Luang Prabang Brings Home the Gold!

Every three-four years, Laos has a two week long event similar to the Olympics called the Lao National Games. This year marked the 10th National Games. They have grown significantly over the years, and now every province (18 provinces in Laos) takes part with their own teams, and there are 7 Government Department teams (for example, the Department of Foreign Affairs has a team). With 25 groups being represented in most, if not every, sport, you can imagine how big this event can get!

The games that are featured include track and field, football, basketball, boxing, boat racing, volleyball and beach volleyball, tennis, swimming, petanque (bocce ball), shooting, sepak takraw, top spinning, crossbow, muay lao (Lao boxing), wushu, karatedo, pencak silat, taekwondo, judo, cycling, table tennis, golf, bowling and wrestling. If you haven't heard of any of these games, neither have I haha. The only one that I know of is petanque because there is a petanque court right outside our office.

Lanoy, our Country Director, was on the Laos National Basketball Team when she was about 20 years old (she is now 35), so every Lao National Games she is invited to be on the Luang Prabang Province basketball team. It is very political, because the Department that organizes the National Games is called the Department of Education and Sport.  As you can probably guess, since we build public schools in Laos, this is also the department that we deal with on a day-to-day basis to get approvals, so Lanoy didn't really have a choice whether or not to play. Granted, she absolutely loves basketball so it worked out, but training also took up a lot of her time prior to the games when we were also getting into our busy season at the office.

Since Lanoy was playing, our office scheduled a trip last weekend to go watch her play. This year, the games were in Oudomxai Province, which is a 7 hour drive from Luang Prabang. If we took paved highways like we have in the States, it would have taken about 2 hours, but since the roads here are sooooooo bad (unpaved, curvy, etc), it takes more than 3 times as long. We headed out Sunday morning (December 14) for her game started at 7 pm that night. Everyone was really excited about it and 25 out of our 35 staff signed up to go! We took 1 large van that could fit 15 people, and one truck that could fit 10 people (5 inside, 5 in the truck bed). I was lucky enough to get a spot inside the truck because the roads were so dusty that everyone in the back of the trust was orange with dust by the time we got to Oudomxai.

We arrived in Oudomxai at 3:30 and we checked into the guest house. Very Lao style, we were put 3 people to a room that had 2 twin beds.  The two girls I was sharing a room with, Da and Maisaa, were very polite and offered me my own bed, which I took with little hesitation. I love the people I work with, but sharing a twin bed with someone is a little too close for comfort! Da and Maisaa are also very petit ladies - I am definitely at least twice their size, so I justified it pretty quickly to myself.

As it was also Lanoy's birthday that day, we decided to wait for her and have a big celebration dinner after the game.  As it got closer to 7, we walked over to the stadium and watched the end of a soccer game and men's volleyball match.


When 7 o-clock rolled around we were at the Basketball Court, but two men's teams came on the court, not Lanoy's team! It turns out that Lanoy's team was playing at 8:30. This is all well and good, except for the fact that no one had eaten anything and now we wouldn't be eating until about 11. I was already starving at 7, so I went and got some cold fried rice at one of the vendors to hold me over.  We watched the whole men's basketball game, and it was pretty pathetic to US standards. Matt and I decided that it was the equivalent of a high school JV game. We were pretty excited when it was over.


Then it was time for Lanoy's team! It was Luang Prabang vs Vientiane, which is the capital of Laos, and Lanoy had informed me that these were the two best teams playing this year so it was the biggest game of the tournament. Before leaving Luang Prabang, we had shirts made that said "Suu Suu Luang Prabang", which is a rough translation of "Lets Go Luang Prabang". When the game began everyone took off their jackets and started screaming "Suu Suu Luang Prabang!, Suu Suu Luang Prabang!" and everyone was drinking a ton of beer Lao and cheering crazily - we didn't sit down once during the whole game! Especially when Lanoy got the ball - our section was deafening.

Our cheering paid off because Luang Prabang beat Vientiane by only 3 points! This level of play was better than the men's game before theirs - more like a High School Varsity game. Lanoy also held her own by scoring many three-pointers!

Overall, it was an extremely fun trip! One funny story though - when we were on our way back there were 4 of us were squished in the back seat of the truck (fine for about an hour - but for 7!?) and we stopped at a road vendor for some snacks. Ai Keuang, who was in the back seat with us, bought a HUGE dead rat. This thing was the size of a cat. I'm getting used to many Lao things, but if this monster of an animal was sitting next to me in the truck I think I would lose it. Luckily I didn't have to say anything because it went in the truck bed with the boys, so unfortunately Matt had to deal with it.

Looking ahead to the end of the tournament, Lanoy's team won the gold!

To see more pictures from the games in 2012 that took place in Luang Prabang, look at a different blog I found online. The last picture is of Lanoy when they won the gold medal! They are on a winning streak!

http://www.journeyswithintravelblog.com/2012/01/11/lao-p-d-r-national-games-in-luang-prabang/

No more Lao classes

After a lot of thought, I have stopped meeting with my Lao tutor and learning Lao formally.  A few reasons:

1) I have decided to take the GMAT when I get home so I need the time I would usually be in Lao class and doing my homework to study for the GMAT
2) I would like to be fluent in 2 languages, but I have to realize that Lao will probably not be one of them. I already have 7 years of French behind me, so I will be focusing on French instead. I am studying on my own right now and I'm looking into the French Institute in Luang Prabang to see if they have any opportunities to speak to French speakers.
3) Looking forward, I don't see myself speaking Lao ever again unless I work for an organization that is in Laos. French is a much more lucrative language as it is spoken in Africa, Haiti, part of South East Asia, Canada, and Europe. Lao is only known in Laos, and if you know it really well you can kind of understand Thai.
4) Lastly, since I didn't see myself using Laos in the long term, it was really hard to motivate myself to study. I know that I should take advantage of being here but there are just so many other things I would rather be doing with my time.

It is definitely sad to stop because I love my teacher and one nice thing about taking Lao is it shows the staff that you want to be able to speak with them and that you are not haughty and want to only stick to your own language. I will keep trying to learn Lao through my coworkers though!

My Decision to Extend

As many of you saw on Facebook a few weeks ago, I have decided to extend my time in Laos by an additional 5 months.  I wanted to write this post to explain to everyone my thought process for making this decision, as it was not an easy one.

Even before I accepted this position at PoP, my goal was to do so well the first few months that they would ask me to stay for an additional length of time. I knew that past interns had extended their time for up to a year, so I knew it was possible. My goal  to get an extension for a year was for two main reasons:

1) I have personally always wanted to live abroad for a full year. When I did my term abroad in college it was for 4 months, and we moved around every month to a different country so I never felt settled or learned about one culture in depth.
2) Many jobs in the international development field recommend (if not require) some field work in developing countries (the longer the better). Six months is too much like a term abroad that most people partake in now, and even one year is not that long since most people will do the Peace Corps (2 years) or something similar.

During my first 2.5 months in Laos, I kept thinking I was going to live in Laos for a full year. When people asked me how long I was here for, I would say "6 months, but I might stay longer". I was planning in my head where I would take people if they came to visit me. I was taking Lao 3 times a week so that I could communicate with staff at work and around town. In my head, I was already staying.

So you would think that when I had a call with my supervisor in NY and she told me they would love to have me stay, I would be jumping up and down! I was not. The week before I had this call with my supervisor, I started having mixed feelings about staying longer. It came down to a huge battle - professional vs personal.

Professional:

• I was told that it was not a huge deal if I stayed here for 6 months or 12 months. Its not like I was going to be international for 3+ years, which is where it would really make a difference.
• I wasn't sure how it would look if I was an intern for a full year. I was using this opportunity to switch my career path to go into international development. An additional 6 months would not be needed to prove that I was passionate about this line of work.
• I wasn't sure if I would be challenged at work my whole time here, especially if I extended.  Now that I was used to my surroundings, the culture, the language, the office, and the people, simple things were not difficult anymore and so I was starting to get bored. I wanted more responsibility, and I was told that I wouldn't necessarily get it because my role was supposed to be a supportive role to the Country Directors.
• My goal was to get to DC to work in international development - so why hold myself back. I should just get started already!

Personal:

• That reason I mentioned before - about me wanting to live in a developing country for a year was still there and looming above my head. There are some parts of a culture you do not experience until you live there for an extended amount of time (more than 6 months).
• I also wanted to prove to myself that I could do this. I needed to get it out of my system, and I didn't know if 6 months would cut it.
• I have my whole career ahead of me, and probably 40 years to work. Why do I need to rush back to get back into the grind if I'm enjoying myself here?

So the battle began. I had 2 weeks to make my decision and tell NY.  I had multiple teary calls with my family and best friends, I emailed and set up Skype calls with people in my network about what they believed the pros and cons would be, I researched online, I did some job searches (even applying to one job), I talked with all the mangers at work to see if they had additional responsibilities/challenges I could take on.

Karin, the M&E Manager in Laos, suggested that I write out a list of everything that I want to get out of being here and what I need to learn in order to get to my dream job. One morning before I had to give my decision, I went through the list I created with her, and it turns out that I could get a lot of those things here! Including a research project, which was a top contender. I also made a long pro and con list, and it turned out that the pro list for staying vastly outnumbered the con list.

As I mentioned before, I have decided to stay and I will be using the time to 1) learn as much at the office as I can 2) study for the GMAT so I can apply for business school 3) talk to ask many iNGO representatives here in Laos to get a better understanding of the field. I am very excited I made this decision and I think that it was the right choice for me and my future. I will not have another opportunity like this again and I want to take advantage!

So if anyone will be in South East Asia before June 20, give me a ring!