'm wasting my time, and nothing is coming from teaching. So many of our investigators just don't get it and a ton more don't even seem to care. But when I get one person expressing the fact that they love learning about this gospel and that they actually want my help, i'm like, okay. This is worth it. For this one woman, what I'm doing is not a waste of time. So that helped me a lot. Good times in Cambodia, right?

I think that's all I've got for this week. I had a homesick week so I'm missing you guys a lot. But like I said, it's worth it in the end. I LOOOOOOOOOVE you loads.

Love, Sister Davis

PS, one of our members told me she loved that I'm super sloat (chill). Why am I so chill? She said because i'm always smiling!! (there's your shocker of the week). So my advice is: keep smiling!