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- Street view of Luang Phrabang.
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- A guesthouse in Luang Phrabang.
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- Colonial house in Luang Phrabang.
“oh duang champa, wela som nong. nuk hen pan sone, mong hen hua chai, hoa nuk kun dai, nai kin chao hom.”
So, last week we learned to sing the Champa Song (the national song of Laos) in our Lao Language class and studied the basic way to introduce ourselves. It’s half way through the program and we’ve just gotten there, but now that we can read and write, it’ll be easier for us to learn from here on about the sentence structures and figure of speech.
I love how our whole class is so into learning the song, we sing it just about everywhere. xP
The weekend in Luang Prabang was amazing: the scenery was beautiful, the bus ride was long, the people were nice, the city was clean, the food made some of us not feel so good, our cameras exploded, and our legs were tired. There was SO much to do and see in such a small area. All in all we had a great time; pulling ourselves up the stairs at Mt. Phousi, riding our bikes in the scorching sun, falling off our bikes into sludge, riding in a boat to the Buddha Cave, trying some LaoLao (Lao rice whisky), finding huge random korean bbq shops out of nowhere, finding a dead gecko on the side of our bed, getting my fortune told by Yaeng’s uncle, receiving sweet “good morning” texts from our friends who miss us so very much back in Vientiane, seeing a family style Baci at Yaeng’s family’s guesthouse, watching a restaurant buy fish from another restaurant so we could have our dinner instead of telling us they ran out of fish, not being able to see a single elephant this whole entire trip… ok, well that’s sad.
So this week, another 2 of the ugrads are leaving. One’s leaving for Northern California tomorrow and Bea’s leaving for Montana on Friday. Then after them, another 2, Sai and Dai, are leaving next week. We’re going to miss the four of them so much. I’m going to miss Onee the most because we haven’t actually hung out since KunKhum’s Baci until last night when we all went out for some soymilk at Centerpoint as a goodbye get-together.
Today Professor Grant Evans is going to come tell us a little more about Lao history and whatnot. Awesome, so I’ll check back soon!
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.
