An Odyssey: One Week.

It completely blows my mind that I have less than one week left in this beautiful country.

Last weekend I picked up my roommate, Michelle, from the bus station on Sunday night. Her first flight had been delayed four hours, plus she came straight up to Chiang Rai, so needless to say she had a long trip. On Monday I had to go up to Mae Sai and cross the border into Myanmar (Burma) in order to extend my visa so I could leave the country. For the third time, I took the local bus up to the border. It's awesome that I get to say I've been to Burma and now I have Burma stamps all in my passport, but there wasn't much to see the hour we were in the country. The market had the same cheap stuff that was in Mae Sai, except for the carton of cigarettes they kept trying to sell me for a dollar. We got back to Chiang Rai around four and I wanted to take Michelle to the White Temple. I bargained with a tuk-tuk driver, who agreed on a surprisingly low fee. Unfortunately, he was half deaf and ended up taking us to the airport instead. By the time we got back into town, the White Temple had closed. O, Thailand.

On Tuesday I started my last week at mirror and my roommate started the outdoor program. Every night for last couple weeks, a volunteer (Arya) and I had been teaching one of the Thai interns, Kartoon. On Tuesday she said she couldn't come to our English lesson because she was going into town to see a movie with the other interns. At dinner Kartoon invited Arya, Rachel (another volunteer whose also been at the foundation for a while), and I to come with them. The interns thought there would be subtitles, so we grabbed our stuff and jumped in the car with them. The movies cost three dollars and one of the internes asked them to turn on the English subtitles when we got there. Right before the movie started they played what I think was the national anthem and everyone in the theater stood up in respect for the country and King. I don't remember what the movie was called, but it was three different sappy love stories. The most provocative scene of the movie was a kiss on the cheek--it was so innocent. The humor and metaphors were quite odd. I remember on line from the movie: "You touched me like a peel touches an orange." Needless to say, experiencing a Thai movie with all the Thai interns during my last week at Mirror was yet another highlight of my trip.

It was quite a busy last week since there was a whole group of new volunteers. We also taught at a new temple with older monks who were really eager to learn English. They wouldn't let us leave without taking a whole bag of fruit. On Thursday, Arya and I taught at our favorite temple, Preaw Keaw. The monks range from 19-25 and they are really eager to learn English. We taught them about various kinds of jobs and had them write what they wanted to be and why. Most of the monks at the temple are only going to go to be monks until they are educated. Children receive better education at the temples than in most schools. One of the monks wrote he wanted to be a singer and dancer because Lady Gaga is his idol. I also had a couple monks come up to me after class and ask if they could take pictures with me because I supposedly look like Lady Gaga. It was a fantastic class. On Thursday night while we were teaching Kartoon, it stormed the hardest I have seen yet. The entire foundation was flooded. We walked in ankle deep water just to get back to our room.

On Friday night Arya and I, painted our hand prints on the volunteer wall. It's a tradition that every Indoor volunteer does before they leave. On Saturday, I took Michelle to the White Temple and then we flew to Bangkok that night.

On Sunday we left for Sukhothai (an old capitol) by bus. We rode bikes around the old city and saw all the temple ruins yesterday. We're about to catch a bus back to Bangkok in a couple hours. We will stay in Bangkok until tomorrow and then leave for Koh Samet--an island! Saturday we'll come back to Bangkok and Sunday we'll fly home. I don't know when I'll have internet again, so thank you to all that have followed my blog during this great odyssey of mine. I will post pictures from this week when I get home.