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.