Adventures in Thai Guo!

It's been a few weeks since I've updated this thing, so long for my aspirations of updating every week. But I have a very valid excuse. I was in Thailand for a conference, riding elephants! Now come on, that's a pretty good reason for not updating this thing on time. But really, Thailand was great. It was so great that I'm going to do my best to sum up the amazing two weeks that I had in a short amount of space. I don't want to bore you with too many details.

I got to Chiang Mai on Sunday night, the 25th of January. Right off the bat, I found out that a few more CTF'ers were staying in the same hotel/hostel/I'm not too sure what it was. It was so good to catch up with people and see the friends that I made so long ago in La Quinta for training. I ended up staying out most of the night talking with a good friend who's teaching in Beijing. The days before conference were wonderful. I got to eat authentic Thai food, which I must admit isn't any better than Thai food in America. I also cut off all of my hair again. It was way too hot for long"er" hair in Thailand.

One of my favorite parts was the adventure I went on with one of my teammates and other friends from 3 other teams. We went to a orchid/butterfly farm (I wouldn't have minded if this was cut out of the tour), and also hiked up to a waterfall. It wasn't too impressive but it was nice to be outdoors. Then we climbed back down and went "white water rafting." I'm no expert or anything, but the rapids weren't anything to write home about. But I think what made it the most interesting was the directions, or lack there of, and the fact that we went down most of the "rapids" backwards. Our directions were very simple, the guide yells "FORWARD" and you row forward, he then yells "BACKWARDS" and you row backwards, and then he yells, "STOP!" and you hold on for dear life because any second you could be thrown out of the boat and would have no further instruction on what to do. So yeah, it was pretty fun. I was asked to sit in front and the genius that I am forgot to bring a bathing suit to China/Thailand. So I got soaked, in shorts, with no way of drying my bum for the entire day, so that was fun. After rafting we went up to a Karen village to see a little bit about their tribe. After walking around a bit and seeing a few people, we headed out towards the elephants. After a nice "buffeT", don't forget to pronounce the "T", and an unfortunate run in with a monkey in a cage, we got to ride elephants for about an hour. (The monkey, the vicious little thing he was, jumped after my friend Kristina while she was trying to take a picture of it and ended up stealing her lens cap to her nice camera. He hissed at her for a bit and she eventually got it back after it's "mother" was coddling him. However, the lens cap was incredibly chewed up and not very effective afterward.) The elephants were awesome, although I was a bit scared of falling out, and apparently I had justification because someone from my company fell off and broke her arm the day before at the same place. But it was worth the risk, I loved the elephant ride! Then we went on to ride a bamboo raft, which I was a little afraid was going to sink. There were 7 of us, 5 teachers and 2 people pushing and guiding the raft. I felt that half of the raft was under water the entire ride. Next time, I will need to bring my camera and risk the water because it was a beautiful and relaxing ride. We then got to go to a few more villages, I don't remember which tribes but we saw women with elongated necks and enlarged ears. I was amazed to learn that the process starts at the age of 5 and either the amount of rings increase until the age of 23 and I'm not sure how big the ear lobes get but I'm going to go with pretty big. I was amazed that the tour was only a day long and I got to see and experience so many things.

The rest of pre-conference flew by and then then the work began. Conference was great though. We stayed at a pretty ritzy hotel in the center of Chiang Mai. We had a few classes and learned more about teaching and what our purpose is here. It was great to get re-energized, rejuvenated, and have time to relax. During the last four days we were given time to get refocused, and just relax. I got a few massages, and spent some time at coffee shops. I also got time to hang out with other teachers and play some music. I carried my drum all the way to China, so I figured that I might as well carry it to Chiang Mai. So I got to play drum with a few other musicians. I loved just spending the nights jamming on my drum with a few others. Leaving conference was hard, but I'm glad to be back in Nanchang again. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone after being with them for a week straight. But it will just make our last debriefing in Beijing more special.