Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world
Every month we have a celebration for those whose birthdays are that month and today we celebrated September–and also added two staff who are finishing their time at DDP. Working with a young and lively staff is one of the benefits of the management job at DDP.
Aaron Wong is a sign language linguist from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For the last three weeks he has been in Cambodia, training the members of our sign language committee in the basics of sign language linguistics to help them promote and develop the national sign language better. Aaron has done a wonderful job, a resource that we have waited for for several years. Today was the last day of the training and after the deaf students expressed their appreciation for his work, Charlie Dittmeier offered him two of the DDP khramas that we give to our visitors.
On 14 August, Kaitlynn Himmelreich finished up her two months of research with the deaf community here in Cambodia and got on the plane to return to her student life in the US where classes begin next Monday. Kaitlynn adjusted well to life in Cambodia and was really able to integrate with and communicate with the deaf people wherever she them. Here she is presenting to Charlie Dittmeier a thank-you card acknowledging the good experiences she had in Cambodia.
DDP has become quite well known in the deaf world since 1997 and many deaf people–individuals and groups–come to see us. This past week, Hosanna Church in Busan, Korea visited. They are a deaf congregation and we had a good visit.
Krousar Thmey and the Deaf Development Programme jointly sponsor a sign language committee tasked with researching and promoting Cambodian Sign Language. The committee was supposed to receive training six or seven years ago but it didn’t work out.
Now Aaron Wong, a deaf man from Hong Kong, and Keat Sokly, the co-director of DDP, are offering three weeks of training. Both are trained sign language linguists.The committee members are meeting at DDP and are off to a really good start.
This was my last day in Europe. At least it started there, in Rome, and ended up in Asia as I flew to Bangkok overnight from Istanbul. Click here to see pictures from Istanbul.
I still want to post some more photos and commentary from my trip to Europe but just ran out of time today to prepare the pictures. I hope to get back to that on Friday.
The conference ended, I spent the day working at the Maryknoll house and then taking a last walk around Rome. Click here for sights from the day plus some pictures of the Maryknoll house in Rome.
This was the final day of the Catholic deaf conference. There was a sight-seeing tour in the morning and then a free afternoon with a dinner in the evening. Click here for view of the day.