I've been waiting to see if you were going to be able to post! What an awesome coincidence for you to have this experience line up with this topic. Sounds incredible... but I don't think I could do it. haha.

Interesting with the "la" word. I wonder if that's where the "la" Malaysians use originated from, which doesn't really mean anything specific, but I could maybe sometimes translate as a "no?" in certain contexts.