Tuesday in Southeastern Asia

Today (Tuesday) we spent the day at the Ta Phin school again -- we even all sang to the teachers at the end of the seminar today (yes, me too! but it was only 'It's a Small World') . . .

The teachers and administrators also made us lunch -- this was my first super authentic Vietnamese lunch (i.e. like you would have in a rural familie's home) --- I ate bamboo for the first time (interesting) and was told that they leave the chicken foot in the soup to add flavor! This first pic is of us at our table at lunch. As the sweet lady was pouring stuff into my cup, sometimes you just say 'Thank you', chew, swallow and smile :)
But hey I'm getting pretty decent with the chopsticks!

Later this afternoon I went for a walk down to some rice fields near the school . . . was a little awkward at first as I could tell the Hmong working in the field were saying to each other -- 'What the heck is that crazy white guy doing down here?' But after I just stood and watched about 15 minutes (with no common language sometimes the only way to communicate is just to show an interest in them and smile) . . . they warmed up . . .

These next couple of pics are of them plowing with their water buffaloes (the guys do this) and then re-planting the rice . . . as I understand it they put many seeds in one small area and then as the seedlings come up they pick them and then re-plant them in other fields.

These last couple of pics are of a couple of men who came by carrying rice . . . and the new world record that one of the guys doing the work at the school set in stacking tables to set bricks! (They obviously don't know about OSHA here :)