Basically we just got up and ate breakfast and took off for home today. We had no official activities.
A lively discussion in sign language took place at this table during breakfast this morning.At the end of breakfast, two of the staff talking with a friend in Siem Reap using live video. This technology has been wonderful for deaf people, allowing them real-time communications at a distance for the first time.Many staff brought their luggage to the dining hall when they came for breakfast. Notice the number of bolsters which people brought with them. Using bolsters for sleeping is a common practice in Cambodian culture.This is a typical room for individuals at the center. They were used for our senior staff. The majority of the staff slept in big dorm rooms, on mats on the floor–and loved every minute of it. That’s the way they sleep at home but here they got to be with their friends.The Metta Karuna grounds have many aids for meditation and reflection. Here is a statue setting representing the woman at the well in John’s gospel.We hadn’t been gone an hour when the bus driver pulled over and invited the staff to buy these Cambodian treats, a type of sticky rice packed into bamboo tubes and roasted.Near the stalls selling the rice, there were rice fields in various stages of growth–and with more trees than is common to see.There was one more stop before lunch, at a rest area along the Pres Prov River and some staff made it an opportunity to pick up a few souvenirs of the week.This display in one corner of the rest area’s main building shows Cambodia’s fascination with wooden figures of every kind made from Cambodia’s forests.When we got to the deaf office, we found that our street was being repaved and we could not get close to the building. We parked a half block away and then carried all our supplies to the office.
