Filed under: Updates
So on the 27th, I board a little airplane set for summer in Portugal and Spain. My senses are on overload! Am also booked into two great festivals – The Super Bock Super Rock Festival in Lisbon www.superbock.pt and the Summercase Festival in Barcelona www.summercase.com … Flaming Lips, The Editors, Clap your Hands say Yeah, Magic Numbers, Placebo, Air, Maximo Park, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Metallica … to name a few! Dreaming of 3 weeks saturation of music, beaches, surf and olives. Still tickets available if you want to join!
The following images are what it is all going to be about …
And this my friends is how it’s done … Actually I picked up a few very helpful pointers from this poster as well!!
Originally uploaded by katiedecarteret.
and so the wet season has started in full force … suddenly the joys of afternoon sunset motorbikes rides through the hills have lost some of their sparkle!
I have to admit, the last few weeks have been my most challenging so far … the combination of weather, no water (DESPITE excess rain!!) and work logistics have driven me close to the edge … which makes every day a continual run of unexpected happenings … but this also keeps life interesting and strangely satisfying. The earthquake last week has been the buzz of town the last few days as well! Have visited a number of different schools out in the provinces over the last few weeks taking books and running workshops with the teachers there. This is how they normally operate
(1) We (myself and another Laos staff member) take a tuk tuk (small passenger type truck thing) up a dusty road to a village (generally between 3 – 6 hrs).
(2) We turn up at the school and generally the school director hasn’t seen or has lost the letter from the District Education office explaining our visit.
(3) We then talk for about an hour about the logistics of how they are going to arrange the workshop as they hadn’t organised anything.
(4) I then suggest that perhaps we could start conversing with the teachers and arranging a room to meet in.
(5) We drink some water and tea and discuss my suggestion and then someone decides to go and arrange the teachers.
(6) The teachers give the students some work and then meet in one of the classroom for the workshop.
(7) I then attempt to speak in broken Laos with some broken translation occurring and run some workshops on active learning type stuff, how to work with the bottom and upper end students etc …
(8) Because we only started at about 10.00 we only have about and 1 1/2 before everyone wants to break for lunch.
(9) We (myself the Directors and the other male teachers) then go for noodle soup – me and the all important men again.
(10) Summary of conversation topics – where my counterpart can go to find “phou bao” (young girls for a quick fling) that night; why I don’t eat meat; an explanation from me on when in a girl’s cycle they can become pregnant; why I don’t want to get drunk in the middle of the working day; why we can’t keep drinking all afternoon because I want to continue the workshops with the T’s.
(11) Then in the afternoon my brain is ready to explode from attempting to talk Lao all day and from the above conversations, so I go for a run and find some delightful little river spot to sit in the rocks and soak in the scenery, the coolness of the water and the bizarreness of the day that has been … and feel invigorated again!
(12) I then meet my fellow worker for dinner … whatever is on offer that day … normally sticky rice and some form of meat and then some sort of green vegetable.
(13) The electricity in the villages is normally only there from about 7 – 9 so I then head back to the g house room so can find my way and get away from the mossie’s.
(14) And this happens two/three days in a row and then we head to Luang Nam Tha which feels like a thriving metropolis after where we have just been!
(15) And then I head to the market and my favourite fruit ladies want to know where I have been and give me some mangoes and the papaya salad lady wants to know why I haven’t been eating with her and I see a number of other lovely friends down the main street inviting me for dinner, beer etc etc because they haven’t seen me for a few days. Amazing really …
Have seen some stunning places and always meet beautiful people … I can’t help but feel a little helpless sometimes with what I am doing in that the people are so conditioned with their thinking and activities that I wonder if any of the work we have done really will actually make all that much of a long term difference … or sometimes I wonder if they actually even want the difference and maybe we/I are trying to open doors that are not meant to be opened?????
Some village photos below for you …
