New Church Progress
Backpack safety
These two young women are wearing backpacks and doing it right. Too many people, especially women, are injured when thieves on other motorcycles drive up next to them and grab the strap of a bag or backpack. If it doesn’t break, they pull the person off the moto and still get away with the bag. The woman above on the right has the best protection–covering the backpack with her jacket. Wearing a backpack behind you, like the woman on the left, can be dangerous because it’s reachable, but this woman’s back is shielded by her companion.
Visitors
A group of us continue to meet on Wednesday evenings for a liturgy and then dinner together. Tonight we were joined by Rachel (L, seated) and her daughter Chenda (2R, standing). Rachel was a Maryknoll Lay Missioner in Cambodia, arriving in the same group with Charlie Dittmeier in 2000.
Pineapple Season
Here where the weather is always basically the same, especially temperature-wise, the indication of the season of the year is often the appearance of a fruit. We don’t have baseball, basketball, football, etc., seasons. We don’t even have sports leagues like that. And the trees are always green and something is always flowering so you can check the roadside markets to see what they’re selling and you know what season it is.
New Church
The new St. Joseph Church is getting more detail on the outside and getting ceilings and column decorations on the inside. Fr. Chatsirey is talking about being in the new building by Christmas.
Reunion
Today was a special day, a chance to catch up with Mark Hebrank (c), a really good friend who was in Cambodia for nine years and was an active member of our English parish and served as a communion minister and part of the St. Vincent de Paul team. Now he is in Florida with Paul but is back to see friends and appreciate Cambodia for what may be the last time.
Be prepared
You can buy almost anything on the street in Phnom Penh. The rainy season has started now and this entrepreneur has switched his stock to rain wear to make sure everyone can stay dry in the daily rains.
It’s the rainy season
The rainy season starts in late May or early June. It seems to be starting a little later each year now. But it’s in full force already this year.
This is Street 53BT where I live in Phnom Penh. We occasionally get some water pooled up but today we had a prolonged heavy downpour and this water will be with us for a day or so. It was deep enough that my pedals were going in the water as I rode my bicycle through the flood.
Possible Venue
The Saturday night community of the English Catholic parish needs to find a new home because the center where they have mass is closing next weekend. It has been difficult to identify venues that can accommodate 300 people but today we visited one site that could be possible.
Previously the owner of the large villa in the back converted the open area in front of the house to a warehouse. Now a school has acquired the property and is converting the warehouse into a multipurpose area which they have offered to let us use. It could be what we need.
It’s all relative…
When we drove the 175 miles to Battambang for the anniversary of the Daughters of Charity, it took six hours on the road. That made me take notice when I saw the headline in the Khmer Times about high-speed trains being successfully tested in Cambodia.
Alas, the article said that successful test will mean the introduction of “high-speed” trains going 18 to 30 MPH on the one line going south from Phnom Penh, and going 30-50 MPH on the northbound line. It’s still faster to drive than to take a high-speed train.