This morning we had a call scheduled with “Uncle” Lance and as we were about to start the video chat there was a whoosh from our coconut tree. Of course we thought back to our simian visitors a few months ago and rushed to close the doors upstairs…but there we saw that our visitors were…
Category: Daily life in Cambodia
Shopping with the girls at the local market
During our first few months in Cambodia I was taking the girls to shop at the local market but once COVID-19 broke I started to avoid the market crowds in favor of our local grocery shop (which is run out of a family’s house). This wasn’t a waste as the girls started coming with me…
Catherine can now eat a full bowl of Kuy Teav by herself
Two years ago I gave you an introduction to គុយទាវ, or Kuy Teav, the iconic Khmer rice noodle soup. It’s a traditional soup known throughout the region by various names including Hủ Tiếu in Viet Nam, Kway Teow in Malaysia, and Kuai Tiao in Thailand. I’m writing today to give you a quick but very…
Charlotte’s Self Portrait and Introduction
Now that Charlotte is back to in-person school one of her first projects was to draw a self-portrait and reintroduce herself to her classmates. Charlotte’s adjectives for herself Reflective Risk-taker Principled Knowledgeable Communicative Charlotte’s list of preferred activities Play Read Color School Sister
Charlotte back to in-person school
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…
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…
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]….