All posts by Sharon

Wat ‘O’ the Week – Wat Sithan Neua

December 13, 2009 Sharon Leave a comment

I’m cheating a little bit with this Wat ‘O’ the Week post. I actually visited this temple on the same day I went to Wat Phia Wat with Catherine.
We had hoped to visit with a monk she knew here, but unfortunately, we were told that he had gone to the States to study for a year.
Wat Sithan Neua is tucked in a back alley just a block from the Mekong River. The monks were hard at work landscaping the temple grounds.

We found a monk who spoke a little English and asked him about the temple’s “sim” (ordination hall). He said it was about 70 years old, but he refused to indulge our request to unlock it.

The small sim featured muted colors and delicate designs, but the building was in serious disrepair. A peek through the crack in the ornate front door revealed restoration work underway inside.

A flashier new addition to the temple stood nearby with rickety scaffolding rising out of piles of sand and up to bright red and gold paintings. The old sim literally paled in comparison.

Daily Life, Laos

Conjuring Up Christmas One Cookie at a Time

December 13, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

At my bridal shower 17 years ago (!), Tony’s mom gave me a book of recipes for some of his favorite dishes. I nearly collapsed with laughter, barely able to blurt out, “Oh, you don’t really expect me to cook for this man?!”
Actually, I did try to cook for him in those early days, but we both felt a great sense of relief when Tony patiently wiped away my tears of exasperation and gently released my grip from the pot full of unidentifiable burnt crustiness. We knew the kitchen was no place for me. Since then, I’ve whipped up the occasional fried eggs or Campbell’s Soup Infused Casserole, and I do make good use of the George Foreman Grill. Otherwise, the kitchen is Tony’s domain.

However, there is one recipe from Catherene Anne that makes an appearance every Christmas: Peanut Butter Blossoms. I know these are common cookies and probably don’t seem very exciting to most people, but for Tony and me, they fill the house with the smell of Christmas and remind us of his mother, who was truly a brilliant cook.
So there we were – in Laos, recipe in hand, on the hunt for very un-Lao ingredients. Luckily, we live in Vientiane, a capital city with embassies from around the world and markets happy to cater to the expats who work here. At the little mini-mart across the street from our house, we found the easy items: white sugar, butter, flour (there were three kinds, all labeled in Lao, so I just closed my eyes and picked one), milk, eggs, and surprisingly, vanilla. I almost bought a bag of MSG, mistaking it for sugar, and fortunately I noticed the small graphic of a shrimp on a bag of tempura breading before using it as flour. Fishy peanut butter cookies? Hmmm … that might be popular here…
Tony rode the motorbike to another swankier shop to get the rest of the ingredients. There were no Hershey’s Kisses to be found, so he bought a couple bags of Hershey’s Nuggets. In all, one batch of cookies cost us around $50.

Saturday morning, I plugged in the iPod and turned on some holiday tunes while I searched in the kitchen for bowls, spatulas, cookie sheets and the rest of the paraphernalia. (When you don’t visit the kitchen very often, it’s rather frustrating to suddenly take on a big project such as this.) I soon found that Daeng had scrubbed all the Teflon off my cookie sheet, but no worries, I used a lasagna pan instead. Mixing flour into the peanut butter mixture is back-breaking work, and the fact that our kitchen was designed for midgets started to grate on my nerves. The counters come to my upper thighs, so I nearly had to double over to hold the mixing bowl. The Christmas songs also began to irritate me after just a couple minutes. They felt out of place in this tropical weather. I switched to some soothing classical stuff. I needed soothing.

Finally, I had a pan full of dough balls ready to pop in the oven. Except I didn’t know how to turn on the oven. I summoned Tony, who solved the mystery. He discovered our oven has a knob with two settings: Off and Max.

Not one to deviate from a recipe, I pulled out the first pan after exactly 10 minutes and smushed a Nugget in the center of each ball. As I always tell my students, we must make mistakes or we’ll never learn. I learned that 10 minutes wasn’t long enough, and a whole Nugget is a whole lotta chocolate. I left the rest of the cookies in for 15 minutes and used half a Nugget on each one. Perfect! Well, perfect enough.

The cookies met with resounding approval (if not some skepticism over who baked them) at our school’s Christmas party last night, and even the Lao staff enjoyed them. As Tony said this morning after gorging on the few remaining cookies, “I feel like Courtney Love, and Peanut Butter Blossoms are heroin.”
Here is Catherene Anne’s recipe. Enjoy!
Peanut Butter Blossoms
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
3 ½ cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 packages Hershey’s Kisses
Pre-heat oven to 375°F, assuming you are lucky enough to have an oven that tells you the temperature.
1. Mix together sugars, butter and peanut butter.
2. Fold in milk, eggs and vanilla.
3. Add flour, baking soda and salt.
4. Roll into small balls. Roll the balls in sugar.
5. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet (or lasagna pan) for 10 minutes.
6. Unwrap Kisses while cookies are baking.
7. As soon as cookies come out of the oven, put a kiss in the center of each one.
Yum!

Laos, Teaching

There’s a Light at the End of the Semester

December 9, 2009 Sharon 4 Comments

As a teacher of English to kids who don’t speak English, I spend much of my time waving around flashcards, overenunciating vocabulary words, leading youngsters through silly songs with repetitive lyrics and actions, and contorting my face and body in ways that help communicate the mysterious language.

I can’t say the word “book” without automatically putting my hands together as in prayer and then opening them up to read the story. I can’t talk about an abstract concept without automatically reaching for a marker to sketch a clarifying illustration on the board.

On a good day, a student will poke me, point out the window, and say, “Sun!”
“Yes, it’s a beautiful sunny day!” I’ll exclaim. “Is it raining today? Nooooo! Is it snowing? Nooooo! It’s sunny! Good job! Did everyone hear Jenny tell us about the weather? She said it’s sunny! Super!”
On a bad day, I’ll ask, “How’s the weather today?” Some poor kid will answer, “Sun!” and then I might possibly have a total meltdown.
“No! We don’t say the weather is SUN! We say ‘It’s sunny!’ I have told you that a million freakin’ times! ‘Sun’ is a noun. ‘Sunny’ is an adjective. Geez, have I taught you NOTHING?!”

Of course, I don’t really say that stuff out loud. But I do think it. A lot. Especially in that first semester of the school year when progress … seems … so … slow.

I just get impatient. I want them to hurry up and learn English so they can change their social outcast status, participate in class discussions and milk every drop of discovery that school has to offer them. Language researchers have repeatedly found that fluency might elude a student for up to seven years, and it’s totally normal for a child to experience a lengthy “silent period,” during which he or she won’t utter a single English syllable. Every so often in those first few months of the school year, I temporarily reject research and its accompanying logic, and I feel compelled to throw a little mental temper tantrum at the mind-numbing pace of language acquisition.

Right about now, however, as the first semester is winding down, there’s a sudden dearth of those cerebral hissy fits. Instead, I can’t help but notice how terribly brilliant all my students are! My eyes, more often than not, widen in admiration rather than roll in frustration when a child answers a question or shares an idea. Sometimes I even find myself asking a question with my back turned to the group, and students actually ANSWER – even though they can’t see my facial expressions, read my lips or take cues from a gesture. It’s like the English Fairy waved her magic wand, sprinkling comprehension dust over all their little heads.

Today, I was teaching some words for food and drinks to a group of English beginners. When I held up the flashcard for coffee, I said, “I like drinking coffee!” Then I grasped the flashcard in a passionate embrace and said, “I LOVE drinking coffee!” Fidgety giggles ensued.
“Do YOU like drinking coffee?” I asked.
Correct answers included (a) I like drinking coffee, (b) I don’t like drinking coffee, or (c) a simple thumbs up or thumbs down to show understanding. To my surprise, one excruciatingly shy second grader popped out of her seat and said, “I don’t like drinking coffee, but my mother and father like drinking coffee.” She didn’t pronounce any ending sounds, but it didn’t matter. She spoke!
At that moment, I heard angels singing and I couldn’t stop myself from giving her a big weepy hug. (Yes, I know I could get arrested for that in America, but such things are still OK in the holistic international teaching world.)

Another end-of-semester triumph occurred in a first-grade classroom earlier this week. I was providing “in-class support” during Miss Jill’s writing lesson, so I sat with a little Vietnamese boy who didn’t speak a lick of English four months ago. First, he drew a picture filled with aggression, complete with ninja warriors and weapons of mass destruction. Next, he told me what was in the picture: good boy, bad boy, fighting, shooting. He didn’t know the words for “tank” or “bullets” or “strong,” so I explained them and helped to label his picture.

Then he told me the story, and I dictated it back, showing him how to link together the “sight words” he already knew with the labeled picture so he could write his exciting action story.
And he did. Here it is.

While we worked, I felt a pang of guilt for teaching this child the vocabulary of violence. On the other hand, who am I to deprive a little boy from writing about what interests him most? Last year, visiting author Ralph Fletcher told our Shanghai American School staff that boys WILL write violent stories, and teachers must give them some artistic freedom and validation of their ideas. I agree.

Even more than Ralph Fletcher’s approval, though, I found reassurance in the big smile that stretched across my student’s face as he read his own writing out loud over and over again.

In that smile, I also found a little reminder of why I love teaching English as a Second Language: Sure, the school year – especially the first semester – is filled with moments of agonizing self-doubt and sleepless nights as I stress about children spending their days bombarded by meaningless sounds and texts. Lucky for me, I get to collaborate with talented classroom teachers, who create a safe, supportive, language-rich environment for those English learners. And best of all, I get to witness the proud grins when those sounds suddenly make sense, those texts reveal facts and fairy tales, and that alphabet offers the power – real POWER – to share thoughts, experiences and make-believe with other people who also understand this crazy language!

Daily Life, Laos

Restaurant Review … or Not

December 4, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

When I got home from school today, I found Tony lounging on the sofa and our dinner waiting on the table. Daeng had prepared a concoction of stir-fried veggies, cashews and pork with steamed rice. Tony begged me to box it up for tomorrow’s lunch and go out to dinner instead.
Vientiane has a shocking number of restaurants for such a small city, but I’ve found that most online restaurant reviews and guidebooks focus on the same few. I decided it would be fun to venture off the beaten culinary path to check out – and report on – some lesser-known eateries. I was mulling this over in my head when Tony exclaimed, “I don’t want Lao food. I don’t want rice. I don’t want thinly sliced meat in broth. I don’t want vegetables I can’t identify. I want a burger!”
So, for now, the restaurant reviews are on hold. Instead, we’re heading out for burgers at Khop Chai Deu, a popular backpacker restaurant in the heart of town. Its menu features touristy gimmicks, such as insect appetizers. The food is mediocre. But they do have an upstairs deck with twinkly lights, and I am a girl who likes her twinkly lights.

Daily Life, Laos

Wat ‘o’ the Week – Wat Phia Wat

December 2, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

I’ve been stalking one of our second-grade teachers, Catherine, an Aussie who has lived in Laos for several years and shares my love of the local temples. She seems to know everyone in town, and she has some beautiful stories about her experiences here. So I tagged her to be my tour guide today – Laos National Day – on my visit to the Wat ‘o’ the Week. I rode my bike to Catherine’s house, which is next to Wat Si Muang (a temple you may recall from the fabulous That Luang Festival “wax castle procession”). From there, we crossed the street, rode down an alley and popped in to a side gate of Wat Phia Wat, a temple overlooking the Mekong River.
We immediately noticed the presence of many military men, including a few camped out on the steps of the temple’s “sim.”
After poking around the temple grounds a bit, we were greeted by On Aye, a friendly temple resident. He told us that he’s living at Wat Phia Wat while he completes his medical residency in family medicine at a nearby hospital. (Side note: Some of you know about my former career working for the American Academy of Family Physicians, so it was interesting to hear On Aye explain that family medicine is a relatively new specialty in Laos.)
On Aye gave us a primer on some of the temple’s features. We walked to a collection of gilded sculptures, and he explained that they depict Buddha’s life:
First, there’s Buddha’s mother.

Next, we see newborn Buddha taking his first seven steps and lotus flowers blooming in his footsteps.

Here, On Aye tells us about Buddha’s first meditation experience.

Here, Buddha is teaching.

And, finally, people pay their respects to Buddha after his death.

On Aye walked us to a banyan tree, surrounded by more Buddha sculptures. These were similar to the ones Tony and I saw last week at Wat Hai Sok. “You can see everywhere the temple usually have this tree,” On Aye said. Turns out the Buddha statues are “Days of the Week Buddhas.” Many people like to leave special offerings or make a donation to the Buddha that represents the day they were born.
The Monday Buddha says, “Stop, in the name of love!” in his peace-making pose, also known as (seriously, I’m not making this up) his “Pacifying the Relatives” pose.

The reclining Tuesday Buddha symbolizes the moment he entered Nirvana. I loved the little clumps of sticky rice left by worshippers on Buddha’s arm and hand. (If I only had a dollar for every time I woke up to find rice stuck on my arm … or in my hair …)

On Aye and I were both born on a Wednesday. The Wednesday Buddha takes two forms, both related to accepting gifts of food! No wonder I felt an immediate connection with my birthday Buddha. Wat Phia Wat’s Wednesday Buddha is holding an alms bowl under his lovely shawl.

The Thursday Buddha also speaks to me … ommm. He is sitting in a lotus position for meditation, seeking enlightenment.

Friday’s Buddha is standing at the Banyan tree, contemplating how he will explain the suffering in the world to his followers.

Saturday’s Buddha is again sitting in meditation, but this time the Naga King is protecting him.

Sunday’s enlightened Buddha stands still for seven days under the tree to contemplate his achievement of complete knowledge.

As we meandered back to our bikes, On Aye explained that the military was using the temple as a sort of base camp to provide extra protection and help keep the peace until after the Southeast Asian Games – a biennial multi-sport event involving participants from the 11 countries of Southeast Asia, which will take place in Vientiane Dec. 9-18.

When Catherine and I pedaled out the gate, On Aye had joined some of the soldiers for a game of bocce ball.
Just like last week, I am coming up empty-handed in my online search for information about this temple. Darn. So in the absence of information, here are more photos!

Daily Life, Laos

Quiz Night

November 29, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

A Brit, an Australian, a New Zealander, an Iraqi and an American go into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a tacky joke, but really it was the beginning of a fun evening – Quiz Night at Sticky Fingers Restaurant here in Vientiane.
Our multi-national team was one of about 12 in the competition, and we comprised a second-grade teacher and librarian from my school (plus the librarian’s husband, who was really only there for moral support although he gave us a couple answers), a middle-school teacher from another school, and me. We dubbed ourselves the United Matrons.
The emcee and restaurant owner, Marnie, also has a yoga studio where Tony and I occasionally take classes. She provided a multi-media quiz covering history, music, movies, celebrities, ancient wonders, English literature, sports and explorers.
I admit to feeling quite stressed all day in anticipation of this event, and I even made Tony test me with the Trivial Pursuit cards. We only realized later that our 10-year-old game might not have provided the best preparation.
Fortunately, each member of our team brought something useful to the table. We really strutted our stuff with English literature, and not surprisingly, ancient wonders (most of which one or another of us had seen in person).
Our team actually took the lead for a short time, only to crash and burn. The celebrities category required us to match baby pictures to the names of famous people. One indication of how badly we did: We thought Demi Moore’s photo was Tom Hanks.
As for sports … Seriously, does ANYONE know how many players are on an Australian Rules football team? History kicked our asses, as well, which is pretty pathetic for a group of teachers who travel all over the world. We had to put a list of 10 historical events in to chronological order. The only American on the team, I’m embarrassed to say, couldn’t quite pinpoint when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth OR when the Salem witches went on trial. Not a proud moment.
In the end, we made a respectable showing and weren’t horribly humiliated. Next time, we may consider throwing the game. The losing team got a pitcher of cocktails as a consolation prize.

Daily Life, Laos

The Surreal Life

November 29, 2009 Sharon Leave a comment

Here in Vientiane, we get two TV channels that play English-language movies. Star Movies generally shows shoot-‘em-up action flicks or slash-‘em-up horror films. HBO also leans to more violent offerings, but occasionally it shows a classic. On a recent evening, the HBO selection was the original Superman from 1978.
Times like that make me almost numb with the surreal quality of our lives. Here we sat, curled up on comfy sofas we had made in Shanghai and using my giant nutcracker barstool from Germany as an end table. Tony leaned back on the pillows from Turkey, munching on Lao-labeled Oreos and drinking Diet Coke. I sipped red wine from Italy, resting my glass on a tray from the Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, as we listened to Lex Luthor plot to steal kryptonite from Addis Ababa.
The first eight or nine times I saw this movie, I had no idea where Addis Ababa was. Last year, I applied for a job there (International Community School of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia).
A similarly surreal moment happened a few months ago, when we sat in a Chinese dumpling shop here in Vientiane, waiting for our to-go order. It was Halloween weekend, but the restaurant’s TV blared National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. We seemed to have passed through a hole in the time-space continuum.
The fact is these “surreal moments” happen all the time. We see children in the most remote Southeast Asian villages wearing Mickey Mouse T-shirts and Nike shoes. Tuk-tuk drivers crank their radios and jam to Beyoncé. We get take-away “Hawaiian Pizza” from the Swedish Baking House, located about four blocks from the Mekong River. My black-and-red “ethnic-looking” dishes from a tiny shop in China are stamped with the logos for Target and Kohl’s, so I could just as well have bought them in Detroit.
Maybe “surreal” is the new “real” for us.

Daily Life, Laos

Thanksgiving – Lao Style

November 26, 2009 Sharon 4 Comments

It is American Thanksgiving … in Laos … which is to say it’s just like every other day.
I’ve tried in vain to find a restaurant in Vientiane with a special holiday menu shouting out words like “turkey” and “cranberry” and “stuffing.” At school today – oh, did I mention we had to work on Thanksgiving? – there were no fixins’ on our plastic cafeteria trays. The other North Americans and I decided we would join forces for an American-Canadian Thanksgiving next year at Full Moon Café, a local restaurant owned by an American guy and his Lao wife. But we waited too long to collaborate on a 2009 holiday meal, so Tony and I hopped on the motorbike and headed to town for a traditional Italian Thanksgiving at a new restaurant owned by a fifth grader’s dad. After enjoying some lasagna and another pasta that I’d never heard of (bucatini), we popped in to Joma, a café serving … wait for it … PUMPKIN PIE!! Halleluiah!
Here are a few things I am thankful for today:
• I am thankful for a family that laughs at ourselves, scoffs at pretense, revels in the spotlight, holds nothing back, values eccentricity, shares in each other’s celebrations but also in the burden of struggles and regrets, and doesn’t get worked up about a phone bill.
• I am thankful for a husband who once scored as my polar opposite in every category on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test but who has stayed the course for nearly 20 years, keeping me grounded and safe when I’m inclined to whirl out of control.
• I am thankful for the title of Aunt Sharon, two snuggly little boys, and the squeaky giggly voice that yells, “Sherrrrryyyy!” when I ask, “Who do you love?”
• I am thankful for the beautiful, strong, supportive, hilarious women in my life. Most of you are way too far away geographically, but I feel so lucky to know you. How would I get by without my BFFs?
• I am thankful for the temples, mosques, cathedrals, monasteries, castles, palaces, fortresses, bridges, cities, villages, mountains, beaches, coral reefs, rivers, jungles, ancient ruins, natural wonders, historical settings, man-made phenomena, museums, galleries, handicraft workshops, art studios, exotic animals, unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, myriad modes of transportation, and the gracious, kind, generous people we’ve encountered in our overseas adventures.
• I am thankful for incredible and fascinating friends around the world, whom we rarely see but truly treasure. The international teaching circuit is a tossed salad of nationalities, and although we may flit in and out of each other’s lives, we know people (from casual acquaintances to dear lifelong friends) in 24 states and 19 countries.
• I am thankful for Skype, Vonage, Yahoo, Facebook, WordPress and every other avenue of interconnectedness that keeps everyone close.
• I am thankful for a career that zings between painfully frustrating and deeply rewarding but offers up something new, without fail, every single day and allows me to give the gift of communication to little people from every corner of the globe.
• I am thankful for the Asian mini-bananas that are golden in color and so much sweeter than any banana that has ever immigrated to America. And if I’m going to get sappy about Southeast Asian fruit, then I have to express my deepest gratitude for Daeng, the young lady who makes sure my fridge is stocked every day with peeled, cut up fresh watermelon, papaya, pineapple, mango, apples, or whatever is in season. I love her.
• I am thankful for the availability of red wine here in Laos, and I can’t help but notice that the more I sip, the more I’m thankful for! How beautiful is that?
• I am thankful for a roof over my head and a big comfy bed … and that’s just too enticing to resist. So off I go.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Daily Life, Laos

Wat ‘o’ the Week: Wat Hai Sok

November 22, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

Welcome to The Guide Hog’s new “Wat ‘o’ the Week” spotlight on Buddhist temples in Vientiane! I’ll try to visit a different temple each week with the goal of finding a unique angle or tidbit of information.
All wats comprise a “sim,” the actual temple building where people pray and make offerings, as well as a housing area for the monks, various sculptures, and ornate monuments with the cremated remains of temple-goers. Although visitors are free to walk around the temple grounds, the sim at most wats stays locked unless monks are using it for a ceremony.
Today Tony and I poked around Wat Hai Sok, a small easily overlooked wat that sits in the shadow of a bigger, more important temple. Here’s a view from the street.

The humble entrance was partially obscured by thick bundles of electrical wires that run the length of the road.

I couldn’t find any substantial information online about Wat Hai Sok. Every website lists the same paragraph:

Wat Hai Sok’s soaring five-tiered roof, topped with elegant golden spires, can be seen all the way from Thanon Setthathirat. It is worth stepping just off the main road to enjoy the atmosphere of this neighborhood temple. The windows and facade are beautifully carved in wood. Gilded multi-headed nagas (mythological snakes) flank the steps. There are usually children playing football in the shaded courtyard. Food sellers serve customers from the surrounding wooden houses, sitting at stalls beside the numerous funeral monuments.

There were, in fact, children playing in the sand next to a small bell tower. As we walked around the sim, we met two more youngsters tussling with a couple puppies. They eagerly showed us their dogs and happily posed for a couple pictures.

The sweet little boy was a tiny bit rough with his puppy.

The temple’s sim had ornate windows on all sides.

I always love the guardian nagas.

Another interesting attraction was a tree surrounded by golden Buddhas in various poses.

Other than the kids and the puppies, the wat was deserted and peaceful. No tourists. No monks. Pretty mellow.

Daily Life, Laos

Sunday Morning

November 22, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

There’s something about early morning on a crisp cool Sunday.
The sun shines in a cloudless sky; it’s 66 degrees. Sitting outside in the shade, eating fresh mangoes with yogurt and sipping thick dark coffee, I have to zip up my hoodie against the breeze that tosses dried palm fronds around my yard. Dark blue butterflies the size of my hand land on the white railing of our front porch, and birds chatter in the trees.
Construction on the house next door has momentarily ceased. The tuk-tuk drivers who park under a big shade tree just on the other side of my front gate have inexplicably turned off their music. There’s a dearth of noisy motorbikes.
As I turn the last page of a fun read (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith with a little help from Jane Austen), I take a deep breath of the fresh air and pull my chair into the sun. Days like this, it really doesn’t matter where you are on the planet; it’s just good.

Adventures in Teaching and Travel