Laa Gawn

Today marks my last day at CARE, and begins the countdown to my departure from Laos Saturday afternoon. It has been a great summer and I am leaving somewhat reluctantly. While there are many amenities that Thailand, and certainly the States, has to offer, I will deeply miss the new friends I have made here. In my travels, I have always enjoyed meeting new people and doing my best to keep in touch as the months, years and distance between us grows. Fortunately, e-mail and facebook have made this endeavor fairly easy. However, for many of the people whom I've spent countless hours with over the past several weeks, keeping in touch will not only require getting past language barriers, but will also have to bridge technological barriers. While almost everyone here has a mobile phone and karaoke machine, not many computers are featured in the home. So, e-mail, facebook and other means to communicate which we readily take for granted at home are not an option for keeping in touch with my friends in Laos. My friend pointed out today how weird it will be to leave a place we have all grown accustomed to, and grown to love, not knowing if we will ever be back again. Over the past several weeks, we have all been made to feel that we were not just visitors passing through, but a part of a community. We had our friends we saw on Monday's and Saturday's for the hash, the neighbors who were a constant each evening after work and the guys we've played football with once a week.

We are having a party tonight with many of our new friends, so there's still time to enjoy each others company one last time. And, who knows, maybe I'll be back here next summer!