Hello all,
Sorry for not posting earlier this week. Internet has been down at my place all week. We hope that it will be up later today when we go and pay $400 for the next three months of service. Note that I just said $400 for three months of service. Sign language interpreters here make an exhorbitant $100+ a month. Most people here in Phnom Penh cannot afford electricity in their homes much less a computer with an internet connection.

Life is extremely complicated here even without the worldwide economic collapse. When I was here in December a liter bottle of potable water was 2000 riel (roughly 50c USD.) Now that very same bottle (with I hope different water in it ;*) is 2500 riel (roughly 65c USD) My favorite pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) was $1.50 USD and is now $2.50. I can easily afford the price rise, but I cannot imagine anyone else being able to do it given that their wages have remained stable while prices have risen roughly 20-25%.

I am working hard at developing a video stimulus program for training and testing the local sign language interpreters. Right now I'm working on a series on classifiers using pictures of objects in life (still lifes if you will.) I will show these pictures to Deaf people and ask them to describe on video what they see. Then I will show the same still life pictures to interpreters and students and ask them to sign what they see and to compare themselves to the Deaf models. The very concept of having video stimulus materials is brand new to Cambodian sign language interpreters. I hope that I can leave something worth Deaf DEvelopment Program's time and effort for having me here.

A bunch of us are going to a conference on sign language research and sign language interpreting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia at the end of the month. We had a meeting at DDP between all of us who are going. Several going have never been on an airplane before. Nor have they ever attended a large international conference. So we gave them an idea about what might happen in the plane and at the conference. Not things like we're gonna crash and the plane is going to break up into a million pieces, though I can imagine some believing that. Rather we have to remind people that airplanes are air conditioned and it will be worth the time to bring a sweater. We also have to remind people that they must bring their passports or we will leave them.... Human nature being forgetful :*)

Some of you may have heard me tell stories about the hill tribe people I accompanied to the Bangkok airport back in the early eighties. The refugees had never really been outside their own communities before they had to flee for their lives to relatively safe Thailand. They most certainly had never been in an air conditioned building before and they could hardly have imagined being on an airplane.

We, the volunteer American-acculturation-instructors prepared them for everything they might experience in a plane going to the US. So we thought! We taught them about sitting still for several hours and about using seat belts. We had even introduced them to sit-down toilets and plumbing for sinks and washing hands. They had a small taste of the kinds of food that they might get ont he airplane, if you can call stale chicken food. At the airport we accompanied the group of about forty to the gate itself, riding up escalators... a challenge for people who had never experienced architecturally fashioned stairs before, much less moving staircases.

The group boarded the plane, and the volunteers moved outside to watch the plane take off and to wait for the next group of outbound refugees. Off the plane went and we settled down to a late lunch to wait for the next group bound to the Phillipines. Out of the blue, the plane that left with the refugees we had just boarded appeared in the sky. Airport fire trucks and ambulances careened towards landing strips and airline personnel shouting incomprehensibilities in Thai ran towards us begging us to come with them . Back towards the gate we ran and were rushed onto the tarmac. The plane bumped and screeched to a very abrupt halt. The doors opened and inflatable chutes deployed. All the passengers jumped or were pushed down the chutes to waiting medical personnel.

When all 200 or so passengers had gotten off we finally got the story. The refugees accustomed to 90+ degree heat in their homelands were quite chilled in the 70 degree tube they were riding. So they gathered all the newspaper they had and lit a fire in the aisles to warm up. Obviously, we hadn't taught them all they needed to know. ;*)

I'm looking forward to a non-pyrotechnic flight to Kuala Lumpur next Friday. Before then I will try to upload some more stories and hopefully video showing Phnom Penh traffic at its best. :*)