Week In Review! Denver Pt. 2!

It's been another two weeks in Denver--and they have been jam packed. Jam packed with adventure, heartbreak, meetings and, as of the last two days, snow! So, here we go--the week (ok, it's been two) in review!

• Remember how I had a horrible tree mural and Cookie Monster blue shag carpet in my walk-in closet sized room? Not anymore. One of my housemates had a massive room and didn't like it. So, we switched! Now we are both happy campers. (And, she painted the mural and psychedelic dresser within 48 hours of being in there. She's got way more energy than me!)
• I continue to love my jobs. The stories I hear though, at my afternoon job especially, continue to break my heart. We had a guy in who couldn't come up with the three dollars he needed for the copay on his heart medications. He'd gone without for two weeks before he found us and came in. (He said it might as well have been three million dollars because he couldn't come up with it on his own either way...) There was another guy who had recently become homeless and because of all the rain had found shelter for the last few nights night...in a port-a-potty. 
• Fall was beautiful for a few days. Then, after an 81 degree day, winter rolled in. Friday I woke up to snow. Flurries have been falling on and off since. (Brrr!!)
• UnderArmor cold weather socks continue to be my best cold weather friends. 
• As much as I love my jobs, I love the weekends even more. Last weekend David had cooked up some kind of a surprise. It had been on my calendar for a month, but I still didn't know what it was going to entail until I arrived at his house last Saturday. We drove out to a state park in the foothills, had a picnic lunch and then went horseback riding! I did not see that coming! David later had a lesson to teach up in what is the beginnings of the mountains, so we headed up there, had some coffee, and spent the evening there. While he was working I had a walk around town and wrote some postcards. It was absolutely what I needed to get me through the next crazy week. 
• Last Saturday eased some of the restlessness bubbling up in me. Horse back riding somehow reminded me of Moroccan camel rides (except way more comfortable!) and the little mountain town was giving me flashbacks to both Boquete, Panama and the mountains of Cyprus. Sunset walks and postcards just set the travel mood even more. 
• This weekend we took things in a completely different direction. We found a free jazz concert with a famous local band playing at a Methodist church down in Littleton. We thought it might be fun. (And, since it was free we were more than willing to take the gamble!) We walked in through snow flurries to find A) warmth (both of our houses and both of my jobs are so cold!), B) lots of old people (there were about 125 people in there. I think we were the only ones who weren't grey headed), and C) lots of fantastically ugly sweaters. The whole evening was great fun. The band was good, and really got rolling at the end--and the old folks were loving it. Orthopedic shoes were tapping all over the place. The grandma in front of us was especially getting down. 
• Two separate couples stopped to tell us that we did not old enough to be there--which just tickled us even more. 

Some pictures from the last couple weeks:  

I remembered to take a picture of our house. 10 of us live here and there are also offices for our directors. 

Horses!

Stables in the foothills. We weren't that far away from town or a freeway, but it still felt like we were in the middle of Wyoming. 

I did not fall off! : )

Our horses: Sky (David's) and Shy (mine). Not really sure why mine was named Shy. It certainly was not shy about stopping to eat, pooping at will or passing gas when others were near. 

It was a beautiful area. 

Up in Evergreen. (Seriously, it reminded me of both Boquete (remember?) and the Troodos Mounains (see here)).

Some fall trees

And sunset walks

Back in the work week, I decided half way through Monday (that had already involved staff meetings and inventorying more than 500 vases and other random things we sell) that in order to make it through feeding 1000 people spaghetti and then through an additional 4 hours of afterwork Urban Servant Corps programing I would need a boost. I made a lunch time stop at Starbucks while switching buses downtown. 

It was a good call because I found plenty of messages waiting for me when I got to my afternoon work site...

There's a saying that there's only two things in life that money can't buy: Love and homegrown tomatoes. I'm obviously a very lucky girl to have both. 

Friday morning at the bus stop!

The snow was beautiful...even if it had me worried that it was getting so cold already.

Totally

And finally, this evening even my Under Armor socks weren't quite cutting it. It was time to bust out my socks knitted by a Bosnian nana. David brought them back for me this summer and I've been waiting to rock them ever since. 

Lazy Days in Laos

{This is the last installment of blogs from my Asian 2012 trip!}

After two days on a slow boat down the Mekong river we were ready to get out and stretch our legs. We weren't, on the other hand, ready to do much else. Luang Prabang provided the perfect atmosphere for the lazy days we were craving. 

We walked around the old town--soaking in the river views and French colonial archetecture, took naps, got massages, drank our daily intake of fruit shakes, and read. Leaving town we met some other tourists who had hiked to waterfalls and trekked through the jungle. They sounded like they had the time of their lives, yet neither one of us regretted our decision to kick back Lao style. 

{The best meal of the Lao portion of the trip (sticky rice is in the little basket). The grandma who made it wasn't too nice, but I guess you can be that way when your food is fantastic.} 

{Gotta squeeze in a little time with the local monks...}

{A buddha making school}

{We stumbled upon a lane that had all you can eat buffets for $1. Also, as an aside: I love Chinese broccoli!}

{We also finished off our supply of rambutan and mangosteen}

{Textiles in the market}

{Dueling street vendors}

After a few days we were rested up and ready to move on. We booked an overnight bus to Vientiane, the capital. I was thankful not to be traveling alone on the overnight bus because instead of seats you were assigned two person "bunks." Thankfully I was traveling with both my "sleep sack" and a friend.

The bus ended up being, I don't know? 5 hours late? We were next to the bathroom and at the back where it was pretty bumpy, so it was a pretty long night. 

Once we got to Vientiane we dropped our bags at the bus station, had lunch and took a quick look at town. 

I also almost passed out from the heat (at least 110 in the shade)

{A garden on a bike!}

This is Vientiane's "Arc de Triomphe"--an interesting mix of Lao and French

From there we put our sweaty selves back on another bus that took us over the Thai boarder, and from there back to Bangkok. 

It was a whirlwind of a trip (and one that included just about every form of transportation imaginable!). 

Floating the Mekong

I've always thought river travel to be the most romantic way to travel. Train travel is a close second, especially when it comes along with old smokey stations, but nothing beats river travel. It might be that it conjures up nostalgic ideas of floating down the Mississippi back in the frontier days, Mark Twain, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Amazon rides all at the same time. 

Back when I was planning my big trip, I really thought about doing some Amazon exploration (see my post here), but South America got put on hold. I finally got a chance to get in some serious river travel in Laos.

It was long. It was hot. It was crowded. But it was also my favorite part of the entire trip.

Supy and I slept at a tiny hotel on the Thai side of the border where Grandma rented us a very basic room (super cheap, but we did decide to spray down our mattress with bug spray before sleeping). We woke up early and headed to the boarder crossing. After Thai immigration you walk down to the river... 

And hop a small boat across to Laos. It's one of the world's only border crossings by boat. 

From there we went through Lao immigration, which was a bit more involved, but still pretty easy. We bought ourselves a boat ticket and some sandwiches and fried rice for the long journey. (We also attracted an annoying and somewhat sketchy German traveler who was difficult to shake...) We sat on the boat until every single seat was filled and then headed out on our two day route. 

The boats were long and skinny. This is from the engine/storage room looking forward to the front of the boat. Their wooden benches had somewhat recently been refitted with old Thai bus seats. 

A closer look at the engine (with a few Buddhist offerings on and around it). This bad boy was loud.

Only one boat makes the trip each day. Families live on the boats when they aren't shuttling passengers and cargo down the Mekong.

The scenery was varied. Sometimes the river was narrow, sometimes extraordinarily wide. Sometimes the banks were sandy, sometimes there were rapids and massive rocks everywhere. 

We also saw lots of wild life--cows, goats, water buffalos, etc. 

Lots of local fishermen and women, and children swimming around too. I'm sure things have modernized considerably in the last few decades, but it seemed as if life was going on as usual as it had for centuries. 

The sunset on day one was pretty spectacular

This is Pak Beng, where we stayed the night. The boat pulled up to the dock and we were surrounded by people trying to get us to come to their hotels. Supy found a kid who gave us a good deal and some banter (and promised that the electricity would run all night), so we followed him to our home for the evening. 

It turned out that making sure our hotel had a generator was a good move because the electricity in town went out before we could even get back out the door. The electricity flickered on and off all evening (making it difficult for us to get our daily quota of fruit smoothies), but we eventually found food in the form of buffalo sausage hot dogs and strolled around town a bit. Finally we figured out the reason for the black outs--a storm was coming. Unfortunately we didn't make it back in time and got ourselves a soaking. 

Everything was clear the next morning though

This is the boat and family that ran the boat on day one. Day two we switched out to a different boat for the rest of the journey. 

 What is a long trip without some snacks? Supy was in love with seaweed flavored anything, but I will admit these seaweed flavored sunchip-type things were tasty. On the right is a ball of flavored sweet fried noodles. It wasn't bad but had a flavor I couldn't place. Finally I figured it out: it tasted like popcorn dipped in sweet and sour sauce.  

River pictures from day two: 

Day two was particularly scenic. These pictures can't do it justice. After two days on the boat though, we made it to Luang Prabang--which was laid back and lovely. 

A sneak peak of the Mekong from Luang Prabang: 

It was my longest water adventure to date, and my first real stab at river travel. The travel was slow--but that was probably just why I liked it. There was plenty of time to read a novel that's been passed along through 2 friends and 3 continents, listen to Joe Purdy sing about the Mississippi, nap, chat, and just enjoy the world floating by. 

Not a bad way to travel at all.