Rice Farmers

This past weekend I went to one of my student's homes. She lives 2 1/2 hours away by bus. We left at 8:00 Saturday morning. She lives in a little country side village. It was really fun, but I don't know if I wanna go back any time too soon. I love my comforts of living in a city! :)

There are 6 girls in her family. She is the second oldest. Her family was so sweet and welcoming! Saturday was New Year's Day, so we went to some parties and sang and danced. They were very kind to make me fish soup and chicken soup and duck soup and chicken laap and papaya salad and noodle salad and fish laap and.... but I had enough Lao food to last me for the next month or so. 

They kept saying that I should stay home from the farm because it isn't good for me to be out there. And if I am out in the sun, I will not have beautiful white skin. But, thankfully, they let me come out to the farm with them!!! :) :) :)

 ViengPhone, my student (you can see her face) and her sisters are putting the small rice seedlings in baskets to take the the field to plant.

 Her mom, Viengphone, and her two sisters out in the field planting the rice.

 I helped too! They also probably wanted me to sit in the shade so I wouldn't destroy their crop this year.

 The mud is kinda fun :)

 Her dad was plowing the other plot to plant rice in soon.

 This is a big field. There are maybe 20 different families that have plots of land in this big field. They are separated by the walls of the irrigation system.

 This is a neighbor's plot of rice that was planted a little earlier.

 They have a big irrigation system. It's dry season right now, and hasn't rained since October and won't rain until April. Their village is right on a river, so they take water from the river to grow rice two times a year. To get out to her plot of land, you need to walk on the walls of grass. I was a little worried I was gonna fall in to the rice!

 All of them planting in a row.

I like their hats.

I was really happy I gotta see how they plant the rice! Also glad I gotta plant a bit myself. But perfectly content planting a tiny section and letting them make me sit in the shade so I wouldn't be too exhausted from the hard work.