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!