Home Sweet Home

Alas, after one more awesome week, we have given our goodbyes to our new Thai friends and returned home. But despite how happy I am to be reunited with my family (and my food), I still have the slightest hint of sadness mixed in with my joy. It's just a little sad remembering my experiences and my friends in Southeast Asia, and knowing that I probably won't ever be there again. Although I suppose I should never say never.

Coming home has allowed me to stand back and reflect on the past two months, and realize just how much I have gained from this experience. On top of all I have learned about Southeast Asian culture, I now understand so much more about myself, working with other people, and the world as a whole. In just two months, I have learned more than I have in years of school, and I'm quite sure I wouldn't have gained this knowledge any other way. It is amazing to me how many simple things about myself and my country I had never realized until traveling to the other side of the world. It is because of that that I am so grateful for having this great opportunity, and I couldn't be more thankful to my professors and those planning the program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and of course our donors, Alston Gardner and Barb Lee.

As for now, I am about to spend the next 5 weeks relaxing and getting ready for another semester at UNC. My life may be considerably less exciting now that I am back to my normal life, but I will try to continue posting occasionally- you never know what adventures I might run into right here at home.

An Afternoon in Ratchaburi

Yesterday night we returned from our excursion in Ratchaburi, where I had one of the highlights of my trip so far. We were fortunate enough to be able to visit the Tham Hin Border Police School, which is a K-6 school near the border of Thailand and Burma. It's called a police school because the area that the school serves can be unsafe, so police officers are trained to teach there so they can help keep the children safe. The children that the school caters to are generally not very well off, and 20 of them are actually from a Burmese refugee camp. But that didn't keep them from smiling from ear to ear during our whole visit. We were first given a presentation and a short tour of the tiny school, which was really interesting. I liked seeing the colorful kindergarten room, because there were pictures and numbers on the walls just like there were in my kindergarten class, but everything was in Thai.

Some pictures of fruits labeled on the wall of the kindergarten room. Note the difference between the fruits here and those from American classrooms.

There was a nice garden where the kids grow their own lunch food, and everything that they don't eat is sold in a local market to help raise money for the school. There was also a fish farm, a chicken coop and a place where they get trained to cut hair. After finishing this school they can move on to higher education, but the higher level schools are in cities that are pretty far from their homes, so they often don't get education after completing 6th grade. For that reason much of the police school's focus is to teach them skills that they can use on their local farms and in the town and such.

It was easy to tell these little boys were the trouble makers of the class, and they really loved having their picture taken. They are so cute!

After touring their school we were able to spend a little while hanging out with the kids during their snack time. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, and they couldn't understand anything I said, but we still had so much fun! I started taking pictures of them, and they thought my digital camera was the coolest thing they had ever seen. The fact that you could take the picture and then look at it again 2 seconds later was just fascinating to them. So I let them borrow it and I ended up getting a bunch of pictures of myself with my head cut out. It was so adorable, and I wanted to take them all home with me. But alas, after a little while we had to wave goodbye to all of their smiling faces and head back to the city life here in Bangkok.

A New Side of Thailand

Well, we are now on the final leg of our adventure, and currently spending our time in the Thai states of Kanchanaburi and Ratchaburi. These states are quite close to the border of Thailand and Burma/Myanmar, and are also made up of very different terrain. Whereas the Bangkok area is flat, Kanchanaburi and Ratchaburi are home to some beautiful mountains.

The view from one of the scary bridges of the death railway.

We have spent most of our time observing the scenery and visiting historical sights. On Friday we visited a World War II memorial and the death railway, which includes the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, and despite the fact that I was still recovering from a nasty flu, it was a really enjoyable trip. We were able to walk on the railway, which was one of the scariest things that I've done since I've been here because the bridge portion of the railway seems very unstable, with many broken planks and holes through which you can see the ground hundreds of feet below. But I just teetered down it muttering "Do one thing that scares you every day. Do one thing that scares you every day..." and eventually made it out alive.

Feeding an elephant in Kanchanaburi.

Yesterday we went to a national park and "trekked" through the woods in what was quite possibly the most intense stair-climbing venture I have ever experienced. At the top of the trail there was a cave and we got to go inside and check out the stalactites and stalagmites. Later we went hiking and spent some time in a really cold mountain river with crystal-clear water. I've never seen water so clear and blue, and it was so beautiful! Most of today has just been spent travelling to Ratchaburi, but I'm excited to find out what we get to do tomorrow.

A Very Thai 4th of July

Okay so really I just wanted to end that last post so that I could make this one separate. Today was of course the 4th of July, but being that we are in Thailand, there were no parades or fireworks, and people just looked at us like we were crazy while we ran around being so excited that it was "July 4th," which to them of course just sounded like a regular date. Earlier today we actually had an activity in which the whole group took a bus to Ayutthya, which is the old capital of Thailand. There we got to check out some really cool ruins and, my favorite part, ride an elephant! It was a great day, but as the evening approached, we all got antsy to have a party to celebrate our independence. So our professor invited us to the house that he is renting, and we got all of the American food we could find and ended up just hanging out and watching Venus and Serena battle it out at Wimbledon. We were packed like sardines in that tiny house, but it was really fun to just hang out and be as American as possible for a few hours. Unfortunately fireworks are illegal here, but Dr. Steiner did throw out the idea of waving around incense sticks in place of sparklers. We ended our little gathering by singing the national anthem and, of course, our alma mater. :) It ended up being a really great end to a rather unusual 4th of July. And now as the rest of you are probably about to start your festivities, I am off to bed. Set off some fireworks for me!

Goodbye Singapore, Hello Thailand!

Sawatdee Kah from Thailand! We arrived a little over week ago (I've been slacking on the blog posting, I know) and so far, it has been a totally different experience. Of course the language barrier was apparent from the beginning. But other than that we also noticed a clear difference in personalities of the people in general. Thailand is known as "The Land of Smiles," and for good reason. Nearly everyone is smiling here, even when they are upset. Right from the start, we noticed that the students here at Mahidol University were very welcoming. They even had a ceremony for us on our first night here. Outside of the college atmosphere, life in and around Bangkok is generally much more humble than Singapore was. Last weekend we went on a canal tour, and got to see firsthand how the lives of the lower classes here are so much different from what we are used to. There were many shack-style houses with people bathing in the river. But as we saw in Malaysia as well, these people were so happy and beaming with excitement as werode by on our long-tailed boats.

A view of the canal from a bridge. You can see smaller patches of those scary green plants we charged through all across the water.

Speaking of the canal tour, that was an interesting and terrifying experience all around. The boats seemed pretty rickety, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be surviving that trip. I was already scared of the boat in general, and then we came across a thick patch of water weeds reaching up to about my shoulders (you can probably see them in the picture). Of course I figured we would be going around them, when all of a sudden the boat driver just hit the gas and sped straight through the plants. Naturally, this did not help to ease my fear, but I finally got over it and began to really enjoy the tour. We took multiple stops along the way in different places, including a lotus farm, a nice place where they make delicious rice snacks, a beautiful orchid farm, and my personal favorite- an orchard. All of the stops were very nice, but the orchard was especially cool because they had fresh fruit waiting for us when we got there, and I discovered two new amazing fruits: pomello and jackfruit. They were so fantastic, and naturally I proceeded to buy exhorbitant amounts the next time I found myself at a market. Also at the orchard we got on the back of a tractor that was even more horrifying and fascinating than the boats, and took it to go see a rice field. The tractor was different from anything I've ever seen in that the driver had to lunge to either side in order to turn it. He especially loved to make incredibly sharp turns at high speeds, and make us think we were about to be thrown off the cart and into the river. But despite how scary it was, it was also a lot of fun.

Some of my friends passing us on their boat. Clearly they weren't as scared as I was, because I was wearing a life vest and holding on for dear life.

I think I should probably go now, but I have so many other exciting adventures to talk about from Thailand, so hopefully I will be able to give another update soon.