Lao Children

We took a three hour boat ride to get to this Lao H-mong village
Few foreigners have been to it
These first 4 pics are all from that all day journey

BTW we took books and school supplies to the village teacher
but only spent about 30 min. due to the heat and humidity

This girl was so sad

Hmong girl from a hill village up the Mekong river
She was beautiful

Another girl same village

And a young boy

This is at a school we visited by van outside Luang Prabang, Laos

Peeking

School break time

Protection from the sun

These girls were in a talent show which is why the were
dressed up in the traditional Lao clothing and hair styles

We saw this hair adornment quite often on
women that were dressed up

Grandma was watching this little one while she sat in her small corner store
The orange boxes in the back are Beerlao plastic bins

I was infatuated with the Lao children. Their smiles, demeanor and innocence captured my heart. This has not happened often and I will treasure the memory of those faces I saw and a few that I was able to photograph. I had some shyness but generally if I asked to take a pic they said yes or their parents encouraged them. Let me know if you also see something special with these children.

Great Air Conditioning

Click on the pic to get the "whole" story

Having a broken AC unit in Southern China is not fun. My classroom unit has not worked for the past three days and it has been warm with the typical high humidity. Thinking about how warm the day could prove to be as I was walking to work this morning and following this young guy, I was  thinking how nice it must be to open and cool.

Both the way this child is being carried, (everyone has a built-in baby carrier) and the split pants are very typical in China for boys and girls up to about this age or so. It proves to be very convenient as you can squat any time and take care of business. Yes you must watch where you step. Little puddles on the sidewalk are not spilled tea!

Hong Kong Flu Outbreak

Masked Boy
c Reuters Picture

So Bev and I were going to HK this weekend, Bev has decided not to go. We have just rec'd warnings from our administration. I may opt to go someplace more local.

HONG KONG, March 13 (Reuters) - More than half a million Hong Kong schoolchildren stayed at home on Thursday after the government shut all kindergartens and primary schools for two weeks to contain an outbreak of flu.

A government-appointed panel of experts is probing the deaths of three children, aged 2, 3 and 7, over the last two weeks. The two older children were infected with seasonal flu, while the cause of illness in the youngest child is unknown.

The health scare has not been linked to H5N1 bird flu but the government's decision on Wednesday night to close the schools brought back memories of 2003, when an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome hit Hong Kong.

Health Secretary York Chow said the government closed the schools because the numbers of young children getting infected seemed higher this year.

"Our main concern is the infection of young children. The percentage of young children getting influenza this season seems to be higher," he said at a press briefing. "The second is the mortality ... if there're two deaths related to flu even before the peak, then we need to do something to minimise the numbers in the weeks to come," he said, referring to two of the three children -- a girl aged 3 and a boy aged 7.

The government disclosed two new cases on Thursday, a 3-year-old boy WHO was in stable condition in hospital and a 21-month-old boy who died in late February after being admitted to hospital with flu-like symptoms. His cause of illness is unknown.

Mrs Kwan, a mother of a 10-year-old student, was worried.

"You can see that many people in Hong Kong are a bit scared of such viruses. It's not like before when kids would just have regular cough and fever. Now, you just don't know how serious any outbreak might be. I am very worried," she said.

Experts say there was no reason to panic.

"This year, there seem to be slightly more flu cases. But from what I can see, we get a bad flu year every few years. I don't think it is very unusual or different from previous years," said Leo Poon, a virologist from the University of Hong Kong. (Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn and James Pomfret; Editing by Nick Macfie)