Happy Christmas!

I just realized I haven't written in a while.... I'v been a little busy with Christmas parties maybe? We did have a number of Christmas parties. It was busy, but also lots of fun! :) We baked plenty of Christmas cookies. Sang many Christmas songs and played some fun games with our students. Although it would have been wonderful to be home with family celebrating Christmas, it was pretty nice celebrating here with friends. (It also probably helps knowing that my parents will be here in 2 1/2 weeks! :) )

The first year (freshman) students started last week. I have another class now of first years. The class is a little smaller, 35 maybe, so that should be nice. I have two monks in that class too. I love my monk students! I will only have them for about a month, and see them two times a week, so it's kinda a short term, but oh well.

Everyone will be welcoming the New Year with a big count down! So, we'll see what we do for New Year's, but I think there are plenty of options. Sorry this is rather uneventful, I thought I would have more exciting things to say, since I haven't written in a while.... maybe next time!

I learned from the Europeans living in Vientiane, that they say Happy Christmas instead of Merry.

Happy New Year!

Today we went to Kilometer 52 to celebrate Hmong New Year with some of Julia's students. Kenton, Heather, Steph, Julia and I went with 5 students, two of whom were Hmong.  We took a bus for a little over an hour to a Hmong town. 

 Some pretty Hmong girls in traditional clothes.

 We went to one of her Hmong student's house. She had many Hmong clothes for us to wear. Some were pretty small, but they either found clothes big enough for us or we squeezed into them.

 Cute kids all over!

 I think the Hmong do lots of stuff with cross-stitching looking patterns on their clothes. Their clothes are black with bright colors.

 And cool hats

 and big jewelry

 and more cute kids with a big bow on her butt

 And I think these kids were the cutest of all!

 One of the important reasons to go to Hmong New Year is to meet your husband or wife. You find your future significant other by playing catch with a ball with them and your friends. They stood in a big line and threw the balls back and forth, back and forth. It didn't look like much fun... but maybe I just don't understand. If you drop the ball, you're supposed to sing a song or something, but they weren't doing that this year.

 Us white girls dressed up in Hmong clothing drew quite a bit of attention. I think we took over 20 photos with random people who thought they wanted a picture of us. There were also many Hmong-Americans who came back to Laos for a few weeks to visit family and celebrate the New Year. So we chatted with people from Minnesota, Alaska, California, and many more states.

Here we are all decked out in Hmong clothes. The festival wasn't much more than lots of ball throwing games and people selling tons of stuff! There is also a bull fight between two bulls, but that was last week. Maybe I can see it next year. It was fun to learn a bit about another different culture!