The Light Festival 1 🏮 Friday

     This weekend was the festival of light.
     On Friday we made fire boats at school.
     On Saturday we explored a paper making and craft village.
     On Sunday we made more at TAEC (Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center).
     Monday was the parade.

     Here are a few pictures of the boats:

Boats made by kids during art at school.

My boat is on the left, Jina's is on the right, and a bean is in the middle.

     The boats are made of banana tree trunks with banana leaves,  flowers ( the traditional orange and yellow chrysanthemums and something from the school garden), and berries. The boats are held together with nails and staples, and the finishing touches are the incense sticks and candles.

     After school, we went to Lao Friends Hospital for Children to hear the french musicians who were performing for the patients. there were several juggling balls and clubs. I'm learning to use juggling balls, but it was fun to try throwing clubs. It's much harder than throwing balls!

Bugs of Laos

BUGS!!!
 (that is all the introduction these guys need.)

This preying mantis is the most dangerous leaf you'll ever meet. That is, if you're about an inch tall. 

Pretty little creature. I don't know what it is.

More leaves! I think this is a hawk moth of some sort.

Red and black + stylish pom poms = perfect little beetle.

Another leaf, this time six inches long and in katydid form.

Katydids love the hospital. See the resemblance with the previous picture? 

May the best beetle catch the golden snitch! or dragonfly. or whatever it is.
(actually, my dad says that those are antennas.)

We get tons of cool moths, often enormous.

incredible luna moth! around 7 inches wide and 5 inches long. Bigger than my hand!

Our House in Laos & our Lao Garden🍊

     Today we took a walk around the house and our garden. The house is down a little road with a motorcycle repair shop and a noodle restaurant. In Lao cities, the neighborhoods are like little villages. They even have village chiefs! Each village also has a neighborhood Wat (temple)

Our house is in the village of Ma. The sign says Ban Ma, which in Lao means Village Ma.

Here is the gate in front of the house. If you look closely, you can see the red roof.

This is Ton (tone) the gardener. He comes about once every three weeks to help mow the lawn, clean up fallen leaves,
take care of the plants, and do other gardening stuff.

I was sad to leave our plum tree in America, but our Lao Garden has even more fruit trees!

Here are some fruits we picked.
Left to right: a fruit that our market guidebook called Maak Wa, and 2 limes. We also have kaffir limes (you don't eat these, but you can cook with the leaves and they smell nice).

Little fruits. These are supposed to be really sour.

A fallen kaffir lime.

Custard apples! These have a bizarre texture, but taste amazing. Usually the fruits are covered in ants because the cracks leak sweet stuff.

 Beautiful tiny pomegranates! These are about the size of my fist. They turn rainbow colors and look very nice, but they won't turn red. We picked one and it was REALLY sour. I guess we'll have to figure out when pomegranate season is.

These guavas are not ready for eating yet. My dad said some types of guava turn pink on the inside when they're ripe.

A lime. You can tell that its not a kaffir lime because those are lumpy and covered in bumps. Also, kaffir leaves have weird segments.When lime-picking it is very important to watch out for thorns!

The neighbor's coconut tree. Ours doesn't have any fruit.

An interesting flower my dad found before  my mom, sister, and I arrived. Sadly, it wilted before I could see it.

Another strange flower. I don't know what it is.

Seed pods on the ground.

A (currently mango-less) mango tree.

Aloe Vera. Apparently it's good for sunburns.

I think a dog may have stepped in the wet cement....

a Year in Laos✈

     My family is going to Laos for a year. 

     Laos is a small country surrounded by China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia. Laos is not very developed, so there are lots of little villages and a few main big cities. These include the capital, Vientiane, and Luang Probang, where we will live.

Here is a map of Laos. You can see lots of cities and the neighboring countries.

My dad is working at the childrens hospital in Luang Probang. Jina and I will also go to school.

Ock Pop Tok (옥 팝 톡)

A few days ago I went to a Lao cloth shop called Ock Pop Tok. It was started by a Western woman and a Lao woman, working together to preserve the Lao weaving culture. Daddy said that Ock Pop Tok means East Meets West, and they have a workshop where you can see people make the cloth. So we rode a tuk tuk (kind of Taxi) to the workshop.

며칠전에 옥팝톡이라는 라오스옷가게에 갔습니다. 라오스의 직조 문화를 보전하기 위해 서양의 여자와 라오스의 여자가 함께 시작했습니다. 아빠말씀이 옥팝톡의 의미가 동방과 서양의 만남이라고 하셨고 옷을 만드는 사람들을 볼수있는 워크샵이 있다고 하셨습니다. 그래서 우리는 툭툭 (택시같은 것)을 타고 거기에 갔습니다. 

I took all of the pictures, except for the very last one.

제일 마지막 사진을 제외하고 모든 사진을 제가 찍었습니다.

MAKING CLOTH (옷 만들기)

Phase 1. Making and dying the silk thread.

과정 1. 실크사 제작과 염색

The silkworms. They're the little tan things eating the green leaves. If you click on the picture, you can look at them close up. The big white thing on the left is a silk worm cocoon.
누에. 초록빛을 먹고 있는 작은 탠칼러가 누에입니다. 사진을 클릭하셔서 클로즈업을 해보시면 잘 보실 수 있으실 겁니다. 왼쪽에 있는 하얀 것은 실크누에고치입니다.  

The silkworms make these cocoons. People take the fibers from the cocoons to make silk.
누에들이 이 고치를 만듭니다. 사람들은 이 고치에서 실크를 만들기 위한 섬유를 뽑아냅니다.

This is the silk after the first boiling. They can boil it several times to make it softer.
이것은 처음 삶은 후의 실크입니다.

This is after it is boiled again. 
이것은 다시 한번 삶은 후의 모습입니다.

This chart shows all the different plants and things that make different colors.
이 아트는 여러가지의 색상을 만드는 식물이나 물건들을 보여줍니다.

Here is one of the seeds from the tamarind tree. This seed is one of the dyes in the chart above.
타마린드 나무의 씨입니다. 이 씨는 위 차트에 염색재료중 하나입니다. 

Here is the tree where the seed pod came from. It is really cool that they can get everything they need from their garden to make their silk and weave it. 
위의 씨가 나온 나무가 여기에 있습니다. 실크를 만들 수 있는 모든 재료를 여기서 얻을 수 있다는 것이 아주 멋집니다.

Here you can see some of the other things to use for dying silk different colors. The materials are on the right, and the dyed silk is hanging on the left.
여기에 다른 색깔로 염색할 수 있는 재료들이 있습니다. 재료들은 오른쪽에 염색된 실크들은 왼쪽에 걸려있습니다.

this is the pot and the stove for boiling the dyes.
염료를 끓이는 스토브와 남비입니다.

This is a photo of the spinning wheel used to wind the colored thread onto a spool so you can use it on a loom to weave cloth. The lady turns the crank, which spins the big wheel. The big wheel turns the little spool of thread which is the long skinny orange thing on the left side. Each time the big wheel turns, it spins the spool of thread one hundred times, so you can spin the thread really fast. 

Phase2. WEAVING

과정 2. 직조

These are some of the colors of thread to choose from.

This is the shuttle, which holds the spools of thread. The weaver slides the shuttle back and forth between the strings on the loom. Some shuttles have one thread, others have two, and some even have three! Actually, if you look closely, you can tell that this shuttle has room for three  spools of thread, but only two are being used.

The looms look very complicated. Here is a video of a woman we saw weaving at a village near Luang Prabang. You can see how she uses the foot pedals to move every other thread up or down, and how she slides the shuttle between them to weave the thread. Then she uses the comb to make sure it is tight. 

Here is a much fancier pattern. This kind takes a lot more work. 

This picture shows which ethnic groups from where make what sort of cloth patterns (and elephants). Ock Pop Tock does about half of their weaving at the workshop and about half is done by women in these villages. 

This is a different kind of  pattern made with white cotton fabric, wax and dye. You use a pen-like thing to make patterns in black wax on the cloth. Then you dye the cloth and then clean off the wax to make white pattern on your cloth where the wax used to be!

The pillow in back shows what it looks like after it is dyed and cleaned. Sometimes the sewing people add beads and things on the bags and clothes like this...
저 뒤에 있는 쿠션을 보시면 염색하고 세탁 후에 어떻게 보이는지 아실 수 있습니다. 어떨 때는 구슬을 가방이나 천에 이렇게 더하기도 합니다. 

...and this. 그리고 이거...

you can make lots of the same patterned cloth with different colors.
같은 패턴의 옷감을 다른 색상으로 만들 수 있습니다.

These are sinhs, traditional lao skirts.
이들이 라오스의 전통 치마인 '신'입니다.

Jina and me in our sinhs that we bought from the night market, with the person who made them.
진아와 제가 야시장에서 산 '신'을 입고 이 옷을 만든 사람과 함께 찍은 사진입니다. 

I hope you enjoyed learning about traditional Lao silk weaving culture as much as I did.

라오스의 전통실크 직조에 대해 배우는 것을 저만큼 즐기셨기를 바랍니다.