Leaving on a jet plane...or a canoe.

In less than 30 minutes, I will be on my way to canoe the Mekong in Laos and along the border of Thailand-Vietnam and Thailand-Cambodia. No big deal.
   This trip lasts three weeks and is the first of my field courses (titled Rivers: Human Rights and the Environment). We were separated into two groups (one of eight and one of nine) and will be starting the course on different sites, meeting during the second week (which will be spent in Laos), and finishing at different sites. My group starts this week with a homestay in a village, not sure where, to be honest. We'll also be staying in guest houses and other villages during the duration of the trip. I am not very sure on all the things that we will be doing, but I am sure it will be fun :)
   I just wanted to update everyone on what will be happening while I disappear from the internet and the phone communication for three weeks.
   I am beyond excited to go on this adventure! I am also slightly excited to come back and tell the stories :)

Thank you for reading and thinking of me. I'm feeling the love all the way here! Keep sending me good vibes and love as I embark on this glorious journey!

Time's a-flying!

Here I am again. And here is what I have been doing.

Last week we had elders from the Lanna community (an ethnic minority group in Thailand) come teach us to make their traditional arts and crafts. We sat with them in our classroom and asked them lots of questions about themselves and their communities before we divided up and went to learn in smaller groups. My group went first to work with the guy from the Lanna community, who taught us how to make a “tung,” which is hung above doors to give a blessing to those who go under it each time. He worked so fast that it was hard to keep up, and our finished products look quite messy compared to his—but he’s been doing this for a while, so I think we did a good job overall. After about thirty minutes, we moved to a different classroom to learn from the two Lanna ladies, who showed us how to make some traditional toys. This was a lot of fun. I was particularly fond of one of the ladies, who sat next to me and helped me for a long time, even when I wanted to keep making little fish and had already made two. She made me a flower before we left, and gave me an extra frog, fish, and bird to take with me. She spoiled me!

            On Friday we went to Doi Suthep, which is on the Southwestern part of Chiang Mai, and hiked to the temple at the top. We began our hike at around nine and stopped at 11 about halfway through to check out a different temple and have some time to explore. We had stopped before for 15 minutes of quiet-alone time in the forests to observe nature (and take notes, mind you). Sitting there, in the forest and away from people, was so peaceful. For a while I just laid back, closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds of the forest. I could hear water at a distance, the leaves falling near (and on) me, and many different types of birds chirping. What a wonderful world!

            At the temple halfway up the mountain, I found a spot on the rocks of the waterfall and looked toward the horizon. It was such a good spot to listen to the water and relax. Little by little, I was joined by about half of the group, and we all sat there and talked about how this, what we were doing, was our class. Experiential learning is such a beautiful thing.

            We made our way to a different waterfall for lunch, where we got to relax for a while before resuming our hike. Near the waterfall, we witnessed the scouts (boys and girls) on a camping trip, which included them lying flat on their bellies and climbing up some steps after a while. It was fun to watch how intense the instructors were and how much fun the kids were having. Jean and I made our way closer to the waterfall and played in the water. On a hot day like Friday, playing in the cold water felt incredibly great (although we weren’t allowed to swim).

            We continued on our hike and stopped twice to practice identifying plants and trees and such. For some, this was fun. For me, it was tough. I have never had to do that before, nor have I really expressed any interest in it, so it was something completely new to me. It was interesting and slightly fun nonetheless. For the last thirty minutes of our hike, we were told to walk by ourselves quietly, so we paced ourselves in a way that would allow us to see the person in front of us but not be close enough to talk. This was such a good idea. I really appreciated the quiet hike through an unknown area!

            When we finally made it to the temple, I was melting under my clothes—the weather was so hot and humid! We quickly changed into formal clothes to enter the temple and were on our way. Although the temple was beautiful, it is such a tourist attraction that I didn’t really enjoy it. There wasn’t the usual peacefulness when you enter a smaller temple; instead there were stores, flower shops, people yapping away and taking countless pictures inside. I wasn’t impressed. I was disappointed that something that tends to be a peaceful experience, such as visiting a temple, could be ruined by tourism.

            On Saturday I went with Danielle’s family to the Chiang Mai flower festival. This consisted of people wearing traditional Thai clothing followed by floats made by each town or school in Chiang Mai (and other places like the botanical garden I visited). This was a lot of fun to watch—the clothes were so beautiful! We were there for a few hours, then Dee’s family went back home and we stayed in town to do some homework. We found a neat restaurant near Cad Luang (the market we go to every day on our way to and from school), had lunch, and then found a cute coffee shop to do some work in. As expected, our afternoon was spent working on Thai homework, reading, or talking; and it was a very relaxing afternoon—much needed after a long week.

            When we got home, we went for a bike ride around our village, which turned out to be an excellent idea. After riding around for a while, we found ourselves following a long road to who-knew-where. At some point on this road, there was nothing but very green rice fields on both sides, and it was beautiful to see. As we rode by the fields, I could feel the coolness of the water on my legs, although the rest of the atmosphere was quite worm—such a weird experience, yet an amazing one. Suddenly Dee and I found ourselves in one of the most beautiful spots yet: on our left side, we could see the moon getting slightly brighter and higher and, on our right side, the sun was setting. We had white on the left, orange on the right; each making the rice fields look just as beautiful as the other. It was incredible. We stayed there for quite a while, soaking it all in and loving nature—I had to pinch myself to make sure I was really witnessing that!

            On Sunday I, once again, went with Dee’s family for the day. We went shopping for traditional Lanna clothing for Dee and I for our party on Tuesday. I hope I don’t make it sound as such, but this was quite an ordeal. Finding a skirt was easy. Finding shirts to match them…not so much. My skirt is purple and has orange/white/brownish flowers on it and Dee’s is black with red lines and silver flowers. Dee’s mom and sister had different ideas of what would match our skirts than we did, so it was hard to agree on shirts that matched each of our skirts. After trying quite a few shirts on, we finally decided on some. It was about an hour and a half of shopping. As many of you know, shopping is not exactly my favorite activity.

            When I thought we were on our way back home, we arrived at Dee’s aunt’s house, which is where we went on our first weekend in Thailand. Also, this was our last weekend with our host families (which I will talk about in a bit), so going to this place was funny/ironic for two reasons. First, this was the first place Dee and I went together and learned to stick together as soon as we figured out we were living by each other. There’s something about that house and our bonding experience. Second, this was the place, where, if you remember, I ate chicken blood for the first time. It turns out that the exact same meal was being given to us this Sunday. Dee and I were given our plates, looked at each other, tried to imagine something worse, succeeded, and decided we were doing this together again. So there we were, the two farangs eating a spicy meal with chicken blood. The blood cubes weren’t as bad this time (although still just as gross in my head if I allowed myself to really think about it). When Dee wasn’t looking, I put some of my tomatoes on her bowl and, as punishment for not eating my tomatoes, took some of her blood cubes. Yum. Needless to say, we, once again, made it through the meal! We are such troupers.

            But really, if there is anyone here who is a trouper, that’s Dee. She’s been a vegetarian for 11 years and a vegan for two, so eating lots of meat and blood cubes has probably been harder for her than for anyone else on the trip. Yet we haven’t heard her complain. I’m just saying…if that was me, the world would know and my blog would probably only talk about that. Now, that’s inspiring!

            Anyhow, when we returned home, Dee and I went on another bike ride in search of the same spot we had found the day before. We made it there and it was just as beautiful. It is so peaceful, too.

            On Monday we went to Chiang Mai University during our foundations class to interview some students for our group projects due on Friday (which is when Foundations ends!). My group interviewed two girls who were studying animation, another girl who was studying sociology and anthropology, and a professor who teaches sustainability. It was so much fun! We used some of our Thai, but the fact that our interviewees spoke a little English was helpful.

            On Tuesday night we had our farewell party for our host families—for reasons not worth explaining our party was earlier than expected and we said goodbye to our host families four days before we actually left them. For this dinner we all wore traditional Lanna clothing, which is very beautiful as you will see in my pictures soon enough. Everyone looked so good: the girls looked beautiful and the boys looked handsome. This night was when (almost) everyone prepared an act with their families and we had a talent show. We had also been learning a goodbye song in Thai with our Thai teachers. All the acts were really good—it was nice to see the group enjoying themselves outside of school. Our song as a group, however, was pretty bad. We started off on about five different keys, which made almost the whole thing sound atrocious. No big deal, though, because all the families were smiling from ear to ear anyway. It was a cute and thoughtful song, I won’t lie. We just might have murdered it. The whole night, I had Silas’ little brother follow me around. He’s almost four, and he is such a cute and happy kid. He’s like a little energizer bunny: runs, laughs, and jumps non-stop. At the end of the night, when we were saying goodbye, he gave me a hug, a kiss, and said “I want you in my house” as an invitation to come visit him throughout the remainder of the semester. He was the cutest thing.

            On Wednesday we went canoeing at the same lake where we had our swim test. We were divided into two groups, got a partner, and began learning to steer a canoe. There have been so many instances in these past five weeks where I have felt so inept. Canoeing was one of those. For the life of me, I could not get the canoe to go on a straight line on the lake. However, it was hard to be frustrated because of two reasons. One, I wasn’t the only one struggling. Two, it was such a beautiful place, that being upset amidst such beauty would be wrong.

            We did a few exercises to help us practice canoeing, which became a little easier toward the end of the day. Whenever we got to one end of the exercise, we had to switch with our partners so that the other one of us would be steering the canoe. This was really interesting and funny—switching places with someone on an inflatable canoe is quite a challenge! We later had to jump off our canoes into the lake and swim to another one to switch partners—this was super fun as well! The last thing we did that day was learn what to do when our canoe flips. We, once again, were in a canoe with a partner and were told to flip our canoe. This, of course, required us to both rock from side to side until we fell off. Once we fell off, we lifted our canoe off the water onto a second canoe, where the other two people flipped it and sent it back into the water for us. Once that was done, we had to get into the canoe. This whole thing seems like an ordeal, but it was helpful to know how to do it; not to mention the fact that it was incredibly fun as well.

            Dee and I did some shopping after school and ended our night by buying dinner and eating it by the river Ping near Cad Luang. As we sat there at around seven, we saw a huge orange circle in the distance and asked ourselves if it was the moon. We both didn’t think so at first because it was so close and so orange and so incredibly beautiful. But eventually we noticed that it was moving up and right, which led us to believe that we weren’t hallucinating before. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen here—so beautiful. The next morning the sun was just as orange, and this was also incredible. We had some time in Cad Luang, so Dee and I went on the crosswalk and watched the sun rise over the river. Thailand is such a beautiful place—I constantly have to convince myself that I am really here.

            Friday was our last day of Foundations—there’s so much joy in my heart. This means we’ve been in Thailand for five weeks already! The whole day consisted of finishing up our presentations and giving them to the class and some of the Pis. I was quite proud of my group (Breanna, Jean, and Laura). We did our presentation on ethnic minority groups in Thailand, which we all had a personal interest in. Our presentation turned out pretty good, and it ended our Foundations class with a bang, to say the least.

            After class, we went shopping again. Our time with our host families has come to an end, so Dee and I have been buying goodbye and thank you gifts for them because Friday was our last night with them. When I got home, Mae Nhi told me that her friend had died and we were going to the funeral after dinner. She was worried because it was my last night with them, and they didn’t want me to have to go to a funeral with them, so she offered to have me stay at Dee’s while they went. But I told her that I wanted to spend my time with them and not anywhere else. This made Mae Nhi, who had already told me countless times that she didn’t want Saturday to come, run to hug me and cry. “I no want you go.” I promised her I would come back whenever I could, but this doesn’t take away her sadness. After the goodbye dinner on Tuesday, I asked her if they’d be having another student next semester. In beautiful Thai-glish, she told me that I’m very funny and made the family very happy, so she doesn’t know if she wants another student because she doesn’t know if she’ll be like me. I was so touched! Mae Nhi and Paw Noi have really given me everything, and I cannot imagine having a different family than them here. I wish, contrary to my fellow classmates, that I could stay for longer with them.

            For my goodbye gift, I bought them a basket and filled it with fruit and a little chime for the front of the house. When I gave it to Mae Nhi, she once again started crying. She told me that I had made her very happy and that she would miss me. I told her that I loved her. In between sobs, she told me she loves me too. We’ve had lots of moments like that since then.

            Mae and Paw gave me a beautiful bracelet and a marble elephant. They are just the best parents (after my own beautiful parents at home, of course). They have spoiled me rotten and treated me like a princes, and I’m sure it will be hard to be without them—I had gotten so used to coming home to them and having a long dinner, washing the dishes, doing homework, washing or ironing my uniform, all surrounded by them every night. I will surely miss them immensely. The good thing is that I will only be one saewng-tao ride away for the next week, which I’ll take advantage of J

We moved into our new homes—an apartment complex next to the mall—on Saturday. It has been, to say the least, really refreshing to have a new little home, although it’s hard not to be with the family. But I’m adjusting. Dee and I are sharing our apartment, and it has felt homey since we moved in, so it’s nice to come back after school to such a cool place.

I also started the Rivers course on Monday. This course contains lots of information, a great amount of it new to me, so it’s been a definite switch from Foundations. Not much has happened since we moved, so I will be writing soon before I leave.

All my love, as usual J