In case you hadn't guessed, I like to eat

Dinner tonight was good. At first I was annoyed, but in the end the evening was very nice. We didn’t have dinner at the school, which was totally ok by me, as I'm starting to get tired of eating Chinese food twice a day every day. Anyway, the boss’s family came to take us out to a barbecue/hotpot place. I kind of wanted to do my own thing and just be able to pick a restaurant, but hey, free food. And barbecue and hot pot are really good. The restaurant itself was full of screaming children, in other words, NOT what I want after a day of teaching. Ugh ugh ugh. I was annoyed, but the food was good.

As the place started to empty out a bit and quiet down and I got more food in me, I started to get into a better mood. As we sat around chatting after dinner, telling funny stories and having a good time, it was actually very, very nice. For all the times I feel irked and individualistic in what’s a very collective atmosphere, it was nice to feel like I’m part (some weird, third cousin, twice-removed, in-law part) of a family here.

Also, "We Will Rock You" came on the soundsystem just as the staff finished singing "Happy Birthday" to a table. It was one of those special, random moments.

Tomorrow we pick up our tailored pants! I don’t want to get over excited and wind up disappointed. But I can’t help it, I’m pretty excited. The only problem is I don’t quite know how to find our tailor’s shop. Suong lead us through a warren of aisles, through twists and turns in the Russian Market to pop us out on one side of the market where there are fabric and tailor shops. So, it’s on one of the four sides of the market. No problem.

Driving to work here – sorry, getting driven to work here – always starts a hypothetical conversation in my head. I see the broken sidewalks and trash collectors pulling their individual carts, the heaping mountains of garbage on the side of the road, the corrugated iron and wooden lean to’s built against the outer walls of schoolyards and temples, and it makes me wish every person in America who says, ‘Get rid of the government/welfare/etc.’ could see this. Yeah, screw welfare! Poor families should populate the streets, living in dirt and rubbish, selling chickens and goslings and turkeys and other birds from cages barely big enough for one animal, living in a shack the size of a double bed. Screw medicare and social security, 80-year-olds should pull heavy ox-carts collecting trash or recyclables, or carry heavy baskets of fruit and noodles to peddle on the street. Screw taxes, who needs street signs and stop lights and lane lines and traffic cops and not-broken pavement to drive on? Who needs the government to construct public spaces? Leave it to the private contractors, who use cheap labor and cover a riverfront promenade with a wobbly-tiled walk, where the tiles are simply set next to each other in plain dirt. Bah. Stupid prats.

I’ve been  living in a hotel for a month now… and it’s starting to get vaguely creepy. The staff here know us well of course, but they’re so happy when they greet us in the morning it’s almost unnerving. I don’t want to say they’re sycophantic, but it’s somewhere approaching that. That or they smile so widely and genuinely that they all seem to be in on some joke. Or they’re all on drugs at 8am. Not sure. Still, they’re friendly so… that’s good.

Ok, I promise I'm working on my second entry on Laos. No really, I'm going to go write it right now.