Sit like this!!! Pour the Water!!!...the life of a demanding nun

So today in an effort to finally deliver the remaining consular New Year's gifts to various agencies and contacts in Laos, I went to a temple with one of our FSNs. (Foreign Service National, a term for local and 3rd country-staff that are hired locally. Despite being widely used and accepted, the term has somehow been deemed offensive or something, and LES (locally-engaged staff) is the new term to use. It's just that it hasn't caught on. And anyway, LES will undoubtedly be pronounced as something approximating the word LESS, thus connoting that the locally-engaged staff are somehow less than...which will obviously be offensive and changed.)

Anyway, I went to said temple with Ae (our ACS FSN, isn't the gov't wonderful with the acronyms?) because we have used their cremation services in the past when a deceased AMCIT's relatives want to dispose of the body that way. It was the same temple I visited last March, and wrote about on our lovely blog on March 29 last year (for those of you who have this whole thing memorized by date).

At that time, we met with the Abbot of the temple, and there was lots of activity around, with novice monks cleaning up the temple grounds, villagers entering and exiting, etc.

Today we walked in to silence. Not even the cats were moving. Okay, when I walked up to see if a cat was indeed dead, it jumped up and ran away, but that was the extent of the activity.

So we stood outside the Abbot's closed door and called gently (last year we woke him up) to see if he was around.

Nothing.

We stood outside the other monks' quarters and yelled for them.

Nothing.

We climbed up some stairs to a common area, where a shirtless, decidedly unholy-looking Lao man was gently snoring.

Ae called out. aye! Aye!! AYE!!!! (Aye = older brother, sounds like a Pirate, or Scotsman, saying yes)

.....to be continued, as Katherine is here to pick me up to go play tennis.....