Cultural immersion ;)

Lao women seem to be extremely good with handicrafts (some men too actually haha) - earlier in week I noticed our guesthouse cleaner Loth knitting a bunch of things and asked her to teach me.. after some initial difficulty i managed to learn how to knit the stitches required for a simple scarf... But apparently the row I did was substandard so Loth undid my knit work (to my horror) and said she wld redo it for me to continue.. Within one afternoon I ended up with a small nicely knitted portion of a pink scarf to work on :)

When my fellow volunteer and I returned from the night market with Lao skirts we got, Loth also had advice to share.. Apparently the position of the hook on my skirt was wrong- it was not placed in a position where the seams on the back wld nicely accentuate my bottom or smthg... And so Loth offered to change the position of the hook for me today.. Very well... I clearly needed to learn how to wear my Lao skirt properly ;)

We also went for an ethnic fashion show cum hip hop performance at a restaurant closeby- and were treated to a pretty interesting showcase of Lao ethnic costumes (modelled by shy students).. The hip hop performance that followed was quite surprising - the Lao teenager boys were really good at it; appeared quite confident and hip; and many struck up various challenging stunts/ poses.. This was something I didn't quite expect of Laos youngsters cos the ones I know are all kind of shy (the monks). I suppose when there are no strict behavioural rules to adhere to, teenagers will naturally behave like normal teenagers.. want to appear cool etc ;)

My chill Saturday ended with a crepe dessert at a roadside restaurant which cost me only 7000 kip (abt 1 plus sing dollar) - will likely do nothing v much tdy too before starting again to prepare lesson plans for the coming week tonight :P

(attaching some photos taken on the iPhone - the night ones aren't v clear but u get the idea :) )