Peter, Skibby, Nate, & I went on a little vacation to CA.  We were gone Wed. Aug 13-Wed. Aug 20.  On Sunday, Aug. 17th, we sent Sam an email telling him about our trip to see the redwood forests, San Francisco, & the Oakland Temple.  We received the following email and pictures back from him:

Subject:  Vacation without the favorite, eh?  

Well, well, well. Someone decided to take a trip without me.

Yes, I did get all the pictures, and they're all very cool. I'm jealous. I've heard the oregon coast is so much fun and so pretty. Also, what's up with nate looking like a gangster at the temple? That sounds like an exciting and fun vacation though! That would be cool to see trees that big. I'm afraid you may have fallen victim to a bit of misadvertising on the Cambodia front. As of now I am yet to see anything actually jungle-y like I think everybody thinks I am seeing. Literally all I see is motos and dirty, dusty roads. 

I don't know much about Oakland. All I do know is that generally you want to spend as little time as possible there. Just kidding. And San Fran will be cool too. 

Everybody here is shocked when I tell them that I'm 19. They're like WOW, you are big. And I mean yeah, compared to tiny little 4 and a half footers I guess I'm pretty big. I just say yeah thanks, I eat a lot.

Everyone assumes here that white people are French. Which, you know, we're not. But we'll ride down the street and hear people say "Barang," which means French person. Sometimes you just respond with "Bonjour" or sometimes you're like "French person?! Where?!" But when I get to tell people I'm from America, I feel so proud. America truly is a promised land. It's so great. And the hamburgers are so much bigger there. Seriously, a few weeks ago we ate at a KFC that they have here and I ordered a mashed potatoes thing cause I thought that would be good. I got the small. And then it arrived and it was slightly bigger than a sacrament cup. JK, it was a little bigger, but still, the portions here are noticeably so much smaller here than in America. People here seriously have a bad problem with staring.

We're moving houses today. We're still in the same Teuk Thla North area, but we're going to move our house into the north area instead of the South area because it's going to save us a lot of time biking. So that's happening.

As bad as I said church was last week, it was super good yesterday. It kind of goes in waves. I told Emily this already, but it's like one week I have 0% faith in the Church in Cambodia, and the next day I'm like wow, this is really happening here. Things work here when the Stake President comes to our ward. Which is his actual ward, but he knows how things are supposed to run and everybody is on their best behavior when he comes. He owns a company here called Flyworks that makes flies to sell in America. He just looks like a million bucks. 

All that most of the little kids know how to say in english is "hello" and "my name is." And the teaching must be a little weak here because most of the time they don't say my name is (name), they just know "my name is ........" They haven't been taught that they are supposed to say their name after that. Also most of them know "how are you" and it's pretty fun to say that to them too because then they say "I am fine, thank you."

I think that's all I've got for you this week. Hope all is going well. Stay safe on the drive home.