Christmas, Christmas

my living room decorated for Christmas

Dear friends and family,

 

 

New Year’s greetings from Laos. It was going to be Christmas, but you can see how well that worked. J

 

the fountain at Patuxay–from when I went with my family shortly before I moved out (I actually didn’t mean to put this photo in the post, but it’s pretty, so it can stay.)

Celebrating Christmas in a Buddhist culture and tropical climate felt more different than I expected. Yet sometimes I forget how different it is that our MCC staff Christmas party was held outside sitting on straw mats and that I recited my role of the angel in Lao, not English. Things like that seem like such a part of normal life now, after 4 months. I’ve spent only a third of the past year in Laos, but since it is my life now, it’s almost hard to remember what it felt like to live in Washington, D.C. or to be finishing my senior year of college, or to be living at home and visiting friends over the summer. But when I realize that I’ve gotten to have all of these rich experiences in the space of one year, I feel very blessed.

getting to know some of the daughters of MCC staff at the MCC Christmas party

Air as Santa at the staff party

Two nights before Christmas, I got a call from my host mom last minute inviting me to go to church to see the girls dance for a Christmas program they were doing. Nampung had been showing me the Chinese dance that she was practicing for this for at least the past month or two, so I went, even though I was tired. It was quite the production. I was so proud of those girls you would think they were my daughters. Some of the youth put on a play that seemed to be about how Jesus is the only one who can release you from your burdens. I can’t be sure since I didn’t catch most of the words, but I have been amazed at how not being able to rely on verbal communication has made me much more observant of other forms. They handed out numbers to everyone and raffled off lots of gifts–everything from pillows to candy. It was basically a big party. The most memorable part, though, was that the electricity went out. Twice. The second time for 10 or 15 minutes. That’s actually really unusual in my experience, at least in the city, but the leaders of the program took took it in stride, as I have often noted (with amazement) that Lao people tend to do. They just sang songs and danced in the dark until the lights came back on. Then they cheered and resumed the program.

Ben trying on Amy's and my gifts from Debi

Christmas Day was spent with other MCCers. We drank Ovaltine (with lots of sweetened condensed milk, it’s my new favorite food) and got really addicted to a 3D jigsaw puzzle of the Taj Mahal. We also cooked a lot of food and listened to lots of cheesy Christmas music. It was a wonderful way to celebrate, but doesn’t make as good of a story as other parts of my Christmas here, so I’ll move on.

One of my coworkers, Somchit, working the cookie cutters. I'm "supervising."

The day after Christmas, I went to what I thought was a concert at my host sister’s school. It ended up being more of a talent show for all the middle school students, and there weren’t as many other family members as I expected. So at first it was a bit awkward to be there, but I’m becoming surprisingly comfortable with the feeling of being out of place, so I had a good laugh about that. It was quite amusing to see a bunch of 12-year-olds dancing hip-hop and singing Thai pop songs and a few English Christmas songs that they learned in English class!

 

The day after Christmas, I showed up at my host sister’s school for what I thought was a Christmas concert that many family members would be attending. It turned out that I was there 2 hours early, and the event was actually more of a talent show for all the middle school kids that not many family members attended (and certainly no foreigners!). The first few minutes of people asking why I was there and staring at me in surprise were fairly awkward, but I was soon able to let go of my discomfort and just enjoy the festive (and hilarious) combination of Thai pop karaoke, hip-hop group dance routines and English Christmas songs. I’m sure that much of the reason that I was able to feel comfortable with feeling so out of place was because of the graciousness of my host sister in rushing over to sit beside me and introducing me to all her curious friends. It is also exciting, though, that while it was a reminder that I will never blend in in Laos, that fact didn’t bother me–I was satisfied with being myself.

And now tonight is New Year’s Eve already, and I’m sure that will bring other adventures! Sabaidee Bee Mai! (Happy New Year!)

Namfone with her glasses, heart, and bouquet. We enjoyed playing with all the gifts my mom sent for my host sisters, but the pipe cleaners were especially exciting.

The Big Move

About two weeks ago, I moved out of my host family’s house and into a cute, comfortable house where I will be living for the rest of my time here with Wendy, another MCCer. So far, I have really enjoyed the chance to have some alone time after 3 months of being with people almost constantly, especially near the end of my time with my host family, when I was trying to spend as much time with them as possible. It is also wonderful to have more freedom (especially now that I have a motorbike license) to go out in the evenings and do things with friends and to host friends at my house. So I’m seeing the benefits of my new living situation. Yet at the same time, I was very sad to leave my host family. Besides being such a significant part of my experience in Laos so far, I have grown to love them more than I would have thought possible in just a few months. So here are some pictures of them. These are from Lao National Day in early December. Everyone has the day off, so our whole family went to a waterfall. The actual waterfall part turned out to be tiny, but it was a beautiful and relaxing place to spend the afternoon.

posing with Nampung

 

Disclaimer: I actually wrote this post in November and forgot to post it. That probably won’t surprise too many of you.

 

Somehow life has gotten a lot busier in the last month. I stopped going to Lao language class full time in the beginning of October, so since then I’ve been slowly figuring out what my job entails and how to do it. I’ll give my quick explanation of my job now, because when I told most of you what I would be doing here, it was before I had much of an idea what it would actually entail. So basically, I am an advisor to a group of young adult (mostly university students) volunteers that formed about a year ago with the aim of learning about conflict transformation and teaching the concepts to schoolkids. My main focus, at least for the next few months, is on creating a more standardized curriculum to train the volunteers and also one for them to use to work with kids. I will also be planning and leading training sessions for the volunteers and contributing to group planning meetings. The meetings are good, although frustrating because I always end up wishing I could just speak Lao fluently and not need to burden the Lao MCC staff with translating for me. Even that frustration is good, though, because it gives me lots of motivation to study hard and to push myself to practice speaking Lao with my host family and whenever else I have the opportunity.

 

I have several transportation stories to share with you. I think both of them explain a lot about my experience here. The first one happened over a month ago, and the second one happened just a few days ago. I share these experiences not to complain (really, they were more funny than frustrating), but just to try to describe something about my daily life here, and how it is different from in the States.

 

Since I don't have pictures of these stories, I'll show you this amazing job that some MCC staff did of loading furniture onto a truck to move to Wendy's and my new house. It required 2 people riding in the back the whole way to keep the sofa on its perch, but it worked.

 

this actually happened a few weeks ago. amy (SALTer) and i had planned to ride bike to the American Embassy to find out more about voting with absentee ballots. Well guess what–it was raining. i waited at language school for awhile for it to stop, but it didn’t. so i eventually ventured out to find a poncho and meet up with amy. ok, this story is so much funnier if you can picture my bike (my 12-year-old host sister’s bike, actually). it is pink, and says hello kitty all over it, and is very miniature. so i rode through the rain (uphill) and stopped at every little shop to inquire about ponchos. unfortunately, i didn’t know the lao word, so i had to resort to motions, which always makes you feel really dignified and in control. none of the shops had them, although i had heard that as soon as it starts raining, everyone puts out the ponchos. i did eventually find one, although i learned later that i had payed close to 3 times more than a friend did (i knew i was being overcharged, but not by that much!). i went to meet amy, and we enjoyed thinking of how falang (foreign, which also has the connotation of not fitting in at all to a ridiculous extent) we must look to passersby, as we stood with our bikes in the rain–me in my poncho, and her in her bike helmet (no one wears those here) trying to read our map.
 
we made it to the embassy for the event (most of which wasn’t terribly helpful, but there was good food at the end) and met some nice Mormon folks. by the way, it was so strange to hear American english spoken by people i didn’t already know! (the foreigner community here is pretty small). anyway, when the event was over, it was dark and still raining, so bikes were not a safe option, and we therefore headed out to the street to find a tuk tuk. we ended up chatting in Lao with a guard for one of the buildings. we were in really silly/crazy moods by then, so i think he found us highly amusing. we decided that with both our bikes, we would need a pretty big tuk tuk. the one we found was actually the smallest one i’ve ever seen–about 3 foot by 3 foot in the passenger space. as we bargained with the driver, we talked to each other in English, since we thought he couldn’t understand. it turned out he could speak better English than most tuk tuk drivers, and understood pretty much everything we were saying to each other, so we all had a good laugh about that. he stuffed amy’s bike in the tuk tuk and we both wedged beside it, with my bike hanging on the back keeping hers in place. the driver was a lot of fun, and liked to joke around with us. he also let us surf radio stations, so we got to listen to a variety of Thai pop music and Lao traditional music. he apparently really likes to blare his radio, because my ear was about blasted off.
 
so that’s my story. i’m sorry if it’s the kind of story that you had to be there for, but believe me, at the time it was all truly hilarious. even getting wet and getting the falang price for the poncho. it was an adventure, and i loved it.

Ok, now for the motorbike licenses story…

 

After waiting several months for our work visas to come through and learning how to drive motorbikes, we foreign staff were finally ready to take the test to get our licenses, so MCC set up an appointment for us to take the test. The process was delayed several times by multiple things along the way, but I’ll spare you the tedious details. J Anyway, all of our application papers were finally submitted, and we were given appointments at 7 am on a Tuesday morning. Most of us were naïve enough to hope that we would be the only ones there at that early hour, and could each drive around in big circles, figure eights, and then little circles and be out of there by 8:00 with our newly-acquired licenses in hand.

Well actually, it was more like this: we arrived soon after 7:00 along with the hundred or so other people, and all received bright orange pinnies with our number on them. We received word that something would actually start about 8, so we passed the time by buying breakfast (sticky rice in bamboo) and finding a bathroom (a process which also involved finding suitable leaves to use for toilet paper). Around 8:45, we were informed that, in addition to the actual driving test, we would have to answer questions about different traffic signs. I hadn’t heard about this before, so of course I hadn’t studied, and the thought of trying to do it in Lao was rather terrifying. Different times during the last few months something has made me think of visitors to the U.S. (immigrants, exchange students), and how much more difficult their experiences must be than mine, especially with language barriers. This was one of those times. As all one hundred or more people gathered in the small room (and the big garage door slammed behind us locking us in), I thought about how much more nervous I would be if I were a Lao person in the U.S., where people are comparatively unfriendly (even hostile) to foreigners and don’t make any exceptions for them, having to take the test in English without the help of my handy Lao MCC staff translator.

After that group meeting, everyone headed outside to figure eight on the cement for the driving test. We MCCers actually had the first numbers to be called, but we opted to wait and see how others did with everyone watching them and oohing and aahing–both for successes and mistakes. It also gave us a chance to practice, which meant edging your motorbike into the practice court along with the other 5 or 6 six people who had already managed to fit into the about 10 x 20 foot space. Then together, by some unspoken rule you would try to figure out whether you would all practice the big oval, the small circle, or the figure eight part of the test, or else you would get in each other’s way and not be able to move. So, after all of that, I pretty nervous by the time my turn came to try to drive the course without putting a foot down. but….I did it!! I could barely believe it, and I was shaking for at least 20 minutes afterwards, but I did it! And all of the Lao people there watching (mostly men) were very considerate, and held back with their comments a bit while us foreigners drove, which I appreciated immensely. It was actually like having a bunch of fans that you know are rooting for you.

 

So the moral of this story is that things sometimes feel crazy here, but somehow, they always work out, and I’m learning to trust that.