Sihanoukville Retreat

All the priests and bishops of Cambodia are having a retreat together this week, starting today.  We are at the Catholic center in Sihanoukville on the southern coast.  Getting here was quite an experience.  It took 6+ hours to do 135 miles from Phnom Penh.  It’s really late now so I’m not able to post the pictures from today’s trip but come back tomorrow.

Nothing to Protect

This is a picture of a government school, set on one Phnom Penh’s busiest streets, at 7:40 AM on a Saturday morning.  You can learn a lot about the culture from one photo.  First, notice the huge billboard set up on the school grounds, right next to the building.There are no zoning regulations that are enforced–if there are zoning regulations.    (My bet is that the school director (principal) is profiting from allowing the sign company to build there.)  Second, notice the school windows are wide open–in the rainy season when it’s raining every day.  There’s no great worry about security because there’s nothing in the room except a blackboard (not a whiteboard) and wooden benches and two ceiling fans.

What the…???

Do you know what these are?  They’re banana seeds!  We get all sizes, shapes, and colors of bananas here.  They grow all year round–and really fast.  Occasionally, with one variety about four inches long, I find seeds in them–not the usual small black dots but big monsters like these.  At lunch today I found these eight seeds in one banana.  It’s really easy to break a tooth on one of them because they’re not soft at all.