Charlotte and Catherine attend The Giving Tree, a small international school in Phnom Penh that a group of expatriate* parents started as a nursery 14 years ago. The nursery grew into a school with it’s first students and now offers Nursery through to Sixth grade. What’s an Expatriate? Expatriate, often shortened to Expat, is a…
Month: October 2022
Bua Tong Sticky Waterfalls
While we were in Thailand we traveled about an hour and a half out of Chiang Mai to visit the Bua Tong Sticky Waterfalls. When the MCC Nepal Reps first invited us to join them we had no idea what sticky waterfalls were… It turns out that they are waterfalls in the jungle that have…
Asia Leadership Team Meetings 2022
Last week, for the first time since 2019, the Mennonite Central Committee Asia Leadership Team was able to meet in person at the Regional Office in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We met with the International Program Directors from MCC US and MCC Canada, as well as MCC International’s new Security Officer, both sets of Area Directors,…
Karma, skin tone, and gender.
In Cambodia, lighter skin tones are traditionally associated with fortune, virtue, superiority, and good luck. These associations have a spiritual component due to how Buddhist beliefs around karma are interpreted locally. Skin tone – along with other traits such as class, health, and gender – are believed to have been determined by the individual’s accumulation…
How many Christians are in Cambodia?
As part of their horrific year zero policies the Khmer Rouge regime banned all religious practice in Cambodia and persecuted the local Christian Church almost to extinction. Buddhist institutions were allowed to reform soon after the regime was driven from power but Christianity remained illegal throughout the 1980s and the few Cambodian Christian believers who…