In my own little world...

Yet another bus ride! This one was only 4 hours though, so not too bad. On all these trips I usually listen to my ipod for while and it would never cease to amaze me how quickly I would escape and drift from reality. This also happens anytime I watch a movie.  As I would listen to music I would think about things from home or a song would remind me of someone and my mind would be in a different place. It wouldn't be until I turned off my ipod that I would snap back into reality and realize that I'm not at home traveling on some bus....but instead in southeast aisa! Music is such a huge part of who I am that I could not go without it. Unfortunately it is also music that makes me sad and miss home alot!

I love how we travel on these big busses through small towns and villages on these small, narrow roads and are constantly having to stop or slow down for cows crossing the road! Sometimes I wonder how they keep track of whose cows are whose because I only see cows wandering around, never penned up!

We finally arrived in the capital of Vientiane. I was sad to be away from the smaller, more rural places and back in a big city. We could tell that we were getting further south because it was starting to heat up! We had to spend a few days in the city to wait for our Vietnam visas to be ready. We went to a place called Buddah park that had many huge old statues. The picture where we are inside the big mouth you could actually go into that stateue and it was quite large with a spiral staircase that led up to the top, in which you get the viewpoint of the picture following.

Don't worry, it's not a REAL alligator!

This picture is humorous to me because it looks as if the children go into the big mouth, but will never come back out....like they are being eaten!

This next picture shows the stairs that we had to trek up to get to this old temple on the top of a hill.  The picture following is us relaxing and enjoying the view!

Doing some exploring inside a cave.

This is a big arc that is in the center of Vientaine and was built by the french when they occupied the area. The inside is in shambles and doesn't match the outside because the french left before it was finished.

That evening at supper we got into a discussion about a topic that I had a conversation about with this girl from Germany during our orientation a few months back. It was about people being vegan and how there are these books out there that after you read it, whether you never thought you'd be a vegetarian, you turn vegan because it talks about how horrible eating meat is. It talks about the cruel ways that animals are killed, that animals aren't here to be eaten, and that there is such terrible, unfair treatment of animals, and on and on. My thoughts are that it's a bandwagon that people decided to jump on because of the big hype at one time and that media has helped out the cause as well. It's unfortunate how a few stories of big time farmers that don't run healthy operations and use hormones and don't treat their animals well, have given a bad reputation for everyone. I claim that my dad treats his livestock better than his children! (Don't worry, I'm just kidding father!). There are alot of farmers out there who treat their animals superbly and don't pump them full of hormones and steriods. It might take a little effort to find, but I know that you can find natural grown meat and vegetables most places these days. I'm sorry if this offends anyone...but I would be willing to have an open discussion about it if you like!

A quick story to end. As we were trying to leave our dormroom in Vientaine, we got accused of losing our room key, which I explained they should have because we left it with them the night before. So, right in the lobby, for all to see, on their huge TV, we got to watch ourselves on the video tape, to see if we were being mischievious! I was happy to see myself dropping the key in the box so we escaped the charges and were set free! So long Laos....Vietnam here we come (after 24 hours of traveling!).