My Lao February

Sa bai dee!! I know my posts seems to be coming every two weeks now instead of one week like I initially said - I'm sorry about that :-) But Amy is doing a good job of reminding me to write :P I'm just thankful that I actually can write, after our laptop had a hissy fit on the weekend - we were worried we'd never be able to use the internet again!
The last two weeks have been lots of fun - as Mum said, revolving around food most of the time!

• I've been to two Lao weddings - but both vastly different. The first was two falang (foreigners) - I played netball in Hanoi with Emily. We were actually invited to the baci for this one, but after getting very lost (which is not so hard to do here!! See my earlier post on directions in Vientiane :-)) we ended up arriving just after the baci finished (ironically, the house was just behind my office). The second was a girl from work, who I have previously said about ten words to! The whole office was invited to this one :-)
• Klastofunk, an awesome funk falang band, played a concert at one of Vientiane's pubs last weekend. It was a very refreshing change from Lao music, which of course I can't understand and is always played at a level which is above the pain threshold. I put my boogie shoes on - I miss my concerts from home!!!
• Mattijs, LIRE's Dutch intern (LIRE is the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy, which is an 'independent' research institute that has its office on Sunlabob premises) had his birthday last week at one of Vientiane's many BBQ/soup style restaurants. I volunteered to cook the cake (since I'm deprived of cooking opportunities!) - he got apple cake, which I don't think quite measured up to the Dutch equivalent but anyway :-)
• Last Friday, Sert from work invited us to play badminton at a court near his house. Badminton is very popular in Laos (along with petong and soccer, as far as I can tell!) I have played badminton very little since high school, so I wasn't particularly good - but I was usually saved from losing by Sert, who was very good :-) After two hours of this, I was pretty stuffed!!!
• On the weekend, our AYAD friend Michelle (who is living in central Laos) came to Vientiane and stayed with us (our spare room seems very rarely empty - Sam has had friends in and out for the last few weeks. I usually discover they're staying by waking up in the morning and finding their stuff strewn all through the house!) She was keen to find a particular market, so we spent Saturday afternoon cruising around and wandering through various markets. I felt so adventurous - I haven't done anything like it for a long time!! And I felt like I didn't even have to practice my Lao at home, because I had to use so much at the market! I find particularly the food markets very inspiring and interesting - they just make me feel like cooking!! Rows and rows of fresh herbs, fruit and vegetables...and then of course mystery meat and fish, which is not so appetising. I was also really pleased by how well I went 'dinking' Michelle on the back of the SuperCub - I haven't done this very often at all, but there were no problems...
• Sunday lunchtime saw Chris and I on another adventure with some friends to a floating restaurant 24 km out of Vientiane. This place is amazing...you can hire a boat to take you around on the river for an hour, and eat and drink while cruising around!!! Or you can sit on their floating platform on the water and enjoy the scenery. We did the latter (the queue for the boat was long!!) It was a lovely way to while away Sunday afternoon.
• Last night my AYAD friend and her Swiss partner had us over for dinner...which consisted of Swiss cheese fondue!!!! Now that rates as one of the most spectacular meals I've had here in Vientiane - even though they made us drink shots of lao lao when we dropped our bread in the fondue :-)

Work has been going ok - I spent last week writing proposals to get a lot of money out of the Finnish government, and next week I will probably be going to a village to install a homemade water filter. I find it quite amusing that I am posing as some sort of water engineer at the moment, but it really highlights the value of my skills, not just as a photovoltaic engineer, but as a critical thinker. We had no electricity at work again today, but it wasn't Sunlabob's fault this time :-)
I will be back again soon - at least I will be able to tell you about the latest event I have been invited to at the embassy (I don't know how many of these they have, but I'm always up for free food!!!)

Sok dee,
Susan