So, really briefly...
Three things I forgot in the last post. One, the power in Luang Prabang cuts out randomly for random lengths of time. One day, part of the town didn't have power for five or more hours. Maybe that particular one was due to the storms that have been hitting the area, but the power would cut out at least once a day even on the sunny days. Two, I was a bit in a funk when I was writing the last email. I don't really know why. It was after hanging out with the elephants. I came home and practically passed out, only to be awaken by my "take malaria pills" alarm shortly there after. When I woke, I was in a fog and a bad mood, but that mood lasted the rest of the night and I tried to avoid seeing anybody I knew. On the bright side, the next day the "boss" of the coffee shop allowed me to download music. I walked away with about 600 songs. Most hadn't heard, and a lot is jazz (there are a few gems but I will be deleting most of the jazz). I've gone through about half and am deleting about 1 in 8 songs. The third thing was that I found out that I will most likely not being receiving $1,000 of which I had budgeted into my trip. It involves a friend back home whom I lent money to. I don't know all the details or all the sides of what has transpired so it's not fair for me to speculate on here. Suffice to say that a combination of job loss and legal problems will no doubt put paying me as a last priority. I hope this not to be the case and I want to trust that this person can get their act together enough to pay me before I come home. It would be a bummer to have that issue waiting for me upon my return.
OK, now to the reason for this post -
for when I finish it, but I can tell you this much, it will be a long post for good and for bad. There is a part in it that really illustrates what my point, "I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food". There seems to be this belief throughout society that eating vegetarian is of a higher moral plane. It is not. 
(this one has a different introduction than mine and comes with annotations for some reason). Written by Henry Thoreau in 1850's Massachusetts, it was a book far, far ahead of it's time. I would go as far as to say that this is definitely a classic that should be read by everyone. It's not an easy read. It took me about 20 days to consume this 330 page book, which is quite some time for even me. There are two reasons that it's a tough read. It is written in 1850's language and prose. Some sentences are literally a page long and therefore easy to start zoning out or to get lost. I do like the old language, though I found I had to look up a few words that are out of fashion today. The other reason that this book is a tough read is that it's heady or heavy, requiring breaks every so often to contemplate. 
