I finally tried the food at Sonphao Lao-Japanese restaurant this afternoon. Treated myself to a nice tonkatsu set! These days lunch is the best meal of the day where i can indulge a little in nicer food.. The other volunteers don't seem keen to spend more than 3 or 4 US dollars a meal, so we've mainly been having dinner at places where the locals go. I have decided that while i don't mind a more 'local' experience; it's quite nice to treat yourself to better food in a foreign land too :)

The highlight of lunch was being able to chat with the lady owner - in a mix of Japanese and English.. I actually asked her if she had watched the Hotaru series.. But she seemed pretty clueless after having been living outside Japan the past few years.. Maybe I will go back again to show her heh..

The funniest sentence made by a monk (in his late teens) today was.. "I want to be beside you forever" (he was trying to make a sentence with 'beside') I was amused cos half the monks seem pretty interested in making these silly love-themed sentences... But I guess it's normal to think abt these things at their age... They wld prob be extra attentive if their Lao teacher teaches a "how to write love letters" class haha.. But oh well that is definitely not going to happen ;P

(photos of set lunch and caramel pudding :P)

I was correcting a student's sentence in class this evening and the contents of his little paragraph made me feel bad for him; and for children in his village.. Apparently there is only a primary school in his village- and the closest secondary sch is 10km away.. So children who wanted to go to sec sch had to either stay with relatives or in dorms...

We're so fortunate in SG - it makes me upset to learn of the still patchy access to education opportunities here, but it's so hard for me to do anything to change things..

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 :) )