Sa bai dee!!!! The title of this blog should give a good indication of my state of my mind at the moment - counting down the days until holidays and until I can see my family, friends and my home again :-) I'm in that state of mental exhaustion at the moment - which I'm sure you have all experienced when it is time for a holiday - where I barely have the reserves left to push through another week. Thankfully I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :-)
Let me start my last blog entry before I am back in Australia :-) The last few weeks have been very hectic from every angle - starting from the day after Julie left. Chris spent the day preparing his sermon for the next day, while I spent the afternoon endeavouring to make unbaked cheesecake for Deb's birthday - thankfully it turned out ok! Cooking here is much more of an adventure than I am used to :-)
On Sunday morning Chris gave his sermon (a combined Palm Sunday/Good Friday service, since Good Friday is not celebrated in Laos) to the biggest congregation we have seen since we started going to this church. It went very well - you know when ministers ask if you are 'theologically trained' that you're onto something!!! Sunday night we went around to Deb's to indulge in some pizza and Summer Heights High viewing (Deb had got herself a copy of the DVD - the series hadn't finished when we left Australia). It was nice to enjoy some good Aussie humour!!!!
Monday night, after our Lao lesson, we headed to the French festival which had just started on the banks of the Mekong with our friend from church, Kaylie. I was pleasantly surprised - there was music and dancing, random strange drama and painting, a wine bar and food stalls (I ate from everyone!), movies on a large screen, boules. It's not often something this exciting happens in Vientiane! So we sat around all night eating and enjoying the entertainment.
Tuesday night was our dinner with the new AYAD's - 18 of them, who will all be staying in Vientiane, asking the same questions I was asking when I arrived, and looking just as dazzled and confused. It was strange feeling like I was more experienced about life in Laos, and realising that I had actually been here for five months. They all seemed very lovely, and I continued to run into them all throughout the week (they weren't hard to spot - they were often wandering around in big groups!!) I hope I've made 18 new friends :-)
Wednesday night saw me at netball - which has now moved from Sunday night to Wednesday night in order to attract more people, which it seems to have done. Its very hard to exercise in this heat (at least, thats what I keep telling myself - I've become very lazy since I arrived here!) so we ran for a little while, drank water for a little while, ran for a little while etc. :-)
Thursday night one of our friends from church held a Passover service and dinner at her house - obviously a Jewish tradition, but with a Christian spin. I'd never been to one before so I thought I'd see what it was like :-) It was very interesting - a lot of tradition involved e.g. the food you eat, when you eat them etc. I made a macaroni cheese pasta bake at Kaylie's house (another person I have discovered with an oven! Hooray!) This night we also had an enormous storm that hit - at 4.30 in the morning. It sounded like it was happening right above our roof. We all ran around in our pyjamas, half awake, closing windows, trying to stop water pouring in, assessing damage.....it was very hard to get back to sleep with all the noise, so I was very tired the next morning :-)
Friday night Jane (our friend from CBTB) arrived - although her flight was delayed by about 6 hours, which was a real pain! So we took her home to get some sleep with promises of an exciting weekend :-) Which is exactly what we had.....Saturday morning we went to the yummy French bakery for breakfast, then showed Jane That Dam (the stupa that was meant to protect Vientiane from the Siamese but didn't succeed!), Wat Sisaket (the oldest temple in Vientiane - most were destroyed by the Siamese - and it is packed to the rafters with about 8000 Buddhas!!!), Talat Sao (the Morning Market - Jane did her souvenir shopping), Haw Pha Kaew (the former home of the Emerald Buddha, which now lives in Bangkok), Pataxai (Vientiane's Arc du Triomphe), and That Luang (the Golden Temple). All that walking made us tired, so we stopped for a massage, then raced home to watch the sunset over the Mekong behind our house. Then we went for some good Lao tucker down by the river, and finished with a visit to the French festival, which was having it's last night (and it seemed like most of Vientiane had showed up for it!) We all collapsed into bed at about eleven after that huge day :-) Although another massive storm hit that night, so we were sleep deprived again....
The next day was much more sedate - we went to church in the morning for Easter Sunday, then had dumplings for lunch, did some exploring along the Mekong 'beach', then took Jane to pack and off to the airport. Jane flew to Luang Prabang at about 6 - it was great to have her around for the weekend, we had a lot of fun, plus it was really good to chat, catch up on what is happening at home, and get a perspective outside of our own on how life in Laos is affecting and changing us. Plus we appreciated the stock up in our chocolate supplies!!!!!!!!!!
This last week has proven to me just how exhausted I am and how much I need a holiday - work was really crazy, we hosted a big Water Purification Expo in our workshop which David and I had organised and ran, plus we're applying for some funding to continue our water purification work, Chris put together a massive tender for Sunlabob to construct some remote telecommunications...it has really sapped our energy. Consequently this week was nowhere near as interesting outside work :-) Monday night we had our Lao lesson, followed by watching the rest of Summer Heights High - classic stuff!! So reminscent of school.... Tuesday night Chris and I took it easy and tried to recover our energy. Wednesday we went to our bible study group (one of the CMS missionaries here and his family are about to go back to the UK, so we are trying to spend lots of time with them before they leave), Thursday night we had a massage as I got over the expo, and Friday night Chris took me out for a lovely French dinner to celebrate the end of the week!!! Yesterday didn't help us reenergise either, as we ran around in the heat trying to get things done before we leave next weekend - we ended up picking fights with each other all day! But thankfully last night was better - Philippa and Samuel invited us over for a candlelit Earth Hour BBQ. We contributed by bringing along one of Sunlabob's battery lantern prototypes to add to the light :-) (although I left the lights on at home..it's a good way to deter home invaders!)
I really can't believe that I'll be coming home next weekend, and will be on holidays, and will see all the people that I've been missing and who mean so much to me. Chris and I arrive home on Sunday night (April 5) at 8pm, spend a week with our families and friends and (in Chris' case) preparing for Robbie' wedding, go to the wedding on the following Saturday (April 12) then fly out with Amy and Jason the next night to travel around SE Asia for three and a half weeks!!!! It doesn't get much better than that :-)
I imagine I'll write again in three weeks with many many stories - until then, sok dee!!!!!!!
Susan
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