taliesgrandma

Our trip through the North Island of New Zealand Our meandering around the North Island (NI) after the Gisborne build was filled with vistas of rolling greenery, more sightings of cows than sheep (NZ is supposed to have 4 million people and 40 million sheep but the dairy prices are tempting the sheep farmers to convert to milking cows), visits to amazing botanic gardens, and lots of good eating. We traveled for two weeks on the left side of the road by car (one of those anxiety-filled expectations that turned out to be easier than imagined) from Auckland in the north down to the capital of NZ, Wellington, at the most southern tip of the North Island stopping for 2 or 3 days in each town or city along the way to see the local ... read more

About our Work Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development was established in 1992, by a group of local Khmer students who, at the time, were studying English behind the Royal Place. Peter Pond, an American and his foster Khmer-American son, supported these local youth in establishing an organization that would educate and empower poor people while encouraging them to become active volunteers in their communities. They named the organization “Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development”. Initial funding for the start up of CVCD was given by generous individuals and by the King of Cambodia who donated $ 2000 USD. Today, CVCD has a budget of about $250,000 to support its projects and administrative costs. Currently, CVCD has 4 major programs to train and support Cambodia’s poor. We described the Primary School Program in our first blog. This program, ... read more

The Executive Director, Sarath Doeur, of our NGO took us on a trip the first day of our assignment with the organization to a number of places on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, a city whose central area is ringed with magnificent palaces and beautiful, new governmental offices and whose boulevards are lined with gardens, promenades, and parks. We drove first to what seemed to be an industrial backwater and rode along the railroad tracks lined with shacks whose inhabitants were methodically laying river snails along the tracks to dry out for later sale in the markets. Mothers were sitting on the ground outside their homes surrounded by babies and toddlers cooking meals for the day or products to be sold on the downtown streets. The anorexic dogs and semi-naked children sniffed and romped in the ... read more

This weekend we went on our last visit to the interior of Sri Lanka, traveling to some of the sites within what is known as the cultural triangle. One of the most famous is Sigiriya rock, a United Nations Heritage site, that stands 200 meters above its base and that once was the fortress of a king who lived there from 477 to 495 AD. We learned about the bloody end to this amazing king’s reign and the engineering feats that brought water to the beautiful pools and irrigated gardens at the top of the rock and the moats, catapults, and walls that kept his enemies away. David and I climbed the rickety steps (1202 of them) along with many others who huffed and puffed their way to the top in the early morning heat. ... read more

Kandy is considered the Sinhalese capital of Sri Lanka. Located on a wide plain surrounded by a ring of guardian mountains in central SL, it was difficult for the invading/colonizing foreigners to succeed in taking over the region. As a result, it retains its reputation as the last bastion of independent Buddhist thought and succeeds in holding on to many of the traditional cultural and spiritual rituals of the early people of Ceylon. David and I hired a driver to take us there on Saturday. On the way, we stopped at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage. You can see some of the pictures we took of the elephants enjoying their bath in the river. These elephants, hurt or abandoned, are raised at the Orphanage until they are trained to become working animals. The babies were so ... read more