Lao Adventures (Week 3)

Most of the last couple weeks has been pretty much the same.  Most days we get to Skills between 8 and 9, and we spend the mornings teaching and tutoring English.  I help tutor one of the staff for about an hour every morning, and then she teaches me Lao for a half hour to an hour.  It is a lot of fun.  I have learned a lot of different words, but I cannot really string it into a sentence.  Learning vocabulary is much easier than learning grammar and sentence structure.  It’s also difficult for them to explain many of the verbs because they do not know them in English, to tell us what they are trying to teach us.  Sometimes I’ll just be sitting in the kitchen or eating dinner and the students will try to teach me Lao.  Half the time I don’t know what I am even saying!!  I just repeat, then they laugh and we try again.  I have learned how to count (pretty much the same as Thai), colors, a whole bunch of random objects and a few phrases.  A lot of the time I can figure out what they are asking, but I don’t know how to answer in Lao.

In the afternoons all the students go to work, so I have been working on editing a business curriculum that they want to use here in the future.  It has been a lot of work, and I will be working on it more and more as the end of my time here approaches, but it has been good to be able to put my business skills and knowledge into practice.  I was told that most Lao people do not really know anything about finances or business, and as a result most shops last only a year or two.  Many family farms do not do well either, or if they do the family has not concept of budgeting and spends a lot of the money right away.  So many people have gotten themselves into a lot of debt, and they do not know how to themselves out.  The curriculum I am working on has a good blend of teaching both personal and business principles, and it challenges the students to apply their own personal beliefs.  I really like it.  I think a lot of Americans would do well to learn it as well!

Last Wednesday, someone came from the fire department to teach the girls about fire safety and how to put out various types of gas fires that they might encounter when they are cooking in the kitchen.  It was nothing like anything I have ever seen.  First they attached a hose to a propane tank and turned it on, so there was fire shooting out from the end of the hose!  Then, to teach them how to put it out, they had each girls come up and use her thumb to cover the end of the hose, and thereby stop the flow of gas (there’s a space between the end of the hose and where the fire ignites).  Yes, I did it too.  Then they took the hose and turned the valve completely open, so there was a 15 foot flame coming from the propane tank, and had the girls put the fire out with fire extinguishers.  Finally they just poured puddles of gasoline on the concrete driveway and lit them on fire, to be put out with the extinguishers again.  It’s all good, until the ground is lit and the fire extinguishers run out.  Then it’s really funny to watch the firefighter try to put out a gasoline fire using a rubber welcome mat!  Every time he got one spot put out, it would just reignite as soon as he moved on.  Eventually he put it out somehow because when we returned from lunch the cars were back in their spots.  It was a lot of fun to watch.  

 

Last weekend we did a program with a group of Hmong children at the home of one of the couples that work at ARDA, along with two guys who are visiting the family.  Sam and Meng are both Hmong American and speak Hmong, so they were also able to translate for us.  We started with some songs, then played games and did a craft.  The kids are so different than the Lao children who come to Skills three times a week.  We taught them how to play the game Ninja, and they LOVED it!!  They were so into it and loved getting the crazy falang (foreign) leaders out first.  I have some videos, hopefully I will be able to put them up on Facebook.  For the craft, we got sand from the sand bar in the middle of the Mekong and dyed it purple, pink, orange, and yellow.  Then we made design on paper with glue.  (Note: it is amazing how far a little bit of powdered food coloring will go when it is mixed with a tiny bit of water.  Not only will it be on your hands, but also on your legs, feet, and face.)  The kids had a great time.  I was surprised how detailed and focused they were with their drawings.  What I had planned to be a 30 minute craft turned into a hour long session.  After lunch we had a story-time, and then went to a local waterpark.  Let me clarify, because it is nothing like a waterpark in the States.  It was small.  There were three small pools of different depths (one was completely green, one just nasty, and the third was clean), a lazy river (hasn’t run in a year), and 10 water slides (only 3 turned on).  It didn’t matter that it was dirty and run down though, we still had a great time.  We played games in the pool and the boys had a ton of fun on the waterslides (only one of the girls was brave enough).  Although, after 3 or 4 hours of swimming, I must admit I was pretty tired.  It was such a great day to spend with the Hmong kids.  It is amazing how little language and verbal communication is actually needed to have fun and play with kids.  They don’t care that you can’t understand each other.