We got to go back into the school this morning to finish our lessons. We were a little surprised when we arrived because they told us that the children prepared an hour long program for us to conclude the day. We adjusted quickly though, a skill we've had to utilize while being here, and did some review and a lesson on family. It was nice to see that the children remembered the majority of the words from Monday. We ended our portion by showing them examples of American songs and dances both performed by celebrities and the students in Portville as a transition to their performance. The section really worked well with our ideal of cultural exchange. The children's pieces were much more than we expected. They took a break to change into costumes and put on their make-up and then did two dances and a song for us. They even had made us a back-drop with different paper decorations that said "welcome" in English. The first dance was more traditional with a lot of focus on hand movements and done mainly by grade five. The song came next done by a grade five girl. Her performance included some dancing as well. She even had some grade four back up dancers. The final dance was mostly grade four and was a little more modern. After their program we exchanged gifts. We donated to the school one of the netbooks we brought, pens, pencils, colored pencils, chalk, books, baseballs, footballs and some basketballs that Maurice gave to us. We also left each child with a letter from a Portville student to keep for themselves and some more lollipops. We left the projector with Khamphath so that he could loan it to different schools within the district to use. The principal of the school presented us with two woven paper swan decorations.
Afterwards, Khamphath brought us to lunch for a Lao buffet. There was a variety of food including an interesting dessert dish. Dr. Andrianoff described it as "jello cereal". It was a sweetened milk with jello, rice, corn and something that Khamphath told us was a jungle fruit.
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