Pakse Bound

Team Laos

Third Row: Doug, Russell, Kenton, Maurice, Corky

Second Row: Mirinda and Johnny, Bethany Kat, Mark, Jeff, Heather

First Row: Sarah, Amy, Pam Amy, Linda

Team Pakse

In just a few short days, two more to be exact, Russell and I will be moving down to Pakse! It’s so hard to believe that it’s finally here. And on top of moving down on Monday, we will also begin teaching on Wednesday. Crazy! I can definitely say that we are ready for a routine and ready to build relationships. Don’t get me wrong, we have acquired some relationships here, but just knowing that we will be living and staying in Pakse makes a huge difference.

We still don’t know what we’re going to do about the house situation. We’ll keep you posted on what happens! When we arrive on Tuesday morning, we will go and look at the other house that Russell told you about. This will also give us some bargaining room with the other landlords, if we decide to stay at that house. I know that the house we are going to look at has two bedrooms, a great room, completely furnished (whatever that means), and it has a washing machine. They are asking the same price for this house as the first house and it seems that it may have more to offer, which would be good in the long run. We really liked the first house--it is really clean and in a great location, but it doesn’t have a lot of furnishings and we’ll have to purchase things to furnish the house.

This week has been full of meetings and greetings, do’s and don’ts, and cultural information. We finally got to meet all of Team Laos and Team Cambodia. There has been so much information thrown at us in the past two months, I hope that we can keep track of it all. I know with His help that we will. I have included a couple of pictures of Team Laos and Team Pakse. I hope you enjoy.

Since our whole team has been here, we asked the girls who have lived in Pakse what we should buy here that we can’t get in Pakse to take down with us. We went to a mini-mart and here is what we came out with: two small packages of brown sugar, a large package of dried chickpeas, a small package of dried cranberries and dried golden raisins, a bottle of maple syrup, and a can of Coca-Cola (Russell was thirsty). All for the small price of $19.50. Yeah, you’re telling me! Things are not-so-cheap here because almost everything is imported either from China, Thailand, or Vietnam. But, that’s the way it is.

Bethany