Week 7: Laos Reading Diary

For the Laos Reading Unit, Click here.

For Reading A: I liked many of the stories from this unit. However,  I had two favorite stories from this half of the reading unit. The first was Lover's Leap. This was the story I read first after reading a storytelling post of it last week. I liked the story a lot. It reminded me quite a bit of Romeo and Juliet although I thought this one was much better. The young couple loved each other in secret so long that their families believed she had moved on from her young love. I liked this story very much.

(river in Laos)

The second reading I liked was The Giant's Mountain and the Temple. This story reminded me of many group projects, throughout high school and freshman year of college. The moral of everyone working and doing there part is a great moral for the story. I liked that at the end the people who didn't help the giants advise others to put in their fair share of effort after seeing how much harder it was. Also, the story had giants carrying mountain tops. There is few things as cool as that. 

(temple in Laos)

For Reading B: I very much enjoyed all of the readings for this unit. Once again, I have two favorite stories I'll write about for this reading diary. The first I'll talk about was The Legend of the Rice. I thought this was a very interesting explanation of a type of 'golden age' for humans, and how it came to pass. In many religion classes I've taken we have discussed a golden age of humans that disappears because of human error. This is interesting, because not only did people not have to work very hard for food as in most stories, but the grains of rice were so plentiful that they would bring themselves out of the field. Overall I thought this was just a very interesting story. 

(planting rice, Laos)

The second story I am going to talk about is The Magic Well. I enjoyed reading this story because it ended on such a happy note for everyone. Not only was the chow was healed, but the water was used to heal everyone from maladies that hadn't had a cure. I also liked the idea of a special journey to reach this well. When the first man to visit there, that dreamed of it and had spirits guiding him, he knew he was the first to go along that path. I thought it was a good story. 

(Mekong River, Laos)