As many of you know, I love my routines. I love the familiarity and comfort of them. They make me feel like all is right with the world. And, as luck would have it, I tend to fall into them pretty quickly.

In just a few short days, I have developed a nice quaint routine in Luang Prabang. It goes a little something like this. Wake up and go for a walk along the Mekong River. The mornings here are cool and clean and perfect. Watch the kids splash and play in the river. Eat breakfast. Head over to Big Brother Mouse to help with English conversation practice for cute little Lao children. Stop at a wat on the way home to help a novice monk named Tomin (I think…maybe) with his homework. He saw me walking by on my first day here and ran after me. “You…speak English?”  Well, yes. “You come in, see my temple, help me with English?”  Ummm….okay? We went into the courtyard and sat down on a bench and worked on his English homework for the day. When we were done he said, “Thank you for helping me. You come back tomorrow?”  Ummm…..sure, why not? And that’s how I wound up working on grammar and sentence structure with an orange robed 23 year old novice monk in Laos. It is a strange, crazy, beautiful world.

Anyhow, after teaching is done for the day, I usually stop at a street vendor for lunch. Fruit shake and a sandwich run about $2. Peanut butter and nutella on fresh yummy Lao bread and a mango shake are my current favorites. Not overly Lao, I know, but scrumptious all the same. :)

The afternoons are left free to continue exploring or head out with a tour company on excursion. Exploration leads to yet another beautiful golden temple (aka wat) and another group of bright saffron robed novice monks. Luang Prabang is full of them and I have the photos to prove it. There are true outdoor cafes (think no walls or roof, just tables and chairs outside) next to the river where you can just sit and enjoy the scenery. It is fantastically stunning here.

Yesterday I climbed Mt. Phousi. Just so you know, Phousi is pronounced….well…think feline…or something with a lot of pus….there it is, you got it. And don’t think I don’t know who is giggling right now (okay, it’s kind of funny). Anyway, I climbed up the 450 steps to the lookout point to see the town, rivers, and mountains stretch out as far as the eye could see. There is yet another wat at the top, with, you guessed it, more monks. I had a long chat with some Aussies about life and the state of the world before heading back down.

Today I went out to the Kuang Si waterfalls. Multiple tiers of cascading water falling into beautiful turquoise pools. The falls are a popular swimming hole for both locals and tourists, and it is easy to appreciate why. I shared a van with six other people out to the falls and wound up traipsing up to the top and back down again with an Irish guy named Connor. When we got back down to the bottom, I set my stuff down and prepared to jump on into the water. Connor asked with surprise if I was going swimming, and I told him yes, that was the plan. Isn’t is cold, he asked. Probably, I said, but it’s a waterfall in Laos and I’m not passing that up. After some good natured teasing and taunting about how the tough Irishman was scared of a little cold water, he jumped in with me. And wouldn’t you know it, the water was freaking freezing. But I got to swim in a waterfall in Laos. It was so worth it.

P.S. I literally have almost 500 photos from Laos alone...however...the internet connection here might actually be slower than dial up. It easily took me two hours to upload the pics that you see here...more will likely be posted when I get home to regular speed internet. :))