Welcome to Laos

Sabidee from Laos! We arrived safe and sound on Wednesday and are now adjusting to a new place and culture. Our luggage, unfortunately, arrived two days later. Culture shock began as soon as we boarded Thai airways in Los Angeles where we, even in economy class, were treated like kings. In comparison to US airlines where we were only served drinks on our 5 hour cross country flight, we were given a full lunch on our hour long flight into Vientiane, Laos.

Vientiane has quite a small town feeling to it even though it is the capital. The traffic is mostly motorcycles and scooters which can be quite hectic especially since the roads are very narrow. The MCC office and Guest house are on a one lane paved road but many of the surrounding streets are gravel. The weather brings rain almost every afternoon and evening, breaking the heat until morning. Thankfully it is not quite as hot as we thought being in the 80’s-90’s. Even in these three days we have seen and done much. We have visited two temples, been to a market twice, ate at various small street-side food vendors and participated in two Lao ceremonies. We are currently staying in the MCC guest house right behind the office for the time being, though we are looking forward to traveling to Vietnam for a brief area conference and moving in with a local Laotian family soon after.

Orientation

We have now completed the first week of orientation here in Akron, PA and are enjoying a weekend of relaxing and celebrating our first wedding anniversary! It is crazy to think that this time last year we were in the flurry of activity that surrounded our wedding. In the spirit of reminiscing we recently travelled to Chambersburg, PA to visit a small farm where Kaarina interned. Visiting with the farm manager, seeing the changes that have taken place on the farm and stopping by the local farmer market for Jamaican Jerk Chicken were among the highlights.

There are 36 other new service workers living in the small village behind the MCC Akron Headquarters. All except three are traveling overseas and the majority are young married couples like ourselves! The days are filled with group discussions, lecture type seminars (concerning peace, justice, computer safety, culture shock, MCC policies, history etc.) and plenty of food combined with meeting new people. There are three others traveling to Laos with us to take up new roles. Although they won’t be working in the same project as us we will be flying on the same airplane into the country and most likely orienting and studying the language together.

We are excited for another week of MCC orientation and then several busy days of packing at home. For our next update we will most likely be in the beautiful country of Laos!