It’s taken me so long to recount the stories of my winter break travels that two whole months have passed here in Vientiane, in which:
-My housemate and I challenged ourselves to spend only $20 each on food for one week (ate lots of noodles and rice, and discovered how cheap is it to make all vegetable dishes like curry and ratatouille here).
-I watched and photographed part of the Vientiane 10’s rugby tournament. (Go Lao Rugby!)
-A number of fellow PiA visitors passed through Vientiane, including my college friend Brian (PiA in South Korea), who participated in a second place-winning trivia night fundraiser (one of two second place trivia finishes in the last few months).
Driving around Vientiane: a look over my shoulder. (Photos by Brian)
-I got into the routine of my new classes. The most different class I’m teaching this term is Pre-ADS (which stands for Australia Development Scholarship), my daytime class. The students are a group of government employees who have six months off of work in order to study intensively at Vientiane College, in hopes of improving their English enough to get a scholarship for graduate work in Australia. I’m teaching “Learning Strategies” (basically study skills like time management, note-taking, and organisation) to this group. It’s been fun to teach a course that’s non-primarily language based, and also fun to teach this group, who are incredibly earnest and eager to study. Although they are at a lower level linguistically than some of my other classes, they are basically always attentive and keen to try whatever I throw at them next. Also, because I’m not teaching from a text, I have a lot of flexibility with this class, and this week I co-taught a “stress management” session for them, which included yoga, breathing and mindfulness exercises, and much stifled hilarity.
-I went on a four day motorcycle trip from Vientiane to Luang Prabang during the midterm holiday. Photos and stories coming soon.
-More photos from Hanoi can be seen here.
Ch-ch-changes: a soon-to-be-paved road next to the river in Vientiane.