HEY, back from Laos

The view from the top of the mountain-waterfall

not even the entire waterfall :)
the royal dance troupe after dancing their story about the birdman....it was cool
oh hey! this is me at the 2nd level of the waterfall, and yes, I totally jumped into the water from the top of the waterfall and the tree branch that had a rope :)

This morning, I was in Luang Prabang, Laos getting ready to come back to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Before we left our guesthouse in Luang Prabang, a lady who was over 100 years old tied string around our wrists and blessed us (safe travels, good health, etc.) with a Buddhist prayer, it was an experience.
So how about I get this blog caught up over the past two weeks?
For about 12 of those days, there was a British invasion. Alex (my roommate) fell in love with a British boy she met at this really fun reggae club. Needless to say, he had friends. So for awhile I got used to having British boys in and out of our guesthouse, and hanging around in general. Our group and the British boys (a group of 3, 19-20 year olds who were backpacking around SE Asia together) ended up going out and about alot together, and had a blast. We all went to watch the English theatre productions that the Chiang Mai University students put on of The Crucible, and The Virgin Suicides. Their English was amazing, and I was surprised by how well they spoke English and analyzed the plays for their projects.
We also had our Thai Midterm, which consisted of us going to a market and identifying fruit and veggies and bartering for fruit and drinks. Which leads me to my Thai friend I made!
There is a Thai guy that works the night shift at our guesthouse and I asked him to help me practice my Thai. It was really cool, and he told me he was Catholic, which was surprising.
Oh! I also went to a Thai Church that was Christian. It was all in Thai but I had a headset that broadcast an English translation, so that was really neat.
During the week we had a lot of Thai lessons, and it is getting kind of overwhelming. Emily and I went to monk chats and found 2 Lao monks that speak English fairly well, and I interviewed them for my project. The second one we talked to was from Luang Prabang and told us all about the waterfall we needed to go see. The next day we had a cooking class and I made green curry. It was really cool because we used mortars and pestles and I could make mine without everything that I'm allergic to. I also made Thai vegetarian soup and chicken with basil, it was one of the best meals I've had in Thailand.
Friday afternoon we left for Laos, and were instantly charmed by the small town of Luang Prabang. It has one main strip down the middle that has lots of french shops and baguettes everywhere! It should be assumed that we chowed down on all the bread since our carbs were mostly from rice for the past month. Drexler essentially let us loose in Laos and the adults did their own thing (we gained Drexler's wife and John Beckelman and his wife earlier in the week {a Coe teacher and his wife}), so on Saturday we had an adventure.
We woke up and found a french restaurant and had one of the best breakfasts so far, and then commissioned a tuk tuk to drive us the hour long trip to the Khoung Si waterfall and back (900 baht total for all of us round trip). Our tuk tuk broke down once on the trip...but we got there and back safely. I can't describe the waterfalls enough to do them justice, and the entire day felt so surreal. At one point 3 of us went off of the path and climbed part of the waterfall barefoot, and I had to hang my camera from a tree so it wouldn't get wet. It was surreal.
We got back to Chiang Mai today and I turned on my laptop and my sister got ENGAGED over the weekend, crazy weekend.