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| Would you mess with her? :-) |
After choosing our groups last night the cooking group got up this morning at 6:30. There were six people in the cooking group and they were Cassidy, Alison, Ellis, Jarrod, Ffion and cliff, the expedition leader (That’s me Ed. :-)). We all came down to their kitchen (outside) and assisted some of the female villagers to cook breakfast. On the menu this morning was some form of starchy rice with raw egg and (for those who eat it) meat (Ed. I tried this meal last year and thought it was a makeshift meal from what was left...I was so wrong...Can’t believe I had to put on a brave face for the Challengers and scoff a whole bowl of the lovely stuff Yak!). We had a discussion before breakfast about trying to show respect to our hosts by eating (trying) the food that is presented in front of us...for some this seems to be the biggest challenge faced so far on our trip. (Ed. Agreed!). After preparing and serving the food to the rest of the group we all tried to eat the meal. For some this was quite a challenge but we all tried our hardest to eat some part of it. Following this we ate some bananas to help with the taste :-).
After the meal we split the group ready to start our tasks. We formed three separate groups and started. The construction group were digging holes all day but had a few breaks in between. The teaching group had the hard task, we were told the teachers would be teaching the children but they changed their minds and just decided to sleep. The teaching group consisted of Sarah, Kaitlin, Glen, Matt, Shey, Mikaela M, Posner & Luke. The teaching group had to teach a whole class of children for three hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Some of the cooking group helped out in the afternoon as they weren’t doing anything else heheh >:).
When it got to lunch time the cooking group tried to help the local women cook but they said they didn’t need help, so they got an even longer break. Following lunch we played ball games with the kids then went back to our tasks.
One little incident during the day was when Michaela Johnston was helping a baby chicken out of a trench then started walking back to give it to the mum chicken (Ed. that would be the hen :-)) but the mum chicken charged at her and so she put the chicken down then ran away.
While everyone was at their jobs the cooking group went for a trek (Ed. hardly! Lol) out and around the village. We were being followed by some guy from the village, if we stopped to take a photo the guy would stop as well. While on the small trek we had a Challenger that was feeling sick and started vomiting, all the girls would walk away to try and avoid the vomit (Ed. don’t worry folks he was eating more food by lunch time and being spoilt by the villagers).
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| The 'A' team proud of their trench! |
After all that we got back to the village and all the groups came in for a break for about 15minutes. When the break was up everyone went back to their jobs so the cooking group had nothing to do so decided to join with the teaching group. In the classes we try teaching the kids all different things about our language such as the solar system, singing songs and teaching them to say “what’s your name? / my name is?” (in English) and the kids understood us. Just before the bell went for school to finish we were playing keepy off with the kids, while everyone was playing Ffion fell down a hill and hit her head on some bamboo (Ed. now that’s news to me :-/). There were 5 of us and around 50 kids. We were continuously getting tackled to the ground by the kids and it was great fun. We played that for a long time then the bell rang and the fun was over so all the kids grabbed their bags and walked off to their homes (Ed. very strange having a break just before going home...but thats the way they roll in Laos), and we walked to where we sit each morning/lunch/night to eat our food and to just chill out together watching the village do its thing.
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| A cheeky little pose from one of the local kids with Miss Posner |
Some of us got in a circle and started to ask questions to each other such as what you would give up for a month (Ed. it would have been interesting to hear what everyone said!). Then some of the kids came out and wanted to play with us so some of us went to get the Frisbees and footballs to play. It’s starting to get dark and the cooking group are starting to get ready to help cook dinner, everyone is starting to wonder what we will be having for dinner we are hoping that it’s not what we had last night, but we will wait and see.
Allison and Cassidy
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