Monks, Crickets, and an Ambulance.

I wasn’t planning on updating this extremely often, but a lot has happened, so I might as well.  

Yesterday was my first full day at the foundation. It starts with breakfast at eight and for those of you who know my picky eating habits, I actually don’t mind the food that much. There’s rice literally at every meal, but there’s also some vegetables. The meat looks really scary, so I’ve stayed clear of that. We learned about the surrounding hill tribes in orientation, which was incredibly interesting. After lunch we went to our first school to teach an English lesson. There was eight of us and we split into two groups, a beginner group and then my group that worked with more advanced kids. We traveled to a temple/school where we taught Buddhist monks English. The beginner class had ages ranging from 7-10 and my group had older boys from about 11-15. From what I’ve heard, in Thailand becoming a monk isn’t for life and they receive free schooling so a lot of parents send their boys off to become a monk for a couple years to get educated. Our topic for the day was “Around the House.” We taught them vocab and had them play some games to practice spelling, speaking, and writing. For the most part, it’s like any American classroom, there are some kids in the front completely absorbed in everything you’re saying and then there are the class clowns in the back. There were 30-40 kids in our class, which was a lot more than we normally teach at one time and was a little hard to handle once in a while, but it was really fun and interesting. We forgot to take a picture with our group at the end, but I’ll be going back there soon.

            After dinner about fourteen of us decided to catch a taxi and ride into town. It’s about a 20-minute drive and costs 400 baht round trip. Split between all of us, it came out to 21 baht a person, which is around 70 cents. Taxi’s don’t get paid until the return trip—more on that later. There’s a night bazaar that happens every night in Chiang Rai. They spend so much time setting up all their venues and they don’t attract that much traffic, especially since it was Tuesday night. I bought two pairs of hippie pants, that everyone wears here and are incredibly comfortable and cool, for five dollars each. I can probably only get away with wearing them in the states if I’m at Delores Park or Cochella, but I’ll definitely get my use out of them here. In the food court they sell plates of fried maggots and crickets, which of course we had to try. We each tried a cricket, but no maggots; none of us were down to stomach them. I actually ate a couple crickets; they’re quite crunchy and salty. I haven’t been getting my very much protein so I figured I could use some extra bugs. After I had cricket leg stuck in my throat, I decided to wash it down with a smoothie. You choose the fruit you want and it’s right in front of you in jars and then they mix it with some ice and water. I tried pineapple and strawberry and it was obviously the freshest smoothie I’ve ever had (and cost a whopping 70 cents). Every night at nine, they slow down traffic around this one temple-like statue that lights up and plays music. It was awesome. After that, it was about time for us to meet our taxi that we told to meet us at 930. We walked back to the station where he was to meet us and waited around. We knew everyone runs on Thai time, which means no ones ever prompt, but after we waited thirty minutes we started getting a little worried. We’re supposed to be back at the foundation by eleven and the later it gets the more expensive taxis become. The other issue is that there are not many taxis that can fit fifteen people.  We walked around trying to find a large taxi but we couldn’t find anything but tuk-tuks. There’s a rescue station in the bus station parking lot we were at, so we approached them and tried to communicate our problem. They tried to call a couple taxi places (I think) but then decided to take us all in the ambulance instead. So fourteen of us piled into a Thai ambulance and we rode back to the foundation for 500 baht. We got the driver to turn on the siren and run through red lights. You know what I always say, why ride in a taxi when you can ride in an ambulance?

We did have to pay the taxi for taking us to Chaing Rai. I guess he misunderstood time and showed up at nine. At least we know what happened.

We went back to the Temple today and taught the monks another lesson. The other group that taught yesterday were convinced to sing Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” so now they want us to sing when we come. The best part is the initiator happens to be the head monk.  We sang the chorus of “Party in USA,” for them and then they sang a traditional Thai song for us. One boy wanted us to sing Lady Gaga and started rattling off a bunch of songs, but the other girls didn’t know any of her songs. One of the girls promised we would sing her next time. I guess singing has become our group’s thing now.   

   At the bus station.

   There was a stage below this where they had music during the bazaar.

 maggots and crickets. yummm.

 my sweaty and grimy self eating a cricket.

                            This is the statue that lights up and plays music every night.

  All of us and the ambulance driver.

   This is Sam, she's from Canada. We were on the taxi on our way to Chiang Rai.

   One of the interns grabbed my camera while we were teaching and snapped some photos.

Arrived.

          Taken into account the fourteen hours I lost flying, its crazy to think I was in California less than 72 hours ago.

          The fifteen hour flight to the Philippians wasn't terribly long after I took copious amounts of NyQuil. In fact, I was so doped up I barely recall that we landed in Guam to refill on fuel. In Manila, they took our passports and then in small groups escorted us up to the gates where the international flights take off. During this procedure, they handed my passport to another American and thankfully he caught it, otherwise I would probably be still stuck in the Philippians. Other than that avoided debacle, travel went quite smooth. The train that took me from the airport to my hotel in Bangkok was incredibly clean and the locals are really nice. This guy carried my bag down three flights of stairs at the train station. For fourteen dollars my hotel was quite comfortable. It had no power outlets and the bathtub had a hole in the side that drained water to other side of the bathroom, but my room had air conditioning (which is quite needed here). I met two people in Bangkok for dinner that are here at the foundation with me, one from Singapore and one from China. We had really good noodles off a street vendor for a dollar, which was a great first meal in Thailand.

          I flew to Chiang Rai this morning and arrived at the foundation this afternoon. The area is incredibly beautiful, I can't even describe it. There's probably about 50 volunteers here right now, ranging from around 18-25 years old. I've met people from all over Europe, Canada, Australia, China, Singapore, and the U.S. There's an extremely mean horse that is tied up right outside our living quarters. I went to get a glass of water and when I walked back he attacked and bit me. I was more shocked than hurt. I have an outline of his teeth on my arm and a nice bruise, but nothing serious; in fact, I find it quite hilarious. We took a walk down to find a shop (which is more like someones house they sell random stuff out of) so we could buy toilet paper. I learned that toilet paper isn't big here because their septic tanks can't handle it, so you use it and throw it away. No flushing it. Fun Fact.

I took some pictures on our walk, which I've posted below. I wanted to take pictures of the locals, but it wasn't the time with so many of us foreigners walking around. In due time.

The Unavoidable Introduction Post

  Hopefully you at least know my name, but just in case, my name is Rebekah Didlake. I am a photojournalism student at San Francisco State University aiming to eventually cover stories in the Middle East. I have created this blog to document my adventures in Thailand as I am spending nine weeks volunteering there this summer.

            Those who know me very well, know that I can only function smoothly when I have ten million things to do and five million places to be. The word “relax” makes me wince so a peaceful summer has never been an option. As great as San Francisco has been, public transit has been a drag and it’s been quite hard to meet people so working in the city this summer didn’t have much appeal. Spending another summer in my quaint suburban hometown of Livermore was definitely out of the question. Last summer was extremely busy and tiring so I wanted to do something more exciting this summer. One of the reasons I have chosen photojournalism as my career path, is the opportunity to travel. Too impatient to wait until I have earned my degree, I decided to use the money I’ve been saving from working the last couple years and put it towards traveling this summer. I found a program called International Volunteer Head Quarters (IVHQ) who acts as a middleman to connect people with nonprofit volunteer organizations all over the world. They have programs in central and South America, Africa, and Asia. I wanted to go somewhere exotic that also had a tourist appeal so I landed on Thailand. I spent two days researching everything about the organization and then phoned home to tell my parents. As I have saturated my parents with talk of my desire to travel, they were quite unsurprised when I proposed this trip. My dad simply told me if I paid for it and the program was safe, he didn’t have a reason to say no.

            So for eight weeks I will be volunteering at the Mirror Foundation in Chiang Rai, Thailand. I will be teaching English five days a week to people in the Hill tribes of the area. My eighth week my amazing, awesome roommate, Michelle, is coming to participate in the Outdoor program and then we will fly back to Bangkok and tour the country for a week.

I will miss my tortoise, Mordecai the most this summer, but we are cherishing the time we have left. There are many more things to do and many more goodbyes to be said, but with one week left the anticipation and excitement are building.

So if you’re curious to know what I’m doing halfway across the world this summer, just check this blog that will be filled with photos and stories of my adventures.