There are approximately 7 weeks left in my course here in Thailand. I have lived for anywhere from 1-5 weeks both in families of urban wealth and rural poverty and the differences have been striking. The rest of the time so far has been split between my apartment in Chiang Mai and the week on the Yom river, camping. Needless to say, we are getting wonderfully varied experiences.

Tomorrow at 6am, we are leaving to take a public bus (yay public transit!) to Mae Hon Song, near the first village of many Karen hill tribes we will be staying with over the next 2 weeks. A lot of Karen people have immigrated to Minneapolis/St.Paul, so I'm hoping to make some new friends when I get back to the States and have some insight into what their past or background culture may be like. And hoping to learn a lot the next two weeks!

So, again, you won't be hearing from me until I get back. Leave your address if you would like a postcard before this whirlwind of a semester is over and I'm headed back to the States. Moving back has been on my mind a lot lately because I've been job searching.

I have a job interview tonight! (a phone interview for a media position with Americorps in the Twin Cities in September).

The country is in a state of stark contrast... and emergency, but in Chiang Mai, you'd never guess by looking outside. There is chaos everywhere across the country, taking very different forms. Chiang Mai is erupted in a country-wide water fight. And you're certainly not exempt for being a foriegner... I've seen kids whisper 'farang, farang' and dump water down the backs up unsuspecting tourists. I can't get down the street to a restaurant to eat without getting a bucket of water in the face. Tomorrow I'm going out with my host sister (it's a three or four day event) and I'll do some of my own attacks.


The situation in Pattaya and Bangkok, and in the privacy of people's homes across the country is much different. The "Red Shirts" who support exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin are facing rounds of tear gas and real guns, not buckets of water and water guns. Thaksin, exiled for corruption among other things, is video conferencing with the protesters and encouraging a "people's revolution" which would give him a chance at reclaiming power. Protesters broke into the building hosting the ASEAN Summit meeting of leaders across SE Asia, and current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit declared the state of emergency. Though I'm in Thailand, I'm sheltered from really noticing what is going on if I wasn't pursuing knowledge of it. In Thai culture, people smile and go about their day no matter what is happening in order to save face. The cancellation of the ASEAN Summit is embarrassing to Thailand, a country still fighting to be seen as developed by the Global North.


Don't worry, I'm safe here and I won't be going anywhere near any protests. I'll be watching to see what happens in the next while.

I'm at a hotel in transit between the village we stayed with for the last week and the last part of the trip, where we'll be checking out the river more and then camping and rafting down a section for a few days. There's so much to tell about it all, and hopefully I'll have time when I get back to explain more in detail, but in the meantime, look for us in this Chiang Mai paper! Miss you all!

http://www.chiangmai-mail.com/318/social.shtml

This is me. Jahjaah.


For the past five weeks, I have been staying with my Thai Family



here:

It is very beautiful. Soo-wayee.

I go to school with some of these people.


On Saturday, we left our host families and moved in our new aparments:

This is how they do construction in Thailand:



We started the Rivers course now, on which I plan to do my documentary. We'll be staying in different villages and seeing direct impacts of dammed areas and non-dammed areas on the environment and the local people and then canoeing a stretch of the river on which there are plans for dams in the future. There is a lot more too tell, but since this is a picture book anyway, there shouldn't even be this many words.

I was finally able to upload a video of me at the caves in the mountains outside of Chiang Mai, as part of our visit to Chiang Mai Rock Climing Adventures!
The caves were huge, and at the end of my glide across the canyon, I transferred to another safety system and slowly rapelled my way down hundreds of feet, just dangling in the air. That was the part that made me a bit nervous. My hands were frozen in position when I got down from holding the rope to tightly, but it was a fun experience. Anyhow, here is a video as proof that I am alive and real here, in the great country of Thailand!

I met my first elephant.
I don't know her name.

I also touched really big elephants and fed a huge elephant a baby banana then he grabbed the entire bunch when it fell on the ground accidentally and that ended quickly. Elephants are very snuffly and hungry. They know what money is; they don't eat it, but they take it. Also, Elephants can dance and play the harmonica, and of course, they can paint. That's normal. The website proclaims that they are all taken care of immactulately and that they have lives outside of showbiz, so I can rest a little better at being able to watch elephants do these things. Perhaps they enjoy it. I enjoyed it.