Holidays and Work

Holidays

This year we had several of our friends over to celebrate Thanksgiving. Everyone had an excellent time and we all managed to overeat and take naps just like we would have back home. I was in charge of the cooking, and managed to do all the food on top of the stove (we do not have an oven). We found a couple turkeys in the village next to us and my partner picked those up on the bus in a big burlap sack and carried them to a friend of ours to be killed and plucked. They were 7 pounds and 5 pounds, the largest that were available. We paid $2.00/lb., compared to the 29 cents/lb. that some people in the states paid this year. The turkeys even received names: Bobble and Nobble. Our menu included turkey, gravy, stuffing, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, baked beans, bora, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. For the apple pie, we purchased “ice apples”. They are called this because they are imported from the states, and it gets cold there. Apples here are extremely expensive, $1.00/apple. There are no cans of pumpkin here, so that was made straight from the pumpkin.

Now we can focus on Christmas. We happened to find an artificial tree at one of the stores out on the road. It’s definitely a Charlie Brown tree, but it serves its purpose. A friend of ours will be having a Christmas get-together at her place, and she will be cooking a lot of Vietnamese food, so we’re really looking forward to that. Another friend is hosting a Christmas cocktail party complete with eggnog. Sometimes it is easy to forget that we’re in another country!

Work

My work is moving along nicely. The grant that was written for the library projects has been approved, and we will be getting the money soon. We will be creating three school libraries, one at the secondary school, and two at primary schools. Each library will have six new bookshelves, one table for the librarian, two small tables for children, and three hammocks. In addition, we will be painting each of the libraries and color coding the bookshelves so that students know where to place the books on the shelves. Most of the money will be spent on purchasing new books for the libraries. We already have about 2,000 books, thanks to many generous individuals in the states who have donated books or money to help ship the books here. With those donations, we set up pilot libraries at two of the primary schools. For most of the children, this was their first time seeing a storybook, and they have been learning the proper way to turn pages and how to care for a book. The pilot libraries have been a huge success and we are really excited about expanding the libraries. They will be run by volunteers in the communities who will also be trained as peer educators. We are trying to encourage students to borrow books, even if they cannot read. Many of them look at the pictures only. We want to be able to create a culture that loves and cherishes books.