Category: Uncategorized

It’s coming along….

On the Easter weekend, the new church being constructed at St. Joseph Parish was opened to allow a few people to see the interior.

The main stairway leading up to the front doors opens into back portion of the nave of the church which has a lower ceiling to allow for offices and meeting rooms above.

Then the back half of the nave opens up to a high ceiling. The building is large but the seating will not be much greater than what is presently available in the hall in another building that is currently used for Sunday liturgies.

Been away too long…

I think I’ve been away from the US too long…. When I moved to this new place where I am living alone now, I bought a small refrigerator. Refrigerators should be rather simple but I can’t figure this one out.

What the heck is this door designed to hold? The large tall area on the right is not deep enough for a 1.25L Coke bottle and it seems the little restraining bar at the bottom is too low to keep soft drink bottles in place when the door closes.
And then there’s the vertical compartment on the left, where I have a jar of jam at the bottom. What is that compartment supposed to hold? Notice it’s got a moveable restraining thingy to hold something in. But what? Enlighten me at cdittmeier@gmail.com or +855 12 608 470 for WhatsApp or Telegram! Please!

Trip to Kampong Cham #1

Today Sau Soknym and took a van to Kampong Cham to some districts where DDP has set up local deaf groups with funding from the United Nations Development Program. It was quite interesting and I’ll put more about it here in the next day or so.

One interesting feature for me was the Virak Buntham bus company we used. I had never encountered them but they are the best I’ve seen, going everywhere in Cambodia and with really good vehicles and professional staff. I wish I had found them years ago! Here are two of their vans at our first rest stop.

Apologies

Ugh… For the post immediately below this one, I was trying a new feature in WordPress that called for media and text together. In the editing stage, it looked NOTHING like the final published result with such large type! That’s the last time I’ll use that!

Apologies

I just spent several hours online trying to complete some paperwork for Maryknoll. It took a LOT longer than expected and now it is really late and I need to get up early. I’ll be back tomorrow! Sorry!

Hospital Day 9

There wasn’t supposed to be a Hospital Day 9 on this trip, but on Day 2, during the routine physical examination, a tumor was discovered on my kidney and the doctors decided they needed to remove it. That final decision was on Thursday and they wanted to schedule the operation for Friday but the operating room was not available. It was then decided to operate on Saturday but then the Bangkok blood bank had no A-negative blood that I needed. It took them two days to find it and finally we were able to have surgery Saturday morning.

This picture is of me is in ICU after the operation. I really never felt terribly bad and mostly only had pain when I made large movements like sitting down or getting up. All in all it has gone very well.

What is his story?

This young man is selling bags of various fruits from a modified motorcycle. From here the red fruits look like apples but they are not.

I often wonder if this is one of the “desperation” jobs in the informal economy. It could be that the young man’s family owns some land with fruit trees and the family kids hit the streets with fruit every day. More likely is that he can’t find a steady job so he rents the motorcycle from the fruit orchard and gets a cut of whatever he can sell during the day. How long will he do that? Just one day? One week? One month? Would anyone keep at it for longer than that, earning a dollar or two a day?