Good morning my fellow friends! This is Eileen and it’s the 3rd day in LAOS!! So far its been a great trip and I’m very excited for these next 2 months.

So here’s my story on the “before the action” coverage; orientation was pretty cool, I read all the bios the hour before leaving the house just to see what kinds of people to expect were going to be there. Actually it was mainly because I was nervous because I’m the youngest SAILer (I’m only 16) and I didn’t want to sound too … I don’t know, I just didn’t want to feel like I’m not supposed to be there. Orientation was at City Hall in San Francisco — I have a couple pictures of it but it might take too long to load judging by how slow these computers are. [We all think we’re kind of spoiled ‘cause we were SO impatient when we found a couple Internet accessible computers in the Lao-American College English Center. Half of us already gave up trying to check our emails, so we aren’t very sure about the 10+ minutes worth of a million videos/vlogs we took.]

At orientation, my mom called in before we even started the movie so I had to leave then to “take a picture for my visa” which we hadn’t done. When my dad came back he said, “oh, you can get your picture taken when you get there for a dollar.” Then I went to Sandra’s house and she was finishing up her proposal for work, and I fell asleep. I’m one heavy sleeper so I didn’t even notice it was 9 until Sandra woke me up recording her dog, which was sitting on top of me the whole night.

The next morning was technically the day we were to leave the US. My mom came a little before 10am and got us breakfast and then drove us to the airport. There, Sandra and I met up with Samantha and her mom. We waited for the rest of the group to get there and finally boarded the plane to Tokyo. After transiting in Bangkok, we boarded a jet-propelled flight to Laos! When we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by Samantha’s friend Thang and another guy, Athith who took us to the guesthouse. After putting all our stuff down into our room and settling in, Athith took us to get lunch. The whole meal for 7 people was a little over $9. That’s a pretty good price. Best part is that everyone was full and there was still more.

That night, we got to sit in the back of Thang’s pick-up as he took us to a restaurant. There was awesome food there too — Vietnamese spring rolls, etc.. I wish I could put up pictures of it ‘cause we took lots. On the 3rd day, we traveled around a bit and went to our first day of school – Lao-American College – to meet potential language partners, but it’s taken awhile to actually find one.  It’s pretty cool though because we got to meet all the students who are going to America this year. Some are leaving earlier, some are leaving later. After lunch we had our first language class. Our teacher teaches Lao to tons of foreign people too, so he is experienced. Our first day of class was pretty intense, I would upload scans of our homework, but unfortunately, it takes a while to upload pictures.

Highlight of the night, we took a tuk- tuk out to the Mekong River and had some fish, some young coconut juice and more papaya salad for Yaeng.

Stay tuned for more….