Sa Bai Diiiiiii

It seemed like a déjà vu - sitting in a roomful of people and not understanding a single word of what's spoken. It was only 1.5 years ago that I experienced this in Timor and now I was putting myself through the 'torture' again in Lao PDR. I sometimes wonder if I have something for pain as I seem to enjoy putting myself in these uncomfortable positions. But now, in the evening as I sit here in S's house, which overlooks the Mekong River, I realize that it is this willingness to be 'uncomfortable' that has helped me to continually grow and learn. How else would I be seeing new things and meeting new people? It is no wonder that when I was much younger (and skinnier), I could never sit still in a chair because my tailbone would ache and my mom would always say my backside is itchy and thus can never linger long enough in one spot. Yeah… that's why I'm tumbleweed. But for the record, this tumbleweed is definitely gonna tumble right back to Timor very soon.

Tumbleweed is here in Lao because she's volunteering at one of the biggest national NGO here called PADETC. I was offered the opportunity while speaking to its founder Mr Sombath Somphone, a Ramon Magsaysay award winner in 2005 for his efforts in building youth leadership. Sombath has been involved in youth work for more than 20 years and I hope that my month stay here will benefit him as much as it will me.

The Lao language is definitely much more complex than Tetum or any other language I have endeavoured to learn, which included Khmer (much simpler because it's monotonal), Burmese (I think I found it easy because I was 8 years younger than now and thus had more grey cells to capture new info), Spanish (way easier because of the Latin roots), Indonesian (growing up in Singapore helped because there is a lot of Malay mixed into everyday Singlish) and Tetum( easy because of the mix of latin and malay languages, plus it's monotonal!). Of course, this doesn't include Mandarin which I grew up learning. But I still think Lao must be more complex since it has 6 tones while Mandarin only has 4.

Anyways, my task here is to write for PADETC which was essentially what I did in Timor. I hope that I won't disappoint since time is short. Of course, I then really should not be blogging too much but instead writing those stories! Ok, wish me luck y'all and yeah, I'll try to upload as many pictures as possible since I got myself a new Canon Powershot A640 last week.

Hey kolega sira, diak ka lae? Hau hein katak hau sei fila ba Timor lalais tamba hau hanoin barak imi. Hau senti lian Tetum fasil liu lian Lao, no hau sempre hakarak koalia Tetum maibe laiha kolega sira bele komprende! Okay, se ita lee hela blog ida ne'e, favor hakerek oituan iha 'comments' ya? Okay, maromak hela ho imi! Ate fulan Marsu (Hau esperansa!)