Helping others...

On our long bus rides I had alot of time to think. Something that kept coming back in my thoughts was the fact that the situation I am here with teaching is way different than what I thought it was going to be. I thought that I would be teaching English to kids who really needed it...not in a special English program where only the wealthy kids can afford to be in it. There are only 3 kids out of the 34 in our class that don't come from wealthy families and their parents give their paychecks just so their children can learn English. What I get paid here is peanuts back home, but very good for here. Sometimes I feel guilty about what I make. Obviously I need to make some money so that I can fly back home! I feel I should be doing more volunteer work....more to help others. School takes up alot of my time, but I feel I need to find something else. I know that there is an orphanage close by that is always in need of teachers.  I feel that would feel more rewarding than what I am doing now. Regardless I want to learn as much as I can about the Thai people and culture while I'm here.

This next picture is kind of an inside family joke! But, I almost fell over when I saw this bag of tang at a little convenient store! Maybe I could live over here longer now that I know they have tang!

On our bus ride we stopped at this village because the bus was overheating. This next picture shows the crowd that gathered to look at all the farangs (foreigners)!  The following picture I felt kind of weird taking, but I couldn't help myself! I assume you could refer to it as "the village shower!" The 3rd picture is of yet another beautiful sunset in the mountains. I still don't think the sunsets beat South Dakotas!

We had a lovely view from our dorm room balcony overlooking Vang Viang.

The draw or pull to Vang Viang is tubing down the Mekong. So we rented our tubes and off we went! Along the first part of the river where you get in, there are numerous swing/trapeze sort of things that you can go off.  I'm not really one who likes to play in the face of death....and I'm just scared of heights! I thought there would be absolutely no way I would go on one of these swings. We had also heard that a girl died a few days before we had arrived...because the water isn't as deep as usual and she hit a rock. After scoping out the numerous swings, I found one that I thought looked the safest. My definition of safe was that this swing you could choose when and where you let go and the water appeared deeper there! I was standing at the top where you take off for roughly 10-15 minutes before I could actually bring myself to jump off! Once I did...all you heard were screams!

After that adventure we got to relax and float down the river and soak in the surroundings.

Our next adventure was heading to another cave. This one was definitely NOT a disappointment! It was in the middle of nowhere, it was not touristy, we had to hike up this steep side of a mountain, and we had to wear head lights because there was no artificial lighting! It was so dark inside! Chelsea and I trekked deep into the bowels of the cave...until Chelsea got too scared and we had to turn around because we heard noises! (I wasn't scared at all! ha!).

When we came out we were rewarded with a swim in this crystal clear river. We were going to swim around and check out some scenery further down the river but then we both thought about big snakes in the water and decided that we had been in the water long enough!

At our 2nd cave we ran into some french people who had a Laos tour guide that was speaking french. I thought this was quite odd, but Chelsea told me that alot of Laos people speak french because the french used to occupy the area. In school Chelsea learned Dutch, English, French and German. All the foreign travelers I have met so far all speak more than one language. It made me feel uncultured to only know English. Learning a language is a good way to help one learn about the culture. I got the impression that maybe other countries think that Americans don't learn any other language because we think that everyone should speak English! Numerous times throughout my travels I had people tell me that only 20-40% of Americans have a passport. That is shocking to me! I feel that shows that we have no desire to see and learn about other countries. I hope that number increases. I had a conversation with a guy from Australia and he said that for a while it was the cool thing to do to hate America. I said sometimes I feel like I'm being judged because I'm American but that I appreciated people like him who I could sit with and have a conversation and then he could judge for himself!