Outside our room we witnessed an insect war. A stealthy praying mantis had his eye on a bumbling cicada twice his heft in weight. Slowly the mantis worked his way across the 20” gap between them, moving one of its 6 legs at a time, testing the woven bamboo surface for a gap to secure its footing. After several minutes it was 3 inches away. We watched it strike at the cicada, but the cicada slipped its grasp and flew about as though blind – bumping into the ceiling, walls and the lamp’s two guardian geckos in a buzzing frenzy. The geckos retreated to the shadows, but the mantis waited and the cicada landed again near the light. Again the mantis worked its way slowly across the ceiling to the new battle ground. By now 4 of us were watching the action from below. Finally the mantis lunged and grabbed the cicada. They fell to the floor and for a second or two it looked as though the mantis had a supper snack, but the cicada buzzed free and bumped again into everything on its way back to the light. I retired, for the night as the mantis was climbing its way back up the wall towards the arena.
I am volunteering ~5 times a week at Bryan and Lyla’s house were 20 – 30 children descend every afternoon between 4 and 6 p.m. Bryan and Lyla are an American couple who have lived in worked in Lao since 2001 predominately with pediatric medical training and with youth. I am missing all my resources that I had in Seattle. I bought 40 small composition books for students to be able to take notes in, and am working to balance my time between writing, reading and speaking. O-ba-ma, ba-na-na, ma-ma, so-da, no, so, ha-ha, he-he, cat, bat, fat, rat, hat, sat… are some of the words kids are starting to be able to decode on their own. Of course the trouble with English is all the exceptions, but for now - to (toe) and do (dough) rhyme with no and so - as I try to get them to recognize the predominant patterns. Some of the best English speakers are 4 girls who work in a shop selling textiles to tourists. Yvette bought a skirt from them on our first day, and I had taken one of their pictures at the time. 
Our 14th anniversary was on the 20th, and we have now settled into a guesthouse for the duration of our time in this village. We have set up a cooking area in the communal space (but as we have the run of the place it is really our space). We bought a small rice cooker, an electric wok, a mortar and pestle, a large knife and a cutting board. For our anniversary we cooked Thai but had to substitute peanuts for cashews as we couldn’t find those anywhere. We also got a movie from our personal Blockbuster – YungXi – a Chinese graduate student who we almost ended up renting part of her house from. We watched The Reader which intermittently said “Property of the Weinstein company – do not copy” so we didn’t make a copy of it. The Chinese copies of DVD’s are much higher quality than the Thai or Lao ones. Those ones none of the submenus work (although the ones I saw in Thailand did fit 4 movies onto one DVD). The market here is sizeable, but filled with so much of the same junk that is a bit futile to keep moving from shop to shop. We bought a kilo of salt because we couldn’t find any small sizes, no one had anything except palm oil, no sesame seeds – not in season, but we can ask a truck to bring them from China, no nuts except peanuts. Occasionally we find something unique: the one store with breadboards and one store that has sponges with green scrubbers…
No comments:
Post a Comment