Jeeps and Crickets

Once I was back from LuangPrabang, President Khampee was at the airport waiting for me. We went back to the Neilson’s house. I called Houmphanh who is the headmaster of the Compassion English Academy, and we set up a time for later in the evening that he would come pick me up to show me the school. Things just continued to fall into place. The CEA is a little far away from where I’m staying, so he let me borrow one of their motorcycles to get around for the month that I’m here. The Church English classes are from 5-7 on Wednesday to Friday, and the CEA has classes from 5-6:30 and 7-8:30 every day. So, it works out that I’ll be teaching at the CEA during the second session from 7-8:30 so that I’ll still be able to help at the Church English classes too.

On Friday, the day after getting the motorcycle from Houmphanh, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon making sure I knew how to get to the school by myself. It took a little longer because I couldn’t find the gas station close by the house, and I ran out of gas after taking a wrong turn. Good thing the motorcycle is pretty light. So, I pushed it back to a gas station, and rode just a little further to the school.

In the evening, I helped with the church English classes from 5-6:30, and then I found my way back to the CEA to be greeted by a bunch of cows hanging out by the entrance. I made it in plenty of time for the 7:00 class, which ended up being a speaking test that Houmphanh had me proctor.

Saturday was a pretty big adventure. I woke up and the power was out. The family was packing up the car to go out to the farm just outside the city, and invited me along. I had nothing else to do all day, so I jumped on the opportunity. When we got there, by the time I was done admiring the original 1970’s army jeep in the driveway I noticed that the boys were all digging holes and pouring water into them. I assumed they were trying to get rid of gophers or something like that, but it turned out that they were actually little cricket-looking bugs. They were keeping them all in a bottle, so I asked what they were doing it for. Of course they replied: “So we can cook them and eat them.” So for dinner, we had these bugs, along with another variety of more cockroach-looking ones and chicken hearts.

On Sunday, The power went out again around 8:00 am, so church only had Sacrament meeting and Sunday school. Afterward, I went with 2 of the members and one investigator around to 2 of the big landmarks in Vientiane: Patuxay and That Luang.

While we were standing outside looking up at That Luang, I heard a very thick british accent ask: “Are you a Mormon?” It took me a minute to figure out where it was coming from, but eventually I saw who asked and we had a lengthy conversation about white shirts and ties (I didn’t have time to change after church… so he recognized the church garb), about things he thought he knew about the church, and also some general world history. He wasn’t very interested when we told him about mormon.org.  All of this was with his great accent, which my Lao friends (and also me) had a hard time understanding.

Monday and Tuesday were both great, I’m starting to get into the swing of riding to the CEA every day, and the English classes at church are going great. Also, it rains a lot this time of year.

Stay tuned for the Birthday post coming soon!