As auto-translation and speech recognition technology advances rapidly, one might start to wonder if there’s any reason to learn another language any more? Why not just pull out our smartphone, speak into it, and then tap ‘play’ on the translated text? There’s some risk of mistranslation but we read that that auto-translation has incorporated machine…
Month: September 2021
First Name, Last Name?
The proper order of names in Cambodia is [surname] [given name]. I would be Conklin Charles, not Charles Conklin. This follows general Khmer grammatic practices of categorizing from broad to specific; for instance, lime juice in Khmer is ទឹក [water] ក្រូច [citrus] ឆ្មា [lime]*. Smoked pork in Khmer is សាច់ [meat] ជ្រូក [pig] ជក់បារី [smoked]….
Farewell to the Prey Veng waterfront
This week I was able to visit our field office in the provincial capital of rural Prey Veng province. Because of COVID-19, we hadn’t been out since Clivia and I delivered lockdown food relief packages back in April 2020. I’d heard that they had begun to fill in the waterfront there but this was my…
Frangipani
Adrienne, from Plains Mennonite Church, and her husband Adam recently started a MCC term of service in Burundi. I’ve been enjoying following her blog and I was inspired by her recent post on botanicals in which she shared her appreciation for the Plumeria. In Southeast Asia, Plumeria are commonly referred to as Frangipani in English….
Being a cross-cultural Mom
Being a cross-cultural mom here in Cambodia has been a learning experience. Things that had priority for parenting in the US have shifted and changed, influenced both by the expat community and the Cambodian culture. The most challenging part of parenting in the US was trying to figure out how to do it right. I…
Fishponds
I wanted to share some photos and a recent story related to the household fishponds that long time MCC partner Organization to Develop Our Villages (ODOV) is constructing in four rural districts of Prey Veng province. This is part of a larger project funded by MCC and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to support rural Agricultural…
Noisy Neighbors
Last month some noisy neighbors moved next door. They are cats and kittens!!!!! They live on the roof. They drive our dog crazy!! The mom cat teases our dog! Our dog whines and barks at night. So loud!! When my Dad checks the momma cat is sitting on the wall looking down at our dog!…
Catherine in Study Group
Catherine has been attending school online for most of this year but today she was able to meet with her class in a study group at another student’s house. You might remember that study groups were phase 2 of the Ministry of Education’s plan to reopen schools last August. It’s taken seven months to get…
A Simian Visitor
One morning this week Charlotte and Catherine were downstairs on the second floor playing when an unexpected visitor appeared on our balcony. It was a rather large monkey which knocked over our mango picker and then fled the scene of the crime. While monkeys are certainly common in Cambodia it’s rare to see them wandering…
Cellar Door and Morality
During a 1955 lecture noted linguist J. R. R. Tolkien, better known today as the author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, claimed that ‘cellar door’ was more beautiful sounding than ‘sky’ or ‘beautiful’. In this he joined a long tradition of colleagues who held that ‘cellar door’ is among the most beautiful…