Superstitions Part 1

Living with Lao people this year has been a great experience. Christa and I have learned a lot about Lao life and culture and have been able to improve our Lao a lot. S's English is pretty much amazing now, and even N, though she is just now trying to produce language, can understand most of what we say in English after living with native speakers for months.

But perhaps the funniest part of living in a mixed culture household is that there are things that some people accept as true that you think are just ridiculous. I guess this can happen with the same culture as well, but it is especially apparent when you have multiple cultures and people living in one home.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share with you some of the Lao superstitions/beliefs that Christa and I have found particularly hilarious (S and N know I'm writing this and there's no hard feelings:)

1. If you wash your hair when you have your period, it interrupts the cycle of your period and causes the day of it to be changed the next month. Thus, most Lao girls do not wash their hair for up to 5 days when they're on their period (I can barely go two days without washing my hair so I can't imagine!). It's funny because as I'm writing this, I asked S if she still thinks this way and she said, "Now, I think I changed and don't care about that anymore." But then she added, "I do think it made the day change though."

2. If your tree isn't producing much fruit, put a cloth skirt on it and it will grow more fruit. Seriously, our papaya tree only had one papaya on it, so our landlady marched over there with an old Lao skirt and wrapped it around that tree, making it a female and thus more fruitful. It actually does have about 6 papayas on there now, but I'm not sure if that's because of the skirt, or because of the natural order of things.

Stay tuned for some more tomorrow :)