Teaching Human Body Parts

At breakfast, I try to explain to some of the students Canadian greetings. That we would shake hands when first meeting strangers, and then greet friends...mu...and family..kop kuah with hugs. I demonstrate by shaking their hands. I then motion to Ramsey and we hug - but I stress that people who are only mu, and not boyfriends or girlfriends, would do this in Canada. I am told that friends here means people of your immediate peer group - same age or with no more than one or two years difference. Anyone slightly older or younger than that would be called "older sister/brother" or "younger sister/brother". I explain to the students that I have friends that are much younger and ones that are much older and they are all called mu. I wonder what they think about all this.

Ramsey taught the students ten parts of the face in English yesterday (eye, nose, mouth, teeth, cheek, chin, hair, ear, head and neck) and he asks me to teach other body parts today. He wants me to do it without either him or So present and just work through the language barrier. I decide to do this by getting them to draw a nude female body first. I don't know if this will be a bit scandalous or not, but I do it anyway. Then I ask each of them to choose a body part and I will tell them what it is and show them the spelling of it. Some boy finally picks vagina - with accompanying laughter of course - and so I teach them "va-gi-na" which they can only pronounce as "wa-gi-na". I also teach them "penis" which they have no problem with. A note on penis. The Lao word for "I" and the Lao word for "penis" sounds remarkably similar - coi -, and both So and Ramsey have been drilling into me the difference between the pronunciations of the words. I could get into some embarrassing trouble here. Ayah...it's so difficult for me to hear the difference...I'm a bit paranoid when saying "I". Try going throughout your day without saying "I", and you'll notice how often you refer to yourself. The Lao word for "tired" (which gets used fairly often here) is also similar to the word for "pubic hair". You can see the potential trouble when trying to say "I am tired" in Laos.

Along with pronouncing "v" as "w", the Lao people also have difficulty with "r" which they pronounce as "l". That's why everyone here calls Ramsey "Lemsee". The sound "th" is pronounced as "t" and "ch" as "s". That's why "thumb" and "thigh" are pronounced "tumb" and "tigh", and "cheek" and "chin" are pronounced as "seek" and "sin".

Along with body parts, I also teach the students some new colours in English to add to the ones they already know. They seem to have remarkable difficulty with distinguishing between yellow and orange - at least in English they do.

Two hours later I'm done my first teaching gig and go lie down on the hammock I've hung outside the library on the porch. My first chance on the sweet hammock. I intend to read, but the comfort and swinging action of the hammock makes me fall asleep. I wake up two hours later with the sun shining on my face and a headache. I don't feel well so I go lie on my mattress inside. The hammock is great and evil...much like Ramsey...just wait...you'll see.

I get up, drink a lot of water, eat lunch...yummy catfish...and feel much better and more energetic. I go with Ramsey to weed the gardens. We begin clearing the weeds among the taro plants that are bordered by these nasty unwanted thorny weeds. I get pricked a couple of times. [A note on the word weed: at the school, 'weed' is not used in a bad way as many of the weeds are very nutritious and/or medicinal and are a staple of the authentic Lao diet.] Ramsey tells me that greens of most plants are the most nutritious parts - not the pumpkin or the cucumber fruit, but the tender green shoots and leaves of the plant. He prefers to eat these. We've been eating a whole bunch of greens picked from the gardens on the school site, the majority of which I've never eaten and which taste bitter, spicy or sour. I like them.

I observe a moth with its proboscis gathering nectar from the flower of a male papaya tree growing outside the kitchen. It is very close up and I can see the hair on its brown and black body and watch its wing beat pattern as it hovers. It seems so intent. I feel like I'm in a David Attenborough nature documentary. It is beautiful.

Ramsey helps the students learn English words and pronunciation using songs that he writes (often with a nature theme).

Since it is Friday, the students will leave after classes to go back to their farms and help their families with the peanut harvest and farming. They will come back Sunday night. It will just be So, Ramsey, Gong and I for the next two days.