This morning Charlotte started back in-person at school. She’s been studying online for most of the last 18 months. It’s a major transition for her and she’s feeling anxious – we’ve reassured her that she’s ready and that her classmates are probably feeling the same way. We’re grateful for her time in online school. We…
Author: Charles
30th Anniversary of the Paris Peace Agreements
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements. In 2019, the anniversary of the Paris Peace Agreements was removed as a national holiday but the 30th anniversary is being commemorated with a 30,000 riel bill. Like most Cambodian currency, it features the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk. Notably, it is the first…
COVID-19: Reopening…again!
This month started with the Pchum Ben holiday, this is one of the longest and most important holidays in Cambodia. Technically, it’s a 15 day long series of ceremonies honoring deceased ancestors but the core is an official week long holiday when Cambodians travel back to their ancestral homelands and pay tribute to their ancestors…
Grilling on our Pot
Gas stovetops have become more common but many Cambodians use a charcoal burner shaped like a pot to cook. We bought one from a passing by cart a few months ago ($6 USD) and have been enjoying grilling with it. In design, it’s basically a recycled materials take on the well known Thai Charcoal Burner….
Charlotte tries some new snacks at Neak Loeung
We stopped for some snacks near Neak Loeung on our way to the countryside earlier this week and Doungchann, our Administrative Assistant, introduced Charlotte to some of her favorites. Charlotte enjoyed the hard boiled quail eggs. There were quite delicious and the yolk had a nice rich flavor. They also came with a tasty tipping…
2021 YAMEN Class
Over the last month we’ve been welcoming our new class of YAMEN participants from around the world. These young adults will be living in Cambodian host families and serving at local organizations for 11 months. The participants this year come from Malawi, South Korea, Kenya, and India. Two of the participants will be living in…
5 Khmer Words that get a bit lost in translation
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…
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….