My Life in Pictures

At four years old, Isaac, my host brother is every bit as mischievous as he appears. He is also the second best English speaker in the house and we've bonded over the fact that we miss our dad's who are far away in North America.
My host sister Goong is an excellent cook. Here she is with dinner for the two of us. When the whole family is home we eat at the table, but when there are just a few, we eat on the ground as is traditonal for the Lao people.

The other side of my bedroom, as well as a look at my very high quality, if not so stylish by Lao standards, helmet. I received some concerned comments the first time I posted a picture of myself riding a motorcycle with no helmet! Don't worry, I never got out of the parking lot that day.
Though I live in a well off family, some food just tastes better when cooked in the back yard!
This is Joshua, my 1 year old host brother. Don't be deceived by his relaxed pose here, he's always on the go! It's been a really interesting learning experience to observe the differences between North American and Lao parenting techniques. For my first month living with the host family, caring for Joshua and doing my own laundry were my only chores. As it turns out, neither one is considered to be a "real" chore here in Laos. This week I will start cooking "foreigner food" for dinner at least once a week, as well as learning the Lao ways of cooking and cleaning. I'm actually really excited to have more household chores to do as this will help me to feel more like a real member of the family, and less like a spoiled foreign guest.
*My apologies for the sideways photos! If anyone knows how to rotate pictures on blogspot, your help would be much appreciated.

The Colour of My Skin

In a tiny open air bus this morning, a perfect stranger stroked my arm and praised the whiteness of my skin. It still feels very odd to me to live in a place where my paleness is so openly coveted. Back in North America, the media has been tempting me all my life to crave just the opposite look. No tanning beds here, every advertisement speaks of miracle formulas to whiten your face, arms, armpits. They seem mostly to be a mixture of bleach and sunscreen. It doesn't stop there. In the full heat of the sweltering sun, one can expect that most people commuting by motercycle will be wearing some sort of heavy sweater or jacket to protect themselves from the sun. The more image consious might go so far as to carry an umbrella with one hand and drive with the other and today I even saw a pair of mittens.

It's hard to know how to react to all of this. I know that I had no control over my skin colour or any other characteristic that I just so happened to be born with. Every day I strive to deepen my relationships with my Lao family and friends, push my interactions past appearances and stereotypes. But even as I learn to communicate more and more each day, I am also becoming very aware that I will always be white, I will always be a foreigner and no matter how much I strive to walk in solidarity with the people of Laos, I do not share their history and circumstance.

Water

So many of my cultural mishaps and adventures here seem to revolve around water. Too much water, not enough water, not the right kind of water. I've slowly learned that my Lao friends do not consider a person to be truly clean unless they've had at least three bucket showers that day, I've learned how to use the minimum amount of water possible to wash dishes and clothes, but as is evident in this next little incident, old habits die hard.

"Ao nam baw?" I ask. "Would you like some water?" My family could not contain their laughter and cries of astonishment as I filled their water glasses after one particular meal. Let me elaborate. It is the custom of the Lao people to wait until after a meal is complete to drink water. Despite living with two toddlers, it is me who feels like a baby most of the time, wide eyed and helpless, and so I try to offer help in whatever little ways I can. The tap water with which I filled their glasses, however, may as well have been gasoline from the looks they gave me. Tap water here is almost as potent. How naive and lucky I am to have been brought up in a country where it seems like the most natural thing in the world to turn on the tap when thirsty!

Transformation

In an open air warehouse across the street from the MCC office yesterday afternoon, I manoevered my motercyle with great concentration around a chalked in figure eight. When the afternoon's downpour subsided, fireworks signalled the start of a cremation at the nearby wat (Buddhist temple). If you had read me this excerpt from my life a year ago, I'm sorry to say that I would have laughed in your face! Asia is truly the last place on Earth that I expected to end up, and I'm not really sure that I knew that Laos existed. Furthermore, those of you who know me well know that I have not always had the most positive relationship with motorized vehicles. Once upon a time, I was convinced that I would never learn to drive a car, let alone a motorcycle. People change; God works in unexpected ways.

So what's changed? Physically my hands are a little raw from doing all my laundry by hand, my muscles are growing from lifting baby Joshua and I have a new freckle two. Emotionally and spiritually, this year is already stretching me in more ways than I can count. I can feel myself exuding a new confidence. Yes I can drive a motorcycle in a city that is becoming less foreign to me everyday. Yes I can eat whatever unidentified substance you have just piled on my plate.
Familiarizing myself with this place is, as a class mate put it earlier today, "like coming out of a thick fog". The squiggles on roadside signs burst into clarity, jumbled conversations spring into order and baffling cultural practices repeat themselves predictibly. I wish I could say that the sun has come out and everything from now on will be bright and sunny, but for now, I'm happy living in the humidity of a Lao afternoon in rainy season.

The Buddha Caves

During my first weekend in Laos, I was lucky enough to participate in an MCC retreat 7 hours South of Vientiane. We piled into a very narrow, very shallow boat, climbed some very steep stairs built against the side of a cliff and entered a cave filled with Buddha images. It was discovered by a fisherman several years ago, but most of the carvings are thought to come from the 1300s!

Lao Language School

Here (left to right) are Emily, myself, Katelyn and Kaylie in front of Candlelight Language School. Kaylie is here on a three year MCC term, and the rest of us are here with MCC's one year Serve and Learn Together program. We are all enjoying the three hours of language classes we have each day. Suddenly, the little squiggles and bumps on the page make sense. We can read! We still don't know most of what we are reading, but our vocabularies are growing each day. It's hard to believe we've only been here three weeks!

Odawan

I have a new name; Odawan. Last night the extended family gathered on a straw mat in the living room around steaming pots of fish, noodles and greens. After the usual discussion about the food, and laughter at my broken Lao, the elder of the group decided that it was high time to give me a Lao name. "Jessie is just too hard for us to say!" it was explained to me. After some questioning as to the meaning of the name Jessica, I was given the name Odawan. In Lao it means "wealthy and honoured one". I have never connected much meaning to my English name before, nor did I find it particularly fitting in my North American context, but here in Laos I certainly do feel both wealthy and honoured. I think often of a favourite reminder of my grandpa's: "to whom much has been given, much is required". I wonder now, in the early stages of my stay here in Laos, what will be required of me this year? As I wait, I laugh at myself for the myriads of cultural mistakes I make each day, I learn to speak a few syllables at a time and I grow to love my host family. There is beauty in this waiting too.

I was asked in an email just now whether we get any rain here these days. I couldn't help but laugh out loud! Each morning I wake up early to the study pounding of rain on the roof, the lashing f wind against my window. This morning it rained harder than I have ever seen it rain before. Riding to school this morning on the back of Goong's motorcycle, we came across a road that was completely washed out! We stopped to push the motorcycle back the way we came, but it was no use, there was just to much water in that engine. And so the two of us pushed that bike through thigh deep water all the way to a little repair shop a few kilometres away. When I finally got to language school, I was very late and very wet. Yes, we do get a little rain here!

One last thought. I recently got an email from my sister asking me why I didn't update my blog more often. I responded that nothing very interesting was happening these days, and no one wanted to hear what I had for breakfast for goodness sakes! I'm not so sure about that anymore. On Friday I woke up to a lovely bowl of rice soup abounding in shrimp, squid and two personal sized octopus. "Saep baw?" (Delicious, no?).

My New Family

I moved yesterday into the home of my host family which is quite a ways out of town. It feels good to be more independent and also it forces me to speak a lot more Lao. I live with euay (sister) Meena who is young and spunky and her little boys, Joshua ( a walking talking 1 year old) and Isaac (4) . It's a busy house! My Lao vocubulary for phrases like "Take that out of your mouth!" and "Colour on the paper, not on the wall!" and "Please put your brother down!" is expanding rapidly. There are also two girls named Goong and Kai (17 and 13) who live in the house as temporary foster daughters. Everyone in the house is trying to learn English and they are eager for me to teach them and also to tech me Lao. Here, my new family calls me "Jedsee", because in the Lao language you cannot end sylable with an "s". Being a small, white falang (foreigner) in Laos is good for the self esteem. Yesterday Nalene (my 8 year old host niece who lives next door) pressed her tiny hand in to mine and called me "Euay Ngam" (beautiful sister).