Going Home

I'm leaving soon! :) And am pumped to see family, friends and nephews! :) :) And have air conditioning. And be clean and drive in comfortable cars. And go to my cousin's wedding and jet skiing and going to the beach and Village West. And just having comfortable nice everything for 2 months. Drinking coffee with my parents every morning. And spending lots of time with family and friends and playing with nephews. And carpet - I can't wait to sit on the soft (although prolly not so clean) carpet!

But there are also many things I will miss here. I'll miss eating fruit and sitting and talking with friends. I'll miss my friends and students. I'll miss the teachers. I'll miss driving my motorbike. And not having to follow traffic rules. And Indian food. (I'm going to try to cook some this summer.) I'll miss some Lao food and speaking Lao with people. And being told how wonderful my Lao is even when I only say "thank you". Spending long amounts of time just sitting and doing nothing and talking with people. I feel like in the States, we always have to be doing something, we can never just sit and be. And sitting and being is kinda nice sometimes.

When I'm in the States I miss Laos. When I'm in Laos I miss the States. But am so excited to be home soon! And to watch like 5 movies on the airplane! :)

Babies

A couple of weeks ago I went with a friend to a brother's baby's welcome to the world party. (Kinda like a baptism for Buddhists.) My friend was holding the baby. And I asked if I could hold him. I was standing beside her. She uncertainly said, "OK" and was going to gently give the baby to me, but she said, "You should sit down first." Hello! I am 24 and have held plenty of babies! But I listened and sat and got to hold the baby. All of the mothers and grandmothers in the room didn't take their eyes off of me - they were worried that the foreigner doesn't know how to hold a baby and that I'll drop him and break him. Also after holding him for a while, he peed on me. Lao babies don't usually wear diapers. They were thin blankets wrapped around their little butts. They aren't very absorbent.

This morning I went to visit my student and her baby boy who was born two weeks ago. She was holding him for a long time and I wanted to ask to hold him but was a little worried because of last time. She didn't offer so I just thought I wouldn't. Then the other student who I went with asked me, "Can you hold babies?" "What?!" I said. "Of course I can, why do you think I can't?" She went on to explain that not very many people in the States have babies. Which is kinda true, considering a number of my students have 8 brothers and sisters. But I had to explain to them that all people come from babies and there are plenty of babies running around the States. And I have held quite a few of them in my life. After hearing that I am capable of holding babies and that I really like holding babies, she let me hold him for a while. And he was cute as ever! As far as I can tell babies are pretty much the same all over the world, but maybe there's something I don't know about Lao babies.

Soccer

Tonight we went to watch a soccer game - Lao vs Cambodia. It ended in a tie - 3-3. But it was so fun! This week Laos had a tournament with 6 other Asian teams. Watching this one game has made me really excited for the Asian University Games which are in Vientiane in November (I think). It's like a little mini Olympics.

I still can't get over the fact that English is "the universal language used for medicine and government and politics and blah blah blah and it helps to develop a country through blah blah blah." This is some long rambly sentence people always tell me about what a wonderfully universal language English is. I feel like I should know this more than others since I teach English as a Foreign Language. But it is still weird when I hear Lao and Cambodians talking together in English or Lao and Vietnamese speaking together in English. Shouldn't they have some Asian language that they have in common before going all the way to English? Obviously not.

I think this every time I hear two non-native English speakers speaking to each other. Tonight at the game, the announcer said everything in English.

They're next door neighbors for goodness' sake. Shouldn't they know at least a little of their neighbor's language? Do many Americans know Spanish? Some, but not many. Maybe I think they should be more like Europe where everyone knows English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Finnish.

This has gotten kinda rambly, but just imagine a Lao soccer player saying something to a Cambodian on the other team. Tonight one of the Cambodians was kinda angry and a Lao guy was being nice and trying to calm him down. His English must have been impeccable. I can't imagine many Lao people I know who would be able to say something nice and comforting that's appropriate during a soccer game. Maybe he was just speaking in Lao to try and be nice to the guy. But that might be more annoying.

It would also be hard to understand others' accents. My students complain of Indians' and Vietnamese's and others' accents. It does sound kinda funny hearing two people speaking English incorrectly with weird accents. But hey, they understand each other and that's what matters.

So, maybe it is a good idea to have one international universal language.