Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Nineteen years ago I witnessed the wedding of Sarah Igboeli to Paul and then in 2007 they relocated to Australia. This evening I got to catch up with Sarah who was very much a part of the deaf program and the Maryknoll community and the Catholic community back in “the old days.”
My major mode of transport around Phnom Penh is my bicycle, here being repaired by a young Khmer man who goes by the name of Jack. He has a little bike shop that fortunately for me is on the way I go from my home to the deaf office. For major repairs like today (getting a new sprocket and chain), I drop the bike off and come back after work. Fortunately also is that Jack is a real good man, a pleasant and caring human being.
Thanksgiving is different in Cambodia. Actually, it doesn’t exist here but we Americans get together continuing the tradition we grew up with. In previous years, it was the Maryknoll NGO that gathered but after the NGO closed, it’s just a ragtag group of us for Thanksgiving this year.
Here is the latest column I wrote for The Record, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Louisville
From a commentary by David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic
From a commentary by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post columnist
Today I moved all my stuff from Street 410, from the Maryknoll office building which we are closing, to a flat in the Boeung Tum Pun area. I had way too much stuff that had to be moved but our small crew got it moved within five hours. Now it is going to take WAY more time than that to sort it all out and find a new place for it in my new home.
Today I got a third–and I hope, final–truckload of stuff moved to my new house. I don’t know where I’m going to put it. I think these boxes–and eleven others–are going to be sitting around the walls of my room–and out on my little balcony–for months as I go through the stuff to see what will go back to Kentucky, what goes to Maryknoll archives, what gets tossed. I wish we had curbs here so I could put stuff out for people to take.
Today I finally got my Kentucky ballot finished and tomorrow morning I will take it to the embassy and they will carry it to the US and drop it into the US postal system. That is a BIG help because Cambodia doesn’t have a functioning postal system. They have restarted sending mail outside the country (there is no incoming mail unless you have a post office box) but a letter to the U.S. takes an inordinate amount of time–and may never arrive–so a really important letter must go by courier (DHL, UPS) at $40 a pop.
