Na na na na, hey hey hey

Friday started out normally...spent the morning at the center gluing and taping cardboard boxes together with the gang. At about midday I got dropped off at Meredith's house and then later I made my way to Gat Luang by myself.

At Gat Luang I bought a couple of t-shirts for really cheap,  thanks to my awesome sweet-talking skils. I love bartering! But the fun stopped there. To make a long story short, my 15-minute rot dang ride from Gat Luang to Central Mall turned into an hour-long adventure through the city, during which I considered jumping out because I was sure I'd been kidnapped. Don't worry though, I wasn't kidnapped. Eventually I made it to my destination.

At the mall we all met up, ate, and then headed over to Brynna's apartment where the 10 of us piled into a rot tu for our 6-hour journey to Nan province. We arrived at our little hotel at about midnight, and the next morning we drove to the nearby Hmong village and met up with some anthropology students from BYU that were there.

The day consisted of an awesome adventure in a waterfall, volleyball with the locals, and lots of ice-cream. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures at the falls, but it was absolutely incredible. The water was the perfect temperature and we had a great time swimming against the current and sliding down rocks and finding frogs and whatnot. Toward the end a warm rain started to fall and I was just in awe. I was in a waterfall in the middle of the jungle in the middle of a rainstorm in the middle of Thailand! It was simply indescribable.

The volleyball game I did get pictures of. Playing with these people was humiliating to say the least. But whatevs. Not like I'm ever going to see them again.

Hmong villagers showing up the pharangs

Aaand, in case you didn't catch the emphasis on lots of ice-cream...

FOURTH cone of the day. Can you blame me? They're only 15 baht!

Saturday night we split into twos and slept with different Hmong families. The way of life is so different there, even from here. Torie and I stayed with a cute old grandmother in her teensy tiny home. We ate dinner on a bamboo ottoman, slept on a mat on a cement floor, and used buckets to shower. I had a hard time falling asleep, not because I was uncomfortable, but because I felt like I was already dreaming. I couldn't believe that people actually lived like this. It was an incredible experience.

Because the Hmong have their own language, it was very difficult to communicate and I actually found myself wishing that they at least spoke Thai. I've never had such limited communication with someone...even my Thai family. All that I could say in Hmong was wachou, which means "thank you," but of course I had so much more to say. I wish languages weren't so hard to learn.

This little Hmong girl was born with blonde hair!

The next morning, we woke up (late) at 5 a.m. and headed out to get breakfast at the market. Then we drove up a huge mountain to see another Hmong village. It was gorgeous up there, with the white fog and the patches of different crops. I couldn't get enough.

In the fog at the top of the mountain.

In addition to the mountain village and its villagers, we got to see a Buddhist cave, a pet deer, and the local village crazy man (naked). It was great.

After the village we went back down the mountain to the other village that we'd spent the night in and gave gifts to the families. Our "grandmother" told Torie and I to get a good education and asked us to remember her. She also said that we could come back and stay with her any time. She was so sweet!

Torie and I and our little Hmong grandmother

To conclude our trip to Nan we ate some more ice-cream, had a yummy lunch with everyone, and went into the city to see some cool wats. That night, I got home at 11:00 and promptly conked out.

Okay, for viewer's sake this post should end here, but it's not going to, so get over it or go away.

Monday, June 11th (HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRITTAN!) I woke up and packed my bag for the children's home, which I would be spending the night at. Then my awesome mother made chocolate waffles for breakfast and we were on our way. There was a meeting, so Meredith and I spent the morning upstairs at Pam and Jerry's house...I worked on homework since my computer is dumb and doesn't connect to their internet. We met their friends from the States and then joined them on a visit to Warorot (Gat Luang). We revisited that stellar smoothie place and shopped around a bit, then I had Pam drop me off at Meredith's, and John came and picked me up to take me to the children's home.

We've decided that on Mondays I will teach the younger kids, so we played some games and sang some songs and they retained probably 5% of the information I was feeding them, and even that number is optimistic. They did get pretty good at yelling "UP! DOWN! RIGHT! LEFT!" though.

Afterward, I worked with John on his English. He's already pretty good, but he wanted me to teach him about tenses. You try explaining when to use "I have been swimming" vs "I was swimming" vs "I swam" vs "I have swum." Not easy people, not easy. English is dumb.

I took over John's daughter's room for the night...but her mattress was far from comfortable. Actually, it was like sleeping on a brick. In the morning I was exhausted, and I kept on falling asleep and waking up multiple times after my alarm went off.

But no rest for the weary, right?

This morning I helped plant trees and then spent the rest of the day building boxes. It was fun though. I love spending time with the people at the center. I showed Olay and Nute and Umpaa a picture of my family (which they loved), and then they tried to explain to me some Thai witch that comes out on Halloween. Umpaa brought coconuts from her house and I drank coconut water...why is it called coconut milk? It's definitely more water than it is milk.

On the way home we went to visit a family who just had a baby. Both parents are HIV positive and the baby was born early at only 3 pounds. It was heartbreaking to see their living situation. That tiny tiny baby lives in a shack with a tin roof and no door. And his mom can't even take care of him because she's so sick, so the dad had to quit his job. It really put things in perspective for me.

Okay, that's the end.

Have a lovely day!