What we're here for...

So, the past few days we've had some really cool experiences doing what we came to Thailand to do. On Saturday, we had a day camp for teenagers who either suffer from AIDS or know someone who has it. Our partner organization, AIDS Access, gives these kids all sorts of cool opportunities to learn, find friendships, and be accepted into the world. At the day camp, we did yoga with them, taught them marketing skills, and Holly and I taught them some drawing and painting, lessons it turned out they didn't really need.

We worked in a building on the grounds of a Buddhist temple and told the kids to go outside looking for something to draw that was inspiring to them. They came back with incredible sketches of the temple, Buddhas, trees, flowers, and tons of other stuff. We couldn't believe how good they were and then they started painting and they were just as good. The thing about these kids is that they all live pretty hard lives. I have no idea what people with AIDS go through on a daily basis...it can't be easy. But they were all so happy. They smiled and laughed and played games together like nothing was wrong.

The arch of the wat. Probably cost close to $30,000 to build.

Today, we taught English again. Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 6th grade. Kindergarten started out nicely, ended looking like a warzone. Kids crying, biting, putting bugs down Holly's shirt, screaming, laughing hysterically...who knows what kind of moms we'll make. The 1st graders love us though, the 6th graders think they're the shiz. We're getting to them though. After we taught, the principal was planting some flowers and needed some help so we got down in the dirt in our skirts and dug holes with our bare hands in the sweltering heat for a couple hours. No exaggeration. Ha.

A really cool thing happened after the first hour though. The kids finished with school and when they came out and saw the farangs (white people) doing all this planting, they started helping, hoeing, shoveling, carrying flowers around. Thai people are extremely hard workers. And these are Thai children, not even asked to help, they just did it voluntarily. Pretty sure some of it was to impress us, but a lot of it is just in their culture, too. They are really just very polite, kind, and genuinely friendly, happy people. Makes it pretty easy to live here :)

Tipping Bucket Fundraiser: the Saman Mit Community

So I'm in charge of a project here where we're building an observation tower in a farming community just outside of Chiang Rai, where we're living.

Read about their need for an observation tower and visit tippingbucket.org to make a donation of at least $1 to help get it built! We have four days to raise $950 and we need everyone's help!

Saman Mit is a farming community consisting of 148 families located 30 minutes outside of Chiang Rai, Thailand. They migrated from the Isaan province 33 years ago when their farmlands were flooded as a result of a government hydro-electric project that dammed the Isaan rivers. Many were left without homes or land to sustain their livelihood. The land they found in Chiang Rai was fertile and well suited for their way of life, but it was too small to support the community.

Acknowledging their plight, the government has recently granted them six square hectares of land to cultivate and develop through their traditional cooperative system of farming. They plan to increase their fish stocks in the ponds, grow trees to sell, cultivate and sell rice, potatoes, and other vegetables as they pursue a goal of becoming a wholly self-sufficient community.

However, to achieve their goal, the community needs to prove to the government that they are using the land wisely, developing it productively, and protecting it from any problems that may arise, such as wildfires or theft.

Through long debate and discussion, the village council has decided that the most effective way to watch over the land’s crop development, while detecting possible problems of theft from outside private farmers, is to build an observation tower. The observation post will be located high atop a hill that provides an ideal purview of all the lands within the 6 hectares of the co-op. The tower will be thirty feet high, built by community members and HELP International development volunteers. The community has come to HELP International looking for a partner to help with construction, fundraising, and business consulting workshops that aim to boost productivity, sales, and land efficiency.

Remember to tell friends and family about this fundraiser, too! Thanks!

Go to tippingbucket.org for more information about the non-profit organization partnering with us on this.

Chiang Mai, anyone?

Flight of the Gibbon Zip line Canopy Tour

Pim was able to get us foreigners a sweet deal to do this. She pulled the "they are just students here to help our people and do humanitarian work" and it worked like a charm. We should've paid $70, but we paid what a native Thai would pay which is about half that.
- Zip line through a 1500 year old rainforest with gigantic trees. Just picture Avatar.
- 2 km of zip line
- 15 different platforms
- An awesome, all-you-can-eat lunch was included after a hike to a beautiful waterfall

We were in this little village way up in the mountains with really cool houses, almost like tree houses. Really peaceful place to live except for when tons of foreigners come to swing like monkeys through the trees.

Chubby rice cheeks...what can we say, we eat rice here. Everyday. Multiple times a day.

Sorry about the scream...definitely not necessary.

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep Rajvoravihara

350 stairs doesn't seem like a lot, but it kind of is.

Umbrella Factory

Night Safari

http://www.chiangmainightsafari.com/eng/activities.html

It was overrated. A day safari would have been much more worth the time and money or just a real one in Africa. The best part was the lone chimp on an island that danced like a ballerina when we made monkey noises and pounded on the railing. That may have been worth our ฿250...

Overall, it was a fun weekend!

Don't you wish your kid had a mullet?

So, on Tuesdays we teach English at a school we don't know the name of, but we call it the Mullet School because there's a tiny preschooler kid with an awesome mullet and he wears a chain with a dog tag on it and leaves his shirt half unbuttoned. Picture of mullet kid coming soon.

We teach 1st graders for an hour...taught them how to ask each others' names, colors, and head shoulders knees and toes. It was fun, got us out of our comfort zones. We're not always the most animated people, but we discovered the more like a fool you look and act, the more affective the teaching is. The sixth graders we taught next already knew a lot of English so we had to improvise a little more and played hangman with animal names and sports and stuff. Not knowing Thai makes things really difficult, but with a lot of actions and drawing on the board, we eventually got our points across.

We had a break for a while, so we sat outside reading until a few kids nearby yelled hello and asked our names. They love learning English. Five kids turned into ten kids, which multiplied after a couple hours into 40 kids pulling us in all different directions to play games, girls holding our hands, and the boys pulled Holly into their basketball game twice. She has lovely blisters to show it because she played barefoot in the 100 degree weather and forgot how sizzling hot the cement would be. So she's been walking on the outsides of her feet for the last few days.

This little girl loved wearing Holly's sunglasses. Didn't want to give them back.

And here's the delayed documentation of Holly's historic ostrich ride. Still the strangest thing we've ever done.

Ostrich for breakfast, ostrich for lunch

Okay so...I know that I look like a huge dork in this video, but no one's allowed to judge me cause you've never ridden an ostrich and you don't know what it's like. It's really just ridiculous. We'll put up Holly's video in a little bit.



And...yeah, at the end of my ostrich ride, I did not slide gracefully off. I lost hold of the wing and started sliding down to the neck and tried to grab onto the neck that's as sturdy as string cheese and it didn't work and I just fell off. Ha.

Well THAT was fun...

So today, for lunch we went to this Islam restaurant and we had the choice between chicken or beef and rice or noodles so I chose chicken and rice. Sounds safe right? So we sit down and start eating and I'm thinking, "Mmm, this is pretty good". Next thing you know, I feel a little pop in my mouth and I feel a nice burning sensation. So then I think, "Well that's pretty normal, things are always spicy in Thailand, it's expected", so I continue eating. Then, POP, another one, POP another one, POP another one. Now my lips and tongue have gone numb. At this point, it's more like "How come the person right across from me is eating the same thing as me and is NOT having a fire burning in her mouth?!?" So I ask, "What the heck is going on?!" And Dave tells me, "Holly, those are peppers you're eating there, and they're not just peppers, they're like really really HOT peppers" and I think, "Why yes, yes they are" as I sniff the snot back up my nose and wipe the tears from my eyes. Then I go to reach for my Coke because naturally a liquid will help calm this blazing heat in my mouth and bring back feeling to my tongue and Rose yells, "Holly! Don't drink carbonation, it'll make it even worse!" So after drinking who knows how much water, Dave traded his plate with me and I was able to finish eating the rest of his meal while he snarfed down my food because he likes having a fire party in his mouth. So yep, turns out the things I though were chives were most definitely NOT chives. Thank you Thailand, you always provide me with a good party in my mouth and awesome eating adventures. I have learned now to expect the unexpected and ask what you're eating before you eat it. Although, when you don't ask and just eat, it provides some nice entertainment for those eating at the table with you.

Holly

Hong Nam U Nai?

Okay, so Saturday night we went to this night bazaar/market thing where merchants had come and set up their goods to sell all along this street and it was probably a mile long and there were two sides to it. The first thing we saw was this dance that these Thai girls were doing. They were probably Stephanie and Andrew's age. And that's what that video is. So we walked along the street, looking at the cool stuff, watching all the interesting people, smelling all the interesting smells, and laughing as Holly kept gagging when she'd smell something gross. Which was all the time. There are some smells that really are not so good though.

Holly likes dried kiwis.




Also, we never really know what we're eating. At the mall, we all ate at a food court and we thought we were getting something really delicious and we got back to the table and our Thai director, Pim, goes, "So you guys got catfish? Wow, you're brave."

Awesome. Holly actually liked it though. And then we ate dinner at a really awesome restaurant where they had a buffet of raw meat and these tiny little round barbecues on the tables to cook your meat. We almost took the gizzard and chicken heart, but we just stuck with the chicken and found some pineapple to grill.

On Sunday, we went to Wat Rung Khun, a white temple that a famous Thai artist is building. He's pretty much the Michelangelo of Chiang Rai. It was pretty sparkly. Take a look. Don't mind the conversation in the background. We went to another cool temple on Monday and the Bhuddist monk who lives there is Pi's, the lady who rents us our house and drives us around, her uncle. So we got to go inside his little Buddhist house and then we weeded his huge garden. Luckily it had cooled down a lot cause of a storm that was coming. We got to eat good fruit off the trees again as a reward.




Rose's ankles have turned into kankles (due to immense swelling).

Monday night, after most people had gone to bed, Rose and I went out on the porch to write in our journals (yes, be proud) and a storm was a brewin. Kenny and our country director, Dave, were having a nice conversation to the side of us which we both were eavesdropping on and then eventually joined in as we watched it begin to rain. The lightening would light up the whole sky and the thunder was pretty cool. Then at about midnight, it started to downpour, hard, and we decided it would be fun to get drenched while playing soccer, so that's what we did for about half an hour - get soaked in the rain and it was AWESOME! By the way, it was boys against sexy girls and the sexy girls won.

In a classroom at a school where we might build a cement walkway, a toothbrushing station and a library. And that's Ryleigh, our new friend who's traveled the world.

These are girls from another school we visited, they were at a daycare/preschool watching Ice Age and we got to play with them for a little bit. Little Thai boys are craaazy.

Sawadee ka...