Sa-baai-dii from the MCC Welcoming Center

I have been here at the beautiful MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) Welcoming Center in Akron, PA (in the heart of Amish country) since leaving Seattle on Wed August 11th. It has been absolutely fantastic. The Welcoming Center is a little complex made up of some beautiful little buildings with some great grass areas and paths between. It's made up of a dining hall, a meeting place, and four houses that are named and decorated based on a world region where MCC works: Asia, Africa, Middle East/Europe, and the Americas. For the most part, people are in the houses of the continent where they will be serving or where they are coming from. I'm in the Asia house =)

That brings me to the most exciting thing about this orientation: it is for both the MCC SALT (Serving And Learning Together) and IVEP (International Voluntary Exchange Program) participants. SALT is for Americans and Canadians serving abroad and IVEP is for people from "abroad" who are coming to do the same thing (a one year living/service assignment) in the US or Canada. This means that orientation itself is an amazing cross-cultural experience!! There are people from almost thirty countries! It has been so much fun meeting people from Brazil, Germany, Cambodia, Zambia, Serbia, Egypt, Haiti, Kenya, China, Indonesia...and many more! I have sat with a new person at almost every meal and lecture session, and in the evenings we all play games together, etc.

As you can imagine, this is not only fun but also immensely helpful in terms of sharing and learning from each other about the new countries of our assignments. I am very lucky to have five

Lao people here for the IVEP program. They're all so nice! And they have been super impressed with my Lao language skills (which is funny, because I haven't even shown them all I know - didn't want to be a super show-off/I'm starting to forget some stuff since I haven't practiced from the book in over three weeks). It's been really fun trying out sentences with them (the tape must have been a good one, because they say I sound very good, just like a Lao person!) and they've taught me some new stuff too! Their English is really quite good (there are different requirements for IVEP participants; you have to have had some English before coming), so I'm not teaching them words, but I've told them some stuff about America/American culture, like explaining Halloween and snow, stuff like that. They've told about some neat stuff to check out in Vientiane (they are all from the capital), how to show respect to elders, good food to eat, and......... Xohmphou (pronounced "Som Poo" or just "Poo" for short) said she thinks it won't be strange at all or a problem for me to go

running in the mornings!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!!! =) so now it looks like the biggest obstacle is going to be the heat...yeah. that'll be enough of a challenge.

So, to conclude: I'm really enjoying getting to know all these fabulous SALTers and IVEPers, bonding with the SE Asia SALTers, learning about the Mennonites (Peace!!!) and just preparing mentally and spiritually for the year ahead!

I'm so excited!! We leave thursday evening and I arrive in Laos Saturday evening, which is the very early hours of Sat morning for Seattle, I think...

next post - from Laos!