It. Was. Awesome.

I got back last night. There is so much I want to write, but so much I have to do now that I'm back. David took such good care of the kids and the house and yard was immaculate when I got back. Also, apparently they didn't hardly ask about me which makes me feel so relieved. I talked to David once about three nights into the trip and asked if the kids missed me. He paused for awhile and was like, "I'm sure they do..." He was afraid to tell me that they had hardly said a word about my being gone, but in fact I was so glad to know that they weren't crying and pining after me.

The purpose of the trip was so that the Thai teachers and the Lao teachers could go visit their PRAM students in their villages and evaluate their projects. Each student must do four major projects and over the past few months, they had been working on their first two.


They are real, working projects that must address the needs of the community and help reduce poverty in some way. The students are agricultural extension officers (government) and each student chose certain families to work with in their village, based upon desire, ability to learn, and level of need/poverty.

The students are divided into two groups: animal husbandry and fisheries. To be honest, most of the projects I saw blew me away. And it was really amazing to hear the villagers talk about how it had improved their lives. This one woman said the best part about having a fish pond was that her relationship with her husband had improved, due to the fact that he had stopped going out drinking at night because he wanted to save their money to buy food for the fish.

This man said they now had a monthly income because his fish pond was doing so well, and that he was well-respected in his village for his new skills. He had never raised fish before a few months ago and it was easy to see his confidence and pride at what he had accomplished.


We also crossed the Vietnam/Lao border and spent twenty minutes or so at a really cold, run-down market that didn't have anything interesting. The coolest part of crossing the border was that I didn't have a visa. One of the Lao students had a friend at the border that offered to help us cross, but of course when the Vietnamese soldiers saw me in the van, they stopped us for 15 minutes and looked menacingly at me. They took my passport and I was worried I wouldn't get it back, but after a few phone calls, they gave it back to me and waved us through. My half-hour in Vietnam didn't leave me with the best impression.

I bought some kinds of fruits and vegetable oil.