Here’s a truck loaded with about a gazillion straws. It’s part of the culture here—probably because of an assumption that nothing you drink from is hygienic–that every drink is served with a straw. You buy a Coke in a bottle, you get a straw. You get an iced tea in a restaurant, you get a straw. You order a glass of milk, a straw comes with it. You buy a canned soft drink, a straw. You buy a fresh coconut on the street, you get a straw. This same truck loads up at the same shop 3, 4, 5 times a week. They would put more on the truck but notice they are just now under the mass of wires above the load.
The Democratic Republic of North Korea is a mess. That is no secret. The regime there has to scramble to keep their elite well fed and produce nuclear weapons. One of the strategies is setting up North Korean restaurants around the world, in sympathetic countries. This is one of them in Siem Reap. The restaurants all follow the same model: a bevy of young, pretty North Korean women who take the orders and serve the food, and then come back near the end of the meal to perform a medley of songs. And then all the hard cash goes back to Pyongyang.
The morning was mostly a fun time and then there was the long ride back to Phnom Penh. The bus didn’t get back to the DDP office until 8:15 PM. Click here for the photos.
Today was a full day of activities at the Metta Karuna center and then a trip to Angkor Wat and then a quiet evening back at the center. Click here for the pictures.
Friday started off early in Phnom Penh. Then after a long bus ride to Siem Reap, the group had lunch and jumped into their camp program. Metta Karuna is a reflection center run by the Jesuits, close to town but away from the noise and hustle of the tourists. Click here to see pictures from the first day.
The first DDP Deaf Youth Camp was held 3-5 February at the Metta Karuna Center in Siem Reap. Over the next few days stories and photos from the camp will be posted here. Click here to see the camp main page.
First, sorry for not being able to post yesterday. We had to get fingerprinted in the morning and the plan was afterwards to update this website before heading to Siem Reap for a deaf youth camp. But it turned out the whole morning was spent with the fingerprints so that I had no time to do anything before heading north to the camp.
A recent directive from the Ministry of Social Affairs said that all the Maryknoll project directors need to get a criminal record check. Probably that is the result of international NGOs pushing against the trafficking and abuse of children here.
I thought it would take maybe 15-30 minutes for the seven of us to be printed but it took 2 1/2 hours. We had to fill out a form for the Cambodian police at the Ministry of the Interior and that took a while because they wanted all our heights in centimeters, etc., and then eventually we each were fingerprinted twice.
The original plan was that we would get fingerprinted and then we would send the copies of the print and our payment to the FBI in Washington, DC., they would do a criminal check, and then send us a record of their findings which we could submit to MOSVY. But it turns out that the police here have some sort of working arrangement with the FBI and the US Embassy so the time spent on all the paperwork was to send that to Washington for us. We had to pay $30 each for that, plus $2.50 for new photos, but if we understood correctly what they were telling us, we don’t have to do anything more.
Sr. Mara Rutten, who used to work for the FBI in Washington, has her height measured in centimeters.Sr. Helene O’Sullivan has her fingers inked for the printing. For some reason, two other officers both took photos of each of us being fingerprinted.
Some people say there’s no global warming, no climate change but it’s hard to accept that here. When I first came to Cambodia, I was told that the rainy season ended in late September. Then the last few years it seemed to finish in November or December. This year it was raining into mid January. Finally last week we had a full week with no rain and I thought “It’s finally over!” But then today we had a sprinkle in the morning and then a real light rain this afternoon! When will it stop?
Friday started off early in Phnom Penh. Then after a long bus ride to Siem Reap, the group had lunch and jumped into their camp program. Metta Karuna is a reflection center run by the Jesuits, close to town but away from the noise and hustle of the tourists. 
