Passa Lao 101: your introduction to the Lao language

So, after three months, I have to say that learning Lao language has been both the biggest challenge and the greatest joy of my time in Laos. I studied formally for 6 weeks. During that time I was able to learn a lot of basics: how to read and write, basic phrases for simple conversation, etc. However, the majority of my learning has definitely come from living with my host family! Only a couple of them speak a little english, so that means every day brings ample opportunity to blunder my way through Lao conversations. Even though it’s difficult, I have come to LOVE it. Lately, I have even started thinking things in Lao when I’m on my own, driving my motorbike or running!! It is SO satisfying to have “successful” conversations with people (meaning they understood you and you understood them), whether it’s just a little exchange with the lady selling you your lunch, other teachers at Nita, or my host mom. When I was just beginning, it was hard to even get through two sentences, but I have come a long way since then. For example, just today I went to the Lao church in the morning and was able to sing the worship songs by reading the words on the projector and have a 30 minute conversation with a new friend – all in Lao!


But since you probably know nothing about this amazing language, I’ll take a few moments to tell you some basics:
- There are 26 consonants and 28 vowels and 6 tones
- The language is 100% phonetic (which is why I can now sound-out and read anything in Lao, even if I have no idea what it means)
- The script does read left to right (thank goodness!)
- The vowels can be found written either after, above, below, in front of, infront of and above, or in front, above, and after the consonant they are connected to. Luckily each vowel can only have one of these positions and it never changes.
- Syllables are the main focus of the language: all the rules about word formation and tone are determined per syllable not word.
- Verbs are not conjugated (also, thank goodness!): there are other little words you can add to indicate past or future tense…although in speech people often leave it out if the listener can understand from the context (for example, “yesterday I…” would not require adding a past-tense indicator, because, well, duh, yesterday is in the past)
- There is no distinction between “he” and “she” – both are simply referred to as “lao”
- Question words go at the end of the sentence (although there are a few exceptions to this…)
- When you are saying a number of something you have to add the appropriate “classifier” after the number. For example, to say I have 2 pencils you say “ khoy mee bpoom 2 gaan.” “gaan” is the classifier for pens and pencils. There are a billion different classifiers: for people (“kon”), for vehicles (“kan”)…for everything. And sometimes for really specific things. For example, “tuay” is for bowls of food, but “nuay” is for bowls without food in it…



I could go on and on (I just think it is SO interesting!) but instead I will leave you with just a could of my favorite things about passa lao (although this is super hard. I like so many….):
- I love that you add “Deuh” to the end of sentences if you want to make them extra polite.
- I love that you add a short, light “no” at the end of questions if you want to make them “friendly” (you also say it at the end of statements that you want agreement on, ie “muu nee hon laai, no?” “today is really hot, right?!”)
- I love that the verb for “to have a meal,” (“gin kao”) literally means “to eat rice”
- I love that there are some words with more than one meaning, like “hua” which means to laugh, head, and is the classifier for books
- I love that some words seem exactly the same…but are actually different tones and therefore different words. One of the most commonly used ones is “sai”: falling tone = to use, flat tone = to put in or on, rising tone = where. The funniest one is probably “muu”: rising tone = pig, flat tone = friend…
- One of my favorite new words is “pa-nyaa-nyaam” it means “try”


And, because it has been requested several times, I will leave you with the four words/phrases you couldn’t get by in Laos without: Sa-bai-dee (hello), Khop-jai (thank you, or khop-jai-deuh if you’re being very polite), Saeep (delicious! Whenever you eat anything, the Lao will ask you, “saeep boh?” and you’d better reply ‘saeep laai!” (it’s very delicious!), and last but certainly not least…boh phen nyang (you’re welcome/no problem). This is practically the Lao national motto. It definitely is used all the time and sums up their laid-back outlook on life.
Ok that’s all for now!
Phop gan mai! sook dee! (see you again/good luck = the two standard Lao good-byes)

The fun continues! Birthday Part 3: the "waterfall"

Ever since my first week at my host family, I had been told we would be going to the waterfall "this weekend." The trip was delayed for about three weeks due to some sickness in the family, rain, etc. On Sunday Sept 26th, the 8 passenger family van finally pulled out, loaded down with picnic food/supplies...and 12 people!

We arrived around 11am. There was no one there. As I found out later, everyone starts coming around 1pm. I guess we were just the early birds.
It did allow us to get a good picnic spot right near the river, though! If you can see from this picture, the park we went to had a bunch of these little picnic shelters with a concrete slab and a tin roof. We spread out our woven mats and had a fabulous picnic! We had...BBQ duck, sticky rice, spicy green papaya salad, bamboo soup, and fried maggots...a classic picnic really =)




Now, I dont know about you, but when I heard "waterfall," i was expecting...well, a waterfall. Instead, it ended up being a river with a few little tiny baby rapids.
This picture is from when we first arrived (hence, no one in the water). The river proved to be perfect for some mild tubing and just general splashing around! At one point we even laid down in a shallow area and just let the river rush by around us. There is nothing better than playing in a river on a hot day!!






When you did go floating down in the intertubes, you floated through this "jungle book" area, as I thought of it.
There were hanging vines four inches in diameter that you could swing on Tarzan-style and then splash into the river. It was a blast!

What none of these pictures could really capture was just how CROWDED it got by the middle of the afternoon! There were hundreds and hundreds of people along this quarter-mile or less stretch of river, both in the picnic shelters and in the river. It was insane!...and a really fun end to a great Lao birthday weekend.

Birthday Day 2: Buddha Park (Xieng Khuan)

SO the fun continued the next day with the MCC falang (foreigners). We all went out to brunch at Kung's Cafe for their famous mango sticky rice pancakes! SO GOOD! But I loved this place immediately. even before the food, because it is hidden away down a residential alley. When you get to the end of the alley, there is Kung's,. hidden behind a veil of jungle (see the pic of my friend Crystal walking into the cafe). The whole cafe is super small (five tables), outdoors under a tin roof shelter that doesnt seem like a tin roof because there are vines hanging from the ceiling and just plants everywhere! It's such a great atmosphere: and great food too!

After finishing our food, we headed down the road, 25k outside of Vientiane, to Buddha Park (or in Lao it's known as Xieng Khuan or "Spirit City". It is this grass area filled with hundreds (?) of stone sculptures inspired by Buddhist and Hindu mythology. They look like they are hundreds of years old...but actually, this park was designed and built in 1958 by an interesting "eccentric" yogi-priest-shaman man who was known for his fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism. Apparently he had a fairly large Lao following in the 1970s.
There are two large monuments in the park: the reclining Buddha and the huge stone orb (see pic below. ps. the girl in the picture is Becky!).


It has three levels: hell, earth, and heaven. The tree on top is the tree of life. If you enter through the mouth of the monster creature you can actually take tiny little passageways and steep stone stairs to climb your way to the top.
Each level is complete with stone carvings representing the three levels. What surprised me was how many snake carvings there were in heaven! That must be the Hinduism influence I guess...if that's an accurate depiction, I dont want to go to heaven!

Once you made it out, there was a GREAT view of the whole park!


There were a LOT of snakes represented in the park...here's a picture of me with one! I've gotten to the point that these stone ones don't actually bother me!

Here's the reclining Buddha...and if you look really closely...you might even see a "reclining Lisa"...

To beat the heat our crew took a little afternoon break at the park's one restaurant. (I love how cute these little huts are...but I have to say, they aren't the most comfortable places to sit...)
I ordered a coconut water...and it came in the largest coconut I had EVER SEEN! As thirsty as I was, I just couldn't finish it, heck, I could hardly carry it!

Lisa's 23rd Birthday: Lao style. Day 1

So, I'm a little bit behind on my blog updates. It's just SO hard to find the time at a computer when you're out having adventures and living the Lao life.
But I do want to share these experiences too! I think there is a balance...which I am still trying to find. Also, I think I just need to write shorter entries...I'll have to work on that, but there's just so much to tell!

i appologize for the pictures in this post...this computer doesnt let me look at them in the preview area, so i have to copy and paste the writing stuff (url?) into the text and i cant tell where it is going to end up!

As I was looking back at pictures to get ideas of things to share, I realized I never shared about my Lao birthday! It was actually a whole weekend of fun: fri, sat, sun! Friday September 24th was my real birthday! In the morning I went sinh shopping (the traditional Lao skirts) with Whitney and Touy because we were going to be attending a wedding on Oct 1st and needed a silk sinh AND a silk shirt, because that is what all the women wear to weddings. We had already had cotton sinhs but it was time to spend the big money (150,000 kip or ~$20) and get silk. Notice the HUGE selection of sinhs at just this one shop!!! and the most amazing part is that this was one of probably around 50 sinh sellers in this one market! not all sold these super bright silk ones, but it was still amazingly overwhelming walking through and trying to pick one!! We bought one here because the lady gave us a good discount. We were going to be her first customers of the day and it is a superstition amongst shopkeepers that if you can get a big first sale early in the day, you will have a good day of business for the rest of the afternoon. And selling two silk sinhs is a good first sale!!

Unfortunately, looking back, I regret the purchase. I should not have gotten a red one. It is just too bright and I can only wear it to very fancy occasions. If I had bought something with a more subtle color, I would feel a lot more comfortable wearing it and could even use it to teach or go to Lao church. Here is a pic of me (in the outfit purchased on my birthday) at the wedding:

Before heading to language school, I bought some lunch from some street vendors(my favorite thing!): a half a Vietnamese sub, two deep-fried bananas and two grilled bananas (the little baby-sized Lao bananas, maybe three or four inches long)...for a grand, tasty total of..$1 US. ahh, i love the exchange rate. I just don't think I'll ever be able to eat out in the US again! It'll just seem way too expensive! (Pheng poht!)

In Lao class we had a test. I did very well. I love tests.


After school Whitney and I stopped at our favorite little food market on the corner near the circus. It is just an empty lot during the morning, but round 3 or 4 o'clock all the vendors and carts start rolling in and by the time we get there at 5:15 it is a fabulous selection of street cuisine! Everything from chicken soup to doughnuts, fruit shakes to roasted pigs feet, and everything in between! For my birthday I got some of my favorite doughnuts and a "drink in a bag" of pineapple juice - with chunks of pineapple floating in it! yummmmm

I see from my journal here that I saw a family of 4 on a motorbike on my way home from Lao class on the afternoon of my 23rd birthday: mom, dad, and two kids under the age of 8 on one motorbike. of course, no helmets for anyone, either. They were going pretty slowly so they actually stayed near me (on my bicycle) for quite a while and I enjoyed waving to the kids, saying "hello!" and "sabaidee!" and laughing with them at this silly encounter we were having on highway. I love these random moments where I just have to smile and think "only in Laos..."

Dinner at my host family wasn't anything special (classic combination of fish, duck soup, and sticky rice) but they had cake for me after dinner! Their birthday traditions are pretty similar to ours (my host mom had her birthday just a week earlier: actually, counting me, my host family celebrated 6 birthdays in the first 6 weeks I lived there!).
They turn off the lights, bring in the cake with candles and sing "happy birthday" (same tune but they take out the "happy birthday dear [name]" and just say "happy birthday" twice in a row. simplifying it a bit). They go through the song twice: once slowly, clapping steadily...then the second time they do a crescendo, picking up speed until it ends in a flurry of clapping and cheering! Muan laai! (it's really fun!)

Funny family side-note: Anna, who is 4, gets her own small cake on other people's birthdays. and we light her own candles and everything. (you can see both of our cakes in the pic below) Apparently she gets really upset if someone else gets a birthday and she doesn't. She is definitely in the "temper tantrum" stage, so it's totally fine with me to do anything she wants, just as long as she doesn't start screaming and crying! Anna LOVES the birthday song too. She'll be singing it all evening once you get her started on it...


I got 2 presents on my birthday! Pauntip gave me my own Lao sarong to wear around the house like all the other women in my family. It's bright magenta with yellow flower-like designs. I wear it all the time! My host mom got me a yellow shirt to go with it. The only thing is...it's a polo shirt...that is about 4 sizes too big. I still wear it around the house, scrunching up the side with a hair tie so it doesn't feel quite so...roomy. They were very thoughtful gifts.

I'm a teacher!

Well, the time finally came. On October 11th I began my job here in Laos - teaching English at Nita School. Nita is a private Lao school in the village right next to my house. It started as a primary school, but has been adding a grade every year - next year it will have all the grades and graduate its first class of students. There are about 1,300 students in total. I teach the secondary students: M2-M6 (the equivalent of grades 7-11 in the US). The school is gated off from the road and there are two main buildings of classrooms with a big courtyard in between that has lots of trees. I love it. Whenever I look out of a classroom, I am always sure to see a lot of green. It's wonderful. One building has two stories, the other has three. The students stay in the same classroom all day, so I end up moving around to rooms on the second and third floors in both buildings (the primary students are on the first floors).






I teach 22 class periods a week (although 16 of those are double periods: the same class for two 50 min blocks back-to-back), with 10 different classes: three 7th grades, two 8th grades, two 9th grades, two 10th grades, and one 11th grade. The big challenge is that the younger grades are the ones with the most students!! My middle-school age classes all have around 50 students each and then it dwindles from there down to 22 students in M6 (the 11th grade class).



One of the biggest challenges is the fact that the students do not have the English books (well, there is actually one class where about every other student has a book, but Im not sure why they have them and the others do not...). So I am left with me, one book (they provided me with a copy of the student book, not a teachers manual), a chalk board, and the students notebooks/pens. It is definitely a challenge! I am still trying to figure out the best way to do lessons. Right now, when there is a passage to be read, I write it on the chalkboard and the students copy it...but that means sometimes half the class period is spent copying texts! one

Also, the Lao educational environment is very different than America. Students are not used to the "raise your hand to answer a question" thing or to the "work in small groups/partners" thing: almost everything is done together as a class. So what ends up happening is few smart kids answer every question and it is very easy for the bad students to sit in the back and learn nothing. I am working on asking specific kids questions, but it is also very easy to lose the attention of the rest of the class if you do any sort of "one-on-one" help. Like I said, it's a challenge but I feel like I am getting a little better every week. There is much more to say about the Lao school system (it is definitely...different), but it will have to wait for another day.


This is actually a strange picture - I usually always have my shirt tucked in...it's kind of part of the teacher outfit...not sure what happened this day...but anyway, this is just a quick little update on the teaching job. There are definitely many more stories to tell (like how I often get asked to sing for my students and have even sung "My Heart Will Go On" by request!) but I have run out of time - I need to go back to school!!

I will definitely try to post more soon. It has been hard to find time to upload the pictures and write. I only get to a computer once or twice a week and then I usually end up on facebook or doing emails or skyping. however, I really do want to share some of the many fun things that have been happening for the last month! Look for more updates soon!

More Pics of Home/Family

Here are a few more pictures of my host family/the house.

Me and Kat! She is super cute, and for the first week or two made me feel very loved by becoming my little 12 year old shadow! She went everywhere with me and took me everywhere she went too! She doesn't speak English, but we are still able to communicate pretty well: she's good at playing "charades" with me and is patient with my limited Lao vocab. Our biggest shared interest is DANCING! she loves to dance and is really good! When we put on those Thai music videos - there's no stopping us! We have a blast together! She also drew me these two pictures/notes! She slipped them under my door one night and I found them in the morning! It was such a cute surprise - especially because I didn't think she knew English...and then she wrote "I Love You" to me!!!!

Here is my host Mom, "Maeh" (the Lao word for Mom). She is very nice to me and is really fun to talk to because she gets very annimated and has this really funny high-pitched voice she uses when she's telling a story about "so and so said..." that kind of thing. Sometimes I help her make sticky rice in banana leaf wrappers. You also usually add another ingredient in with the rice: banana and sweet potato where what we added in this picture. When we make them, we eat some and then we take some to the temple to give to the monks as an offering.

Speaking of going to the temple...here is a pic of my sisters Bah and Puna (Puna left, Bah right...girl in the back = their friend) at the temple one Wednesday morning. I got to go with them to help give the offerings for this special Buddha day. Notice that we are all dressed up in our sinhs and carrying the offering in littel bowl/basket things.

Besides the banana leaf wraps, we also gave some money, some sticky rice, and some black gelatin cube dessert things in little baggies as our offering. To do this you get in line and walk along a big table at the front of the temple and drop one thing from your basket into each of the baskets on the table. Before you put it down, you bring it up and touch it to your forehead and say a little prayer for good health, happiness, etc. All the people sitting on the floor are listening to the monk at the front chant off some of Buddha's teachings. Unfortunately, Bah and Puna could not stay because they had to go to school, so we left right after doing the offering table and pouring some water over a bush in the temple courtyard while saying a prayer.

Here is a picture of my room! It is on the first floor of the house, next to the living room. The thing on the left is a dresser/closet/bookshelf unit with a built-in mirror. It's great! I'm glad I took some of the free posters from MCC at orientation; they really help make my room feel special (you can see two of them there on the right, but there are two more as well). There is also a fan in the upper-left corner by the door - that is probably my most prized possession, since the thermometer on my alarm clock reads between 82-86 degrees during the night! (and that's with the fan on too!)

And here is a very rare shot - a picture of our dining room area with nobody in it! I can hardly believe it! (when did I even take this?) This is usually the most happening room in the house...well, next to the house, technically. This is that area that is covered by a tin roof and is open air on one side, connected to the sauna area on the right. We eat all our meals here at the table - in shifts, usually, since there are so many of us!! (our numbers have increased to more like 15 most days - one of Kat's friends is always over, as well as a mysterious "uncle" person and Puna's parents). It's funny to me to sometimes think, "wow it's kind of quiet around here today, where is everyone?" and then count and find that there are still 8 people in the house!

Week 3-4: The 5000 kip game

My week two schedule was starting to seem a little dull by friday - hang around at home or at MCC office studying Lao, go to class, go home - so I decided to play a new game during week three to give a little adventure/excitement/anticipation to the day...I called it, the 5000kip game, and it totally made my week! (well, more like my life actually - i still "play" quite often...)

It works like this...everyday on the way home from school I would stop at a new food stand and get a snack, something different every time - but it had to be 5000 kip or less.

Now, a quick lesson on Lao finances: $1 US is equal to roughly 8,200 Lao kip. For ease in calculating/because the smallest Lao bill is a 500kip, I round down to the mental math of 8,000kip = $1.00

So, like I said, "the 5000 kip game" could be roughly translated as "the 60 cents game." Unfortunately, I usually forget to take pictures of these foods because it is kind of awkward to always be the dorky tourist who takes pictures of everyday things, like buying food from a street vendor, but I do keep a very detailed accounting book so I can share a few of my 5000 kip or less finds (which is pretty much anything you could want for a snack - and often more!):

2,000 kip - small, personal-sized baguette/ 2,000 kip big dumpling thing / 3,000 kip large sweet roll with some red jam-like thing on the inside/ 5000kip bag of fried banana chips/ 1,000 kip a piece assorted "dougnuts": or you can get 6 for 5,000 kip (one is kind of like an american donought, but other ones aren't quite the same - they're WAY better!! My favorite is this one that has custard stuff inside, but the outside is kind of crispy...actually, funny story, from the outside, it looks just like this other thing they sell there that has a little hotdog-like sausage on the inside! that was a shock. i should try to take a picture next time I get donoughts...)

here's something I DO have a picture of...but I have no idea what it is called. it is quite possibly my favorite thing yet, though. It's hard to describe the taste: sweet, yet savory (note the bits of green onion on top), doughy, warm, thick, yet also light, with a kind of melt in your mouth goodness...sigh. I included the pic that shows the inside so you can hopefully see the consistency a little.) You can get 1,000 kip a piece, but I discovered that "one piece" is actually two of these that you see pictured here putting the flat sides together so it makes a round ball...so really...5,000 kip buys you 10 of these heavenly treats! The one pictured here we got plain, but the following week a different vendor gave us a packet of sugar to put into the bag and shake them in a light coating of sugar. it was just too good.

Also, most of the "drink in a bag" things I think I've mentioned before (again, I need to take a picture of the stands that sell them to give you a better idea of what they're like) are either 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 kip. On my second day of the 5000kip game I discovered a stand that sells Taro flavored drink, and they put a little coconut milk in with it - heaven. There are also many fruit shake stands that you can mix and match your flavors and add little jellies, etc also for the low low price of...5000 kip!

Finally, one day, Whitney and I discovered....Sidamdoun Ice-Cream Happy Shop. with a name like that... plus, I was craving ice cream! so we broke our usual street vendor style and took the game to an actual permanent establishment with tables and everything (that is actually the hardest part of this game - where to eat the food! there are absolutely no park benches anywhere in Vientiane, not to mention hardly any parks, so I often end up eating the food straddling my bicycle on the side of the road!). We were quite pleased to discover that even here at Happy Shop 5000kip goes a long ways! 1 scoop = 1,000 kip. So Whitney and I each got 5 scoops! Then, to our surprise, they came with toppings too! We didn't get to pick - they just added them. I lucked out and mine (the bottom one), three scoops Taro, two scoops coconut, came with some little red and white jelly things. Whitney's - three scoops chocolate, two scoops banana - came with....corn! We could not stop laughing! It was fun to try corn and chocolate ice cream! We spent the rest of the meal trying to decide what their decision process was about who got corn and who got sweet jellies - was it the chocolate? the banana? just random?... =)

I love Lao street food! =)

Field Trip! Distributing School Supplies in the Sang Thong District

(warning, this is kind of lengthy...and it is not exactly new news from me, as it happened two weeks ago now...but I felt it was a trip/story that I should tell about)

The first monday after moving in with my host family (which was two weeks ago by now - yikes im far behind!) Whitney and I were invited to skip language school to go on a little field trip with Wendy (the Program Administrator for MCC Laos) and two other Lao MCC workers to the Sang Thong district. This rural district is just north along the Mekong from Vientiane and consists of 37 villages. MCC has an office in the region that works primarily to train community health workers, although there are a few agricultural programs and a minor role in supporting district education. It was this final activity that we were assisting with on this day trip. For the past few years, MCC has helped out some of the districts poorest schools with school supplies, funded through the MCC Global Family program.

Now, this picture with the water buffalo is not a true reflection of the nature of the trip. For one thing, it does not really show the amazing beauty of the rural, tropical scenery we passed along the way - the quiet Mekong River on the one side, densely forested small hills and valleys on the other. Secondly, it doesn't show any of the little houses or rural communities we passed through on the way (I did take another couple of pictures out the car window, but this was the only one that turned out alright).

But the main issue I have with this picture representing the trip is the road - it's way too flat. We left Vientiane at 6:30am and arrived at the first school three hours later, however, I would guess we hadn't gone more than...oh, i dont know, im really bad with distances, but like, 40 miles. It was the bumpiest, craziest dirt road I have ever been on! I wish I could describe it better than that...when this picture with the water buffalo was taken, it was on one of the very few, very precious moments of peace and smooth, flat dirt road. It really added to the adventure of the day - we were really leaving the city!

Now, this picture here to the left was our first stop - the first school. It was just a local, P1, P2 school (the "P"'s are like grades), so the fact that there were only three small dividing walls in the building was alright - there were only two grades being taught here. But still, it was definitely quite a shock to pull up to this dismal structure and find happy school children inside. They were all quite excited, as you can imagine, to have their school day interruptedd with three foreigners coming to visit! Their excitement mixed with nervousness was an almost palpable emotion in that little classroom, once we had all piled in.

At every school we visited we gave every P1 and P2 student a packet of notebooks and pencils. Some students also received a bigger package that included a school uniform and a few other school supplies. These students were selected based on their need (as established from community income surveys done during the summer). Wendy was telling us that this might be the last year they give away any of these larger packages, at least by this "pick and choose" method. They have been running into the obvious problem of unhappy parents who think - why didn't WE get that stuff? We are struggling too! That's not fair!" etc. Over the past few years they have been doing this program they have found that as much as it helps those who do receive it, it also creates an equal amount of tension in the community and school. Wendy says they are in the process of trying to come up with an alternative. This year is the first time that they have combined the packages with the distribution of notebooks/pencils to all students, so they hope this will help, however, even this is a temporary fix. Next year it is likely they will have to choose only one school in the district (the poorest) and give all the P1 and P2 students the entire contents of the school kit packages. Oh, and each school we went to also received some sports equipment to use at recess! (i thought that was a nice gesture)

(ok, so i feel really silly, but i tried to rotate this picture like three times and just could not get it to upload once it was rotated, so i know it looks silly, but here it is anyway....the picture to the left is a super cute example of Lao culture. Lao people do not wear shoes indoors - not in homes, not in offices, not in schools - even in this concrete floored classroom). So outside of every school we visited you would see piles of the cutest, smallest shoes!!!)

The second school was quite a bit bigger and nicer than the first, and housed several more grades. The best part of this visit was the warm welcome we received: as you can see from this picture, when we pulled up, all the school children were lined up on the hill along both sides of the driveway leading up to the school. Our driver dropped us off and the bottom and we were able to walk up the hill through this "tunnel of welcome" as I guess you could call it. It was fun and rather awkward too! Because that was a lot of times to say "Sabaidee" in a row! and they were all standing with their hands in the greeting position (palms together, fingers pointing up, with the tips right about level with your mouth) and if you were just meeting one of these students, you would be expected to say Sabaidee in return while doing the little hand motion and maybe even a small bow. But can you imagine trying to do this walking up the path that is lined with students on both sides?! it was impossible to properly greet everyone, no matter how slowly you walked! (which was quite slow, I must say). It was quite the experience.

The third school was about equal in size with the second, although not nearly as nice, even though Wendy told me it was a new building. Also, according to Wendy, this was one of the poorest villages in the district. What really struck me most about this school (well, all the schools, really. the top pic is from this third school, the bottom from the second) was the bareness of the classroom. Walking into an American elementary school is always a "sensory overload" experience, at least for me. Not only are there small children everywhere, running around and being...well, small children, the classrooms are also jammed with visual stimulus of every sort - posters, art projects, books, toys - there is hardly an inch of free, unoccupied space in the room! These classrooms were, by comparison, completely deserted. There was, in some cases, literally NOTHING on the walls. Nothing. In one of the schools there was a classroom I saw that had a couple of sad looking posters half hanging, half falling off the wall. But they were just white butcher paper with some Lao script in blue marker. Nothing glossy or even a picture. I think this was the biggest shock to me. I just could not imagine going to school someplace so...barren, and learning with so few extra things - props, visuals, anything! - to help you engage with the material.

At two of the schools I got to help physically hand out the notebook/pencil packets to the children as the teacher called their name off the list to come forward. This was super cute. Whitney got a couple of good pictures of me doing this, but she is not with me right now so I do not have access to them. The most memorable part of this experience was just how small they all were!!! and how cute and excited some of them were. Several girls, after putting their hand together and bowing low, grabbed the notebooks from my hands with great gusto and then hugged them tightly to their chest as they scampered off back to their seats, clearly delighted to have gained this new possession and determined to keep a good hold on it. I just hope they will be able to have the same excitement and enthusiastic ownership over the material they learn and copy into those books over the course of this school year.

Finally, as we were leaving this last (poorest) school, we were overwhelmed with gifts. All the parents had come to us with bags of fresh produce, fruits and vegetables of every kind (most not available in the states). This picture is of us loading their generosity into the back of our truck - look how much there was! This a fantastic way to end the day - a true testament to the nature of giving in development: we try to give them the things we think they need, but the
"poor" always seem to end up giving YOU an overwhelming amount in return, displaying generosity that far exceeds their monetary means.

oh and one final, hilarious sidenote....I saw several very western little kid backpacks at these schools. There was a mickey mouse bag, several barbie bags and several of my personal favorite: the hannah montana bag that said "Barbie" over the picture of hannah! haha!! i laughed so hard - yet, part of me was actually very sad too - that Hannah and Barbie and all these white, blonde faces were the only things that seemed to decorate these children's little plastic backpacks, one of the few pictures they would see at school, it seemed. I don't know. It was funny, but also just seemed...so wrong. (oh and PS - that blue bumper sticker on our truck there is the equivalent of a "don't drink and drive" sticker in Lao)

This final pic I'll leave you with was one I took out the car window as we were leaving the third school. It is a mom walking home with the bag that her child received, carrying it away in that plastic blue sack on her head.