Today Musica Felice and the Ninth Harmonics combined forces to perform a fun Christmas concert to benefit the children’s programs of the Daughters of Charity. Click here to see them in action at the Department of Performing Arts.
Author: Charles Dittmeier
Education Conference
This is a conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities sponsored by the NGO Education Program. It brought together this past week a lot of civil society and non-government organizations to look at the situation in Cambodia.
It looks like a normal organization meeting in any hotel in any major city anywhere, but this one had its Cambodian characteristics. Cambodians thrive on noise–loud noise–and they always turn the PA systems up very high–and leave them at that setting. Their technicians do not adjust the volume for each speaker as he or she comes to the podium. The volume stays on high all the time. And then speakers come up and yell into the microphones. If we were in the United States, OSHA would require ear protection for everyone in the room. Here the locals just consider it normal—and it is in this culture. We foreigners consider it painful.
A relaxing ride…at least for him.

Notable Quotes
A quote for Advent
“Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.” ~Thomas Merton, Trappist monk |
Christmas Season 2017 #3

One of Maryknoll Cambodia’s traditional events is decorating for Christmas. All the mission team members get together to decorate and then have pizza. Click here to see how it went.
Planning Meeting
About every eighteen months, the Cambodia Mission Team–the members of Maryknoll serving in Cambodia—has a planning meeting to examine what we are currently doing and to examine the signs of the times and what is going on within Maryknoll and in Cambodia that might require a response. This year we met on a government holiday when most of us could be available.


Christmas Season 2017 #2
Every year the Don Bosco technical schools have a Christmas Bazaar at which they sell food and student-made items and also sing and dance and just have fun. Click here to see the 2017 bazaar.
Christmas Season 2017 #1
Cambodia is 94% Buddhist and especially outside of the cities there is little understanding of Christianity, and Christmas—which people will have heard of–will be seen as just a western holiday where the foreigners wear Santa Claus costumes and decorate their homes with evergreen trees and lots of ornaments and lights. Christmas is not celebrated throughout the culture at all but most western families and groups will mark the birth of Christ with church services and parties at Christian-based NGOs. Click here to see how the English Catholic community began its Christmas season.
Not yet….
Electricity is still not a given in Cambodia. I think now the percentage of the population with access to electricity is about 34% and where it is available, it is quite expensive.
Cambodia is now buying more electricity from Vietnam and the supply is more reliable. Previously because the grid was so weak and the price so high, air conditioning was a luxury and was never part of the original design of a building. Now it is still a luxury but more and more people feel they can afford it so external air con units are appearing in more and more places. Here fifteen of them have been added to the top floor of a residential block. Individual units are now not such a rarity but it will still be a while before architects think of central air conditioning for a building here.
Preparing for Sunday
Some Catholic people comment “I don’t get anything out of mass.” First, it is important to remember that the eucharist is not entertainment so we need to temper our expectations about what we feel when we go to mass.
Secondly, because the mass is not entertainment and we don’t approach it passively expecting someone to make us feel good without our doing anything–like going to a funny movie which might cheer us up when we’re down, we might appreciate the experience of the eucharist better if we prepare for it.
I’d like to offer some resources to help us do that. These are websites or e-mail mailing lists that give some thoughts about the readings for the coming weekend. Since many Christian churches now use the same common lectionary (book of Sunday readings) as the Catholics, these resources could benefit Christians from a variety of denominations.
These resources present the readings so you can read them in advance and then they offer some insights about how the readings developed, why Jesus said what he did or the evangelist included it in his gospel, and then some comments to help us appreciate what we will hear on Sunday.
The first resource I’d like to suggest is First Impressions. It’s written by a group of Dominican priests based in Texas. They offer not only thoughts on the scripture readings but several other helpful items that might help you develop your spiritual life. Give it a try, bookmark it, and click on it each week!