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.