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the 12 days of Christmas

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

inspired by Rob…
Luang Prabang, Laos

Yep, we’ve been writing more Christmas songs!
You’ve got to promise to SING this one out loud – or we won’t publish it, OK!

On the twelfth day of market-mas
My true love sent to me….
12 sticky rice crackers
11 roosters crowing
10 bar-be-cued bats
9 sticky rice “patties”
8 bags of Mekong weed
7 caged sparrows
6 sticky rice bundles
5 fresh chilies
4 filled baguettes
3 dead ducks
2 pineapples
and some sticky rice in a bamboo basket

Which got us to thinking…..eighteen days in Luang Prabang meant…..

  • * 6 days no internet
  • * 2 days no electricity (6am to 6pm)
  • * every day intermittent water (if someone else in the neighbourhood starts a tap, ours refuses to run…and tomorrow there will be NO water at all!!!!)
  • * yesterday flickering lights
  • * not one HOT shower for Mama (some of the others managed to get a short hot shower, but not me)
  • * no comfortable chairs (just the floor, small wooden stools or concrete benches)
  • * too many days of snorting neighbours *hoick*
  • * 36 meals of sticky rice
  • * 17 days of fevers and/or V&D for someone (everyone except Mama was stricken)
  • * 16 nights of uninvited “guests” peeking into rooms, standing to chat
  • * uncountable: the number of times we heard, “One family, you my sister”

  • * two dishes politely declined: Mekong River weed (we stirred that one round the dish to make it look eaten) and one platter of pig’s brain, liver, stomach and intestines (a bit of Lao language got everyone laughing and us out of eating. In case we ever need to use that sentence again, here ’tis: Koy bo kin! Plus we added, “Today two families. One family eat, one family no eat.” Nothing like laughter to avoid an issue!)

  • * eaten: live maggot, grasshoppers, dried Mekong river weed, buffalo, baguettes, BBQed chicken and pork, divine chicken curry, fresh pineapples, papaya, oranges, bananas and coconuts (see, it’s not all bad!!)
  • * 2 pair of socks completed (which means we’ve been relaxing)
  • * 2 school visits (yes our children have now been to school!)
  • * 2 bicycles for the kids to ride
  • * about a dozen new playmates
  • * no rain (no not a drop, you Kiwis! Bet you can’t even imagine what that’s like!)
  • * temperature dropped from mid-30s to 12*C in the mornings…..brrrrrrr
  • * 5 motorbike rides (including one exhaust burn – it’s healing)
  • * 700,000 kip limit on ATM withdrawals
  • * 1 fashion show, 1 music festival

Posted in food, housing, money, postcard: Laos, recreation | No Comments »

weekends

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

By Da Mama
Luang Prabang, Laos

Weekends at home are a time for the children to race up and down the right-of-way with all the neighbourhood children, who don’t need to go to school.
Weekends in Laos, are no different, apart from the space being smaller and the fact that the children don’t share a common language. Doesn’t stop them chattering to each other nonstop though!

ER2 was never going to smile for that photo – adults pokeand prod and cuddle her all day long, and when they give her a break, this new special friend is there following the big-person example! But really, they do have fun together.

Sundays for us generally mean meeting with others in a building we call a church, (or meeting them at the beach <wink>)

I’ve been thinking.

We haven’t “been to church” the whole time we’ve been away – but that doesn’t mean we haven’t sat with people and talked of things that matter to us, it doesn’t mean we haven’t listened to sermons (our six year old requested to re-listen to Ravi Zacharias’s message on Jonah as soon as we had finished listening as a family!), it doesn’t mean we left our faith at home.
Planning on spending three weeks in Luang Prabang, we decided to try to hunt down a church though. Wats there are a-plenty, but not one church that we can find. 
What if there were a church here?  I’m wondering how people who man a stall from early morning to late at night seven days a week would benefit from it? The ladies who sell us filled rolls are one example. They are set up at the market before 8am, late in the afternoon they move over to the other side of the street, from which they serve night market customers until after 10pm. I actually wonder when they do their washing and cook their sticky rice! What do they do when their baby frets and the three year old can’t do one more hour on the side of the road? What would Jesus mean for them? What would “meeting together with other believers” look like? Truth be told, they already spend all day in community – and I suspect they *live* community. SOMEONE picks up their older children from school and feeds them and puts them to bed. SOMEONE sometimes takes the smaller ones somewhere before the night market session. And they are friendly – so friendly. They congratulate every new Lao word I speak, they wave out if we are walking by, they almost feel like friends! How much of the external trappings we call church would have any significance for them? Is some of it either unnecessary or at least optional? What could church look like in this culture? (church being defined somewhat loosely as “the family of believers”)

These are the things I think about as I tend the fire and watch the children play.

Posted in children, God, postcard: Laos, recreation, tradition | 3 Comments »

walk where the road takes you

Friday, December 5th, 2008
text straight from Rach's journal, illustration from Jboy12's Luang Prabang, Laos

 

The children are all sitting on a huge mound of dirt in the shade of a tree, journals open in their laps, pencils sketching ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in craft, housing, postcard: Laos, recreation, tradition | 3 Comments »

JINGLE BELLS

Monday, December 1st, 2008
By Rachael Luang Prabang, Laos

 

* jingle jingle * jingle jingle * The silver coins decorating skirts, shirts and head-dresses clink together with every step, announcing the arrival of striking black-and-bright-rainbow-pattern-attired Hmong people. Wherever they walk, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in craft, dress, intergenerationalism, postcard: Laos, recreation, tradition | 1 Comment »

backtrack

Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos while internet access has been intermittent (that's a generous term for "non-existent for three days") in Luang Prabang, when we have had it, it's been FAST, so we've uploaded our pictures from the hilltribe trek we did ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, dress, postcard: Laos, postcard: Thailand, recreation, transport | No Comments »

What’s in ‘da Hood?

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

by Rob Luang Prabang, Laos 

Wats is around us? (Rach edits: I'm not sure if that's supposed to be another one of the far-too-many-wat-jokes or if it was just a typo!!!!!) What does life look like in a 1km ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, craft, food, God, postcard: Laos, recreation, tradition | 1 Comment »

same same summer

Saturday, November 29th, 2008
prompted by Jgirl14's contemplations Luang Prabang, Laos The suddenly nippy mornings caught us by surprise and we found ourselves wondering if summer was nearly over. What it has lacked in length (it's only been seven weeks), it has made up for ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, learning, postcard: Laos, recreation, tradition | 1 Comment »

trekking: an adult’s perspective

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
taken from Rachael's journal with Rob commenting in italics

trek 1st night

It was surreal to be standing there slightly above most of the Karen village looking down at the smoke curling ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, craft, dress, food, health, intergenerationalism, learning, parenting, postcard: Thailand, recreation, toilet, tradition, transport | 5 Comments »

trekking: through the eyes of children

Monday, November 17th, 2008

 

If you were to read the children's journals, you would get the impression we did lots of eating. And that would not be altogether wrong, but neither would it be the complete picture. Immediately at ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, postcard: Thailand, recreation | 3 Comments »

poetry parade

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Jboy12 copies from his journal....(including the poem he penned).....

Tonight I will remember....always!
If you weren't there (and if you're reading this you weren't), I will help you to be there in your imagination.
You are watching a parade with people ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in dress, postcard: Thailand, recreation, tradition | 3 Comments »

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