There's something happening here...

What it is ain't exactly clear...Remember that song?

Anyway,some things are happening here and it's high time I told you about it all....

For one thing, it's raining!! That DOES NOT happen in Luang Prabang in January. And it's raining quite heavily, in fact, after many days of very oddly warm weather, so I guess climate change has well and truly found this place, along with the greater mass of tourists from around the world.

So what else is happening? Well, some of it is weird and unprecedented, like the rain and the fact that I made my own breakfast today. I guess it's all just progress in the life here that I have come to love, but not to expect, because what I love most here is the surprises and the unexpected stuff, the daily discoveries and new possibilities as well as the unanticipated quirks and irritations and disasters, all of which are part of the deal.

Enough waffling. I can hear Peter saying ...And your point is....?!?

One change is that I have three months off from the hotel job as they go into their high season and need all hands on deck to handle a fairly full house. Staff are having their eyes opened as to what work really means. I pop back from time to time and am gratified by the warm reception and earnest entreaties for my return that I get from all the staff. Take note: If you want to feel good about yourself---be a teacher in Laos. Students are deeply respectful of teachers and have a very sweet disposition as well so you can't miss in the warm and fuzzy department.

Having time off is a pain in the finances, but is giving me time to concentrate on the usual enhanced social life of this time of year. Yesterday the Froggie segment of the expat community plus many non-Frog of us gathered for the annual 12th Night or l'Epiphanie celebrations chez our friend Francis, co-hosted by Gilles and Yannick of the famous LÉlephant restaurant empire who laid on the nosh. This means several things. One is the gorgeous gallette de Roi and other pastries they served (Yah, I had to nibble at the fillings and leave the crusts) as Yannick is a premier pastry chef. Another is the chance to be in Francis' wonderful house, an old French colonial building in soft mustardy yellow with a sweet little garden outside and many beautiful antique pieces inside. He is extremely knowledgable about Buddhist history and practice, especially Lao Buddhism, as well as being an expert on botanical matters. He's been here for years and is a charming fellow.

Shortly after this gracious gathering in the soft afternoon sun, I changed pace completely and headed out to a small grassy field in a farming area on the outskirts of town for the penultimate pre-semifinal practice of Suzy's Superstars, my premier soccer team.

This may be just about the biggest point of the competition, bar the finals, but it's only our first meeting with one of our new players from Vientiane, late of the national team, thanks very much. Another one arrives today for literally ONE training session before Friday's BIG one at the stadium. Talk about last minute...

Fingers crossed that we win this one and can then go on to the final in two weeks. When my manager isn't on hand, I can only actually communicate with one or two of the players and that in a fairly rudimentary fashion, so it's a fun time for us all making gestures and hilarious attempts at each others' languages. Crowds of small would-be Superstars hang around to gawp and giggle at the players and the farang lady.

The coach is a big lump of a fellow with not a skerrick of social graces and a voice that could skin a pig at a hundred paces, but the lads seem to like him and he's getting good results. He occasionally smiles but not usually until post game drinks are well under way. The late and casual arrivals of our star players makes us look pretty unprofessional, but I will say that we only have a big piss-up after matches and not after training, which is regarded as a mark of serious sportspeople in this town. I supply cold drinks at practice instead or take them all out for fruit shakes.

There's more that is changing and moving....The school is up and running for real now and we are half-way through our teacher training course, with three of our trainees already exceeding expecations and the other three not far behind. They will soon move from assisting in the classrooms to teaching under supervision and this means we can start several new beginners classes next month which will mean that we are finally making some money to cover our expenses, but so far only stuff like loo paper and lightbulbs and
maybe a phone.

I am preparing my roster of advanced classes in speaking and writing and will try a course in understanding what foreigners eat. Then in May, I will be flat out with Amantaka and other places as they go into low season and staff have time to study. The idea is that I will use two of our trainees as my assistants so can cover more than one hotel at a time. So lots of planning to do....

And lots to learn. It's fascinating how difficult it is to teach expressive language, idioms and nuances of meaning to people whose own language has none of these. They stare wide-eyed when I tell them about the different ways there are to say things with different sounds, references, impacts etc. I tell them that trying to learn English is like learning to juggle live fish, but even that image takes a lot of explaining and some fairly ungainly mime work to get across.

The biggest excitement is that the first of my darling children has finally made it up here and seen that Mummy is not actually running a brothel or living on rotten rice and snake meat in some hovel. It's been glorious having her and Alistair here, but much too short, of course.

They arrived on Christmas Eve in Vientiane, where I had an ex-student pick them up and whisk them to the bus station, not because they are not capable world travellers and grown up people, but because my student was so keen to help and because I wanted them out of Vientiane and on their way to ME as soon as possible!!! They came by bus to Vang Vieng,(a beautiful place currently being destroyed by yahoo tourists), where I met them, having driven down with my dear friend Mario, who had lived in Vang Vieng on an organic farm/community outreach centre there for 6 months and wanted to visit.

The drive down was lovely and the drive back was too, as it is almost all mountain roads with breathtaking views, hairy switchback turns, and roadside villages full of wandering -pigs and adorable naked children and people doing what they do despite the occasional semi-trailers or double-decker buses thundering through, inches from their front doors.

We stopped to join a Hmong New Year party of kids decked out in their beaded, pleated, multi-coloured finery playing a traditional courting game of tossing a ball back and forth----sounds simple, but is actually rather fun.

Later we stopped at another village where I have spent some time and where I had toilets installed in honour of Alice and Andy's wedding. There the headman and his family welcomed us with open arms and presented me with a stunning gift of a Khen---a traditional Hmong musical instrument about four feet long that looks a bit like a cross between an oboe and a crossbow and is played while dancing to its music, which is a somewhat doleful flutey sound. Along with that came a simpler bamboo flute and a small but beautiful mouth organ/jew's harp in it's own case. A full Hmong orchestra---I nearly wept at their generosity. Alistair being a musical wunderkind was able to play the flute and will no doubt master the Khen, given a bit of time.

Time being precious, we hustled home ---it's a six hour drive---and had Xmas dinner with my friend Ric and his Parisian houseguests and other friends, and then spent several days trying to see and do everything here, but of course not having enough time to do it all. We hit some highlights---Kuang Xi waterfall, Mount Phousi, a walk in the jungle to the temples and the seven headed Naga statue buried in the trees on the other side of the Mekhong, a visit out to our land for a goat barbecue with the family and a swim in the Nam Khan River. And dinners out, shopping, and a trip to my old school for a guest teaching session. Then we launched ourselves on another marathon drive, this time up to Luang Nam Tha in the north.

The first bit of road is pretty good, especially along the Nam Ou River. Then we did battle with the appalling stretch from Pak Mong to Oudomsai which is redeemed by the fabuous views out over miles and miles of misty green-blue mountains and more cute bamboo huts/naked babies/wandering piglet villages before we stumbled through the really bad stuff beyond.

Finally, and quite mind-bogglingly, we hit the last 37 kilometres, recently completed as part of a corridor from China to Thailand and it was utterly surreal. One minute we're crawling over jagged rocks and steep drops and massive potholes and the next it's like a modern road in any well-developed country. Like driving on whipped cream and actually quite eerie. Drove in top gear for long stretches. People living on the road were probably awed by it to begin with but now they treat it like any other road---a good place to dry chillies, stop and chat and live their lives. Flat places are at a premium up here so they use the road as part of their living space and somehow they survive.

The kids took turns not feeling well, but after a night in Luang Nam Tha, we left them in reasonable spirits planning to meander back down to Luang Prabang via various buses and boats while Sommay and I drove the 7 hours back by road, most of it in daylight. The nighttime driving here is nothing short of harrowing as people still wander along and inhabit the road as they do in the daytime, but sans lights. They seem not to realise that they are invisible until the last minute in one's headlights and they often putter along on motorbikes and bicycles with NO lights at all. The big trucks and buses just scream on through (Liberal use of the horn is necessary as a warning)and somehow no one gets killed. At least to my knowledge.

One has to juggle steering, constant gear changes, very slow traffic as well as big fast vehicles and somehow keep enough lights on to see the road and this gets hairy, I can tell you. So I drove and manned the horn and the high beams while Sommay kept his thumb on the fog lights that are the only way to see pedestrians. In most there are no proper verges to pull onto and in many the verge is literally through someone's house, so it's a tricky business, but a great test of one's reflexes and driving skills. Never boring.

Sommay is a great co-pilot. Never gets nervous, even sleeps through the most hair-raising bits, but otherwise he is useful---in rainy season driving he gets out and wades ahead through puddles so I can see the depth, and he murmurs "Hmmm, exciting..." when we hit an unexpected bump or encounter some idiot coming at us around a hairpin bend on the wrong side of the road. Once we saw a motorbike approaching and duly dimmed all our lights, whereupon the approaching driver simply turned his off completely, rendering him completely invisible in the dark. We laughed a lot. We make a good team.

So, it is definitely a new era in our lives that he is going to go to Thailand soon to check out the possibility of being apprenticed in a mechanical shop, learning all about car detailing, painting and panelbeating as we call it in Oz. He's also interested in a law career, so we'll see which one wins out.

It will be odd without him as he may end up going for the better part of a year, but I am sufficiently local now to look after myself in most things and I still have Joy---oh, dear---- and a friend of ours called Xayngeun will take over Sommay's room and some of his roles in the house while S. is gone. Xay is an ex-student of mine and his English is much better than Joy's so I will be OK. (My potted palm has better English than Joy, of course...)

Enough already, as even here in lotus land there is stuff to be done. Happy Greetings to everyone for the new year and the new decade! Remember, if you know anyone who can help me support Phone, the wunderkind medical student that I sponsor, I will be deeply grateful, as will the population of Laos when he starts to practice in five years or so.