Sabaaidee

Looking back, I see that that first post is kind of all over the place. I wrote it when i was very jet-lagged, thinking I would change it later, but now I’m just going to keep what I was thinking about at the time. I admit it’s pretty daunting to try to describe what life is like here to pretty much everyone I know back home, especially since I would probably tell each of you about different aspects of it. And there are so many things to talk about! But enough with disclaimers…

A typical day for me right now means getting up sometime around 7 and having breakfast at the MCC guest house, where I’m staying until I move in with my host family sometime next week. At 8, Wendy and I get picked up by our tuk-tuk (open-air vehicle with a motorcycle engine–like a taxi) to go to language school. I practice my extremely limited, but rapidly improving Lao language skills with him by exchanging “Sabaaidee” and “Jao sabaaidee baw?” (“hello” and “how are you?”). We ride through the streets of Vientiane, weaving through swarms of motorbikes, bicycles and cars, passing people selling anything from fruit to temple offerings on the street. It’s quite exciting–I call it my natural hairdryer.

The morning is spent in Lao language classes, both conversation and reading and writing. After class, we MCCers have been eating lunch together, either at the MCC guest house or a nearby restaurant. The other day we ate at what people call “the MCC restaurant” (because people from our office eat there so often) just down the street. I had wonderful chicken and rice-noodle soup that I don’t remember the name of for a cost of about 60 cents. Yeah, it’s crazy! Afternoons are spent doing Lao homework, usually with the SALTers (one-year MCCers). For some reason, I didn’t think much about how nice it would be to have other English speakers close to my age to hang out with, but it’s been fun.

Besides the language study that started on Wednesday, I’ve been getting oriented by the MCC staff. Basically, that means talking with Lao national staff in the office or going out to eat or to people’s homes and talking over amazing food. I’m not complaining.

I’ll finish up with a list of my favorite things so far about being in Laos.

• always taking off my shoes at the door of a building (because it means being barefoot almost all the time!)
• riding in tuk-tuks! I love seeing the city from that vantage point, and the breeze isn’t bad either.
• friendly Lao people who are always willing to let me practice my Lao language skills on them
• the older people on my street who smile so broadly when I say “Sabaaidee” to them
• trying new foods– like laap, which is ground up meat with lots of mint (and probably other things that I can’t identify)
• fresh pomegranate (even though it took me half an hour to spoon the little sections out of less than half of one
• the excitement of understanding even a phrase or two of a Lao conversation I’m listening to

Thank you to all of you who prayed for me and thought of me as I traveled here, and will continue to do so during the next two years. That means the world to me. Until later…

with Ling for my first motorcycle ride in Laos

Laos from the air--much greener than other views from the plane

First few days

Things have started quickly for me here in Vientiane. We had our first Lao language class this morning, with an hour and a half of conversation class and the same of pronunciation/writing class. It fun and exciting to learn, but wow, amazingly hard. It has been a long time since I completely started over like this.

Yesterday, Debi took Wendy and me (Wendy arrived with me and will be my supervisor) to the market. I bought material for my first Lao skirt! It’s a lovely blue-green, which probably will not surprise many of you. And no, I’m not sewing the skirt myself.

All three of the SALTers (the one-year young adult MCC program) who came last week are sick in some fashion or other, so I’m very thankful I haven’t gotten sick yet.

Even more exciting to me than language class starting, I ran into someone I know at the language school! It was Ling, a young woman that I got to know when I worked at EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute last summer. I hadn’t been able to find her email address to tell her I was coming to Laos, so she was very surprised to see me! I was shocked as well, and delighted that it was so easy to find her. She is so sweet, and was one of my absolute favorite participants from SPI, so it will be great fun to reconnect with her.