Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
The Khmer New Year isn’t until April 14 but our students go home for a long holiday on 8 April so today we had the DDP new year celebration. Here Mom, one of our houseparents, and Sophy (R), the Education Project manager, watch lunch for 60 people cooking on a charcoal brazier. It was so heavy they were fearful it would break the clay fire pot but all was well.
It’s still early for the rainy season in Cambodia but, these days, with climate change, nothing about the weather is normal.
These are some of our Education Project students, enjoying some after-school activities in our eating area. You can see this first heavy rain of the seasons was, well…heavy! (And it looks like the gutter on the left is clogged.)
I was leaving–on my bicycle–for a 5:00 PM mass when the rain started and I got rather wet.
This year will probably be my last in Cambodia. Because of age and the departure of Maryknoll, it has become more of a challenge–and more expensive!–to live here in the kingdom. Life is certainly easier here but I need to consider long-term implications like getting sick and needing assistance that I don’t have now after Maryknoll left.
One of the things I will miss is having my own IT technician! At the Deaf Development Programme office today, my desktop started acting up. I got our tech to take a look and he found an external drive is on its last leg and then cleaned the RAM contacts with alcohol, and–voila!–I’m back in business. I won’t have the type of service in the US of A! 
This year has seen the introduction of vanity license plates in Cambodia. They start at $500 and seem to be quite popular which must make the government happy. From what I’ve seen, it looks like the plate must have eight digits, not a lesser number.
The first time I headed for the toilets in the baggage claim area after getting off a flight in Phnom Penh, I did a double-take before entering to make sure I was in the right one. Most toilet iconography would feature a figure with a skirt or something similar for the women’s room, but in Cambodia the emphasis seems to be on a waist and a flip of the hair.
Every two months I write a column for The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, about life in a mission context. Here is the latest column which appeared last Thursday. Click here.
[I turned on the comments feature for this page. Do you have idea what are the red things in the bags?]
Thursday, March 20, was the vernal equinox, the day when the day and night are equal in length, and the first day of spring. Angkor Wat was built in the 1100s, long before modern developments of science, but it was constructed so that the sun on the vernal equinox rises directly above the main tower of Angkor Wat. This is a stunning achievement with the limited knowledge of astronomy and cosmology and architecture available at that time, and a dramatic expression of the curiosity and creativity and intelligence of the human species. This year more than 85,000 visitors were at Angkor Wat to observe this phenomenon.