Neung Deuan!

It’s been neung deuan, or one month, since I’ve left home, and I have one month to go!

This week has definitely flown by! With many reports and other duties this week, I have not found time to write, so this update will be brief. I am so used to having time to myself, but this week it was “Go, go, go!” While I was at the EXTREMELY slow internet café sending my update last week, a guy started up a conversation with me, and after a lot of small talk, he invited me to go out with him and a friend of his. I ended up becoming friends with these two people, named Haley (from Seattle) and Brandon (from Ottowa, Canada) who were traveling just for the heck of it. They decided to come down to Ban Phao on Monday, and stayed the night, helping with the classroom and observing the village. At this point I realized that I have become somewhat proficient in the Lao language! They saw that I could hold conversations without looking at my phrasebook (which until then was my lifeline), and after commenting on it, I made it a point to communicate without the book at all. That was an epic failure. Although I am proud of how far I’ve come in learning the language, I realize I have so much more to learn in the coming month.

Wednesday was a day of rain, and I’m talking flooding, reasons why the houses are built on stilts, rain. Because of this, My parents told me not to teach in the morning, because no students would come. They also did not work, and instead showed me passports, family pictures, certificates that looked like high school diplomas, and friends. This was fun to see more about their life prior to my visit. I was getting ready to take a nap when I was told to come down, because some children were at the house. Surprisingly, some of my students came to the school hoping I would come, and when I failed to arrive, they walked to my house. We proceeded to have class, right there, because they wanted to so badly, then walked up to the school to find even more children waiting. What an awesome feeling to see children excited to learn!

On Friday, I awoke to find that my mother and sister had gone to the farm, and my paw told me to stay home again, and not teach. I found this extremely confusing, but after a while he just said “go to school” and I hopped on the back of his motorcycle. Not realizing how nicely he was dressed, I arrived at school seeing all of the children of the village dressed in their school attire. I thought “Great! Finally they have all come to learn English,” but when the parents came as well (also in their Sunday best… yes that is a joke considering a. Sunday is not the Sabbath for them and b. they do not dress up for worship) I realized that this was a special occasion. I went into a room next to the principal’s office, which my paw proudly said in English was the “Room to Read.” At first this confused me, but while looking around I saw books everywhere, in a horrible disarray, many of them labeled with a sticker that said the same words. Apparently “Room to Read” is Lao’s reading initiative, equivalent to D.E.A.R. (for those of you who forgot, or never had the privilege of participating, it was Drop Everything And Read, in elementary school). We sat for a while, and when it was time, I was herded to a classroom, cleaned, and with a fake tulip sitting on the teacher’s desk. After much chatting, clapping, and presentations, certain students’ names were called, they came in and bowed twice, and were given a certificate just like the one my paw showed me that his children had. Apparently Friday was graduation from regular Lao school! After the cookies and rambutan refreshments accompanied by the highly-acclaimed BPEB-ZEE soft drink, the principal told me to go home. But I was itching to go back into the Room to Read. I have a weird hobby of organizing other people’s things, but never bothering to organize my own. So I spent the day organizing, not stopping for lunch, and putting together broken books, separating the Lao, Lao-English, Lao-(insert Asian language here), solely English, and English-Spanish (what the heck) books. But that was not enough. Then I moved on to the arts and crafts section. At last, with dust on my clothes and paint on my hands, I left to go to Vientiane, in preparation for my visit to Thailand on Saturday.

The visit to Thailand was bland, to be honest. The purpose was to obtain a visa for another month, because it was cheaper than extending the visa, and that is about all that I got from it, other than delicious Thai tea mixed with condensed milk. I forgot my camera so did not go sight-seeing, and did not want to buy anything, because where we were it was all American products. I went with my boss and Brandon, the new friend, and they had already been, but the city (Nang Chai? Nani Thanh?) was not a very important one. The best part was leaving, crossing the Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge and the beautiful sight of the Mekong river.

I have spent the majority of my past 2 weekends in a restaurant called Joma, which serves western food and gives free WiFi, and this weekend finally got up the courage to talk to the waiters in Lao instead of English. Though embarrassing, it was fun to stumble through conversations, but they loved the fact that a westerner decided to speak Lao, because almost no one in the restaurant speaks any Lao. As soon as they saw I could hold a tiny conversation, they spoke 900 words a minute, exactly 7 of which I could understand. I counted.

I got yet another student today, who I did not ask to teach, making a total of 6 students that I teach on Sundays. Though fun at times, the unknown aspect of who will show up is somewhat frustrating. The one physically handicapped girl that I teach is the best, always smiling and happy to be given attention. Apparently the family does not care for her as they should, giving her minimal attention and care, which is probably why, at 12, she is still at minimal movement of her body. But she learns quickly, pointing to different objects correctly if I ask where they are.

I’m about to be picked up by my brother, hope all is well wherever you are in the world!

Loving Laos more and more each day,

Will