Pre departure training

Sa bai dee! It's been a whole week since pre depature training finished in Canberra, and I think I've just finished recovering.

I arrived in Canberra on Sunday afternoon, having spent most of Sunday morning virtually tearing my hair out from stress (mainly just because I couldn't believe that it was actually happening). We stayed at the Rydges Lakeside, which is in the centre of Canberra (although I didn't find this out until the end of the week, because there's not much there). We had a meet and greet at the hotel on Sunday night, so I met the Lao group (14 of us in total, the second largest country group - there were 120 people there in total) and lots of other people, and spent my first evening (of many) in the hotel's bar.

Monday morning was when it all started. I woke up to the sounds of my roommate (Lisa) getting ready to go for a jog (keen!!) so I introduced myself - and then she says 'Do you have a twin sister?' It turns out Lisa lived in New College with Amy. Small world!!

We had presentations from the AusAID staff and some RAYAD's in the morning (let me explain the acronym - I am an AYAD, which stands for Australian Youth Ambassador for Development, and when I return from Laos, I become a RAYAD, which is a Returned AYAD). We were trucked over to ANU in the afternoon for discussions about cross-cultural awareness and religion (I thought I was supposed to be avoiding uni for the next 18 months!) then came back for some dinner (and in my case, a random two hour trek around Lake Burley Griffin with two girls who wanted to go for a walk!) I was absolutely stuffed at the end of the day - I think because I knew noone there except Nishan, so every conversation started at the same point - 'Where are you going?' 'What are you doing there?' - plus they were packing our schedule really tight.

We spent all day Tuesday at ANU in presentations and discussion groups about development issues and capacity building. We met some Laotians who were studying at ANU, and at the end of the day one of them (unfortunately I can't remember his name) went to each person in the group and tied a white string with some kip (Laotian dollars) attached to it around their wrist. My Lonely Planet tells me that this is called a baci ceremony, which is of animist origin. The tying of money to the wrist bounds our guardian spirits to us. It was pretty special :-)

Tuesday night I caught up with my old uni friend Nick who now lives in Canberra - it was great to catch up and just spend some time with someone I knew!

Wednesday morning consisted of several presentations from some senior AusAID staff about Australia's aid program in general, HIV/AIDS, and media expectations (and some very exciting news - Nishan's assignment got approved!! For those of you who don't know Nishan, we studied together at uni, and now both work at EnergyAustralia as graduates. We applied independently of each other to the program to go to Laos, and now by some remarkable twist of fate we will actually be working for the same company!!) We also spent some time in our Lao group preparing our presentation for Friday afternoon, which was to reflect what we'd learnt during the week - naturally our group decided to do some sort of interpretative dance...

We actually had some free time in the afternoon (yay!) so I went to the war memorial with two of the other Lao girls Michelle and Nicole. It was fantastic - I could have spent days wandering around, but I only had an hour!!! Then it was off to our swish reception at Old Parliament House with the Foreign Minister. It was a nice night - we met the Lao Ambassador and his wife, there was a presentation by Mr Downer, and lots of picture taking. However I was relieved to get back to the hotel and take my shoes off - two hours standing up in heels is never fun!

Thursday was great - in the morning we had presentations from the insurance, medical and security companies that take care of us while on assignment. The security guy was the best - he was ex-SAS and looked like he couldn't wait for some sort of war to break out so he could come and evacuate us. The medical guy, meanwhile, had me terrified that I was going to get rabies/dengue fever/malaria/everything all at once.

In the afternoon it just got better. We went to the Lao embassy (which was actually the Lao ambassador's house). The first thing he did was offer us all a BeerLao (which is apparently the best beer in SE Asia). Then we had this huge BBQ with sticky rice, chicken lap and papaya salad (I think I'll be eating lots of these over the next year!) and then he put on a DVD of the ASEAN conference held in Vientiane so we could all watch Mr Downer dance and sing at the gala night. What an awesome guy! If all Lao people are like him I'm going to have a great time!

Thursday night was the quiz night (which was organised by two of the Loud Lao crowd, Keith and Julie) and then back to the hotel bar (I think the only night I didn't spend any time there was Monday). The only problem was we had drunk them dry. Someone had the smart idea of going to a nightclub called Mooseheads, and so we all ended up following them. It was crap....as soon as I walked in I became very aware of how long ago I was actually 18. So I left pretty quickly :-)

Friday was dominated mostly by the AYAD's filling out various bits of paperwork, and our presentations. It turns out that most people had actually gone for the interpretative dance approach, and the Bangladeshi group had had pretty much every single idea we'd had (and they went first, so we looked pretty lame...except for Nishan's rapping). We got delayed at Canberra airport on the way home, but I was nice and comfortable in the Qantas Frequent Flyer lounge, chomping on camembert and drinking champers (don't ask me how I got there).

The week really helped with my motivation and focus for the trip - before I was just feeling stressed and questioning why I was going, but now I'm really excited again (and just stressed about how on Earth I'm going to get myself organised to go).

Phop gan mai,
Susan