Grilled Bananas

I'm horrible at writing on here. . .

I feel like last year I had all these new exciting things to write about but now they're not so new anymore, so then I don't write about them or anything really.

Yesterday I was walking back to my office after eating lunch with some students. I met some students on their way to class. One student had a small bag of grilled bananas. He didn't say anything to me but just smiled and held out the bag for me to take a banana. So I took one and said thank you. But he said nothing, just smiled and walked away.

Last year I was also more OK with things not being OK. The school knew we were going to come teach here three months ago, but they don't have our visas yet - no big deal! That's just how things go in Laos. The students graduate with a degree even if they can't speak 3 words of English - that's OK, we live in a poor country and English is a hard language to learn.

But this year I'm much more easily annoyed. If they knew we were coming three months ago, how do they not have our visas ready yet? It's not that hard - just sign the papers. We're teaching here for free, can't they at least have our papers ready for us? How can students graduate if they can't speak in English? If they didn't learn anything in 5 years at University did they really earn their degree? Of course not! Send them back to Year 1 so they can actually learn something.

A lot of this is true - students really shouldn't graduate if they can't speak English but it is important for me to remember that I'm only a guest here and nothing I want to do will change anything, so I guess actually, it isn't that big of a deal.

Even though there's plenty of things that bother me, I do love living here!! :) And the good far outweighs the bad!