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I am at JFK airport in New York City waiting for my sixteen-hour flight to Guangzhou. I may not be able to update the website before I get back to Phnom Penh—and I don’t arrive there will midnight Friday–so it may be a while before I get back to here.

In the morning we had the final session of the April board of directors meeting and then we all headed home. I went to Newark Airport for a flight to Louisville. Click here for pictures from the day.

I was really busy with the opening of the board meeting and my taking notes as the secretary and didn’t have a chance to prepare an update here. It will come tomorrow.

I spent most of the morning getting from the airport to Maryknoll, and then in the afternoon I made the rounds of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners and the priests’ seminary building to say hello to people and arrange meetings for the next few days. Click here for some photos from the day.

Today started in Phnom Penh as a usual Sunday morning but after lunch we headed for Bangkok for a meeting of the Asia South Pastoral Group of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. Click here to see some scenes from the day.

ChildFund is a Swedish-based NGO working on issues related to children in 20+ countries and this week they have sponsored a workshop in Phnom Penh to consult with local groups here.

A distinguishing characteristic of this workshop was that it was limited to about thirty people whereas so often this type of gathering has 150 or more participants. Because the hosts were Swedish and don’t know Khmer, the workshop was conducted in English which was a real plus for me as I represented DDP.

This weekend the Royal University of Phnom Penh in collaboration with the Chinese University of Hong Kong offered a seminar on sign language linguistics. The catalyst for the event and the main speaker was Prof. Gladys Tang, the head of the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies at Chinese University. Click here to see some photos from the day.

I hadn’t planned on a series of articles about anticipation of the Lunar New Year but it seems each day presents another example of the preparations that have now started in earnest. Here is an example I encountered today:

Most major holidays or festivals in Asia are multi-day, even multi-week events. Even a basic wedding can go on for three days. The official lunar new year day is Tuesday, 5 February, but the new year festival has already started and will continue after February 5th. In the picture above a local man burns imitation paper money and symbols of luxury items to appease ancestral spirits and make them happy as the new year approaches.

Ted Miles, the executive director of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, and Leslie Lopez, our advancement director, went to the Maryknoll gathering in Hua Hin, Thailand with us. Then they came to Cambodia with us when we returned yesterday. They will spend their time here meeting with the Maryknoll Lay Missioners and visiting all of their projects.