Vang Vieng--Robin and Suruchi Teaching English

While strolling around, we found a temple that mentioned that they had English classes every evening and they were looking for volunteers. We thought we'd give it a shot. One of the guys who has been teaching there for the last month told us that the kids are particularly interested in learning restaurant English. So I went to the Simpsons Cafe (where we had spent a lot of time) to ask if I could borrow menus that were in Lao. I quickly noted the English translations. We had no idea that the classroom would be filled with kids ranging in age from 6-16. And we had no idea we'd be COMPLETELY on our own! To make it interesting Robin did some extremely memorable impressions of the animals that appeared on the menu. Next time you see him ask him to show you one of them! Just when we were all proud of ourselves for making it through the 30 minute class, we discovered that the class was in fact 60 minutes long! DOH! So we improvised a whole restaurant scene and had the kids repeat phrases like "May I take your order please?" and "Just a moment." etc. It all went really well. This picture is only of an empty classroom because when we asked the kids who were hanging around after class if we could take a snap, they declined.