Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
The owner of the apartment that I am borrowing asked me for some photos of it to see if he needs to make changes. When taking pictures of the living room, I noticed the difference in color in the chair on the left and its matching sofa on the right. I had the chair cleaned when my backpack leaked on it and that may have lightened the color. Now I think I’ll need to clean the sofa to see what that does.
When I moved to my present room, it was a rush and instead of sorting and throwing away a lot of stuff, I brought it with me. Now as I face leaving Cambodia on August 11, I had to do something with all that I brought with me from the old house. Sorting through it all takes a lot of time and Maria Montello, a former Maryknoll Lay Missioner, came today to help me open boxes and dig through them.
I think my room is going to look like the aftermath of an earthquake for the next two weeks because we just had a start today. Maria estimates we processed 20% of the task. I hope it was that much!
Clothing is much cheaper here than in the US so I am getting some things to wear when I get back. Today Sophy, a very competent and practical member of our management team, took me on a DDP moto to a small tailor shop located by our DDP barbershop. Sophy helped me with Khmer, to make sure the tailor understood what I wanted him to do.
The young tailor has made some clothes for me before so I trust him for this relatively big job. I take him clothes that fit, to copy, and pick out some material from a swatch book, and then he checks measurements as a precaution.
I ordered a black suit, three clerical shirts, and two pairs of pants, and he is charging me $232. The clothes will be ready in two weeks.
One of the delights in traveling to Bangkok is staying at the Maryknoll office there with Fr. John Barth. He and I lived together in Phnom Penh many years ago and he is a wonderful friend and a most gracious host. When I stay there, we take supper up to the TV room and eat while watching Aljazeera news and then talk.
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.
Valentine’s Day is a special day for me because I arrived in Cambodia to stay on Valentine’s Day, 2000! I’ve now been living here 25 years!
Today when I was on my bicycle going to the Deaf Development Programme office, I got squeezed between two vehicles at an intersection and got a good abrasion on my left arm. When I got to the office several staff pitched in to clean up and bandage the wound with our first aid kit.