Maryknoll Lay Missioners in Cambodia
Retreat in Kampot
16-18 November 2012
On this last day of the retreat, we ate breakfast by the river and then celebrated a liturgy on the porch of our meeting house. Then we packed everything up and headed for Bokor Mountain a famous and iconic hill station of the French era. After lunch there, we headed back to Phnom Penh, planning an early arrival to avoid the traffic and road closures occasioned by the advent of President Obama and other world leaders for the ASEAN summit meeting.
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Our schedule was rather relaxed these three days with greater attention to the sequence of events rather than to the clock. We had time to enjoy eating together and this last breakfast was no exception. |
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Before we headed back to the cabins to pack and check out, Sami Scott and Steve had a last chat by the river. |
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At the liturgy Steve and Medin Tan provided musical accompaniment and Dee Dungy helped carry the lyrics. |
| Charlie Dittmeier was the presider for this eucharist. |  |
| This is a bamboo pole with pegs driven into it as foot pegs to create a ladder for climbing coconut trees to get the fruits. |  |
| While they waited while Sami paid the bills, Medin Tan and Maria Montello got in a last swing together. |  |
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Steve was packed and ready for the road. |
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We made a detour to Bokor Mountain, an old colonial-era hill station where the French would go to avoid the heat and which then was abandoned during all the years of war. Now it is being redeveloped and we stopped to take a look and take a group photo. The little girl wandered over from a group of Cambodian tourists. |
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Almost every hilltop or pass through the hills has an animist spirit that is venerated by the people. This one on Bokor Mountain is bigger and more formal than most, probably subsidized by the owners of the hilltop casino, to give potential customers another reason to go up to the hilltop. |
| Our goal was to eat lunch by the waterfall so we scouted around for a relatively flat place where we could sit and spread out our food. |  |
| Lindsay Doucette seemed to be carrying on the retreat reflection while she ate her tuna fish sandwich. |  |
| Dee Dungy looks a little nonplussed: all the chocolate chip cookies (which she made) were gone and she also lost her sunglasses. |  |
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