Whirlwind, what’s new?

So far, 2012 has been more full of change than any year I can easily remember.

I think going home really changed my relationship to living here. At the same time that I have felt more often and intensely homesick since coming back, I’ve felt much more established and content being established as a person who lives (and isn’t merely visiting) here.

I’ve been insanely busy and haven’t updated (as usual), so let me get you up to speed.

Our family has expanded again in what I dubbed “the closest thing to an ‘oops baby’ as Maggie and I will ever get.” One sunny Sunday, I was minding my own business on the way to breakfast. I saw some girls dumping a kitten at the temple (normal practice here for unwanted animals) and walking briskly away. The only problem was, the kitten didn’t want to stay at the temple and ran angrily after them, meowing her little head off. To make matters worse, they walked right into the busy traffic, unaware (or uncaring) of their follower. They escaped and the kitten continued to follow, nearly getting hit several times. I couldn’t stand by and watch her get crushed, so I called her over. I noticed she was a beautiful cat and had obviously been well cared for by her momma. Wondering what on earth I was getting myself into, I put her in the basket of my motorbike and carried her home. She stayed outside until Maggie came home and promptly fell in love with her.

The rest, as they say, is history. Her name is Henry and she is very pleased to meet you.

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Speaking of home, that has managed to change already this year, too. We had some disgusting and seriously frustrating problems with termites that, on top of the poor lighting, poor maintenance and general “ick” we felt around the place, broke the camel’s back and pushed us to find a new place. So, taking advantage of the extra time I had the week before my daytime contract started, I went out with a few agents and managed to find an amazing townhouse not too far from our old place. It’s two levels, so it feels a lot more like a home, and the lighting and storage and general modernity of it are more refreshing than I thought they’d be. Our old landlady gave us a break on rent if we moved out by the 15th, so despite the fact that Maggie was in Bangkok, I managed to get all of our stuff over to the new place over the course of two weekends. This past weekend, we were both home and spent most of our waking hours putting away and organizing the place to death. By some miracle, we finished Sunday evening and now have a beautiful and frankly surprisingly organized new home. I’m actually excited to go home to it every day.

What else…

I reached a big milestone the other weekend when I re-attained “Aix-zen.” I experienced, for the first time since leaving France, the feeling of utter calm and perfect contentedness that I felt so often when I was living in that city. It was something to do with the weather and the food and my schedule and a disregard for watches and, most of all, my friends. I’ve finally attained that here and it feels great.

Schedule-wise, things are pretty hectic at the moment. I’m working 5 mornings a week now at VC and I’ve switched up my ChildFund schedule to make that 5 days a week as well. I pulled a 13 hour day yesterday (with a 20 minute lunch break) and I fear those will become more frequent as the term pushes towards crazy-town pretty soon here. Most of next term will be the same, but then, in May, things will start to quiet down. By the end of that month, both my VC daytime contract and my ChildFund contract will be up and I’ll be left with a lull… for a few weeks, at least. It’s busy, but I really don’t think I’d have it any other way.

On the topic of schedules, though, I have to get to completing mine for the day, so I’ll end this here. Hopefully, I’ll have some house photos up soon.

A Return…

In my defense, dear abandoned blog, I’ve had a lot on my plate.

The Rugby World Cup is finally winding down and for the first time in 5 weeks, this weekend won’t be sunup-to-sundown rugby Friday thru Sunday. Overall, the RWC has been an awesome experience – I’ve gotten to know both national teams much better and, as a sort of French-language-liaison, I’ve gotten to know a bit of the French community here as well.

Last weekend was one of the best experiences I’ve had in Laos so far; after the two Sunday rugby games, Maggie and I hung out for 6 hours or so with the men’s and women’s national teams (plus a good portion of the club teams, as well). After the final whistle, most of the falangs cleared out of the bar, but the Lao folks stayed behind, and we stayed with them. The result was good-old-fashioned Lao Beer-halling, which, as one of my new friends told me, is always “bor tang gaan” or off-the-record. In my experience, Lao people love to play at just about anything; the beer hall is an excellent forum for their playful natures to have free reign, laughing, talking, and everything in between. All to be forgotten the next morning, of course.

The cool part for me, though, was that they didn’t bat an eyelash at the fact that I was participating. It made me feel confident in my Lao that I could follow a decent amount of the conversation, and it was such a welcoming atmosphere that I felt more at ease with a large group of folks speaking my non-native language than I have probably ever felt. I was even separated from Maggie for most of the night, but it really didn’t matter.

Speaking of Lao, I’ve been making great strides with my classes both at VC and CF. The in-between language at ChildFund continues to develop and flourish; I know that I’m catching subtleties in the Lao and translations that I would have completely missed a few months ago. Stringing together whole sentences along the lines of “She should try that shirt on first, I’m not sure it’s going to fit” actually come easily now and we’re all happier for it.

At Vientiane College, I’ve started a new term and my unquestionably favorite class is Elementary 1. Elementary classes don’t have a good rap at VC, so anybody willing to teach them is usually well-accepted. Thanks to my Teaching Assistant, communication is a breeze. And as an added bonus, my level of Lao is approximately at the level of English that I’m teaching them, so I’m able to follow along with the translation and learn quite a lot of Lao myself. As for the actual content, I think I gravitate towards the small victories as a teacher – I would so much rather congratulate a student for finally mastering the present simple form of “to be” than for writing a good 3-paragraph essay.

So now that I’ve got Lao down (hah…) I’m starting to pick up Thai. I’ve got no interest in the language itself, but the writing system is so ubiquitous here that I figured I could use my visit to Thailand two weeks ago as an opportunity to pick up some learning materials. Well-made flashcards are actually fun for me, so hopefully, that will go well.

The trip itself was lovely – I went to Chiang Mai by way of Udon Thani  and while the latter wasn’t good for much but shopping, the former was very beautiful indeed. Here are some photos and video:

  

(click the photos for the full albums)

Alright, that’s enough for now. I’ve got more to say, but I’ll save it for another day, which will hopefully be less than 6 weeks from now!

Changeling

This week marks the end of my first term at Vientiane College. As much as it sometimes feels like I’ve been here for a long time, I still very much feel like the new kid in town. I’m still getting my bearings and I’m still sinking my roots – that said, I’ve come so far already and I think I’ve finally hit some major turning points. Here is some photographic evidence of the biggest changes to my world here lately:

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And a question for you:

 

Finally, I’m headed to Nonghet next Sunday for a week, so expect some potential radio silence. I’ll be back just in time for my birthday and a week of much-needed relaxation back home in Vientiane. I’m looking forward to it.

Observing

• The monks seem to be more active lately, walking around town, riding in the front seats of tuk tuks or song teeos, taking their bowls door to door asking for alms of rice. I saw one the other day using a weed whacker to mow the lawn of the temple down the street. The rainy season has started and Lent is only a few weeks away; I’m guessing that they’re busy now so that they can retreat in the near future.
• I sometimes watch the street below Vientiane College when my students are doing silent reading or some other task that doesn’t require my constant supervision. Thursday, I saw two monks in their saffron robes walking one direction and three well-to-do teenagers (shopping bags, iPod headphones, brand-name/probably-Thai clothes) walking the other direction. As they passed, the three teenagers’ heads bowed automatically and they kept right on talking, as if nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened. And it hadn’t.
• I never get tired of the feeling of riding on the back of Maggie’s motorbike when there has just been rain, so the air is cool; and when it’s evening time, so the streets are empty. The ride up Lane Xang toward the lit-up Patouxay with the warm air on my face and my arms around my girl… it’s the very stuff of happiness.
• We re-discovered one of our favorite restaurants last night. It’s a French place that used to be a French-style cave (but they’ve re-done the ceiling now) – the owner is even from my corner of France, or at least cooks like she is. Maggie ordered a buffalo steak with vegetables and soufle on the side and I ordered a three-course steak meal with onion soup as a starter and a fruit platter as desert. We shared a carafe of house red. The total was about $35.
• Yesterday was rugby day, and we spent it running a special session of Champa Ban rugby. There were several activities (relay races, coloring, team-building games) in addition to the usual touch rugby, and everyone was served lunch (Indian, Western and Lao food; a neon-rainbow of sodas) afterwards. I took the photographs, floating around the whole event, and tried to capture the fun of it all.They’ve been posted to the Lao Rugby Facebook page here.
• There’s an unspoken rule of the road here, that when there is a big vehicle that wants to pass a little vehicle, the big vehicle waits for the little vehicle to acknowledge it. Motorbikes usually fly down the roads at double the speed limit and triple the speed of cars, so this mostly applies to bicyclists. And so, whenever I hear a car or truck behind me, I instinctively look over my shoulder at it and let the driver see that I know he or she is there. The car then passes by, often within inches of my bike, assured that I won’t startle and swerve.
• I’m amazed by how active the town is early on the weekends. Saturday, I left home at quarter to 8 and there were a dozen family members gathered across the street to help mow the grass. As I turned the corner, I saw another family of at least 10, working together to move what was either a very sick person or a recently-deceased family member into the back of a van. And Sunday, at just past 7, we drove down Nongbone, the “backbone” of the town (it runs parallel to the commercial/financial Lane Xang); it was as busy as I’d imagine it at 3 on a Tuesday or 9 on a Friday. Once we got to the office on Setthathirath (usually populated by hoards of tourists and ex-pats), it was back to Sunday morning: streets deserted, shops closed, windows shuttered.
• I heard a story the other day of a woman who, as a girl during the revolution of 1975, had been offered a ride on a raft across the river into Thailand and eventually to repatriation in an anglophone country. On the night of the voyage, she and her two siblings had their papers checked and stamped and were packed onto a boat with the other lucky children. As it set sail, she yelled and cried to be taken back to her mother, but the boatman refused to turn around. So she, the 7-year-old, dived into the water and swam all the way back to her war-torn country, where she still lives, nearly 40 years later. Her siblings are New Zealand and Australian citizens.

Photos!

Click on the album title or any of the pictures to be taken to the full album 🙂

Champa Ban – From the first Champa Ban (kids’ community rugby) session I attended.

  

Welcome to Laos (boats!) – From the LRF team building karaoke-boat trip