Number 5

Today was a fairly quiet day. I worked all morning, in the office, on the Vietnam project. The initial feedback on my drafts has been quite positive. I do need to go over them and remove all words over 3 syllables and replace them with simpler terms. Everyone does more then one thing here. I was drafted to create time management sheets for the employees and a template for taking and keeping minutes at the weekly meeting. It wasn’t all that hard but Bruce and Wendy are busy with the final plans for the conference in the Philippines that BABSEA is sponsoring in December and if I didn’t do it I guess it wouldn’t get done for quite awhile. Then back to my reading and writing.

At noon, Moon took me to the Central Market to get photos for my Visa application for Vietnam. This was my second visit to the Market. I forgot my camera which I had wanted to bring to take a picture of my favorite sign in Thailand. It’s in a drug store which is called “Street Price Drugs”.

We had lunch while we waited for the photos. There was an interesting “combo” plate of garlic rice and fried fish. I asked Moon what kind of fish it was. She said it was Thai fish. When I asked her what breed the dogs all are she said Thai dogs. When I asked what kind of oranges we had at the house she said Thai oranges. The fish was good and the garlic rice, which was really good was served in the shape of a big star. The whole thing came with a salad and soup. With a bottle of water it was 50 baht ($1.50) We had taken a red truck to the Market but decided to walk back so she could show me some interesting buildings and another temple. We took a different route through some neighborhoods and I got to see some interesting buildings which meld new modern technology and design with the old Buddhist roofs and arches. Many houses and business have a spirit house in the yard or front of the building. They're like a large doll house shaped like a temple and made of concrete or heavy wood. They even have a couple inside the market. I like them a lot and we spent about 15 minutes at a lot where they were selling them. It was hot and humid but it felt good to walk after being in the office all morning.

After a few more hours of working in the office I decided to observe the “teacher's" English class for the Lao professors. It's held on a picnic table on the grounds and was fun to watch. The Lao are really nice people and eager to learn. The “teachers” seem quite adept at what they do (considering they're all 18-19 years old) and since a breeze had come up it was nice to sit outside. Somehow I got dragged into the lesson and told “ a guy walks into a bar” jokes which were translated to the Lao. A few times they actually got the joke and laughed. The other times they laughed to be polite. The Lao were making a traditional Lao dinner for the teachers and insisted I join them. While they prepared dinner I sat outside with the teachers and Corn and we played a number of odd card games. Corn is quite competitive and had learned to put an L up to her forehead and laugh whenever she won. It was pretty funny. There was a lot of teasing and laughing which I realized goes on a good part of the day and night here. Just before dinner a red truck pulled in and delivered Porn. There’s no significance to that other then I still find it funny to say it.

The Lao dinner was good and fun. Since I hadn’t contributed I asked if they would like me to bring my iPod and speakers and provide music for dinner. They seemed to like that a lot so all of us sat down and ate our traditional Lao dinner while listening to the Grateful Dead. Nang and Thip were grooving to the tunes and Subine and Kham both said they liked the music. They made a salad with a few things I recognized and a bunch I didn’t. Not wanting to insult them and wanting to try new things I didn’t do my usual asking of what everything is and I simply ate it. Interestingly, a couple times one of the Singapore kids would ask what something was and the Lao would say they didn’t know the word for it so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. There was rice, a soup with some strange large green thing wrapped around a huge mushroom. (which Thip insisted was one that we planted yesterday and was quite pleased with herself for making a joke) I ate the soup but not the mushroom thing. There was a pork dish that I passed on and did my best not to insult them. Since Bruce is Jewish and they have learned that Jews have certain dietary rules, they didn’t take offense when they were told Jews don’t eat pork. They apologized for not knowing I was Jewdish (the Thai way of saying Jewish) but I assured them I was enjoying all the other dishes so much I wouldn’t have been able to eat it anyway. I complemented them on all the other dishes and took seconds which made them happy. After dinner us non-Laos insisted on clearing the table and doing the dishes and everyone pitched in while we made the Laos sit and listen to Eminem. A few minutes after we finished, Mark showed up with fresh fruit and some kind of pastry and dessert was had. There was more card playing, more laughing and some Marvin Gaye and eventually everyone went off to their rooms.

A quiet day but a good day.