I have my exit date established, with a little chaos and much help from my mother in America. On June 13th I will leave these shores and arrive two hours later in LAX. This sounds like a great trip when worded like that but in actuality it is a 17 hour and 5 minute flight from Bangkok to LAX. I am then lucky enough to get to spend a night in LA because no flights would dare flight the 1and a half to Phoenix any later than 9, I arrive at 9:30. Thus giving me the time I was really hoping for to be alone with my thoughts for one more night. Kidding I would much rather be at home in my own bed with my family. All of these thoughts of going back to the US has got me thinking about the future and what I will actually do with my LIFE (cue the ominous echo life life life). This stay so far has truly opened my eyes to the wonderful culture and people of Laos not to mention the great work that CLI is doing. They are changing the lives of so many with relatively little on the NGO scene. The perpetual uphill battle is something to be admired but can also take many years off ones life. The support of readers like you help make it all possible. I am just not sure if I could be able to sustain the constant fight for life/livelihood of so many who depend on it with so many forces fighting to slow things down. All I know is that my second tour of duty will be an interesting one. I have tried to prepare things to keep myself up with my Lao knowledge. I have made some flash cards and even tried to start learning how to write. I will give you all the first lesson on how to write Lao/Thai. First you will need a pen, a lined piece of paper, and a handkerchief. Next roll the handkerchief until it is two inches wide. Next tie the handkerchief around your head slightly above your eyes. Pick up the pen and the piece of paper. Place the pen at the beginning of one of the lines, with your non writing hand pull the handkerchief over your eyes. Start writing but if you make a single character that looks latin in origin start again...you failed. Open your eyes and look at what you have written. There is a possibility that you are one of the thousand monkeys, on a thousand typewriters, writing for a thousand years, who wrote the Lao Constitution. All kidding aside I decided to start this needlessly difficult venture by walking to one of the many college students living in dorms around the house and ask for help. I started slowly with a book of all the consonants. HAHA. Little did I know that they all sound the same. Follow this link for a really good picture of the letters: http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/LaoLanguage/LaoAlphabet/lao_consonants_poster.htm. Then come the vowels which surround the consonants. Let me give you an example the vowels are in green:
The first is a short vowel the second is long one.
Logical right.With this information in hand I had my teachers write down a few important words and key phrases. This went well but the one who did the writing for me said that this was a more formal way. The next day I went to another group of will tortures and took more phrases. They were very kind while mocking my inability to read or pronounce what they were writing. I then compared some words between the previous days writings and the more current version. I established that its all a lie. They make it up at they go and I am pretty sure no one in the country can read anything written by anyone else. The words written by the two different people looked similar but not enough so that you would perfectly distinguish it was the same word. Now in a state of disbelief I kept comparing words and arriving at similar responses. I have now resigned myself that I better move here permanently if I learn how to read and write because that much brain space being taken up cannot help many other aspects of my life.
Time is counting down and I already cant wait for my second tour. Thanks for the support and I will keep the updates coming from my remaining weeks in LP.
