The 4 SAILers 2010 have been carrying out their activities in Vientiane Capital of Laos as the third week by now. Vientiane which is in the central part of the country is now in the middle rainy season. I mean it rains almost every day during the last two weeks, which means there’s not so many hot days as the previous months and early weeks of this month. It is such a nice weather for our local people and the 4 SAILers as well.
As the SAIL in-country Program Leader I have talked with the SAILers twice a week when we have a small meetings on Monday and Thursday evenings in which they give me reflections on their situations in regards to their staying at the guesthouse, their food and health, training course, volunteer work and extra-activities.
By now they informed me that there’s no problem with accommodation, food and health. It’s quite convenient to have food in nearby food shop/ restaurants, also access to internet cafe.
They can follow their teachers in learning Lao language, Lao history and culture. Each student has shown progress to some extent in the Lao language learning, especially speaking even though slowly and with strange accent and pronunciation. Reading is alright but sometimes- difficult to understand the meaning of words/ phrases in different tonal levels.
Another thing is quite difficult for them is writing Lao scripts, particularly writing of words with a few number of consonants and vowels. In addition, they still have limited knowledge of vocabulary. However, they hopefully think that it would be improved in the coming weeks through regular practice and lots homework, and they will learn about sentence pattern, sentence structure as well.
History and culture classes are great. Besides listening to the teacher’s explanation in class they also get supplemental reading materials from the teacher.
Beside having classes for their own lessons the SAILers have been doing an extra work on voluntary basis. Each one of them has done volunteer work since Tuesday 22nd June (week 2).
Toby spends her time in the morning 3 days a week teaching English for 2 groups of kids at the Children Development Center(an attached project to Primary School ) some 10 Km from the guesthouse where she stays. Ryan is volunteering at the National Library in downtown Vientiane. He goes there 4 days per week- Tuesday to Friday, from 8.30 to 11.00 am. He sits at the front desk giving services to the library visitors who come to read books, borrow books, or register as a member, while he also has opportunity to read Lao history, or literature on the palm-leave script books.
Akarath is volunteering 2 hours in the morning 3 days a week, Wednesday to Friday. He is teaching English to a group of some 40 kids in a primary school located in the heart of city. Phouthasack is doing his volunteer work at the Lao-American College, giving presentations to the classes about the SAIL program and their intention to learn Lao language and history and culture. etc. He also socialize with students there in the school library to practice Lao language for himself while he help students with English or about the USA .
Last weekend the SAILers visited the Children’s Educational Develop. Center (of Vientiane Education Department). They have seen some activities there, such as drawing group, reading room for kids’ story books, show by Sinxay poetry reading group (short drama).
This weekend the SAILers will take a trip to the countryside some 70 Km to the north of Vientiane City. The group would spend 2 days and 1 night in a village. Through this excursion tour they expect to be exposed to rural community livelihood, to have experience on rice planting, fishing, bamboo basket/ mat weaving, and other cultural activities.
