The Planning Stages

Since I have arrived in Laos my life style has been drastically different from that in the states.  People here go to bed early for me its has been around 8:30 or 9pm each night then up early it has been around 7:30.  Next Tom and I will walk through the street market which they set up every morning it seems to our breakfast spot.  This is quite the change from life in the states where I rarely saw the early side of 10 am.  Today was unique in that we had our first CLI Run to the Games team meeting.  The project is made up of Tom, Bob and myself on the farang side of things and some CLI workers.  Farang is what the Lao call foreigners.  We had our first meeting where we discussed the numbers of students and schools we would be dealing with.  The program is starting to take shape.  Starting on Monday we will go to the local stadium and start doing workouts there to start to garner some attention from the locals.  Monday also begins our serious Lao language learning session.  Starting out we will focus our attention on a few schools primarily Nam Bak and Nam Thoum both schools are north of Luang Prabang but still in LP province.  The idea is that we will run a race of maybe 1500m and then give out awards and create teams out of the top finishers. These top finishers will represent their school in a race against the other ones. Currently these schools only have a few organized sports soccer and sometimes basketball.  During one contest the girls championship game's final score was 4-2, the boys was an offensive slug-fest with the final being 12-10.  After have schools compete against each other certain students will be selected and given training programs for the summer and then during the fall with be driven down to LP and go through running camps with us.  The specifics are still in the works but we are making a lot of progress and now it is up to the local school directors and politicians to see this as advantageous to support us.  I will be sure to do my best with the updates and the pictures.  I will also try to respond to any comments in a timely manner.  Remember you are always welcome to email me with questions or funny stories of what I am missing in the states.
On another note we had a beautiful sunset tonight.

Looking at the street market.