Laurie's World

Slept until 4 am this morning!! Nothing short of a miracle. Got that instant coffee brewing and Nichol and I are ready for walk by 6:30am or so. We Just waited for the sun to come up! He’s a whole new guy today. Standing up and changing his position in bed! Wanting to lick his favourite toy! All excellent signs.

Being up at 4 AM gives me the opportunity to catch up with everyone back home with texts and FaceTime as that’s still yesterday afternoon there. By 6:30, Nichol was definitely ready to go for a walk and he even tried to go down the two flights of stairs when we left the room. That was a hard no from me but once I carried him to the street and set him down, he was off to the races.

There are lots of dogs here. Off leash of course and probably some mix of street dog/pet? situation. Nichol is very good with all of it, butts were sniffed and we moved on. This is great news for us that these dogs that roam are not aggressive towards him. There was one female that we encountered a couple days ago that was clearly a new mama that barked a lot at us but at that time he was still in my arms so I’m not sure what her deal was per se. Probably just saying her piece to the new guy.
We have a little route established here in the neighborhood and I see the same people every time we go by. Up until now I’ve mostly been carrying him, but now he walked on his own and people were cheering him on and smiling it was very sweet. The security guard out front was particularly smiley when he saw our progress!

I am going out apartment hunting in about 30 minutes so will update on that later. This morning, I also caught up with a fellow teacher that I met on a pet import Facebook group as part of my research to get here. She flew in last night from Atlanta and has a cat and a dog. As it turns out her place is about half a block from me so I think we are going to walk our buddies together tonight. I’m really looking forward to it! Having another person to talk to, with shared experiences is important for all of us!

Nichol had his first dose of meds at 1pm ( I had to get peanut butter to get him to take meds but Quick trip to Aeon Mall across the way solved that need!) By 3:30pm I am already seeing more life from him than I’ve seen in days. He’s lifting his head and his breathing is normal again. I can’t even imagine what he was feeling. (DawgMom guilt!😞) I’ll make it up to him. I promise! Other than the 20 minutes to go to mall and back and a quickie trip downstairs for a margarita pizza and mango smoothie, I haven’t left him since coming back here at 3 pm on Monday. He’s eating about 1/2 the food he normally does, but is drinking well so that all good signs. The vet said he should be acting and feeling better in 3 to 4 days and that by 10 days he should be back to normal. If not I have to take them back and they will look at injections into that knee if the inflammation is not down. I’m hopeful that this will help. Even hurt him lifting his head like this is a huge improvement❤️

Picks of my supper/pizza for the foodies out there🍕 ❤️

This supper slightly more Expensive at just over $7 😂😂😂  Sawry….still very reasonable meal imo! Had to have another mango smoothie too. It’s just fruit after all….. 🥭

Once Nichol is all better and we can venture out, I’ll have more to share on the food situation!!

TTFN

Not gonna lie, today was ruff. Up most of the night with Nichol. He is not doing well and I’m questioning all my life choices about why I did this to him. I’ve got an amazing support network here already with Landon and the staff at the school plus my amazing ❤️hubs and ❤️kids back home rallied around both Nichol and I as I worked through it. I did not go into school today. I took Nichol to the vet. In my copious preparation I had already sourced out two trusted, capable and English speaking  veterinarian clinics before coming here. The staff at east west confirmed my choices as the best so I reached out to both for an appt ASAP! Animal Mama responded quickly and they could See him that morning so I made my appointment for 10 AM. I caught a Grab and was there right on time. I’m super super impressed with the care he received, they were kind and patient and knowledgeable. I can’t ask for more than that. The vet was concerned about his hips and his knees. He took x-rays and determined his hips are great but he has one bad knee with a hyper mobile patella. The 22 hours on the flight with extended time not being able to walk around was more than his knee was able to tolerate. So inflammation and pain were the result. He prescribed 10 days of Meds and he predicts we will be on the mend shortly. All this for $57.50! And supposedly this is the “expensive “vet in town. I am more than happy to pay that as you can’t even walk into a vet in America for less than $100 Let alone get x-rays and meds!

This will be my go to place for Nichol while in Phnom Penh. They have doggy daycare too so I’ll be looking into that!

They emailed me his X-rays! I hope I don’t embarrass him by sharing this, but look at his curly tail🤩

Nichol updates forthcoming! 🐶❤️

Apologies for the delay in posting about how Monday went!

Grab app not set up like I thought 🤦🏻‍♀️ So I Caught a Tuktuk to school! Narrow little lane….he gave me his number so I can call him ANYTIME apparently. I’m sure that’s the case because I gave him 10,000 riel for a ride that would’ve cost 4300 riel if I had used grab. But just to clarify that’s $2.50 USD instead of $1.10. Still within my budget 😉 And I was feeling generous.

There is this phrase that gets used frequently during orientations to new jobs, the amount of information you are presented with can feel like getting sprayed with a fire hose. I can confirm this. I actually ditched out at 2 PM as I didn’t have a computer yet, and I need to get back to Nichol. He was officially spending his first day alone in at least three years (maybe more). He still wasn’t able to walk after the flight and MY jet leg was real. So I took the hardcopies of curriculum that I could and walked back to hotel to be with him.

The same Mural that was on the wall when I visited in 2019 is still here. I sense that not much has changed in many schools over the last 2 1/2 years here as most have been primarily closed due to Covid. I need to get a pic of me back in front of it to compare to the one I took in 2019, but it was fun to see that the message lives on. Here’s my teacher desk and my door.

It’s not really my teacher desk because it has all the things from the teacher that I’m covering for. I’m not going to move any of her stuff I’ll just live in her world, it’s OK. But anyways you can have a glimpse of what it’s like. I met my grade level teaching partner, Brandie, and my Khmer classroom teaching partner, Makara. I can tell that both are absolutely amazing, so kind and helpful. We are going to make a great team!!

Some pics of school lunch (Yessssss, that’s carrot soup! So delicious!) and pumpkin in my salad! My obsession with pumpkin is being fed!

I was lucky enough to get to sit at the cool kids table for lunch! Landon actually really is a happy guy, not sure why he makes these faces 🤦🏻‍♀️  I am going  to work with him on this! I however look sweaty and exhausted. But that was accurate. So it is what it is 😂

TTFN❤️