Author: Charles Dittmeier

Sign language resource

Patrick Labelle is a French friend of the deaf who has developed an app for learning and using sign language. It’s for use by deaf children more than the general public.

Patrick explains his app, named Sign Discovery, to Julie Lawler and Thuch Sophy from our DDP education project.

Street Food

A seasonal favorite among the foods sold on the street is corn on the cob. It is sold either roasted or boiled and is usually offered from vendors pushing bicycles with a large bag of boiled or roasted ears of corn. It’s quite good!

Pomelo is in season

One of my favorite fruits taste-wise is the pomelo. It’s quite a bit like a grapefruit but with a better taste. Eating a pomelo is not so pleasing, though. It has a huge soft rind around the fruit part and it takes some effort to get to what is edible. And the fruit part is not so readily edible as a grapefruit. There is a heavy protective skin around each section and it’s difficult to maneuver around that.

Water Festival

The day after the Water Festival ended, life started returning to normal.

The street barriers were pushed aside. Gone were the 6.4 million tourists who jammed the waterfront. Only departing tourists were left.
On the river, a barge with a light display remains. On the shore just a tent frame and empty rubbish bins.

Water Festival

Saturday was the third and last day of the Water Festival.

Some of the smaller boats.
A monk blessing the boat rowing crews.
The final parade of the light barges on the Tonle Sap River
4 million people came to Phnom Penh for the boat races and other Water Festival events.
King Sihamoni presiding from a royal box on the waterfront.

Water Festival

Today is the second day of the Water Festival, a three-day holiday extravaganza. More than a million people come from the provinces to Phnom Penh to watch the annual boat races.

350 boats representing towns and villages all over Cambodia are brought to Phnom Penh to race against each other. More than 20,000 men–with a few women–paddle the boats along a 2-kilometer course.
Lots and lots of people crowd the waterfront for the races. Pigeons, too!

UNDP Validation Workshop

The United Nations Development Programme has been conducting an analysis of the situation of deaf people in Cambodia. Today there was a workshop to review the initial findings and offer comments and corrections.

Mr. Sit Song, a director at UNDP, welcomed all the participants from the deaf community, NGOs, and government offices.
Nino, an external consultant hired to conduct the analysis, presented the preliminary findings.
Charlie offered an observation about the role of government after part of the presentation.

Too Early

One of the disadvantages of not having our own church and needing to borrow a hall from a school is that we cannot control the environment and the factors that can support good liturgy. Last Saturday I cringed when I walked into the hall and saw they had already erected a Christmas tree, six weeks before Christmas and even before Thanksgiving and Advent!