Soccer

By Tali Sauer

I play soccer in the fall, I play soccer in the spring, I play soccer by a wall, I play soccer while I sing. When I’m on the field, my thoughts dont drift, they concentrate into one point, like the center of a whirlpool. My mind is all about the game. I rush down the field, dribbling the ball around everyone else. I leap past the final defender, sending the ball in the wrong direction, but I lash out my foot, making contact with the ball, and it curves right into the goal.

I’ve been playing soccer since before I can remember. I used to play goalie, but I do not play anymore because of my slight height difficulties. I play soccer almost every other week for seven straight days, sometimes even inside my house (not to my dad’s approval). Soccer is a big part of my life, and it helps balance it out so I stay active and in a state of elated happiness.

Maï Savanh Lao

Maï Savanh Lao? What is that? Well, roughly translated, Maï is silk, Savanh is heaven, and Lao is Lao P.D.R. So, Maï Savanh Lao means Heavenly  Silk from Lao. 

This is a silk and tea producing company that promotes fair trade from the making, to selling, to buying. And I was fortunate enough to get to visit their company in Vientiane while I was staying there.

Women, who wanted to work in the spirit of fair trade, started Maï Savanh Lao in 2005. Many of the tradition Lao dresses are handmade and take lots and lots of time to make. The women in Lao would make this to sell, but did not get very much money for the amount of skill and time that went into the dresses. So began this company, one that works and earns the fair amount.

When I got there I did not know what to expect, but I received a very nice tour throughout the factory and was taught about the process of making silk. The people in Maï Savanh Lao were very generous to give us this tour and let us take pictures.

The first thing to making Lao silk is the silk worms. They are feed on mulberry leaves, until they are ready to make their cocoons. 20,000 eggs makes 12 grams of silk.  







Next is boiling and hand reeling. But nowadays, people use machines to reel the ends of the silk worm cocoons. The part that people use for silk is actually only the cocoon, but also use the worms for dried snacks. Yes, sadly the worms die through this process. This picture on the side is reeling, but not directly from the cocoons. I did not have the chance to take a picture of the machines reeling directly from the cocoons. The women is this picture was our guide and she is from France. She is also one of the people that started Maï Savanh Lao in Vientiane.





Next is dying the silk. Maï Savanh Lao uses natural dyes made from flowers and other various plants. This process is dangerous, because you have to heat the dye up to it's boiling point for the colors to transfer. Again, it it done by hand. 

Next is reeling it back into rolls to be woven into dresses.  





    

Next is the weaving process. The women working here will then take the rolls of silk and weave them into Lao traditional dresses or sîn. Sîn is what Lao people these traditional dresses.  

The final process might look something like this. But the dresses come in very MANY styles

Sources: http://www.silkliners.com/product_images/uploaded_images/silkworm.jpg

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/4d/a3/b6/traditional-lao-dress.jpg

And my trip to Lao, and my camera/