Khmer language classes began Monday morning at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, after an opening ceremony with Vice Rector Hang Chanthon and the four Khmer teachers. Students arrived impressively dressed in the "uniforms" of Cambodian students at RUPP, then waited for their peers to arrive. Seth, Jake, and Phil relaxed in a tree just moments before the opening ceremony.

Pictured are Bailey and Trisha undergoing their initial oral language testing designed to place them in appropriate sections of the language course. Immediately after the opening ceremony and language testing, Khmer language classes began. Students were attentive and motivated to learn Khmer, now that they are living with host families. Teacher Meng is pictured here working with about half of the SSTers on how to speak with their families about eating, and Teacher Sisophantha animatedly introduces the day's lesson.

In the afternoon the group took tuk-tuks and bicyles south toward the Psaa Tuol Tumpong (Russian Market) area, where our afternoon lectures will be held. We heard from Poch Bunnak about "Cambodian Peoples and Cultures" in that initial lecture Monday afternoon. Students were particularly interested in hearing about Cham Muslims and the various indigenous tribal groups (the Tampoun and Jarai) since about six or seven SSTers likely will live with the tribal families in Rattanak Kiri Province for their service assignments. We ended Monday's class session as we will each day -- with processing group- and schedule-related questions.

On Saturday students all came by the Graber Miller home to process their first night with their Cambodian host families. There was enormous energy in the room and on the apartment's balcony (as well as some jet lag exhaustion) as students relayed stories about first encounters, cross-cultural learnings, initial meals, and attempts to communicate in Khmer. Sakhorn, who helped with housekeeping when the Graber Millers led the 2007 Cambodian SST, also was at the house Saturday. She'll be coming one day each week to assist with basic household work, and she'll also regularly make tuk groach c'hmaa (lime juice) for Mia and Simon since they remember her juice so fondly from 2007.

By Sunday everyone had settled in well and adjusted to their families. Four or five host families are Christian, so some students had the opportunity to go to church on Sunday. Most other families are Buddhist, and at least three or four students went to Buddhist temples (wats) with their families on the weekend. Phil Stoesz told the story about being blessed by a Buddhist monk, with powder smeared on his face and a blessing spoken over him.

Since several students already had gone to Wat Phnom, the oldest temple in Phnom Penh and the one after which the city is named, the Graber Millers also took a brief trip to the Wat Sunday afternoon. There monkeys run wild, eating whatever they are given (or they can take), and an elephant is available for rides around the Wat (we didn't ride).

Students are healthy and upbeat and seem to be thoroughly engaging the Cambodian experience thus far. This afternoon (Tuesday) we'll be visiting the National Museum and Royal Palace here in the capital. Watch for another likely blog post by the weekend.

By 6:30 p.m. this evening (Friday evening for us, Friday morning in the U.S.), all 19 students had gone home with their host families. It was a whirlwind day, first with orientation at the hotel, a driving tour of the city, and then meeting the parents and siblings.

Ann and Keith tend to practice the "soft landing" approach to SST, especially given the arduous 29-hour flights/travel and the reversal of body clocks. Given that, the Colonial Mansion was a fitting and comfortable place for our first night, allowing us to relax on our balconies (Charlie, Austin, and Seth), swim and play cards around the pool, and lounge in the rooftop mini-pool that overlooked the city.

Orientation began with brief introductions and then a 45-minute presentation by Dr. Gloria Christie about "Staying Healthy in Cambodia." Dr. Christie is quite colorful, so this was an invigorating introduction to healthy living. For the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon Keith, Ann, and Marya spoke about being cross-cultural learners; how to negotiate traffic and monetary matters; guidelines for living carefully and responsibly on SST; and what to embrace and what to avoid while living with Cambodian host families.

In the midst of orientation we took a long lunch break, beginning with an extraordinary buffet luncheon at the hotel, with Cambodian, Western, and other gourmet foods many of us had never experimented with before (squid, leg of lamb, lobster bisque, oysters). See the photos of Allison getting her food at the buffet table, followed by Stephanie, Phil, and Jake. After lunch about half the group took a walk, some played Rook by the pool (Annie, Austin, Rachel, and Phil), and some lounged on the rooftop (Kat and Annalisa).

After a briefer afternoon orientation we took a two-hour driving tour of the city, passing by most of our key landmarks. On a typical Phnom Penh map, much of our activity will focus on the northwestern part of the city -- Royal University of Phnom Penh (morning Khmer language classes) -- and also the west-central section of the city (Ann and Keith's house, Mennonite Central Committee's office, our afternoon lecture meeting space). Mao Tse Toung Boulevard is a key street that provides access to many of the places we need to go.

When we arrived at MCC at 5:00, some parents already were waiting for us, and others came to pick up their new family members over the next 90 minutes. In the photos are a group of students waiting for their families; Annie sharing a first laugh with Sreyhem and her new host family; and Allison greeting her mother. These were pleasurably intense moments for students as they met the people they would be living with for the next six weeks and then found their way home on motos (see heavily laden Michael Ruth with his brother Oudom) and tuk-tuks (Seth with his mother Sivorn; Charlie with his mother Phai). Students are settling into their new homes and spaces now.

One of students' experiential assignments tomorrow is to find their way back to the Graber Miller house at some point during the day, just so we can check in with everyone and they can have a reason to explore the city. We look forward to seeing them, though we know they're in good hands with their Cambodian hosts.

Nineteen healthy and happy Cambodia SSTers arrived at the Phnom Penh Airport two hours ago. After about an hour of moving through the visa, immigration, and customs process, we were on our way to the Colonial Mansion, where we're all settled in now. Students send their warm greetings back home to Moms and Dads, siblings, friends, and others they love.

The goal for tonight (now 1 a.m.) is sleep, with breakfast in our rooms (grocery items brought in this evening by the Graber Millers). We'll start orientation at 9 a.m. Friday (9 p.m. Thursday, Indiana time) and continue throughout the day. At 3:00 we'll leave for a driving city tour and then host family members will pick up students at the end of the city tour.

Pictured in the photos are newly shorn Jake and Julian and Annalis preparing to go through immigration; Annie, Chloe, Kelly, and Allison waiting in line to turn in their visas; and the collective student group in the bus heading for our hotel. Daniel Lanctot, older brother of student Rachel Lanctot and a non-governmental service worker in Cambodia, also met the group at the airport and accompanied us back on the bus. In the bus photo, he's sitting with his sister Rachel. Daniel and his spouse Kristin Buller have been helpful in identifying possible speakers for our academic program, and in recommending service placements. Rest well tonight. All is well in Cambodia.

Tuesday evening Ann, Keith, Sreyhem (our family assistant/coordinator) and Marya (our local assistant/coordinator) met with students' host families on the Mennonite Central Committee rooftop. Parents were quite animated as they looked over the personal information sheets for their students, asking about what students' interests and hobbies were, their year in school and major, what their parents did for a living, and other questions.

We talked about our desire to have true cross-cultural learning, with the hope that Goshen students could be integrated into their families as sons and daughters rather than as specially honored guests. We expressed gratitude that their families were making possible the kind of deep learning the Study-Service Term seeks.

Pictured here are, in order: Austin Yoder's 13-year-old brother and father (Mr. Thy, a contractor); several mothers, including Nary, Allison Yoder's mother (in pink) and Um Chenda, Bailey Bontrager's mother (in darker color); Keith with Rachel Lanctot's brother and mother, Phoung Bopha; Trisha Handrich's baby sister Sophia in the arms of MCC Cambodia Co-Director Shari Yordy; Keith with Chloe Mathonnet-Vanderwell's sister Sina (who speaks Khmer, French, and English) and other sisters; Marya with some of the parents and siblings; and Sreyhem and Keith with Ata, Allison Yoder's 19-year-old sister.

As we write this blog, students are preparing for their last night of rest before leaving for their 29-hour journey. They will leave campus at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning (Wednesday) and arrive here in Cambodia, after leaping 12 hours ahead, at 10:40 p.m. Thursday night (10:40 a.m. Thursday in Indiana).

The day of students' arrival is a major holiday in Cambodia known as Victory Over Genocide Day. It's the day in 1979 when Vietnamese troops, together with former Khmer Rouge soldiers who had seen the errors of their regime, marched into Cambodia and took over the country from the Khmer Rouge. Current prime minister Hun Sen was among those former Khmer Rouge soldiers who re-entered Cambodia with the Vietnamese. For the next decade, the United States (having recently come off the war with Vietnam, known here as the American War) and United Nations saw this Vietnamese event as an "invasion" rather than a "liberation," and only allowed the ousted Khmer Rouge (which had been responsible for the deaths of about one third of all Cambodians in their several-year reign of terror) a seat at the United Nations table. The history, which we'll be learning about in the opening two weeks, is quite tragic.

When students arrive Thursday evening, we'll first be staying at the Colonial Mansion, providing for a quite comfortable initial night in Phnom Penh. All day Friday we'll do orientation, and then at 3 p.m. we'll take a driving tour of the city, ending up at Mennonite Central Committee's offices, which are near the Graber Miller home. Host families will pick up their students at MCC by 5:00 Thursday, less than 18 hours after they have been in the country. The SST Cambodia journey begins.

The Graber Millers spent Christmas weekend in nearby Bangkok, just an hour's flight away. The kids loved the enormous buffet breakfasts, and they were especially pleased with our hotel's majestic, rooftop pool, with stunning views overlooking the sprawling city of 12 million. We also had a chance to take in the Jatujak Weekend Market, one of the largest outdoor markets in the world. We also repeatedly rode Bangkok's famous sky train to get about the city, and Mia and Simon loved that, too, even at rush hour. Some students will travel to Bangkok after the SST experience is over in April.

On New Year's eve we went for dinner at Lana and Andy Miller's house, which is two blocks from ours. Lana, a Goshen College graduate, and her husband Andy are Southeast Asia Directors for Mennonite Central Committee. The picture shows us dining on a Cambodian feast on their rooftop terrace.

Homeschooling for Simon and Mia continues to go well, with Simon reading for hours every day and both Simon and Mia doing several hours of structured study each day: social studies, math, science, writing, and reading. They enjoy the flexibility of the homeschool schedule, and the freedom to learn about Cambodian culture as a part of their education.

SSTers all have received their host family placements, so they know something about the families they'll be living with. We've also completed a first draft of the syllabus, schedule, and week-by-week assignments and sent an extensive packing list for students.

By this time next week, the Graber Millers and the 19 GC Cambodia SSTers will be settling into our hotel for the night, going through our orientation sessions, and preparing to go home with host families the following afternoon. We're anxiously awaiting the students' arrival.

Sreyhem and Keith spent much of the week visiting host families for the SST group, seeing 20 homes and talking with a 21st family over the course of the last several days. We are awaiting a firm response from two families, and a couple of the families that we had hoped would work out were altered when we saw the distance they were outside of the main part of the city. Right now we have 19 interested families that we are talking with. All but one of those homes or families are depicted here.

A few of the families are Christian, though the majority are Buddhist, as is true in Cambodia overall. One family includes a Catholic father and Buddhist mother, and a family or two have Buddhist parents and Christian children. Some of the adolescent and young adult children of the household speak some (or much) English, and in some cases there is no English at all spoken in the home.

As you can see from the photos, most Phnom Penh host families have tile floors, though some have wooden floors (as will be generally true for countryside host families). Often host family homes are in the p'teah l'veng style, with a lower-area living room and then bedroom in a mezzanine area overlooking the living room. In the evenings families often park their cars, trucks, or motos in the lower levels of their homes.

Some students will have their own rooms, but more will sleep in a room with a host sister or brother. Some will sleep on straw mats in the living room; some will sleep on the wooden platforms pictured in many of the photos; and some may sleep in beds with thin mattresses. Some women will sleep in the same bed as their host sisters, and some men may sleep with their host brothers.

We have not yet assigned particular students to specific families, but hope to do that early next week after a couple of loose ends fall into place. Once we know which families students will be living with, we'll post a list on Moodle so students can see the general contours of their families (how many siblings, location in the city) before they arrive in Cambodia.

We're hoping you all have a Merry Christmas back in the U.S. Students will land in Phnom Penh two weeks from tomorrow (Thursday)!

From Friday morning through Monday afternoon, the Graber Millers visited Kep, one of the locations for an SST Cambodia field trip. We'll go with the student group the weekend of February 7 and 8 to both Kep and Rabbit Island, where we also visited.

The 3 1/2-hour trip to Kep was fascinating because we were able once again to see the Cambodian countryside, where students will be living on their service assignments. Other than that, the driving trip was bumpy (about half of the road was under construction) but relatively uneventful, save for one flat tire along the way.

We stayed at the Beach House, where we'll also stay with our student group, and had several of our meals at the Veranda Hotel and Restaurant, which overlooks the sea. We'll have a buffet breakfast with students at that hotel restaurant when we're in Kep.

Most memorably, we spent all day Sunday at Rabbit Island, after ferrying out to the island in the Gulf of Thailand, about a half-hour off the coast of Kep. We invited Ren, our driver and a friend of Mennonite Central Committee workers, to accompany us out to the island, too. Mia and Simon loved playing in the sand and sea most of the day, while Ann and Keith lounged on mats or chairs and read novels. One striking sight that day was seeing a young girl with an IV in her arm walking down the beach, her mother holding the IV bottle over her head.

Also memorable from the day was eating enormous prawns pulled straight from the sea and grilled at the hut just beyond where we camped out for the day. The restaurant owner later pulled fresh crabs from the water just in front of us, preparing those for another patron.

The overall trip was partly to take a break, partly to have a mini-vacation with the kids, and partly to prepare for our trip to the Beach House and Rabbit Island with students. It also was a chance to celebrate Niles' 18th birthday (December 21) ... though Niles isn't yet in Cambodia with the rest of the family. He's spending the Christmas holidays with his Graber grandparents in Puerto Rico, so Happy 18th Birthday today, Niles!

Marya and Keith now have most of the lectures in place, and we've just begun working on service assignments, too. The Graber Millers are looking forward to our students' arrival on January 8: the initial hotel is set, we're meeting many of the families, along with Sreyhem Roberts, Tuesday, and other details are falling into place. Hope you all have a lovely and blessed Christmas holiday.

The Graber Miller family, minus Niles, arrived in Cambodia Tuesday, December 8, and spent much of the first week settling into the new Goshen College apartment. The apartment, which also will be the site of our Wednesday evening processing meetings referred to as P'teah Goshen Nights, is on the fourth floor of a new apartment building located between Mennonite Central Committee's office and the Russian Market.

In the photos you can see our children Mia and Simon in front of the apartment, and the views from our balcony. We bought some goods for our partially furnished apartment at the local, open-air hardware store across the street (see photo). When Keith goes out on his own he rides his bicycle, as students will, or takes a moto-dup (motorcycle), but when the family goes out we always take a tuk-tuk. Tuk-tuks, as pictured here directly and in the reflection from a following semi-truck, are carts pulled behind motorcycles, and are the standard form of transportation for many Cambodians and visitors.

Simon and Mia are enjoying homeschooling, with Ann as their teacher. We went to the Russian Market, or Psaa Tuol Tum Pong, to pick up school supplies. The market is located near the Buddhist wat (temple) Tuol Tum Pong, hence the Khmer moniker, and the name "Russian Market" came from the period when Russians in Cambodia bought most of their supplies there. Now the market is a great source of daily home supplies for Cambodians and long-term visitors as well as souvenirs for travelers and tourists.

Keith has been working at various logistical details, including hiring a local coordinator, Marya Sen. Thus far Marya (pictured with Keith going over the proposed SST schedule) has been a wonderful addition to the Goshen College presence in Cambodia, assisting with scheduling lecturers, confirming hotel arrangements, and meeting with language teachers. Wednesday we met with all four language teachers at RUPP, and Keith was pleased to see that we have all four teachers back from the 2007 SST experience. The teachers asked about many specific students from the first Cambodia SST group, and Keith reported where they are living, who has gotten married and to whom, and where they are serving or in school.

Sreyhem Roberts is our other local assistant, continuing her work from 2007 with Cambodian host families. At this point all 19 families are secured, and the Graber Millers and Sreyhem will go house to house to meet many of the families on Saturday.

Sunday evening the Graber Millers went to Sreyhem's home outside Phnom Penh to participate in a Christmas party Sreyhem and her husband Mike hosted for an array of friends (see several photos). Children and adults from all over the world -- Cambodia, Korea, New Zealand, the U.S., England, and elsewhere were at the event, which included a carry-in potluck (with turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy, even -- real rarities in Cambodia). Pictured in the photo are Ann and Sreyhem attempting to cut the turkey, with one one of Sreyhem's nieces looking on in the background. The evening included gifts for the children and a white elephant exchange for adults.

Temperatures are routinely in the mid- to upper-80s during the day, and get as low as the high-70s at night. The sun shines every day, all day, and we're not likely to see any rain for about two months. All is going well as we prepare for the arrival of our excellent group of SSTers on January 8.