Yay!

Well, we had a mini-crisis yesterday/this morning that seems to have resoved itself pretty much to my satisfaction. Last night I went to take money out of the ATM, only to find that every ATM and land line in Luang Prabang was down. So no money, which meant none of the last couple items on my Christmas list got bought or mailed. Fortunately within the past hour or so they finally got the system back up, but for a short time I was wondering how long I could make 30 bucks last and hoping that figure was greater than the number of days a phone system can be down in Laos. So the good news is that I am now liquid again and can finish my shopping, the bad news is the odds of everything arriving in time for Christmas have gone down by a day.
The real good news of the day, though, is on the volunteering front. I went to Big Brother Mouse this morning and practiced conversational English with a college student named Sansuri. He wants to be a tour guide for hill tribe treks, and is Hmong himself, so I had him tell me all about Hmong life and customs, which was not only great practice for him, but really cool for me. He told me about burial rituals and how boys and girls meet and marry and how people worship. The coolest thing he told me was how when a person dies, an expert must play the drums in a very old pattern that gives the soul directions to eternal rest. If the drummer screws up, the deceased will come back to haunt his dreams until the family has gathered enough of the currency of the spirit world (not sure exactly what). When they've gathered enough, the drummer has to burn it as an offering and then the deceased can buy a ride from a spirit that already knows the way. Cool, huh? What a great opportunity for me to get the real scoop. I almost feel like I got the better end of this volunteer excursion. Needless to say, I'll be back for the rest of the week.
Other than chill at Big Brother Mouse, I plan to take a cooking class, ride some elephants, and schedule out my trip back into the wilds of Thailand (aka Bangkok). I think I'm going to take the slow boat up to the northern border and then take a bus to Bangkok from there. The slow boats are on their way out now, so I'd like to do it before they no longer exist. It'll be two days of cold sitting on the deck of boat, but the opportunity of a lifetime to see the Lao countryside.