Sunday 2/26:

I woke up early in the morning (but not as early as Gretchen and Alex, who went out with Mark for a morning walk by the lake). We had breakfast, and for the morning, we learnt the Hmong language from a Hmong teacher in the ComoEl called Gao Li. As we had to communicate with the kids whose English level was below average, we were urged to learn some Hmong so that the kids will feel more comfortable in talking with us. We learnt a few sentence like “What’s your name?” and “Hello” in Hmong.

In the afternoon, we drove to ComoEl, which was situated in St Paul (15 minutes from Mark’s house). There, we played with the Hmong kids in the school gym. At first, they seemed reluctant to play with us, but after a few games, we started to hear laughter filling the gym. We had a great time playing with the kids. It’s been maybe years since I last actually felt like a kid.

At night, we had a wonderful dinner prepared by Marjorie. A guest speaker from Hmong joined us for the meal, and he shared his sad but interesting experience with us after the treat. He was in the army during the Vietnam War days, and he was the only one survived in his unit. It was fun listening to his experiences, among them including how he escaped from the military hospital and how he got to know his wife.

We went to do some groceries shopping after that.



In the school gym