Bartering

This past week we had meetings with the whole Laos team. There are twelve of us; 5 will be in Paxse, a city in the south, and 7 of us will stay in Vientiane. It was fun to meet the rest of the team and see how they interact with each other. We learned about culture and teaching and how to work with and love our teammates and the Lao. It was lots of new information, but very interesting. We will have plenty of laughter on the team this year! Some of the cultural stuff seems so confusing! But we heard plenty of funny stories from veteran teachers who made many mistakes in their first year here, and still make mistakes now. But our students are usually pretty forgiving and still love us through our cultural blunders.

Saturday morning, Julia and I went shopping for sinhs (the traditional Lao skirt we will wear for teaching). We got one a couple of weeks ago, but will need a couple more for teaching. This time we went shopping without any Lao friends. We were a little nervous about the language and such, but we had so much fun!! I really feel like we made some (sort of) friends! The first lady was so nice and helpful! It's kinda hard to browse in the market because lots of times the owners are all over us, pulling out material left and right, showing us black and blue and purple sinhs! It can be a bit overwhelming and even annoying, and it's hard to know what is appropriate so we don't offend them. In our very limited Lao we told her that we would be ajaans (teachers/professors) at Dong Dok (our university), so we wanted to know which ones would be appropriate for ajaans. She knew some English and told us she was also a teacher (I didn't catch where). We sort of asked her if the ones we liked were appropriate for young people, and her daughter who looked about 22 said ours were acceptable, so hopefully we won't look like out of style grannys on our first day of class.

Then came the buying/bartering part. I usually hate this because I feel like I'm stealing from them and they need the money more than I do, even if it is a little more... We asked how much, she replied 300,000 kip, which is like $40. When we came with Mon and Jiam, they started at 260,000 and we ended up paying 200,000. Yesterday, we ended up paying 250,000, which is more than what Lao would pay, but there is a foreigner price for everything, and there should be, but we thought we did pretty good. But the bartering part was fun and she had fun too! It really is a way of building relationships! And I felt since we had connected while choosing the fabric, as they helped decide if it was ok for ajaans and young people, we really hard formed a teeny friendship!

We each got 2 more sinhs, and some cotton material to make (American) skirts. But we had lots of help from all the merchants and it was fun to practice our Lao with them! :)

We also went for lunch to a restaurant near our villa that we visit often. The ladies who own and cook are always very friendly, but yesterday we talked to them for probably ten minutes! I think they are sisters and one has two sons, one is one month old (we think). But again they were so patient and helpful with our Lao. I actually took my dictionary along which was useful as I looked up words for sisters and son. I should take my dictionary everywhere with me! Yesterday was probably my favorite day of interacting with the culture so far. It makes learning Lao so much more exciting if I know I will actually be able to use it. :)

This is the first sinh that I got. I'll take a picture soon of me in it, but it's pretty plain and simple, the hem goes to the middle of my calf probably.

I also got a greenish and blackish one. Yes, there are butterflies on the bottom of the black one. I thought about changing the bottom (you can pick out a different bottom if you want), but everyone said butterflies are fine for ajaans... so I'm keeping the butterflies. :)