The Big Comfy Couch!

Do any of you remember the Big Comfy Couch? It was a show with clowns on PBS or something. I'm so happy to have our own nice big comfy couch!

Jane's still here! She leaves tomorrow. We went to Vang Viang this weekend, which is a little town 4 hours north by bus. Here's some of our happenings of the past week!

 Jane came to class with me a couple of times.

 We bought new furniture!!!!! It is so nice! Jane thinks its too hard... but so much better than wooden kitchen chairs or the floor! and it's orange and just great! It's a sectional - 2 couches and 2 chairs. I LOVE it!!

 Jane wearing my sinh to school. She also got one made which we'll pick up tomorrow.

 We have two rugs. One looks like a slice of watermelon and one looks like a car. They're cute! Our adorable neighbor boys always come and "drive" them around. They also always kick start them. So cute! PS, they're semi-clean... We just washed them this week... but they're having fun!

 Jane at That Luang, the symbol of Laos. Some Buddah's hip bone (I think) is buried here.

 In Vang Viang, we got massages! and facials and pedicures :) It was COLD and rainy! We were going to go tubing down the river, but it was too cold! So there wasn't a bunch to do, besides pamper ourselves! It was nice and cheap.

 We saw two caves. This was the easy cave to see. We asked these guys to take our picture, but he joined us!

 We rented bikes! It was fun to go to the caves and just ride around. The road was kinda bumpy...

Vang Viang is in a valley kinda. It's really gorgeous! And also has some nice rice fields.

 This is the other cave we went to. We had decided enough riding, let's go back. I had seen a sign for a little cave with fish on the way, so said, hey Jane! Let's stop and check this out... so we did. We paid our $2 and were handed two little flashlights. The guy told us to go. So we followed the arrows and rode our bikes through a dry, sandy, rocky riverbed. He followed on his motorbike. The riding was a little rough. Jane wasn't having much fun. I kept assuring her it was fine to turn around! But she said that since we started, we had to finish! So, we kept going...

We enter the cave with our little lights. After going in 15 feet, we have to squeeze through a small opening... a little scary. But, Jane wanted to continue. So, we followed the guide over bamboo bridges and under stalactites. It wasn't so bad. (I had been in another cave similar to this before, but Jane wasn't sure if she could trust our guide.) We followed him for maybe ten minutes. We get to a small opening and he stops. He shines his light at a small tube sitting in a little pool/river of water in the middle of this dark cave! Oh, no, I think we do not want to go! I tell him. He said he usually takes ten people a day and only one goes in the water! It was so scary! I can't imagine anyone crazy enough to hop on the tube and float to who knows where! In the middle of this dark and creepy cave! He just laughed and turned around to lead us back to safety. And we did make it out safely. It wasn't the most fun thing we did on our trip, but it made for a fun story!

This was the sign. It says, "Welcome to Bowl Silver Cave. Beautiful water for swimming and tubing (tube supplied) Many different fish to be seen.

A picture taken from our balcony of our hotel. (It's hard to have good pictures when there's only two of us) :(

 I LOVE our neighbors! Today, for the first time, the boys brought over their little brother. He is so stinking cute! I hope they all come over more often! I am so happy to have these little boys at our house! Makes me more excited to see and hold my little nephew(s)/niece when I get home!!!!

A bunch of my old students came over tonight! They taught Jane some Lao dance, and she taught them some American dance. They ate some chili soup. It was just fun to see them!!

Jane is here!

Jane is here! We have internet! I love my new house! I love my neighbors! Our landlady is so sweet and kind and helpful! Our students can so easily come to our house now and we can so easily go to them! I love living in Laos!!!

 Jane joined the teachers for lunch today. A couple of times a week, I eat lunch with the Lao English teachers in our department. We put all our food on the table (like a pot luck) and dig in! We always eat standing up. Jane thought it was a little weird that we all eat out of the same bowls... I guess I had forgotten that we don't eat like that in America. She liked the food though! I buy my food from the market. And we always eat sticky rice, which is delicious!!

 Our two adorable neighbor boys!!  Thia is 6 and Beh is 8. We have given them lots of candy... hopefully we don't rot their little teeth! We also bought a soccer ball for them to play with. Their family is kinda poor, so sometimes it's kinda hard to know how much to feed them and such...but they're stinking cute! And most of the time we actually understand what we're saying to each other! :)

 These are some of my students from last semester who I do not teach anymore. Who I guess are now my friends. The two girls in the front are my favorites! :) I have so much fun with them!!

 More random pictures of our house. This is our bathroom. One side for the shower. One side for the toilet.

 Our shower. We use the shower, not the big bucket. It's a big shower! The only problem is that the walls do not go up to the ceiling. There is a 2 foot gap of nothing between the top of the wall and the ceiling. So we can hear anything in the house no matter where we are!

The toilet and sink.

More Pictures of Our House

Here are more pictures of our house. These are mostly for Mom and Dad. Sorry for everyone else that there are so many! But since Mom and Dad only saw my old house... I thought I better show them as much of this house as I can. But, we don't have internet at our house yet... hopefully tomorrow! :) So, now there are only four pictures, so hopefully more soon!

This is our fridge, ant cupboard and oven. The ant cupboard has bowls of baby powder under the legs to keep the ants from crawling up and into our nice American food! It has worked pretty well so far, but if even a cord or something is touching the cupboard, the ants can get into everything, so we need to be careful! The doorway goes into the living roomish area.

 This is another angle of our kitchen. The table is right in front, with the water pitchers on it. And then all the cupboards and the sink.

 This is the beautiful Lao wood furniture. It's pretty but not too comfy, we're gonna get a comfy sofa soon!

This is looking from the living room area to the dining room/kitchen. The white table to the right is where our stove sits.

I'll have more pictures soon when we have internet.

This weekend we had a team retreat in Pakxe, the city in the south where we have 5 teachers. It was fun to see them again and just to relax and have fun together! We played games, talked, and sang together. It was good! We took a 10 hour night sleeping bus ride down there. The beds back home were a little longer and comfier, so it wasn't so bad!

We have already been having so many more students over to our house! Just for whatever. And it's been great! Last week was 63 degrees and rainy for 3 or 4 days, so it was too cold to be outside and see neighbors, but hopefully now that it's hot again we will see them again! And my friend Jane comes to see me tomorrow!!!!!

Home Sweet Home

We moved into our new home!! We (Julia and I) had been wanting to move closer to school for a while, and we found the place! The landlady seems great! Hopefully everything will continue to go swimmingly! The other day our landlady came over and sat and chatted with us while we were eating breakfast!

Here's our house! It looks big and it kinda is. It's $400 a month divided by 2, so $200 a month for me. In August we will have another teacher living with us so then it will be even cheaper. It's a great house!

The house is really open. This is looking at the front door. And then you can also see the railing of the balcony upstairs. We can really talk to each other from any room in the house.

The area to the left is a little living room. 

We have a nice big balcony!

This is from the front door looking to the kitchen. The stairs are to the right. And the door you can see on the right side of the picture is the door to the third bedroom. The little living room is right to the right, and then this big open area. We have some beautiful hard wood Lao furniture. It's pretty but not the most comfortable. So we still need to buy a couch and some comfy chairs.

We rented this truck for $12 to move all of our stuff from our old house to our new house. It was cheap and easy! I don't know how we've accumulated so much junk in only 6 months!

Our little neighbor, Waleesa, came over right away to welcome us and help unpack things! She's been over for probably 2 hours every day so far! Her mom has made dinner for us twice I think. The neighbors are so nice and welcoming! And we were asked to drink some beer with our other neighbors. We were going somewhere, so had to decline, but hopefully next time we can join them for a Pepsi! We asked to have relationships with our new neighbors, and I feel this request is already being granted!

Some students and friends came over to help us clean and unpack our stuff! They're cleaning our kitchen cupboards. 

Waleesa an Julia wearing our garbage cans as hats.

Our front porch view. We have a nice big yard!

We made cookies to take to our neighbors. We had friends and students come help us bake. Nuyie is scooping them on the pan. She didn't think the dough tasted very delicious.

We don't have a microwave yet, so we had to soften the butter over our gas stove. I splattered some on my skirt, so I wanted to wash it to get it out. I put my skirt in a big kitchen mixing bowl and poured on some boiling water to get out the grease (this may have been the wrong thing to do... I don't know). Since the water was boiling, I used a big mixing spoon so I wouldn't burn my hands. Sonexay came running over and told me how disgusting it was that I was using the kitchen bowl and spoon to wash my clothes. I said it didn't matter, but she was appalled! 

But afterwards, she used the kitchen rag to wipe the floor, and then rinsed it out to wipe the counters... which I've definitely done before too... but to my American mind, I think that is grosser than putting my skirt in a kitchen bowl. Just some fun cultural cleanliness differences. 

They also love to sweep the floor! I think they've swept 3 times every day! 

ViengPhone is helping to make the cookies.

Playing Uno!

We also have some little neighbor boys who like to come into our gate and play on our swing. They've also enjoyed eating our cookies! It's so fun to have kids feel free to come into our house!

So my first four days in our new house have been great! We're almost finished buying everything that we will need! :) We've spent lots of money, but I think it will be worth it!

I'll put up some more pictures of our house soon. It's three bedroom and two bathroom.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

It is so great to be back in Laos! It was wonderful to see friends, students and teachers again. We started teaching the second semester this week. I have a different class from last semester. At first I was pretty sad that I couldn't be teaching that same class again. But towards the end of the semester they were inviting me to almost all of their little get togethers/hang outs with each other. They like to go to someone's house, cook and eat, sit and talk, sing and dance, and eat and talk. And take pictures. And since coming back from Thailand, we've jumped right in to visiting people's houses again. So I think it actually worked out better that I'm not their teacher this semester. This way, it's easier to be their friend and not their teacher and friend. 

 One of the hundreds of pictures they have taken on my camera!

 This is at a student's grandma's funeral. The boy with his head shaved is the one whose grandma died. You probably can't see very well, but they are eating ice cream sandwiches. But this ice cream sandwich consists of two pieces of bread with a few small scoops of ice cream in the middle.  : )  I was informed that this is not a normal Lao way to eat ice cream. . . It wasn't as gross as it probably sounds, but I think I prefer my American ice cream sandwiches.

Two of my old students!