Feeling Thankful

As many of the other Americans are on the go this Thanksgiving, there will be no giant feast like last year.  I’ll have to make do with my turkey sandwich at falang-favorite Joma Bakery.

It must be fall now because this is on the menu.

Though I am not celebrating by nodding off to sleep in a tryptophan-induced food coma tonight, I still have so many things to be thankful for this year, including:

Friends and family around the world.

Meeting up with friends in all corners of the world (India, Dec. '10).

A job I love.

YLPF1 celebrating Halloween (October '11).

Adventures.

Gliding through the villages of Inle Lake (Burma, April '11).

…and much more.  Still, I’m thinking a bit wistfully this evening about football (the American kind!), Black Friday, the parade, and the official beginning of the overwhelming, yet nostalgic, commercial bombardment of the Christmas season.  And I certainly miss these colors.

2009 in Princeton: the last time I saw fall.

Boun That Luang

Once a year during the November full moon, Pha That Luang (Vientiane’s most important stupa, which is just uphill from Vientiane College), becomes the center of everyone’s attention for the Boun That Luang festival.  People from around the country come to visit the monument and make merit for one of the country’s largest Buddhist holidays.  These events culminate on the final day with a mass early morning alms-giving, and a late-night vien tian (similar to the name of the city, though not actually related), or candlelit walk, around the stupa.

Like most holidays around the world, the solemn religious origins have been compromised in the modern day by rampant commercialism.  Some of my students bemoaned the fact that this was “ruining” the event in their eyes, but it seemed to be entertaining for all regardless.  For days the stupa grounds are overrun with a carnival not dissimilar to that set up on the Mekong before boat racing.  The air fills with the aromas of grilled meat and sticky rice desserts, along with the sounds of hawkers selling their home improvement products.  Competing music clashes in the air between the Beerlao and Namkhong entertainment tents.  Balloon-popping carnival games, and other diversions, like the ever-present “Here there Be Strange Animals” circus tent sprout up on the temple grounds.  And each night a phalanx of cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, and tuk-tuks brings the traffic in the immediate area to a grinding halt.  I weaved my motorbike slowly through the waiting vehicles with renewed thankfulness every day after hearing of coworkers who spent 3-5 hours in their cumbersome cars trying to wade through the mess.

Alms are given every morning around the city, on a very small scale.  Small clusters of monks from the village temples process along the sidewalks at dawn, and early risers will wait outside their houses to offer some snacks or sticky rice before beginning their day.  I’ve observed this ritual a handful of times (entirely due to my tendency to go to bed far too late rather than to wake up early), and have been fascinated by the coexistence of these small religious ceremonies with the prosaic routines of day-to-day life–street dogs sniffing each other, shopowners sweeping the stoop before opening, trash collectors making the rounds, kids getting ready for school, and small handfuls of people praying on the sidewalks before opening their own shops.

At Boun That Luang, this ritual is amplified by the thousands.  Between the hours of 5 and 9 in the morning, people gather around the stupa, dressed in their finest, with offerings at hand awaiting the monks.  This is a chance for people to pray and to make merit for themselves and their families, and also to give back to the monks and the communities that they represent through these acts of charity.  I find it overall a poetic concept, save the fact that most of the “snacks” that are given to the monks are like Thai versions of Twinkies.  I guess health food hasn’t made it into the donation circuit yet.

And so, last Thursday my alarm rang at 5:30 am, and in the peach-tinged hours of dusk, my housemate Mike and I sleepily donned scarves and sinhs (well, I wore the sinh), and rode toward the stupa, early enough to get a parking space and to pick up some essentials–sticky rice, tiny boxes of soy milk, and packaged snacks–to put in our gold alms-giving bowls, purchased the day before.  As we looked for a place to kneel, and lamented our lack of foresight in bringing a mat, we were lucky enough to hear a familiar call, and find an acquaintance, who invited us to join her and her friends.  The women quickly went to work on our baskets, helping us fold 500 and 1000 kip notes (worth approximately 6 and 12 cents, respectively) into neat little fans, to be more presentable.  They showed us when to touch our baskets and when to press our hands together, as prayers echoed from the tinny loudspeakers, and the bottom half of my legs nearly lost all feeling and circulation from the pain of kneeling for so long (a skill among devotees that I truly admire!).  Finally, the procession of monks began and the alms-giving began–we rushed to pull sticky rice and treats out fast enough to keep up with the stream of saffron robes, putting a bit of sticky rice along with money and a snack in each basket.  In the past, the monks have sat still and people have processed by, but this year the arrangement was reversed.  Mostly this seemed more appropriate, so that the monks were standing above us, rather than vice versa, but it also resulted in their baskets getting overloaded very quickly.  Many were trailed by assistants carrying burlap sacks, into which they dumped their baskets every few minutes, which reminded me amusingly of carrying around a pillowcase on Halloween in order to deposit the maximum amount of candy.

Our baskets were empty after only about 10 minutes, so we took our leave from the procession.  The sun had risen and was beginning to get hot, a (presumably five-legged) rooster was crowing in the circus tent behind us, and our respects had been paid, in the form of individually-wrapped vanilla wafers and soy milk cartons.  Time to go home and nap before class.

Microvacation

Sometimes my surroundings pass by too quickly from the seat of a motorbike, as I scan the road for dogs and potholes and other potential beginnings of an accident.  As I blink rapidly, trying to clear my eyes of the ever-present dust in my contact lenses,  I miss the details around me.

For this reason, along with the constant need to remind myself to embrace the bo pen nyang  a bit more,  Sunday at dusk has become my time for “microvacations”–tiny pauses from productivity to notice the here and now.  Last week, my housemates and I took a walk to some rice paddies only 10 minutes from my house and got a glimpse into another world, perhaps a look at what Vientiane was like several years ago.





Naturally the tranquility of this bucolic landscape was juxtaposed with the thump of karaoke music at the giant convention center/movie theater/mall/bowling alley just next door.  The cows munched on grass and local boys looked for frogs in the creek, while K-Pop throbbed in the background–another typically paradoxical Vientiane scene.

Souk San Wan Kurt!

A birthday party abroad, for the third year in a row.

Homemade mango sticky rice, grills, kebabs–what more do you need for a delicious party?!

This year was a blend of new and old: some new friends, some old friends, a new house, but the same idea–fill a cooler with Beerlao, fire-up two Lao-style grills (basically half a metal drum with a grate on top) and a party will ensue.  In honor of the many theme parties past, my theme this year was simply “Accessories,” allowing for a motley collection of leftover hats, sunglasses, costume jewelry and bowties to be dusted off and see another party.

We take accessorizing very seriously.  These are only a handful of the night’s decorations.

Some guests were less happy about the theme than others.


Once again, I had not one, but two, amazing cakes: a work of art from a local bakery in the shape of a purple handbag sculpted from marzipan, and a delicious coconut cake.  With an impromptu living room dance party, about 30 friends who stopped by at various points in the night, and a plethora of silly headwear (berets, headlamps, ski hats, and more), it was yet another very happy birthday here in Vientiane.

This is a cake. Amazing.

Happy Halloween!

Laos is a country familiar with ghosts.  From my conversations with friends and students over the past year, I’ve gotten the impression that nearly everyone, at least a tiny bit, believes in pii–in ghosts or spirits.  Naturally, some of those beliefs are more serious than others, but the concept of spirits existing all around us, both bad and good, is quite prevalent.  This is visible just walking down the street and taking in the wide array of “spirit houses” outside nearly every business or home: miniature buildings to appease the spirits of the place, with small offerings, from liquor, sticky rice, and bananas, to Pepsi and cookies.  Some are flashy, covered in mirrors, and neon paint, others modest and minimalistic.  But they’re always there.  For some, this is a tradition, perhaps less a literal belief than to promote general good luck, but still entrenched in the culture.

A sampling of spirit houses, from right to left: Bangkok, Vientiane, Bali.

And from the urban legends I’ve heard, the pii are all around me here.  On Halloween night, a Lao friend started recounting tales of all of the spirits in the surrounding area, from the “scariest ghost in Laos,” according to him–a little girl who eats live chickens (and sometimes children)–to which places in town have particularly high concentrations of spirits (for example, one area on a main road, where all of the ghosts of people who have died in traffic accidents congregate).  He spoke half as though he were recounting simple facts, and half as though he was just trying to freak us out.  “Do you really believe this?” I asked, after a story about a ghost over the bridge in Thailand.  He just shrugged and said, “Maybe.  Why not?”

So perhaps it makes sense that the Western tradition of Halloween is becoming quite popular.  In talking with Australian coworkers, I recently realized how American many of the traditions I associate with Halloween are.  Many asked, “Do you actually carve pumpkins every year?  And go trick or treating?”  A such, these traditions were an essential part of my first Halloween celebration with the new American Embassy scholarship program.  Two of my good friends are teaching and developing this brand-new two-year program, that teaches both English language and American cultural customs to underprivileged local high schoolers.  As the first of the American culture celebrations, the roof at Vientiane College was decked out in orange and black, the American ambassador was in attendance and 60 high school students carved greenish Lao pumpkins with scarily large knives.  A few of the other American teachers and I joined after class to help out (and mostly to feel nostalgic for childhood).  After jack-o-lanterns were aglow (with minimal loss of blood), we hid in various classrooms to jump out and scare “trick-or-treating” students before handing out candy.

Saturday night  was the main show, costume-wise.  Kongkhao, a favorite hangout among expats, was hosting a “dead celebrity”-themed Halloween party, so naturally, we had to go all out (the day my life ceases to involve sporadic necessity of costumes will be a sad one).  I was Audrey Hepburn, and was joined by a posse that included the likes of Albert Einstein, Amy Winehouse, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, and a very dead rockstar.

A peek into the classroom: YLPF1 students working on Halloween masks.

Pumpkins? Check. Costumes? Check.  Halloween should be over, right?  Because I can never let a celebration pass by without drawing it out as long as possible, this was not the case.  Halloween Monday was a party all over again.

Teacher--leave me alone and let me work on my mask!

I conveniently had both of my Young Learner’s classes on this day, which was a great excuse to let lesson plans slide and allow both my and my student’s excitement to join forces for some just-barely-under-control fun classes.  With my smallest children we made Halloween masks and then played a version of “Red Light, Green Light” that involved walking around like zombies (and turned out to be a surprisingly good listening exercise).  My older class sat around and told scary stories, most of which involved–that’s right–more pii sightings around their houses (and even Vientiane College!).

After the last gluesticks and scraps of colored paper were finally cleaned up (along with the vomit of an over-excited 8 year-old), I headed out with a few coworkers to some final Halloween festivities.  Though it was a Monday, bars, restaurants, and clubs across town had huge Halloween parties on.  After all, if you’re going to celebrate a foreign holiday, why celebrate it on the wrong day?  After visiting a few of fake-cobweb strewn venues in the city we ended this year’s holiday watching an elaborate costume fashion show with some of our awesome TAs at one of the city’s fancy clubs.  Now the costumes are back in the closet for the time being, but the seemingly endless stream of holidays that mark the fall term marches onward.  Next up: birthday, That Luang Festival, and (eventually) the rest of my stories from Australia.

This is an accurate depiction of how it feels every time I enter this class.