Feb. 12, 2015

I'm considering investing in the loudspeaker rental business as I think you'd make some serious cash here.  It appears that any major event, such as a wedding, funeral, house warming, or regular party is an occasion to be shared with the neighbors - via a pair of gigantic loudspeakers.   For the first month, I only heard regular parties at an earsplitting  95 db or more - weddings and blessing of houses.  Most would begin about 7 am and end around 11 pm.

For four days last week, beginning around 5 am (or that might just be when it woke me up), a funeral was being conducted somewhere in our neighborhood.  One of the students told me that in the countryside, the proceedings can begin around 3 am and go to midnight so I guess I can't complain.  If my research is correct, when someone who practices Buddhism dies, it is seen as the end of one life and the beginning of another -hopefully better.  One of the students told me that the "master of ceremony" - which I think is a senior level  Buddhist monk called an achar -  conducts the ceremony.  This involves chanting in a language that most Cambodians can not understand for up to an hour at a time.  The chant is to calm the spirit and prepare it for what is next. The number of days that the chanting can occur can be up to seven days depending upon the family and their means.  The first four days, the seventh day and the hundredth day are the most important.  The student felt that the deceased must have been an important person for the proceedings to start so early in town and go for so many days.  In between the chanting, traditional funeral music was then played - loudly - and it was melodic gongs, cymbals, and xylophones. We had quiet (relatively - if you don't mind constant construction noise, dogs, roosters and chickens) for a couple days, then on day 7, the music and chanting began again.  This time I think there were two things going on - the 7th day of the funeral and a wedding since occasionally, it sounded like people live talking and telling jokes.  The next day, it was only the wedding music, chanting and the people talking on the loudspeaker.

 I've uploaded a couple short video clips of the chanting and music on the Google Drive Cambodian photo file if you wish to hear it.  While the student said that this is "traditional", I'm assuming the ceremony part only, since loudspeakers were not around 40 - 50 years ago!

The boys and I went with two of the students to visit the Royal Palace last weekend.  The buildings and grounds are impressive and we saw some valuable statues made of emerald and diamonds.  The boys got tired of it pretty easy, but since it only took an hour and a half they toughed it out (mostly after I bought them ice cream).  A small band was playing traditional Cambodian music - I have another clip of that.  It's easier on the ear without the loud speakers and we watched it for awhile.

The English classes and skype conversations between 8  OSU students and 15 of the Leadership Academy students have started.  I'm finding it much easier to plan for the intermediate English speakers than for the advanced beginners, but I'll get there eventually. It's taking a lot of time to plan and some other things are getting pushed to the side.   I think most all of the students on both sides of the world are enjoying the conversations once they get past the nerves.

I hope next week to travel out of Phnom Penh to Siem Riep to see Angkor Wat  and the other temples - we are thinking of taking the bus since flying is expensive. - That takes 7 - 8 hours, but we'd see the countryside I'm told!  Hopefully all of us will be over our head colds by then.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_LWGul2UlSaUDZhaWlqcGUtN1U&usp=sharing