Tuesday: Good morning paradise!

I didn't sleep particularly well during our night at the Lahu outpost. I had dreams that there were ants in our bed and woke up completely disoriented and panicked. I heard later that Megan had found a giganto spider in her room on the other side of the outpost, which thankfully she told no one about until we had left. We were essentially sleeping outside so we could have woken up to anything on our mosquito nets. Thankfully all I woke up to was morning dew and the sound of rain outside. Then I heard Tegan next door going outside and simply saying "Good morning paradise!" in a loud, overtly sarcastic tone. It was both hilarious and unnerving as I laid there in my moist bed thinking 'oh great....'

Tegan called it. I opened our door to a fogged in, drizzly, miserable morning. It made for some amazing views later but was also so unbelievably muddy. That mixed with steep downhills the whole way made for a slippery mess. We were taking bets on who would slip first. I was legit scared of injuring myself it was so slippery, you should have seen how I inched down those hills. And the downhill was not good on my ankle, I was in so much pain but I had no choice but to go down. God forbid I stay another night in the hills. It was truly miserable.

A small ray of sunshine was that a puppy from the Lahu village followed/led us all the way down to the waterfall. Then a grown dog that looked just like him took over guiding us the rest of the way from there. It was adorable, reminded me of the dogs in Mozambique that would walk you all the way home at night.

Once the ordeal was finally over we met with the vans at the end of the trail and drove straight to white water rafting. There we ate lunch and got changed into our rafting clothes just as it started to drizzle again. By the time we were on the river it was a light rain, but for the most part we didn't even notice. Having white water rafted 2 or 3 times before I was pretty comfortable with it and went in a boat with some nervous first-timers. As an offshoot of Team Sassy we were Boat Sassy. We did 10km down the river, including four class 4 rapids and a couple of swims outside the raft. I'll admit the class 4's were pretty scary at times but it was awesome. I will never miss a chance to river raft.

We came back to cold showers at beautiful eco lodge. It was at the foot of the hills in a Lisu village (called Lisu Lodge) nestled right up against rice patties. It rained the rest of the night as I hung out and bonded with the girls from the other project.