Tuesday morning Christa had to teach at 8am, and I stayed home all day. I had an extended time of devotions, read more of the Chronicles of Narnia, watched the movie Letters to God (which was surprisingly not that bad/cheesy for a Christian one!) and started reading a book based on Ephesians called Sit, Walk, Stand. I might post on that later.
So Christa taught until 11:45, came back and had dinner with me, and then taught one more class. During her afternoon class, I was in charge of making banana bread. When she got home, we went to the sauna. The first time in, I felt like I couldn't breathe and wondered how relaxing this could really be, but the second time in was better and I could actually enjoy it. My skin is definitely softer now, too. We just used regular vanilla yogurt. The same kind that I had for breakfast this morning! No pictures of that adventure though, sorry to say ;]
For dinner, we went back to Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant and then went to the Night Market to try to return a shirt and finish getting my souvenirs for people. So I think I'm finished with that now! We also had roti for dessert. It's an eggy pastry thing with sweetened condensed milk drizzled on top--sep lai! :] Again, we were early to bed. I think I slept from around 9:30pm to 6:30am. Now that I'm on Lao time, I am getting a ridiculous amount of sleep on this trip. It might be harder yet to get back on Iowa time! Christa says there's something in the air here.
This morning (Dec 28th) I went to class with Christa. I graded for her while she taught and then I read more Chronicles of Narnia. One of her classes also had a gift exchange for the New Year, which is what the banana bread was for. I got an interesting little blue jar in the shape of a heart. :] It was lots of fun to see the different personalities though, which you can maybe even see in the picture a little bit.
Christa's been trying to teach one of her classes the difference between "You have to" or "You don't have to" etc. "You have to" is 100% = You must. But "You don't have to" is 50% = You may, or you may not. Which is confusing because they seem like they should be opposites. So in their example sentences, the students write "You don't have to touch a monk. If you touch a monk, you are sinning," because they think it the opposite of "You have to..." The English language really is confusing!
Shortly after class, we went to Corky & Maurice's house again for the ELI Teacher's Christmas party. Last time I was at their house, I was a bit of a zombie, so it was nice to actually be able to talk to them with a well-rested, fully functioning brain. That also means it's been one week since I've gotten here. Christa & I decided that in many ways, it seems like I've been here for more than a week, but in a good way. So far, we've just had a nice relaxing week with a few Christmas parties here and there, but not rushed really at all, so we've had lots of time to catch up. :]
We had a gift exchange with this Christmas party, too. Christa said I should bring Velveeta cheese from home, which was battled over between two people a little while. I ended up with a cool little lamp thing, and Christa got a coffee mug and granola bar from one of her favorite local coffee shops.
After the Christmas party, we went to visit the "four girls" dorms again. There were two guys there this time too who weren't so shy to talk to me, and they are level 5 in school, so they knew English pretty well, too. It was fun. :] It's only 9:30pm here, but I think we're off to bed for a bit of reading before probably falling asleep by 10. It is vacation indeed. ;]
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