Red dirt road in Laos.

It’s day 18 and we still don’t get a break. Day after day, weekend after weekend, there’s something to do. It’s actually hard being so busy, but fun is always a good thing no matter what. Friday night, we karaoked the hour away; Saturday night, attended a friend’s show; Sunday, we went to “taad moun (moon)” waterfall. Though it wasn’t really a ‘waterfall’ waterfall, it was still really fun. What was totally unexpected was that we would see the children from the Donkoi Children’s Center (where some of us are volunteering) there. There was so much to do there! Once we got there, I couldn’t help but snap everything in sight for the first half hour. Then Samantha threatened to confiscate my camera. I was actually glad I didn’t have my camera with me because i slipped and fell a couple times, so was pretty thankful I didn’t kill it. The rocks were COVERED in moss, it’s hard to tell if that’s a good of a bad thing: good – I didn’t hurt myself AS often, bad – it was easier to GET hurt. After seeing the Donkoi kids, things really lightened up because otherwise, I don’t think I could’ve done much with people who didn’t want to get wet. Sandra was wearing shoes in so she didn’t have to step on the moss; Brandin didn’t seem like he wanted to “play” in the water so much; Yaeng came in, and sat with me; Amy couldn’t come in even if she wanted to, Phon [the only student who went with us] refused to go in for a WHILE until someone made him change.

All in all, I was pretty glad I met with some high school girls who went with Donkoi. What really bothers me is that I feel the same age as the Ugrads who are 19+, but I feel older with the high schoolers, and I’m a couple months younger. Maybe it’s the looks, girls here look so much younger than they do back in the states. They agreed to be my language partners but it was sort of confusing because we had some communication problems at first and it’s hard to talk on the phone with them because I don’t know what they’re saying, and they don’t know what I’m saying. But according to everyone, they say that’s the key – forcing myself to learn Lao.

Brandin’s got the pictures from the first day up until now which have been very hard to download from here, but we hope to get some of them up soon. Bye from Laos!