@ Home in the city...

Aw, first off..."thanks for reading". I was feeling a little glum and posted last time about wondering if anyone reads this. The day after we got a phone call, then emails, and comments and OK.. I know you guys are still there. I know we connect with allot of you on FB.. if you know our email you can find us there. I was a little worried a few weeks ago because Vietnam has been limiting FB and Twitter.. I imagine someday that might happen here. I don't know.. hopefully not. I still read accounts of people stepping over 30 years ago and wonder how they emotionally did it. I mean I know "how" but .. ; )

So. Hopefully these photos post.. a few shots from our "home" here. We've had less work the past week so we've actually had a chance to do some things around here. This Saturday however we head north for a week. (20-27) Looking forward to that. Although, it will be a challenge. I am frustrated with my Lao not being better than it is.. I am vowing to concentrate more on it in the coming months.. J has learned more by teaching English. Somehow, my classes don't work that way. I really need to go back to Lao school somehow. Finding a tutor has proved impossible. As westerners, we tend to think we know a language we can teach it. Here, unless you are a teacher you feel you don't know it well enough to teach it. Reasoning that "you know more than I do" falls on deaf ears.

So, I digress. We are heading north. We haven't really been able to figure out accommodations or anything since none of our friends here have ever visited it. Going to do a big loop. It's a 16 hour bus ride north , then we will take a river boat back half way downstream and then the bus back. It will be good to get out of the city.

A preview photo.. thank you www for letting me glean. ; )

A young student is coming with us because his family lives in the northern city. He was "geng jai" (uncomfortable, embarrassed) but now OK because he thought his village will be too country for us. I always fall back on "I was born in the country, it's OK. My family had pigs when I was little.. we grew a big garden with corn and blueberries..and ..." and somehow that smooths out the "geng jai-ness" (See Mom + Dad, who would have thought my early years would prove so valuable halfway around the world?!) Actually, J started it.. he would say "she's from the country" and realized it elicited smiles.

So, if I don't blog again before we'll see you on the flip and post photos of our trip then! Lots of love. Great to hear all the things going on in RI and elsewhere.. Keep us posted on all your news too, we love reading! :)))

free wall art! window 'screen' found on our roof..

home is where the coffee maker is. our little maker from "da hill" back in RI

bedroom. yes. still sleeping on the floor. it probably won't change.

main room after painting.
kinda sorta have a kitchen now. still doing dishes in the shower room sink.

Update 10/28

Photos - I shared a link with some so you may have already seen photos. Blogger for some reason is slower than slow here, so it's easier for me to upload and email a link. If you would like to see photos, please send us your email if we don't have it. I will be uploading more photos soon, I finally think we almost have a schedule which means we have time to do things again..like blog. Imagine that. :D

We just got back from a 3 day teachers conference in Bangkok..which was just what we needed. It was great to meet teachers from other parts of SEAsia; Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, China.. and it was nice to be in an English environment. The conference really recharged us, ready to get back to work.

Our little home is coming along. A few weeks ago in Thailand we bought some things to make it feel more homey.. throw pillows, some fun dishes, some shelves etc. Funny the things you just either can't buy here or they are outrageously priced. We are hoping to paint the big empty room in Dec., Joel fixed the roof the other day. Went up on it and spread tar which seems to have taken care of the leaks. He would have hired someone to do it, but try explaining putting tar on a roof to someone who thinks cement is a better idea.. (the cement cracks line of reasoning wasn't working..)

I feel a little "geang jai" (uncomfortable in a humble way) but we just hired a "me ban" (mother of the house) ie..housecleaner to come 1x a week. It's very affordable here (about $20 USD a month) and will save me immense amounts of time. I still have to work out the details.. I've never had anyone other than my mom do my laundry! But even some of our local Lao friends have them, so it's not really so strange. I'm still coming around to the idea..

We are still in Lao class daily. We are thinking of enrolling at the National University come January. They have a Lao program there too, with all levels; basic to advanced. Our biggest line of reasoning on this is that it lets us meet more people and we figure it wouldn't be a bad thing to have on the resume when we come back Stateside. But, we'll see.. right now we have the classes with the school we work for.

For our friends learning the language back there: you'll be happy to know we are FINALLY working on getting recordings made. Hoping to contribute to the knowledge base. ; )

..I am off to go work on my Lao part for a conference this weekend. Yikes!! :P

All our love,
The Kids.

Lao PDR. Lao, please don't rush. (Unless you're driving)

When we visited here 3 years ago we were amazed that the couple we stayed with could fit so much into their schedule. I am starting to understand the other side of the mirror, so to speak. It has been a busy 2 weeks! I can’t believe we have only been here 2 weeks as of this past Wed.

Were to begin… well, we are still waiting to move into our apartment. Hopefully either the end of this week or sometime next. The bathroom plumbing apparently has major leaks. J tried to fix them but without his tools it’s a more difficult chore. Not to mention, the quality of things such as tools here is debatable. He bought a hammer, attempted to pull out a nail using the pry end and it broke. He promptly took it back to the hardware store were the man told him a hammer isn’t used to pull out nail and tried to sell him a crowbar. Joel asked him, then what is this end for (holding up the pry end with the slot for pulling a nail.) and the man just said.. No you can’t use a hammer for pulling out nails. He double checked with his wife who muttered a grumpy “bo dai” (no can) sooo… as you can imagine a plumbing problem can become quite the saga in the land they listen to rice grow..but the place is awesome, in a great location and about $300 USD per month LESS than the average rent here.

We are both teaching. Joel has pre-intermediate students (mostly adults) and I have elementary kids. It’s rather comical, I suppose the school thought since I am female I’d be good with children.. so never mind teaching English, learning to deal with a classroom of kids is my challenge! J is doing really well, he’s really picked up this teaching thing quickly. He says it’s because he has more experience standing in front of large groups of people he’s more relaxed. But, thanks to teaching and a contact there I found part time work with a Media company here. So, I start next week working for them, it will be a combo of office work and from home work. They are a music label so I will be mostly assisting with the design of the album covers. They brought two Americans on board to rethink the way the CD covers are designed. If you have ever looked at a Lao/Thai CD cover you know why they can use some outside input. :P I am pretty excited about it.

We have been going to meet friends of friends to get started knowing more people here. It’s really hard to make new friends, so we are grateful that people are introducing us to theirs. We met one nice kid at a café we go to a few times a week.. J started talking to him more because he remembers that we go there often and has started to befriend us. He works there 7 days a week with his wife. Very nice guy. That’s another thing I will like about my new job, is that at the school there are definite student – teacher roles and the teachers don’t/can’t really hang out with the students. So, at least at the Media company if I want to eventually ask people to come join us for dinner or the like, I can.

This week we start Lao classes everyday for 2 hours a day 4 days a week. I think this will be really helpful! It’s allot of what we already know but review will be good. The school we work for is paying for it (they also teach Lao) so we don’t even have to spend money on it. Cha-Ching.

Other exciting news is a couple from China just arrived. They are going to be teaching Chinese at the school apparently. It is estimated 300,000 Chinese are here. So a few of our friends are signing up to (learn Chinese. Two of our friends here already speak Chinese and another want to learn so I think they will have a nice little class. As for us, learning Lao is enough right now. Hmm, actually I’ve been playing around with learning a few greetings in Khammu which is a hill tribe language here…but it’s only a spoken language (don’t quote me on that) as they use Lao to write. So, if you write a word in Khammu you spell it in Lao script. For you Lao learners, it means Sa-Bai-Dii become Sa-Mai-Lut (hello) but it’s still written with the Lao alphabet. Figure it’s just nice to be able to say hello at least.. We’ve met a few people that are Khammu. (And it’s not as tongue twisting as Hmong.. we’ve got one friend here fluent in Hmong but you lose me with all the x’s. mhennxtubx or whatever..)

But so far everything is good.

One challenge we are having is driving. Driving is NUTS here. You figure you have thousands of people now driving cars and scooters that 3 years ago only had bicycles. We bought two scooters but I’m starting to chicken out of driving. You see accidents daily. When it’s rush hour sometimes you literally have to bang on the side of a car/truck to get it to stop cutting you off. 4 way stops? You’re joking. Everything thinks they have the right of way. Even J who has been driving real motorcycles (verses these 110cc things) for years says it’s the worst driving conditions he’s ever dealt with. This coming from Mr. Wheeler. The worst ones are some of the other foreigners who are making big dollars, living tax free and driving around in six figure Mercedes or Hummers (yes, they have made it to Laos) who don’t even bother to notice they share a road. Every man for himself. We often use the expression it’s like the Wild West here. In more ways than one.

But we do absolutely LOVE it. The local people, the culture, the food, the teaching…I’d like to think we are getting better with the language. Even if it’s something as simple as trying to explain that yes, a hammer was designed to pull out nails. :)


Love you all lots!