Our friend and tennis instructor / torturer Tat and his wife just had a baby. We went to meet the new kid, who they are calling Donut (at least that's what it sounds like to us). Anyway, he seems pretty decent, although this picture doesn't do him justice, as it looks like he's screaming. Anyway, this is their first kid, the cute little girl on the side is their niece. They are basically our neighbors, as they live about 4 streets away . Of course, given the lack of road signs, etc. it took us 4 phone calls and 20 minutes to find the place, and even then he had to come out to the main road to lead us in. At one point we found ourselves back at the other end of our road, having gone in a full circle, drove past our house, and tried again.

I also represented the Embassy today in a Ministry of Foreign Affairs-sponsored badminton tournament. It was the MFA vs. representatives from the Embassy community. I was the only white guy there, but the Embassy community was well-represented by the Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesia and the Philippines. I was teamed up with a guy from the Chinese embassy. Our common language was Lao, which was kind of fun. We won one and lost one.

Oh yeah, Saturday, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between the US and Laos, we (the Embassy) are playing the MFA team in Soccer (after the war, we never closed our embassy in Laos, as we did in Vietnam and Cambodia). Of course, never having played soccer in my life, I'm playing Left Forward (not sure what that means). The good thing is, after 10 minutes, our entire side will be replaced with Lao employees who actually knwo what they are doing. Katherine has done most of the organizing.

Then Saturday afternoon we are going out to the Don Khoy center, which is an after-school / summer program for Lao kids. They are putting on a play and selling little trinkets they've made over the past few months. Pictures and a full report from the weekend to come.