Shelley and I just got back from a fun little trip into the village. We ventured into the villages of the southern part of our province to learn a little more about the culture in those villages. It was an awesome time because we got to see a different side of East Asia than we were used to. The jist was we were an hour away from the border of Laos, and we were able to lose the space heaters and long underwear to donn shorts and a t-shirt for a few days while traveling to different rubber-farming villages via bus and meeting people. Usually around this time of year, we are preparing to take a vacation to Thailand over our winter break, but this year due to the cost of returning to America for my sister's wedding in April, we are skipping that vacation and hanging around our city. So, this was a great substitute for us, and we never had to leave the country. We went with 5 of our friends and learned as much as we possibly could about a people group in East Asia that is about as different from the rest of East Asia as you can get. Here are some examples:
Instead of apartment buildings, they live in little villages of these awesome houses that many of them built with their own hands, from cutting down the trees to putting up the walls (read: every man's dream). The bottom of the house is on stilts, kind of like a beach house, only instead of SUV parking they use the bottom to raise their pigs and to store their farming equipment. They also have chickens, lots of chickens.
They make a great living off of rubber farming. They also grow and raise almost all of their own food, and only work 9 months out of the year. Because of this, they don't care if their kids go to college or not, and their kids don't necessarily want to go to college! This is ridiculously counter-cultural here. Everywhere else, education is everything, and the kids face tremendous pressure. Here, may as well work on the rubber farm. It is good money and you have everything you need. While the rest of East Asia is freezing in the winter, they are enjoying evening and morning temperatures in the 60s and daytime temps in the 80s.
They grill their meat. I repeat, they grill their meat. I walked by a restaurant with another guy and the smell stopped us in our tracks. Every man knows when he smells flesh cooking on wood. That smell is genetically ingrained in all of our hearts to cause us to drool. It is something beyond Pavlov and his dogs. It is the way we were created.
It was a great trip, and we learned a lot! We are now back to our apartment and our computers, which means we will hopefully also be back to posting a little more regularly.
