Happy Thanksgiving!

The Saturday before Thanksgiving Andrea and I hosted a huge Thanksgiving feast for all of our falang friends and Lao coworkers. Since the Lao staff never let us help pay or cook when they have events, Andrea wanted to treat all the Lao staff to a big dinner to give back, and I was going to help by being her sous-chef. Since we were preparing to cook for around 30 people, it turned into a full week affair.

• Monday: We had to start off by buying all the dry ingredients (flour, oats, etc) and wet ingredients (vanilla, oil, etc) on Monday night. At two stores in Luang Prabang they have a few western foods, including canned cranberry sauce, canned green beans, Dijon mustard, and gravy packets.
• Tuesday: Andrea prepped any dishes that had multiple steps, for example roasting the pumpkin, frying the bacon, and making the dessert.
• Wednesday: Big trip to the market.  As I usually go to the market on Fridays with my Lao teacher, I asked if we could go on Wednesday instead because I had to cancel on Friday. We bought 6 kilos of potatoes, 4.5 kilos of carrots, 30 eggs, 2 kilos onions, 2 kilos of mushrooms, and a few more items. Good thing I went with Geo (my teacher) so we could ride her motor bike.  I would not want to lug all of that home on my bike.
• Thursday: cleaning and making sure we had enough sleep in preparation of Friday and Saturday!
• Friday: Turkeys arrived! Unfortunately, the 4 turkeys we had originally bought and were supposed to come on Thursday never showed up. As a back up plan, one Lao staff member asked his mom to send 2 turkeys from his town (2 hours away) and they came on the bus. Live turkeys being put on a regular bus with people... enough said. Our driver Ai Mai went 4 hours in a different direction to pick up 2 to more turkeys.  They all arrived Friday night at which time we had to kill and dress them.  Luckily, I did not actually have to do any of this and I just watched two boys from the office perform the dirty deeds.  After the turkeys were dressed, Andrea and I went home and cooked for the next 6 hours until midnight.



1) drain their blood when they were still alive so that their heart could pump all the blood out 2) put them in boiling water to kill them and loosen the feathers 3) pluck them 4) cut their heads off and take out all the innards. 

• Saturday: Cleaning, cooking turkeys and heating up all the sides, getting ready, people arrive at 6:00 

Carrots with honey-mustard glaze, turkey, green bean casserole,
mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin casserole,
pumpkin pie, and apple spice cake with cream cheese frosting

Overall, it was a super tiring affair to cook for 30 people (32 ended up showing up!), especially because I have never cooked for more than my immediate family before, and never for Thanksgiving or in a foreign country. But it was completely worth it to see how much the Lao staff enjoyed it! Their favorite dish seemed to be the turkey, but the pumpkin casserole (aka sweet potato casserole but made with a pumpkin looking vegetable instead) was the second favorite which was a surprise to us since pumpkin is not used in sweets here (unlike the US with pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, etc).



Aaron's delicious plate!

Our living room filled with friends!



Pick and Khamhoung killing the turkeys, Na really enjoying
 the turkey legs!, very full table but half the food gone, everyone enjoying the meal

Lao Wedding

Last weekend (Nov 16) I went to my first Lao wedding! I say first, not because I have so many friends getting married in Laos this year, but because I've heard you get invited to a ton of weddings even if you don't know the bride and groom. And this was one of those cases - it was the nephew of one of the guys on the construction team at PoP that does not know any English, so our interactions have been slim to none.

Since I had no idea what to wear or do for a wedding, I called my friend Amphai who works in the finance group at PoP.  I asked if she would come to my house in the morning, pick out my clothes and jewelry for me, and then take me to get my hair done with her.  When she looked in my closet, I could tell she didn't know what to tell me to wear since I have NO appropriate Lao wedding attire here. Appropriate wedding attire for women is formal, traditional Lao clothes, so a silk structured blouse (or collared shirt) and Lao skirt called a sinh.  I never wear collared shirts, so I only have 4 here - 3 are PoP shirts with the logo on it, and 1 is a sleeveless flowy shirt from express. We settled on the sleeveless one because it was the best option, but I was surprised since sleeveless shirts are supposed to be frowned upon.

Next, we went to Amphai's hair dresser. I was expecting to go to one of the places I've seen around town that look pretty dirty, no walls/doors so I can see people getting their hair washed, and people most likely just do the hair of their family members and close friends. I was pleasantly surprised when we pulled up to this place where the 2 male hair stylists looked very stylish and they had a hair dryer and flat iron. They straightened and then curled my hair with the flat iron, put WAY too much hairspray in so my hair was rigid like a board, but looked good until I started sweating (5 minutes later).  We stopped at Amphai's house so she could finish getting ready and she let me borrow a belt that is supposed to go with the Lao skirt so I looked more appropriate.

Me and Amphai all dressed up!

We were early for the reception, so we went to the Basi ceremony at Ai Keuang's house (PoP construction worker). It was an extremely small ceremony so I felt a little out of place to waltz in during the ceremony, but they were extremely welcoming and I soon found myself up at the front and tying the white strings around the bride and grooms wrists while I wished them luck in the future.  Also to note here - this was an interesting wedding to attend because the man was in his 20s and the woman was in her 50s.  As you can imagine, this is NOT common here so I liked to see what the interactions were like between the bride, groom, and guests.


As soon as the ceremony was over, everyone went over to a school in downtown Luang Prabang where they had set up tents for the reception. About 10 minutes after we got there, all of my PoP coworkers found 2 tables that we pushed together, and everyone started eating! I looked around and most people had not arrived yet, and no one was sitting at tables. And there is my table pigging out and will finish all our food before others even arrive! Apparently, this is normal. People eat throughout the whole reception, so you can start whenever you want, as food will just keep coming out. The food was normal Lao food, and consisted of steamed rice, mushroom/carrot stew, papaya salad, Luang Prabang salad, fatty meat, and clementine's for dessert. And of course... Beer Lao.



Once most of the guests had arrived, the bride and grooms families went to the front to have a large picture together. Matt, the other intern, and I could not stop laughing - everyone was so serious! No one was smiling and just staring at the camera. We know they were happy because we had seen them smiling and joking right before hand, so it seemed like that was the style of picture they wanted. To each their own.

no smiles...

 A few cute things they did at this wedding:
1) The bride and groom came around with 2 Luang Prabang shot glasses to everyone and offered a shot of whiskey.
2) Their first dance as man and wife was a Lao dance (faan dancing) in which you do not touch each other but go around in a large circle facing each other. Many other people came in to join in.
3) They also had a "Western" dance in which the man had his hand on her lower back/waist, hers on his shoulder, and them holding one hand out to the side. It was very sweet to watch, and only 2 people joined in.


After the first dances, the real dancing got started. All Lao dancing, but now I'm a pro and we had a lot of fun dancing with the whole PoP group. I didn't stay too long, but left around 3 pm.  Even though the wedding and reception seemed super long to me, I realized that I had only stayed a fraction of the time as a wedding I would go to in the U.S. One major difference though is that I would know people at a US wedding or at least can speak their language so I can easily converse with people throughout the whole day/evening. It is super tiring to stay engaged when you can't talk to anyone!

A few things I learned:
1) You give a gift between 50,000 -100,000 Kip, which is $5-13 USD
2) The ceremony is a Basi (same as every other celebration here) at a relatives house for only close friends and family, and then a reception follows at a different location where everyone is invited
3) You wear a Lao sinh and a collared shirt for women
4) When you show up at the reception, as long as its after the bride and groom, you just sit down wherever you want and start eating the food on the table without waiting for the other guests to arrive
5) All the food is homemade by the relatives
6) Tourists LOVE taking pictures! It was so funny how many pictures I must have gotten in from tourists just walking into the wedding or peering over the wall

Me being weird and Matt tolerating it

Laos film has arrived!

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about working on a film when a US film crew came to Laos. It has finally been edited and published and is ready for viewing! It was shown at the PoP Gala last month that raised almost $2,000,000! I hope you enjoy it - 

Here is a link in case the attachment above doesn't work:
http://youtu.be/0gw1sXzHoqI