This is a chicken.
Good morning or
evening (your preference!)
Much to update here!
In this dusty, sleep corner of the earth, the temperature is rising
and the mekong is steadily disappearing into acres of sandy beach and
frazzled looking plants. I even played frisbee on this beach!
We had an event at
our school last week called “Family Fun Day.” Apparently this is
another event where our children turn into k-pop stars and sing
Frozen and New Direction and other stuff i've never heard of and
shake their hips at our head of school. Also notable were some of
our 'sponsors' at the event, including the company “Slim Concept”,
who had a booth at our event with the very nice touch of a scale for
10 year old girls to see how fat they are and some rather toxic
looking products that would indeed cause you to lose weight since
you'd die and dying is technically one way to lose weight and also a
skin-whitening booth. I'm definitely not in Kansas or anywhere
remotely near. Like most events my school puts on, this one looked
like it cost roughly 7 million dollars. Also, with all the weirdly
dressed trendy adults watching children entertain them via
competitive performances, it kinda reminded us of the Hunger Games.
The last few weeks, us upper primary teacher had spent a lot of time
teaching the 4-6 graders how to perform a sign language song called
“See me Beautiful.” It was listed on the official program as
“Interpretive Dance.”
The interpretive dance:
Another exciting
occurrence was seeing two neighborhood dogs stuck together after an
intimate (although rather public) moment. Erica and I being mature
fourth grade teachers promptly stopped everything, dropped our bags
outside of our gate, and started gaping and taking photographs. An
elderly Lao man who is always situated near our house perhaps as a
general observer of life walked over and helpfully pantomimed with a
circle and a finger what had happened. Glorious! I'm not surprised
about this as I think either all of the female dogs in Vientiane are
in synchronized heat or all canines have started a fight club
recently... but this occasion has led to a great relationship with
this lao man who now gesticulates lewdly to us every time we see him
while he points to dogs and laughs while I reply, “yes, we like so
much” in broken Lao (which I suppose means that Erica and I like
when dogs get stuck together).
I went to a farm earlier this week with a bunch of Lao kids who have apparently never seen a
shovel or a chicken before. Once again, I feel like Laura Ingalls
Wilder. I have shared intimate quarters with chickens in my past life! I know how to dig and plant things! (sort of). Newtern, the smartest kid in fourth grade who literally
reads Jane Austen and Dosteovesky in his free time, affected a
victorian english attitude and huffed about all the dirt. I mean, I
get it. Harry helpfully told me that he was a herbivore as he ate a
meat patty and fish for lunch. THe future president interacted with hay for the first time and came away pleased. It was a good day.
I'm really proud!
The other day, I was driving home on Brian from hanging out with Otto
and thinking about how Otto was spending his day working on his novel
and I was spending my day probably ogling goats and I realized that
there's literally nothing stopping me from doing something insane
like...writing a song!!! And so, as I glided majestically down the
boulevard on my truly surprising and new mode of transport, I started
composing a song in my head using Brian as motivation, starting with
this line, “I used to hate motorcycles. And the sort of people who
ride them.” Promising start. I even had some phantom chord
progressions echoing around in my skull! When I reached home, I ran
upstairs, got out my uke and for the next half hour entered what I
shall now refer to as my “Mozart moment” as I somehow plucked out
the beginning of a song. I was so excited to tell Erica and when she
got home she promptly finished writing the second half of the song.
The day happened to be Valentine's Day, by the way, so by the end of
our efforts we both realized that what had happened exactly was that
we wrote each other a love song on valentine's day.
Feast thine eyes on
the fruit of our labour...by going on facebook!!! I don't know how to link it here.
What's really cool
is that two goofballs like Erica and I can write songs! And not bad
songs either! I can't guarantee it's not plagiarized as who knows
what Metallica song was knocking around in my head at the moment to
give me inspiration but it felt pretty genuine at least. If we can
write a song, we can do anything. Anything!-including survive the
bizarre social climate of Vientiane—which is quite an
accomplishment indeed!
We have truly
accomplished so much these past few months. Besides writing a song,
we have also upped our domestic routine to 3 (3!!) dinners that we
can make together. The first, a flavorful pasta with tomato sauce,
then indian lentils, and finally bamboo soup. And, those fresh
ingredients don't just appear in our kitchen, you know. We go to buy
them ourselves. And I sometimes speak Lao to ask for bananas. So
there. Take that, Lao. We now know how to inhabit you more
comfortably than before. And our bamboo soup is next-level. Erica
and I are so finely routined that a mid-week proposal to hang out,
really throws us for a loop.
And speaking of loopy, tonight we leave on an all-nighter bus down to southern Lao to see Pakse, the Bolaven plateau, and 1,000 islands with pink dolphins! The last time we took an all-night bus, it broke down for 12 hours on a mountainside and we had to forage for bananas and Erica had to share a bed with a thai lady boy. Here's to a better ride!
Love and loopiness,
Ilse
Comments
Post a Comment