Toms Arrival

Today was/is an interesting day made no easier by the fact that I was out a little to late last night with some of the lao college friends. Tom arrived as the heading would suggest and it was nice to see that friendly face and shoot the breeze.  I was in desperate need of some food so we decided to venture out.  The problem was that Toms bike was a complete mess.  First both tires were flat then it turns out that there was something wrong with the starter and none of his gauges worked.  I left him to deal with that while I got food expecting him to join me shortly.  This would not be the case after I finished lunch around 2:30..it was a very late lunch.  I was driving back and saw a man yell at me as I drove past.  It was Tom who was walking and enlightened me to the problems with his bike and that he was walking to meet me.  Luckily we ran into each other and I gave him a ride back home.  None of his keys actually opened the house so he was stuck with nothing else to do but find me.  We got the key situation fixed and then were talking with Chantas sister when they decided we were going to have duck tonight

Preface the next part is not for the feint of heart.We changed our previous dinner plans then sat outside holding two ducks by their wings.  While one person held the ducks another person, luckily tom and I were neither of the people, would cut open its neck and bleed it out.  The blood went into a bowl for some duck blood soup to be cooked later.  The duck at this point was not dead so they put it into a bucket full of water.  At this point I was disgusted with  their terrible treatment of this duck who after a minute popped out of the closed water bucket only to be shoved back in.  Later after it was finally dead they dipped it in boiling water and then plucked out all of the feathers.  Sorry about the graphic nature but I am just telling you what I saw.  Later tonight we will be having those ducks for dinner.

After seeing the ducks start to get plucked we headed out to meet a friend whose birthday it was.  We sat around on the floor in his dorm room and talked.  Tom and I decided to head out when it turned into karaoke night. 

Tomorrow is our first day of real two a day practices and we get into the swing of things bright and early at 7:30.