The Mekong River.

Drinking iced tea.

My heart was left at the bank of the Mekong River. What a wonderful sight to see this river that flows through countries and serves as important source of livelihood to the people.  I really enjoyed getting out of the fast paced, over crowded streets of Vientiane for a nice bike ride and boat ride on the Mekong River. After heading up towards Luang Prabang the highlights would be one of the ethnic minorities and their huts just tip-toed on the peak of the roads with the children at play. Many things have changed…for example we had to pay for “entrances” into all of the temples. When I was here before it was free…and surprisingly most everyone spoke English and the women didn’t wear sinhs as much as they do here in Vientiane.

I hate to count down my stay here in Vientiane but…here it goes….3 more weeks….I’m actually really happy that I finally have a permanent Lao language partner. It was pretty hard trying to find the right fit and make time from all the volunteering and socializing time. Hopefully I can pick up more Lao along the way with the local Lao. I really enjoy my Lao language teacher…he is really nice. But it’s hard for me to remember the characters and I don’t want to disappoint him. I recently bought a Lao dictionary to pick up more vocabulary.

The internet is pretty bad…I tried logging in so many times that I had to go to an internet café to get a stronger “signal.” Oh…I am so sad…I had 16 gigs of video clips and pictures from the 1st day of our orientation on my flash drive, and a couple days ago we were adventurous and so hungry that we walked to That Luang which is a 10-15 walk and then it started pouring. So we ate in the rain and I protected the cell phone but I totally forgot about my flash drive that got totally soaked. I am so sad and will wait a while to see if it works. Right now it says I have to reformat my drive…..=( Today we met with Professor Grant Evans. I was intrigued by his knowledge of history, government, culture of Laos. I wanted to know more but there was not enough time…