til glede for vaare engelske lesere bringer vi et redigert udrag fra en mail skrevet tidligere idag:

my buddha, get a grip.

the main speartime actitivity among laotians it seems is drinking (as in
many other countries). when there is something social
happening, its allways with beer and alcohols. i have a hard time getting acceptance for not allways drinking bottomsup. even wine
is bottoms up. (they are even less sophisticated than norwegians).

I dont miss norway, neither snow, tv2 nor 20-bussen. but I miss many of the people staying there, and some of the food, the easy food on the
supermarket. and i miss good music. iam sick and tired
of thaimusic which sucks like the insane calf from
hell. (yeah, i know i should have brought cd's, but i thought theye were easy to get here, right)

yesterday i had a lao exam. lao language looks like the nice brouderies on your grandmas skirt:


really nice but it takes some time to figure out what it means. what makes it diifficult is that they dont use space between the words, only between sentences (above is two sentences).

by now i can read, and i can also guess on the writing of a word when i hear it. but usually i am wrong. there are 8 possible ways of wtriting the same word correct if you dont worry about the tones. And I am pretty happy if i hit one of those 8.