The things we do for fun . . .

Well the new year is upon us. Joe has already started teaching again, and I'll be back at work in little over a week. But "fun" is a big part of Lao culture, and although there aren't any of the conventional "fun places" for westerners to go to: fast food restaurants (no McDonald's, KFC, etc.), malls, movie theaters (OK, there is one and it shows only movies in Thai or dubbed into Thai or Lao), not even a supermarket. What is an expat to do? Well, I'll run through a couple of the things that I do for fun . . .

There are two great coffee shops with delicious French-style pastries (I never get tired of them!). They even have big green salads too - yes, no problem eating them. One of the cafes is Canadian-run and the other Swedish. The Greek Salad (baw sai pak bua - without onions) is my favorite. And of course, there is the Aussie-managed pub in town that hosts the quiz nights on which Joe led our team to victory two months in a row. The next one will be the 30th of this month.

I have also found a German and English woman who love to dabble in art . . . we met at a gallery to see a watercolor show once. After talking with the gallery manager - a very nice Lao gentleman who speaks great English - we agreed to hold painting sessions once a week. It's not a class, but we all just "do our own thing". I will post pictures of the wonderful traditional Lao building/gallery that we paint "under" - yes, it's cool and pretty much mosquito free. Local artists breeze in and out of the gallery during our sessions and usually stop to give us a tip, a thumbs up, or a smile. Art supplies are very limited here, so I was able to pick up some mediums while in Thailand. Sabine, the German artist, is in Australia now and just emailed us to ask if we needed more stuff. I, of course, thought of more ways she could weigh down her check in luggage!

And . . . as I will be going to Ukraine this spring (yay!), I have to practice my Russian skills. I'll be spending a month in a city where almost everyone speaks it. Through a lot of trial and error - I posted a sign, and bugged my international friends - I have found a great conversation partner from Uzbekistan. We do a 50/50 exchange in English for 30 minutes and Russian for 30 minutes. I think we may be on similar levels "linguistically", so it works out great. She has a 6-year-old daughter that is intrigued with our arrangement and chimes in with her bits of Russian and English to help us out :) My homework assignment is to watch "Madagascar" in Russian. I am looking forward to that! Really - I think cartoons are magic language learning tools . . . all over the world I have met so many kids who speak great English with hardly any accent. I ask: Did you learn English in school? and they answer: Oh no! I learned English from the Cartoon Network! So, I'm giving the old Language through Cartoons methodology a go.

Hmmm.... other fun - well we can get almost any movie or TV show on DVD here. So we have finished the lastest season of Dexter (yes, Season 4) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (yes, Season 6). Now we are making our way through the very first season of Columbo. Gosh - TV was so great in the 70's. Not only are the outfits amazing and colorful, but the actors are really interesting to watch. I'm totally serious. So we are kind of in a time warp these days.

Oh, yes, there is the exercise challenge. How can you work out when it is so hot and humid? Well, you can get up at the crack of dawn - about 6am these days - and walk for an hour. And you can do exercise DVDs - thank god for the DVD player! Mom sent me my resistance bands, I found weights in Chinatown here, and I brought my DVDs from home. There is a gym about a 10 minute bike ride from here, but with no AC (or not the kind of gym AC I like!). So, hey, our electric bill may be high, but we can turn up the AC to an obscene degree if we want to.

OK - can we call this the rambling blog entry? I could go on and tell you what fun "cleaning day" is - but I gotta go mop downstairs - this is what we get for opting out of the expat tradition of getting a maid.