Advice

Because Mir and I have a new baby, people everywhere feel the need to give us advice on raising him. Normally I don’t mind at all, in fact, I welcome the advice. I know I have a lot to learn about being a father and I don’t want my pride to get in the way of caring for my boy.
But it’s is a little more complicated when the advice comes from Lao people. Now, I am not saying that Lao people don’t know how to raise children, obviously thousands of children are born here every year and they go on to become happy, successful adults. But our methods definitely conflict at times.
Here are a few of our favorite nuggets of wisdom.

“Don’t put him in diapers when he’s at home. He’ll be bow-legged when he grows up. When you go out, fine, use diapers, but not at home. Just let him pee on the floor and clean it up.” (Ewww)

Referring to his cradle cap: “Lots of people from the country get this because they never bathe their babies. (Ouch!) If you just wash his head every day and use lots of Vaseline it will go away.”

“He’s too hot, take the blankets off him!”
<--------(These two happen interchangeably)
“He’s too cold, wrap him up!”

“If you hold him over your shoulder like that he’ll have a hunchback when he grows up.”

Every time he hiccups: “Give him some water to drink, don’t give him milk!”

“If you pinch his cheeks like that he won’t want to eat food.”

“You shouldn’t dress him in onesies like this, it’s too tight on his neck. He should wear loose fitting clothes.” (I swear Lao babies only wear blankets for the first year of their life.)

My Classroom

As an English teacher, the title of this post might be somewhat of a misnomer. I don’t mean my literal open air, blackboard, complete with chickens and goats, classroom. I mean the stage of life the Father has us in to grow us into his son’s likeness. This isn’t an original “Doug” idea, I borrowed it from our country director’s wife, Corky. I love the perspective it gives on life though.
So, what is my classroom? Right now my wife and I just started the adoption process for our son Jonathan in a country where there have been two, yes two, previous adoptions to Americans. Each adoption has been decided on a case by case basis and at any time our request might be denied by either the Lao or U.S. government.
Our visas have been expired for five days now (as of January 5, 2009) even though the paperwork has been sitting in the administration office since October. For three months there have been serious doubts about whether they would even be extended, all this at a time when we need to be in Laos more than ever to work on the adoption. But recently there has been good news that they will be processed soon, though now that our old visas have expired it becomes slightly more complicated.
Finally, our financial situation has been tenuous recently. It seems like our organization is constantly adding more expenses to our profile, and with the recession at home many people have stopped giving to our account. Couple that with a falling dollar and rising inflation and you have a very stressful situation for the “provider” of the family. At times I have wondered which would send us back to the States first, lack of visas or lack of money. All of this again becomes more complicated when we consider the unknown costs of the adoption and starting our family.
Well, as best as I can tell, my classroom is faith that the Father is in control even though my life is clearly out of control. Any one of those three events would be enough to keep a person up at night, and all three together have given me plenty of chances to worry and fret. But we are not called to worry, we are called to trust. And I cannot waste my time and energy today fretting about tomorrow. I feel blessed because every morning I can wake up and trust that everything is in the Father’s hands and he cares for me. And even if the unthinkable happens today, this life is only a vapor and soon I will be in my Father’s arms.
Lessons like these make my phonetics classes look like a joke. How about a little audience participation? See if anyone even reads these notes. What is your classroom? Try to be CG (Communication Guidelines while in Asia) friendly, follow my example as best you can.

The only thing worse...

I am on the schedule to lead song time at our foreign fellowship here in Laos. Because we all take turns I only lead every couple of months. In November we started planning the adoption and ran into problems with the family asking for money. One Sunday morning we were finally able to meet with Jonny’s birth-mom and her family and explain very clearly why we could not give them any money. It was a long and stressful day and when we came home we relaxed and didn’t go to fellowship that night.

Fast forward one week. Our service starts at 5, but because we live out of town, we need to leave between 4:30 and 4:45. I was busy getting ready to go upstairs and at 4:15, I remembered I was on the schedule to lead sometime in early November. I raced downstairs and opened my email, praying that I didn’t have to lead in 20 minutes.

Let me ask you, what is the only thing worse than finding out you are supposed to lead w-ship in 20 minutes? Give up? Finding out that you were supposed to lead w-ship the week before and you forgot. I found out later that the speaker that night stood up and asked for the leader, and when no one came forward they did music a cappella. I was so embarrassed that we decided not to go to fellowship that night. I know, I know, I should have gone and fessed up, but no one is perfect.

The Dream

A few nights ago I was having a very intense dream. In my dream Jonny was screaming his head off because he had a wet diaper, and I was trying to change him and his onesy. I pulled and pulled, trying to get the onesy over his head and when it finally came off, I woke up. I found myself kneeling on the bed, with my pillow in one hand and my newly removed pillowcase in the other. I stared at both of them for a while, and decided it would be too much work to put the pillowcase back on so I went back to sleep.

The next morning Mir woke up, and her first words to me were: “What the heck did you do with your pillowcase?”

My Grossest Moment Ever

Warning! This blog entry is not for the faint of heart or for those who have recently eaten.

Mir at the MTV cafe, you can see the sign for the restroom behind her.

When we first came to Asia we had a four week stop-over in Hanoi, Vietnam. The purpose was to complete a TEFL certificate so that we could be certified EFL teachers in our respective countries. These were probably some of the worst four weeks of my life, and Mir would probably concur. We were jet lagged, living out of our suitcases in a cramped hotel room, sitting in classes for seven hours a day, and in a country where we didn’t like the food and didn’t speak the language. Because our classes were in our hotel, we rarely saw the outdoors except on the weekends. The one ray of sunshine was the MTV cafe. This was the restaurant next door that had free Wi-Fi, an English menu, decent food, and a very convenient location. In other words, we were there almost every night.

But in one moment, my perception of the MTV Cafe was changed forever. Having just arrived in Asia, my stomach was still on ropes and frequent trips to the bathroom were the norm. On one such occasion, I entered the bathroom, sat down... and then the toilet exploded onto me. I’m not joking, there was other peoples’ “business” splattered all over the walls, the floor, and of course me. When something like this happens, it takes a while for the gravity of the situation to sink in. My thoughts went more or less as follows:

“Did this really just happen?”

“Oh my gosh, I’m covered in $***!”

“How the heck am I going to get back to my room?”

(This series repeated several times.)

After collecting myself, I wiped off as much of the mess as I could, walked/ran through the restaurant, and booked it up to our hotel room. The next step was a long shower with all my clothes on, and then the disposal of said clothes in the trash can.

Sometimes I still can’t believe it...

Doug pre-grossest moment ever doing schoolwork.

Birthday SMS

Every year on my birthday some of my students send me a text message wishing me a happy birthday. This year’s haul was a little larger than in the past, and I thought I would share them with you. Most native English speakers cannot compose a grammatically correct or coherent text message, and so what hope do we have for English learners?

0:03

0:02

0:01

0:00

“(((((((BOOM)))))))”

“Happy Birthday”

“vo” “vo”


Happy birthday iwish you have successful in your life from class E6.

Happy birthday for the teacher.

Happy birth day to u i wish you successful in your life.

Happy birth day for you today and forever.

Morning, Happy Birthday to my teacher. I wish you very happy, healthy, have got a new baby and successful for everything in ur life. Love. (no name)

Happybirth day to you. I wish you to good health good luck and successful for your work.

I wish you happy in your birthday and successful for your work.

Happy birthday to you! I wish you have goodluck and healthy.

Happy birthday. I wish you happy and have a good thing.

happy birth day teacher DOUNG. I hope you successful on your work &good luck good health.

Nocturnal colloquy

Many a night I have entire conversations with Mirinda while asleep. Hilarity often ensues, but Mir almost always forgets the exact conversation by morning. Until last night when she had a pen and paper handy...

Me: (Rolling over and kissing her back) I’ll make this towel day one for you baby. (In a seductive voice.)
Mir: What does that mean?

Me: Five days, fifteen towels.

Mir: (Laughing) What? Do you know Jonathan?

Me: I know him better than you!

Mir: Doug, do you know Jonathan?

Me: I know him about as well as any other baby that age.


And then I roll over and am asleep again. Enjoy.