Woo hoo! I quickly skimmed over the list of local restaurants scheduled to participate in the cooking competition, but the words “free public sampling of dishes” were all I needed to mark my calendar.

One line in the invitation particularly caught my attention. Turns out this event was part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Edible Insect Promotion Program. I guess I didn’t realize that ALL the free samples would contain insects.

Tony and I arrived at the convention center with our friend Nikki (the new VIS counselor) shortly after the event’s 4:00 start time on Saturday. Unfortunately, the hungry throngs had already snatched up all the paper plates and gorged on most of the samples. Chefs frantically tried to whip up new batches of their larvae eggrolls, cricket fried rice and sushi, insect laap, grub tacos, and other delicacies.

I struggled to snap a few photos in the jostling crowd.

Here, a judge tastes one of the entries.

Cooks prepare some cricket fried rice.

If you want to make it at home, don’t forget your bucket-o-crickets.

Don’t you think the tomato rosette lends a touch of elegance?

Mmmm … nothin’ like a big pile of slimy larvae on a rainy day.

When I saw our lovely Lao friends, Addie and Lae, relishing a selection of invertebrate treats, well, there was no avoiding it. I was just going to have to eat some bugs. People all over the world eat insects every day as a cheap source of protein, so it seems ridiculous and immature to make a spectacle out of it … and yet …

Lae encouraged me to try the cricket canape offered by one of our favorite restaurants, Lao Garden. The cricket sat on a little bed of grassy bits, and the cook poured a spoonful of sauce overtop.

After a few moments of requisite drama, I popped the snack into my mouth. The sweet-and-tangy flavor was surprisingly pleasing, and I have to admit enjoying the crickety crunch.

Lae preferred the cricket sushi.

Next up: grubs. Addie called them “baby bees” and tried to convince me that they tasted like potatoes.

For some reason, I was way less eager to sample the grubs.

Potatoes? Whatevs. Grubs taste just exactly like what you think they’re gonna taste like. I don’t recommend them plain. I wish I’d tried the grub taco instead, but they were all gone before I had a chance.

Final verdict: China’s sea cucumber continues to hold the coveted title, “Nastiest Creature I’ve Consumed,” but that grub offered up some stiff competition. As for the cricket, saep lai lai!

Rain pounded Vientiane overnight, but that’s nothing new in this wet season. As we headed out the door for school this morning in the deluge, I donned my water-resistant ride-to-school pants, purple plastic poncho and polka-dotted gumboots and then climbed on back of Tony’s motorbike. I prefer to hitch a ride rather than pedal on days like this.

When we arrived at school, we parked the bike and walked toward our classrooms. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until we turned the corner around the administration building. The whole field and playground area had transformed into a lake. My first thought was, “Rain day!” But then I remembered where I was. If we canceled classes for every downpour, we’d have to teach all summer to make up the missed time. No thanks.

I often work with small groups at these outdoor tables, but unfortunately, none of the children came to school in hip waders today.

I had supervision duty here at break time, but my main job today was to tell kids, “Don’t even think about it!” To make up for the playground prohibition, I taught them how to play “Red Light-Green Light” on the sidewalk. That was a surprisingly big hit.

The hallways in the secondary building were literally crawling with every little creature seeking refuge from the flood – spiders, roaches, crickets, beetles, frogs, snakes, snails, you name it.

Many of us felt disconcerted that our 2-year-old campus could experience such terrible flooding problems. We worried that a poorly designed drainage system might lead to weeks of indoor recess (every teacher’s nightmare). We wondered if the land would eventually return to its previous incarnation as a rice paddy. Our new director asked if I knew what a cubit was in case we had to build an ark. (I didn’t.)

Luckily, our facilities manager, a spunky Thai woman named Ben, found the source of the problem. She borrowed my boots, waded into the flood water, and discovered the school’s drainage system worked perfectly to channel the water off campus and into large ditches. Ben also discovered that the pooled water in the ditches was a popular fishing spot for village children. When the heavy rains and flood run-off created a strong current in the ditches, the children used their problem-solving skills and built a dam, effectively trapping the fish and flooding our campus.

After Ben dismantled the dam (and survived an encounter with a large eel), the water and the drama quickly ebbed.

… you stare at the plastic boxes that hold your year’s supply of toothpaste, Citrucel, hair dye, and other toiletries, …

… and you realize that your new contacts enable you to actually read the label on one of the boxes, …

… and you suddenly burst into laughter, pee, and realize everything is going to be OK.

I’ve written about my Seasonal Affective Disorder here before.

It’s common knowledge that I worship the sun. I don’t mean that in the cliché overused way that teens worship Zac Efron. I mean, when I do sun salutations in a yoga class, I am seriously bowing and prostrating in grateful praise of the sun’s rejuvenating energy. When bright rays seep out from behind a cloud, I send up a little thank-you mantra. When everyone else escapes into the shade, I stretch out my arms and embrace the heat with religious zeal. Since moving to Laos, my Happy Light has remained stashed in a closet, and that beautiful, blazing, tropical sunshine has kept my spirits soaring.

However, like Job in the Bible, I now find my devotion tested. My beloved sun has sent forth a plague in the form of skin cancer.

During our summer vacation in Michigan, I visited my mom’s dermatologist – in part because he was rumored to be a hottie but also because I had a little mole next to my eye that had morphed a bit. He recommended a biopsy, and sure enough, it turned out to be basal cell carcinoma. Damn.

My mom accompanied me on my second visit to Dr. Stutz. I put her in charge of documenting the procedure (although she may not have been the right person for the job, what with her “essential tremors” and confusion over the iPhone – “Is it a phone or a camera?”). So here we go:

Here’s the little spot a week after the biopsy.

Dr. Stutz shoots up my face with some numbing agent. I encouraged him to use Botox, but he wouldn’t do it.

Then he scrapes out a chunk of flesh and cauterizes it. There’s something a bit nauseating about the smell of your own face burning.

I was relieved to learn that basal cell carcinoma is a slow-growing form of cancer that rarely spreads to other parts of the body. I had to laugh when I heard that redheads are more susceptible. Would it make a difference if the cancer knew my auburn hair comes courtesy of Excellence Creme #6R?

Unfortunately, the best way to prevent skin cancer is to limit exposure to sunlight. I refuse to think about that. It’s rainy season in Laos right now, so the sun poses minimal threat. In a few weeks, I’ll have to come up with a strategy for meeting my daily sunshine quota while protecting my traitorous skin.

I will continue to be vigilant, however, about other mysterious marks on my body, and I encourage you to do the same. Check out the Mayo Clinic’s page about basal cell carcinoma for more information.

Oh, and Dr. Stutz really is a hottie.

After four years, we moved to China, and our shipment included some books from that original shopping spree, as well as many new additions purchased during our summers in the States. For awhile, I had an amazon.com credit card that rewarded me with free shipping and store credit, further fueling my book acquisition habit (and leading to many late-night online impulse purchases).

The e-reader is the perfect gadget for someone like me who travels so much and moves to a new country every few years. How many times have we hit the road with a suitcase half full of novels (and then paid for overweight baggage)? How many times did I pack several extra books because I wasn’t sure what I’d be in the mood to read? How many times did I leave a book in the airport/plane/hotel and then have to buy another copy? Yet … would I be content to read books on a screen? I didn’t think so. And that’s why our shipment to Laos last year was, again, heavy with books (including, I’m embarrassed to admit, a few jetsetters from the Istanbul M Bag collection).

This summer, I gave e-readers some more thought. I sought advice on facebook. I searched the blogosphere for reviews. I agonized over the decision. Then amazon dropped the price of the Kindle, and it seemed like a sign from God.

When my new toy came in the mail, I immediately added my first novel – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – and read it straight through. I never ever missed holding a real book. In fact, I never noticed I WASN’T holding a real book. I was hooked! I soon discovered that amazon’s one-click purchase option for Kindle books was easily as addictive as browsing in a real bookstore. It worked like this: (a) make a list of book recommendations from friends, (b) look up one of the books on amazon.com, (c) read the plot synopsis and reviews, (d) click “purchase,” (e) look up the next book on the list, (f) repeat steps c-f ad infinitum.

On our trip back to Laos, I read voraciously. I even bought a few more books while sitting in the Chicago airport. And then disaster struck. About half-way through our grueling flight from Chicago to Tokyo and half-way through the fantasy/bodice-ripper Outlander, I clicked “next page” on my Kindle and the screen did this:

I restarted the device about 20 times and then nearly burst into tears at the idea of six more hours on the plane with no video-on-demand and nothing to read except United Airlines’ Hemispheres magazine. Once we arrived in Tokyo, I found free wifi and synced my MacBook with my Kindle account so I could continue reading Outlander on my computer screen. Not nearly as pleasant, but better than nothing for the flight to Bangkok.

Back in Vientiane, I crankily wrote an email to amazon.com. In a show of unparalleled customer service, amazon actually asked for MY phone number, and THEY called ME seconds later. No waiting on hold for 30 minutes! The representative asked a few questions, agreed with my diagnosis of a defective screen, and then promised to send a new Kindle ASAP. Hooray!

So the story has a happy ending. Despite my first Kindle’s sad demise, I don’t regret taking the e-reader plunge, and I look forward to a long and blissful relationship with my new one. Tony looks forward to lighter luggage.

Woo hoo!

Yum!!

Nico got a little sticky. But it was worth it!

On one of our last days at the lake, Nico played in the sprinkler while his little brother napped. The lure of the sprinkler was too great; he couldn’t be bothered with putting on a swimsuit, so he jumped and splashed in his Fruit ‘O’ the Looms.

Nico has very big muscles because he eats so much watermelon.

The Visitor Center features an excellent display about the forest, local wildlife, logging and life in the logging camps of the 1930s.

Nico was interested in the animal pelts, including this bear.

We walked through the forest – mostly beech and maple trees – to get to the Logging Museum. Nico found a couple walking sticks, which were also handy for smacking trees and plants. Paul mostly just ran to keep up. We saw chipmunks, squirrels, lots of birds, moss, 100-year-old tree stumps and other cool stuff.

The Logging Museum comprises a collection of buildings that recreate a logging camp.

The boys did laundry 1930s-style, and then Nico found a checkers game in the bunkhouse.

My mom and I pretended we were working at the camp. We wouldn’t have lasted through the winter. The men slept three to a bunk, and the bunks were small. The snoring alone would have driven me stark raving mad. It would have been one of those urban legends about the crazy kitchen girl who murdered all the men in the middle of the night.

Mom didn’t take long to hook up with a logger.

The men used these huge wheels to transport logs to horse-drawn sleds or to the river.

It was a lot of time in the van for the boys (and the grown-ups), but we kept ourselves entertained.

Recently I got an email from ClustrMap telling me they were going to archive my map and put a new one on my blog. They do this because some people’s maps turn in to one big red blob over time. Makes sense. Still … my new map looks so naked. Is my ClustrMap the blog equivalent of sitting at the cool kids’ lunch table at school or wearing the latest style of sneakers? Am I that desperate to be popular?

Unequivocally, yes.

So I’m posting my old map to prevent an inferiority complex. Isn’t it pretty?

Oh, and please refer your friends (especially those in South America, Africa and Russia) to my blog, and let’s all work together to make that map into one big red blob before ClustrMap strikes again!