We're here in Laos!!

Alice and I have made it to Laos!  It took about 13 hours total: 10 on a really nice, double-decker VIP bus, and 3 getting from the bus station to and through the border into Vientiane.  The bus we were on for 10 hours was actually very nice.  The seats had tons of leg room and reclined almost flat.  It also helped that the trip was overnight, so I was able to sleep most of the time.  Getting through the border was really easy, but took a little longer than normal because all the customs officials had a 20 minute breakfast break right after we arrived.    Other than that, it went perfectly smooth.  Sorry, there are no fun stories!

We traveled here with a group of 6 Mennonite women, 5 of which are only here until Saturday.  They came to help out with a missionary conference in Chiang Mai last week, and this week they will be helping out at ARDA.  Angela is the only one who will be staying.  She works for the ARDA Skills Centre as a teacher.  We also met Jeremy, Charlene, and their daughter, Akira.  They all work at ARDA as well, and Jeremy will be our supervisor.   

Vientiane is located immediately on the border with Thailand, with the Mekong River as the only separator.  For most of the drive to where we are staying, we could see across to Thailand and we are actually living about 2 blocks from the river.  It is kind of strange because the Thai side is very luscious and green, but the Lao side is dry and brown; even the park we drove by was mostly dirt and a few trees.

The hotel we are staying in us very nice.  There is even a TV and a fridge!    We have a corner room, so we also have the added benefit of a window.  The hotel is within walking distance of the place we are working.  It is supposed to take about 10 minutes, but we haven’t actually walked it yet.  ARDA is planning to buy 2 bikes for us to use for the month, so it really isn’t that far at all. 

Time for a quick recap!

The internet at the place we live has been out for a week and we are not sure when it will come on again (hopefully Wednesday or Thursday), so I am sitting at Sorn's Restaurant and using the Wifi here (Sorry, there are no pictures for the same reason).  Here's a quick recap of what I have been doing:

Wednesday:  We all got sick from some veggies that didn't get washed well enough the night before.  Luckily it was just a short thing, and we have all been feeling much better after that first day.  Ironically, we also had a Thai cooking class at Sorn's that day for our Thai Cultural Arts class.  Amazingly, most of us were feeling much better by the afternoon.  I expected Thai cooking to be very difficult and complicated, but the four things we learned are very simple to make, and I will be able to find all the ingredients in the US.  (I will have to host a Thai night at Houghton next semester!)  Plus, if I make it myself, I don't have to make it as spicy as the Thais like it, which is generally too hot for me :)

Thursday through Saturday we spent at the South East Asia Film Festival at Payap University in Chiang Mai.  Most of the films we saw were documentaries, some much better than others.  Whether they were "good" or not, I learned a lot about South East Asian culture and way of life, which is much simpler, but harder.  It usually revolves around agriculture.  Many of the films we saw were about the situation in Burma.  The people there have very rough lives and the military is terrible, using fear, killing, and rape as their main tactics/weapon of war.  (We also spent an entire afternoon class on Monday talking about Burma)  Even if people escape Burma into another country (such as Thailand or Laos) they are not given refugee status, but illegal migrant status, so they have no rights and live in fear of deportation.  Many of the girls are trafficked into Thailand for the sex industry, and if they are rescued, end up right back in it.  Often the choice is between paid prostitution in Bangkok and rape in Burma.  If that's not the most rotten set of options in the world, I don't know what is.  We watched a couple documentary films by the Free Burma Ranger in class, and they were difficult to see; I was in tears by the end.

Friday morning we were able to plant rice with the Lahu students at TLCC.  It was a lot of fun.  We started by picking the seedlings and bundling them, then we took those bundles and planted them again in another field.  Basically the seedlings grow too close together to be very productive, so we replanted them farther apart.  The Lahu students seemed to enjoy our participation, but I'm not sure if we were more help or entertainment.  We were only able to stay for 2 hours because we had to go to the film festival again.  Hopefully we will be able to help with the harvesting before we leave.

This morning (Tuesday) we didn't have class, so we helped teach English to the Lahu students.  It was really neat.  Some of them speak very well, but you can't always tell because they are so shy.  (Shyness is a common quality among the Lahu people in general)  One class was learning about furniture, so we did a scavenger hunt across campus to find all the things on their list and we compared the things they have in their homes to what we have in our homes.  The other class was a first year class, but they can already read pretty well and hold a simple conversation.  It really helped break the ice, and I hope they might feel a little more comfortable around us now.  I wish I knew more Lahu than I do, but there are multiple Lahu languages, so it wouldn't help in all cases anyway.  They enjoy helping us learn what we can, though.

The nine of us students have spent a lot of time together, just talking, over the past weekend.  Saturday we stayed up waaaaaay too late, then slept halfway through Sunday (good thing church wasn't until 4:30!) and on Sunday some of us got stuck waiting on a sung tow for over an hour before it even went anywhere!  We have a great time no matter what we are doing, and I am so glad that we all get along so well.  These girls have really become my family here.  We also started a daily prayer time to pray for the issues that affect South East Asia and for God to prepare the hearts of the people we will come into contact with, especially for Him to prepare our practicum sites for us. It is such a blessing not only to be here, but to be here with these people.

"I feel like the Pied Piper!"

This past Thursday through Sunday we visited a Lahu village near Chiang Rai to do research for our Social Context of/for Community Development.  It was absolutely amazing!  The ride from TLCC (where we live) took about 3 hours.  After we unpacked the trucks we split up into two groups and walked around the town.  By the time we found each other again we had amassed a group of about 50 kids!  We stood around in a circle and sang songs.  Well, we sang and the kids watched.  They don't know English so our songs were basically gibberish, but they didn't care.  There are very few farang (foreigners) that come to their village, so our presence was pretty exciting.  For the next three days, every time we walked out the door, there were kids there waiting for us.  It was a lot of fun to play with them and (attempt) to talk to them.  Between the little Lahu and Thai I have learned ( and  few of them knew a little bit of English as well), I was able to ask a few questions and have two sentence conversations.

The main reason we went to the village was to do a survey of the community and where it is in terms of development.  My group did a group interview with some of the men on Friday night.  It was supposed to start at 7:30, but we didn't actually begin until after 7:45 because the function on "Lahu time" (similar to Caribbean time).  It was interesting to watch how they interact and learn how they view the community while we waited.  We had a lot of questions, and we weren't even able to hit them all because it takes so long to have a conversation through a translator. It was frustrating at times because the questions were sometimes hard to get across and because the translator only gave us a summary of what was said.  I wish I could have understood everything that was said in the meeting.  At one point, towards the end, one of the older men in the group actually fell asleep.  That's when I realized it was probably time to wrap it up (it was almost 2 hours)!  We learned a lot about the community, which I will eventually have to write a paper on :( 

We stayed with a woman who is in the local government.  She represents the Lahu people and has done a lot to help her community.  One of her biggest contributions was to create a group to help people who have TB and to teach the village about TB prevention and treatment,  They are a group of volunteers who give rides so the TB patients can get to the hospital for treatment, and when the patients come home the volunteers help them and encourage them to take their medications (which can be very confusing).  Many of the Lahu believe that TB is terminal and there is no cure, so she has done a lot of work to teach them that there is a cure.  Also, the patients often feel better long before their medication is done and stop taking it too early, then they relapse and have worse problems, so the group does a lot of work to make sure that everyone finishes their treatment.

The pastor of the church is the man who translated the Bible into the Lahu language.  He is highly respected in the community.  I wish that we had been able to meet with him, but we did not have a chance.  We were told that he has had a mild stroke and is not doing well.  We did get to briefly meet his wife; she is an amazing woman.

While we were there we were also able to go on an elephant ride and visit a children's home (not orphanage, many of the kids parents are too poor to care for them and pay for school, but they go visit them sometimes on weekends and during the summer).  The kids at the orphanage were really sweet.  I was disappointed that much of the time we were there was very structured.  We only got to really interact with them for about a half hour or forty-five minutes.  They showed us around and then we played sports.  Some played soccer and the rest of us did a combination of volleyball and tekraw in a circle.  It was a lot of fun, and I was able to hit the tekraw ball a few times.  I must say that the girls found our lack of skill quite amusing.

We also visited the White Temple in Chiang Rai for our Cultural Arts class.  It is very beautiful and creative, but it is sad that it is built for the wrong purpose.  It was funny because when we were told where we were going we all expected it to be a few hundred years old, but it is not.  It is still being worked on and is not expected to be done until 2070 at the earliest!  To get inside you have to walk over a depiction of suffering, basically it is a pit with hands reaching up.  Really creepy.  When you get inside there are finished murals on the front and back walls and one in progress on a side wall.  The back wall is a depiction of the Earth with all its evil.  It is very interesting to look at.  It has historical figures and events, metaphorical images, and superheroes and pop culture icons (including Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and even a scene from Avatar).  The whole thing is an effort to gain merit so the people involved can have a better next life.  It is so sad that all this work is being put into this one thing to gain merit for a life that will never exist. 

This week is short (only 4 days) because we are attending the Southeast Asian Film Festival at Payap University in Chiang Mai.  All the films will either be in English or have English subtitles.  I am really excited because the directors will be there to answer questions after the films.  Can't wait!

Food and other fun!

To answer one of the questions that people keep asking: yes, the food is absolutely amazing here!! It has so much flavor and color, it’s more like a work of art than a meal.  In fact, Thai cooking is actually a part of our cultural arts class here, that’s the level at which food is held here.  Thai’s love their food and love sharing it with us.  Amazingly, I have not hit a rice wall, at least not yet.  I expected to be eating it at every meal, and while they do eat it often (even as a part of breakfast or dessert) it is not always included.  They also use (rice) noodles!  Honestly, there are so many flavors accompanying the rice, that you don’t even notice it.  I hit a spice wall long before any rice wall even appeared.

 

The other big question: chopsticks?  Yes, but only with noodle meals.  It was probably quite entertaining for the Thais to watch us all try chopsticks for the first time.  Suffice it to say, that meal probably took at least twice as long as it should have :P  Slowly, but surely, we are all improving.  By the end of the semester I will be a pro, or at least I hope so.

Yesterday we learned how to weave in our Cultural Arts class (Pictures coming soon!).  Looks easy, but it’s not.  If you do one thing out of order, the process won’t work right.  It also takes FOREVER!! Because the thread is so thin (like embroidery floss) it took us 3 hours to do about a foot and a half of fabric!   It is actually really relaxing.  Once you get the process down and get in a rhythm, you can just sit and (or attempt to learn Lahu!) while you weave.  Nanipa (the lady who taught us) can make a shoulder bag in one day, and sells it for 150 baht in the market.  That’s the equivalent of $5!  She also makes beautiful skirts and shirts, which take her up to 10 days to make.  It would probably take me a year just to make one!

We are able to go work on our fabric whenever we want.  We keep them at Nanipa’s house, which is really neat because it is a place where the Lahu are comfortable.  Even though they can, they do not come to our house because it is an unfamiliar place and most of them are shy.  Because we are in their space and doing one of their traditional activities, they come help us and talk with us.  It is a lot of fun to get to know them.

We have been incredibly busy the past few days!  Monday afternoon we left to visit Doi Inthanon.  It takes about two hours to get there from where we live near Doi Saket.  When we got to the top of the mountain it was actually cold enough to see our breath, not thinking about the elevation difference and the resulting change in temperature, none of us were prepared.  We froze.  Despite the cold, we had a great time exploring the chedis and surrounding gardens.  The chedis were built to commemorate the king's and queen's 60th birthdays.  They are quite magnificent.  Inside the queen's chedi are a huge buddha and mosaics; the king's contains another buddha and is decorated with painted gold leaves.  Each is surrounded by a large garden.  They are built on the highest peak in Thailand as a representation of the people's love and respect.  The more something is respected in Thai culture the higher it is placed physically.  The people here really love their king, and his pictures are everywhere as a result. 


While we were in the area we visited some waterfalls and went swimming (further down the mountain where it was warm).  The waterfalls here are so much bigger than any I have seen in the Adirondacks!  It is so amazing what God has created!  

For lunch we went to the coolest restaurant ever!  The tables are on platforms built, literally, on the river.  It give waterfront dining a completely new meaning.  We had roast chicken, fish (cooked in salt, but it did not taste salty at all), som tum (green papaya salad), and sticky rice.  It was all very tender and fresh.  It was very nice not to have any spicy food for a meal.

On Wednesday we started classes.  We have one in the morning (Social Context for Community Development) and one after lunch (Thai Cultural Arts).  They are both very interesting and are forcing me to think about things in many new ways.  It is very interesting to look at the the world from a Thai and/or Buddhist point of view, even though I do not believe the same things, and many aspects are in conflict with Christianity.  I never realized how self centered Buddhism really is.  Even though they appear to be very selfless and giving, it is all part of a merit system with the intent of progressing up the hierarchy chain.  Being that this country is over 90% buddhist, it is very evident how much God is needed here.  However, it is very difficult because buddhism is a very accepting religion and do not understand why they need to get rid of what they believe instead of just integrating Christianity into their current system.  It is a country in need of prayer.

We've Arrived!!

We finally made it!  There were a few times during the 32 hours of traveling that I thought it would be forever before I could say those words.  I praise God and thank all of you who were prayig because in all of our traveling there were no problems and all of our luggage arrived safely. 

When we arrived at the airport we all received beautiful flower ornaments.  They are made of roses and jasmine, so they smell amazing!  We all put them in our room, and it smells wonderful.  The people here are so welcoming and friendly.  Everywhere we go I hear greetings of "sawatdee" which means "hello."  One little girl who lives near us does a wai (traditional bowing sign of respect) everytime she sees us.  It is adorable!

The Go-ED program owns a few bikes, so a few of us explored the area around where we are living.  It was a lot of fun and we actually made it back without getting lost at all.  There are a lot of really neat things around this area, and I could probably spend the whole semester just exploring everything there is around here!!
The main type of transportation the we use here are song tows.  Basically they are basically trucks with seats and a roof on the back.  We can all fit easily in one, and there is room for many more.

It is so beautiful here!  We are surrounded by mountains and rice paddies.  Tomorrow we are going to Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand.  We will be staying overnight there in a tent.  Hopefully I will have some beautiful sunrise pictures in the near future.