Early in December we went on field visits to three schools in rural Prey Veng province. I shared a bit about the breakfast program, now let’s get into teacher coaching. It is difficult to be a teacher in the countryside. The pay is low, supports are few, and absenteeism is common. Some teachers routinely skip…
Month: December 2019
Our Daily Bread
Throughout my life I have been deeply blessed by people and experiences which poured into me. By the time I started what I consider to be my first “real” job post-college at Peaceful Living, I was brimming full and poured out joy and energy, knowledge and passion, upon my work and the individuals with disabilities…
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Last Thursday I visited the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) with Annaliese. She’s a SALT participant working with long term MCC partner Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Cambodia Peace Gallery in Battambang. She scheduled the meeting with DC-Cam’s Information Technology Coordinator, Morm Sophat, to ask DC-Cam for recommendations on archival databases, how…
Fred Kauffman
This morning I received an email from MCC Cambodia alumni Carol Buhrman letting me know that Fred Kauffman had passed away suddenly. Fred had a long history with MCC and with the Mennonite church, but we feel a special warmth for him in Cambodia. Fred and Minh were the first MCC Cambodia personnel. They arrived…
ផ្លែខ្នុរ | Jackfruit
For the North American readers, have you ever chewed Juicy Fruit gum? Did you ever wonder what the juicy fruit was? It’s Jackfruit – which isn’t that juicy but which has a sticky resin. We have a small Jackfruit tree at the office that recently had some ripe fruits. The office day guard – who…
Rural Primary School Breakfast Program
This was originally a Global Family program that I was put in charge of implementing during my first term in Cambodia. MCC had a breakfast program at a Primary School just outside of Phnom Penh previously but they wanted it to move to a rural location where it would help more vulnerable students. There’s a…
The Girls’ First Visit to Pea Reang
This week I went on three field visits to MCC education projects at rural Primary Schools in Prey Veng province. Crystal and the girls came along to one of the Primary Schools in Pea Reang district. I’ll be sharing more about the work MCC is doing in Prey Veng in a later post. I got some…
Prey Veng Christian Center
We went out to rural Prey Veng province Thursday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. The purpose was field visits to three rural primary schools that MCC supports but we stayed through Sunday to attend church. This is the church that I attended most often when I lived in Cambodia. It has a new building built by…
37th Birthday
I turned thirty seven this week. Crystal baked my traditional birthday cake – Jewish Apple Cake – to celebrate and even found a place that sells hoagies in Phnom Penh. The Jewish Apple Cake was wonderful and the staff were quite impressed by Crystal’s baking skills! During my last term it was next to impossible…
Visal Wedding – Traditional Dance
Visal’s wedding had many morning ceremonies. Charlotte’s favorite was, no surprise, the traditional dance. This style of dancing is named Apsara and dates back to the 7th century. It is a slow, intentional dance with a lot of focus on stretching and turning at certain angles. Each movement is deliberate and has a meaning, but…