Today is the last of the three days of official celebration according to Chinese tradition–although there are NO official public holidays in Cambodia for the lunar new year. Many families either relaxed at home today behind the closed shutters of their shops or continued visiting relatives and friends. Click here to see these last new year photos.
Lunar New Year—Day 2 — #5
Today was the second day of the new year, and again much of the action was indoors. Driving along the streets, one saw more shuttered shops than people. Click here to see them.
Lunar New Year—Day 1 — #4
Today was the first day of the new year, a day for visiting parents and elder relatives so much of the action was indoors. To show a more interesting side of the celebrations, here are more pictures from yesterday, New Year’s Eve. Click here to see them.
Lunar New Year #3
Today the new year celebrations began with the evening reunion dinner but before that there was time for offerings for the spirits of the ancestors and to purchase a roasted pig for the family dinner. Click here to see how it happened.
Lunar New Year #2
Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and the big reunion dinner to bring all the family together. Today families are scurrying to accomplish last-minute preparations. Click here to see what they are doing.
They get the point…
Most of the time most Cambodian men wear sandals rather than shoes. When they do wear shoes, though, it’s not unusual to see them in long, pointy-toed styles that may have come from A Thousand and One Nights.
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A New Era
We are living in a new and unprecedented era, one in which the President of the United States knowingly, repeatedly lies before the nation and the world. Who would have thought we would come so low as a nation?
It is a dangerous and uncharted situation we find ourselves in, and we need to develop new strategies for survival. One I have seen discussed by the heads of major journalism organizations–and which is illustrated by this New York Times headline–is for the media now to concentrate not on the content of what Trump says but on its truthfulness, and to call a lie a lie and not use euphemisms for it.
Lunar New Year #1
The Year of the Rooster begins next Friday night, New Year’s Eve. Here are some of the preparations for this major celebration in Cambodia.
Cambodian Microbe Hunters
Jim McLaughlin is a former Maryknoll Lay Missioner who helped set up diagnostic microbiology labs in Cambodia and then co-founded the Diagnostic Microbiology Development Program there. He serves as president of DPMD and returns to Cambodia several times a year to mentor, advise, and teach. He just returned to Phnom Penh with his friend Dr. Peter Gilligan who is the Director of Clinical Microbiology at the University of North Carolina in the United States. Peter will consult and review the DMPD operation and teach the Cambodian staff and technicians and students who are making this new field a reality in the kingdom. Here they are visiting the Deaf Development Programme.
Fourth Graders Visit Church
Every year the fourth graders from the International School of Phnom Penh come to visit the Catholic church in the Boeung Tum Pun area of the city as part of their study of major religions. They hear what Christianity is about and get a chance to see the church and the sacristy (the room where all the vestments and supplies are kept), and then to examine up close the statues, stained glass windows, etc., in the body of the church. And then they ask questions. Fourth graders have a lot of questions!
