Does it look like I care?

Longest Saturday of my life. And probably also the wettest.

God forbid we sleep in here, we left for our field trip at the normal time, 845. Most of the group had stayed up way late having a few drinks the night before (which we refer to here as "bible study") and were exhausted. I skipped bible study and went to bed nice and early, but was still just as exhausted. And guess what was for breakfast today. Phad see ew and tom ka gai, two of my three favorite Thai dishes. Too bad I wasn't all that hungry, having what I normally eat as dinner for breakfast is too weird still.

Hannah, a half British/half Thai administrator for DEPDC, and Caterina, an Irish volunteer, led us on a walk around the back roads of our area. They took us to a cave temple which we had to hike some major stairs to get to. We were huffing and puffing real quick, very reminiscent of the Table Mountain hike. But once we got in the cave it was pretty unique. There were all sorts of huge Buddhist statues inside and the cave went on and on. There were even a few monks inside praying and meditating. We walked through all of it barefoot, which I normally don't like (we take our shoes off ALL THE TIME here) but in the cave it felt really grounded, really natural to walk through and feel the stone underfoot. Added to the awe.

After the first hike/temple we walked over to another temple on a nearby hill. I see this temple every day walking home from DEPDC and I was really hoping to go see it. It's just a pointy gold dome off in the distance. But up close it is much smaller. We did another set of stairs up this mountain, this time it was much more curvy and jungley so the climb was easier. And once at the top the view was incredible.

We climbed back down to eat our sack lunches provided by DEPDC, then went back to the school to work on the infernal wall. We took an hour rest before heading out to pour cement, and as soon as we got outside the rain came. And I mean real, monsoon rain. We grabbed our rain gear and proceeded to pour cement into the bricks in the downpour. The rain coats didn't help at all as the entire rest of your body got soaked. I thought we might do this for an hour or so and call it a day, but no such luck. We were out there, soaking and muddy, for the whole 3 hours. I wore some crock knock-offs I'd bought on the street that were better for the rain/cement than tennis shoes, but it was disgusting trudging through the 4 inches of muddy water that collected around the wall every time I needed more cement. As I got more and more pissed off my cement pouring got more sloppy, as pictured below. At one point Lee looked observed my less than pristine pours, and all I said was "don't say it, does it look like I care?"

Does it look like I care??

While we were still smiling about it. That didn't last long.

I sassed Ava the entire 3 hours about leaving early and about being out there with lightning while surrounded by rebarb. Nothing worked, this woman is a task master. I was trying to think back to a time when I have been either that wet, that dirty, or that miserable. Couldn't think of anything. But at least we were all hating life together. And it made for one of the best hot showers of my life.

Standing on the bricks to avoid the flood and ants

Now we're off to the bar after dinner for some Saturday night drinks with Ava, Hannah and Caterina. No wall tomorrow, it's our one and only free day, so I'm sure we'll all enjoy ourselves. We earned it.

Thai Taco Bell

Thursday and Friday at DEPDC didn't get much better. But I think I may have changed the tide a little bit today, which I'll tell you about in a bit. But Thursday first.

Our day started with something Thais call ABF: American Breakfast. Ava talked about it a few days ago, and when we had no idea what ABF meant she was shocked and said "you guys don't call it that??" It was unseasoned fried eggs, hot dog slices, some tomato slices and really strange toast. It is 2 slices of white bread put together with copious amounts of butter in the middle, then put into some kind of press like a George Foreman so it ends up really flat with a weird grill mark down the middle. I choked it down by puttin the egg in the soggy toast for a makeshift ABF sandwhich.

Molly and I got our chance to DJ the English hour on DEPDC's radio Thurs morning. It went from 9 to 10 and we picked music from a list of random English songs they had. I picked the music, Molly provided the witty banter between songs. We would chat back and forth and totally got into it, we called it Molly and Natalie in the Morning--reminded me of Troy and Abed. I wish I could do it again, sitting in an air conditioned booth listening to music was so much better than the wall. But I won't have the chance, no school=no DJ next week.

I managed to snag a spot helping with the kindergarteners afterwards to avoid the wall. We split the 2 hour period into 2 shifts, and the second shift was tough. They were bouncing off the walls. One of the girls had the bright idea to bring in tootsie rolls at the beginning of class.... they literally swarmed her and were climbing on her, on each other, on a mission to get as much candy as possible out of her. No matter what we tried we could not get them off and away from her to move on to something else.  I think we resorted to piggy back rides. These became a reoccurring last resort activity the rest of the time with them on Fri.  Eventually we got them settled into coloring, then they took our cameras and took pictures of each other for the rest of the time. In short, we did absolutely nothing productive with them. Kindergarten is tough.

Then it was back to the wall... We spent the day unlaying the bricks we had previously laid so that we could cement a smaller portion of the wall together, then build it back up. We were given buckets of cement and water bottles cut in half to use as pouring cups. Then we needed to pour cement into the holes in the stacked bricks, thus cementing them together. Cement was going everywhere as we poured and we were told to "pour neatly guys!!" I talked back a little bit and told her it wasn't possible to be all that neat with this set up, and eventually Ava understood. Then she gave up and just followed us with a hose to wash off the excess cement.

As this was happening the two boys got volunteered to dig up old fence posts. Once they were done with that backbreaking task Ava told them to take a break but  "come back quick because we need your cemen." All of us girls standing there at the wall burst into a fit of giggles. Even now Ava still forgets the t at the end of cement, and it has become a running joke. That and "grubs" instead of "gloves." The Ava-isms just keep coming.

She could tell we were hating the wall work Thursday so she said we could finish at 4 instead of 430. But as we're walking away the workers, who had been sitting, smoking, and watching us work, told us we can't leave until we use all the cement. We were PISSED, half the group didn't even come back we were so over it. So we poured the remainder as quickly as possible and left by 430.

Thankfully we salvaged the night with well earned showers and a trip to the market. This time we went without Ava (but still had her make all the arrangements) and got ourselves roti. New favorite treat. Molly and I also, just for the heck of it, split some phad thai we got from a street cart. It wasn't bad, it was our late night 4th meal. Like Thai Taco Bell.

And you'll never guess what was for breakfast this morning. Phad thai. Yes, really. It wasn't bad but it was too spicy, so we couldn't eat much of it. Then it was back out to the f'ing wall again. I think we relayed brick on top of the cemented portion today, though I'm not sure how that took all morning. It is now back to it's original height. We took a break at 1030, during which I asked if we would be building on Saturday. I knew we were going on a little field trip with some people in charge of DEPDC, they're taking us on a walk to a village some of the kids come from. We were mostly under the assumption that this would mean no building, but to my surprise Ava said we'd come back and build the rest of the day.

Here's where I take full responsibility for a potential turning point. To this news I asked her to please not make us build after the field trip. She responded "this is what you came here for." Then I inform her "no, I came here to teach." Ava was shocked and just said "What??" I  was the only one speaking up but I think one or two people may have nodded along with me, at least I hope so, though I don't know. Then we discussed the technicalities of our project preferences and I clarified that the wall is not the problem, the problem is that now we are no longer splitting our time with teaching.

To my surprise Ava responded really well. She agreed to let us all forego the wall that afternoon in favor of everyone leading activity together, one last day with the kids. Then once activity was over we found that she had magically found some teaching for us to do. It's all day English classes with the 14-17 year old kids, and she had drafted us a full schedule of team and individual teaching over 3 days. I don't know why this wasn't an option before.... But it seems like my speaking up got everyone on the same page again. At least now we get to balance our time a little better between projects.

As the kids were leaving they got the whole school out in front to say good bye to us. They presented us all with scarves and had the kids come give us hugs and thank you's. It was pretty sweet. Then we got to leave early as well, and took an hour long truck ride to another DEPDC site with an olympic swimming pool. Sompob, the founder of DEPDC and 4 time peace price nominee, said it was "his pool" so we were all envisioning hanging out in his back yard in his pool. Not exactly. They made us wear shirts over our bikini's and swim caps. I kid you not, swim caps. But no one else was wearing them! We laughed about this the entire time and kept making fun of how ridiculous we looked. Got some great pictures though, I'll try and get a hold of some soon.

I signed up for this?

Today had it's ups and downs, so give me a little latitude while I bitch. Late morning half of us, myself included, moved on from making metal framing to moving and laying bricks for the actual wall. This was only made more difficult by 90 degree weather and 90% humidity. We all wore the hats we brought for sun protection, and thinking back this is probably the first time I've worn a hat in maybe 10 years. I don't enjoy it but it keeps the sweat out of my eyes. Yes, it is that bad. As Joey so aptly put it, we have been "Shang Hai'd into hard manual labor."

Thankfully I only had to lay brick for about an hour before lunch, after which I was scheduled to lead "activity," AKA play with random kiddos. Kind of like recess. We took them downstairs to a big open area and let them play red light-green light, hokey pokey, bingo (when they win they just yell "GO!!"), soccer and catch. Not to toot my own horn, but even without communication abilities I felt like a natural. All of us girls did great, the kids loved us. Some of the kindergarteners who we've taught once even found us and followed us around. After a ball got caught in the ceiling and the older boys shook it down, I got a couple of kindergarten boys to help me sweep the floor. Eventually they took over and I could have died from the cute. I really hope I get to play with them again.

At lunch and shortly before activity Ava informed us that there's a scheduling issue. Apparently there is a teacher training next week that all of the teachers need to go out of town for, and therefore there is no school next week......... That means our 2 weeks of teaching and working with kids is now 1 week, this week. It's Wednesday. Sufficient to say we were pissed. We signed up to work with kids, that's what we put as our preference and this is the assignment we got because of it. I could have signed up to work at an elephant sanctuary, but I wanted to work with a children's organization. And now we're primarily building a wall. Now I can't learn names, I can't teach any real English, I just get to lay bricks and pour cement. When I get home I'm writing ISV an email about the level of organization/coordination in Thailand, this is ridiculous. I just feel sorry for Ava, now she has to deal with the fallout.

Moving on, after having fun with the kiddos it was back to bricks. And that's when someone found the BIGGEST SPIDER EVER in a brick. I ran, I didn't even look. People were taking pictures, trying to get it out of the brick. It ended up JUMPING away. I still haven't looked at any of the pictures, but others are openly nervous now about finding another spider because of how huge this one was. Words cannot describe how I feel right now, as if I wasn't already paranoid/twitchy enough.

I ended a draining day with an intense headache, probably from the sun, and a shower. One bright moment was that dinner was good, finally saw some noodles and curry! No heads this time. Then, since we'd all earned it after the day we'd had, we went back for Thai massages. The first one was better but I motioned to my masseuse that my shoulders hurt so she concentrated on those. She even cracked my hips and back for me, it was like going to a chiropractor. I finished the night with a Singha and a game of kings with the group. Tomorrow morning Molly and I have volunteered to DJ the DEPDC's English hour on their radio station, but we have yet to figure out what we're doing for it. In the most literal sense, doing it live.

Hokey Pokey and Roti

At dinner we found out where the chicken heads ended up... Ava found it in her bowl of tom yum soup. All she said at the table was "is that an eye??" and all of us jumped out of our seats to crowd around and see. Here is a (rather fantastic if I do say so myself) picture for your viewing pleasure.

Teaching went well today, it was only an hour so we didn't have to bs our way through too much. I found us some flashcards and markers/paper for the kids at the school and brought them to our classroom as backups. These ended up being Godsends. We started by doing names (couldn't say a single one) and the hokey pokey. They caught on quick and LOVED the hokey pokey, though Claudia being Venezuelan had never heard of it. Thus I was stuck singing it all alone for the duration.

We did some colors and alphabet work, which they already knew, but ran out of ideas with about 20 minutes to go. So I passed out paper and markers and had them copy my drawings of a cat and dog. Once they had done this Claudia had a stroke of genius and passed out the picture flash cards for them to copy. This kept them preoccupied for the remainder and their drawings were pretty adorable.

Afterwards we were back to work on the wall reinforcement. Thankfully we had a short day because after lunch we met with the founder of DEPDC, a man named Sompob who has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize 4 times (never won). He gave us a presentation about trafficking that lasted a good 2 hours while all of us tried not to fall asleep in the air conditioning. I asked an awesome question that he rambled around for a while and didn't really answer, then right as he's wrapped up and we're about to leave he starts talking about heaven. Out of no where. Not even kidding. And we are all still sitting there smiling and nodding like "what is going on right now?" It was bizarre...

Instead of just heading home Ava made us go back out and work for a final 30 minutes. We feel like Ava is going a little tiger mom on us, and I'm feeling really frustrated that she keeps cracking the whip unnecessarily. It makes me miss Africa, I don't feel very appreciated here, we're more like labor than volunteers. But in Africa they were so happy we were there and wanted us to have a good time and really rich experience. Here they want us to get a lot done. Also everyone spoke my language in Cape Town so I could build relationships, here we can't communicate and won't be building relationships with the kids. I suppose I'm just feeling frustrated at this point.

Anyways, moving on. After the chicken head dinner we went to the market in the truck again. This time I rode hanging on the back, just for the experience. Our market browsing turned into more of a dessert adventure. We found roti, which I think are actually Indian sweets. Regardless they are the best thing I have ever eaten. Everything bad for you wrapped up in wax paper. It's filo dough stretched out super thin, then fried on a skillet type thing in oil. A dab of margarine in the middle then it's folded into a square and flipped over to fry on the other side. Once it's golden brown dough it is taken off, covered in sweetened condensed milk and cocoa powder, then rolled up. Heavenly, you have no idea. I already want another one. Otherwise we just wandered down the street looking at random shops. Found this one and had to take a picture.

Chicken Heads

Today was our fist day at DEPDC, all of which I spent building the wall. We got there bright and early around 845 and jumped right in straightening bent metal poles. They were like thin rebarb, and once we got the kinks out of them we cut them and bent them into rectangles. The rectangle forming made sense to me and I got really good at it, so I tried to stay with that job as long as possible. I can already tell I'm going to be really sore, especially my back and tricep; I'm going to come home with massive muscles only on my left arm.

The rectangles then got tied onto thicker rebarb to make reinforcements, I can only assume for concrete to be poured around. You can see one getting put together behind me in the picture. We made 4 10 meter forms all day, the last three took about 1.5 hours once we worked out an assembly line system. It was tiring work and we were filthy by the end of it. I was either covered in rust or mud and it took significant showering to get it all off immediately afterwards. But at least it wasn't unbearably hot like I was expecting, instead it rained most of the day and we were under cover. However the rain send a bunch of furry caterpillars seeking shelter in our area and we were avoiding them all day. Apparently they give you a nasty rash.

Besides the caterpillars we also had to deal with what we names Jesus spider. I found (of course it's always me who finds them) a rather large, white spider spread out on a column where we were working and got scared. Thankfully Molly stepped up and brushed it away from us, but Jesus spider angrily ran back towards our cover. Molly kicked him into a puddle, then he started walking on water back towards us. Hence Jesus spider. But that didn't last long and eventually he sank, only to be rescued by a bunch of ants that then swarmed it. We kept an eye on him throughout, but at one point we looked back and he was gone. I am going to assume the ants took him away and ate him. This was the most drama we had all day.

We got home around 5, showered immediately and met for dinner. I was rather excited when I saw that it was tom ka gai soup, the only Thai food that we can make at home. Finally something familiar! I'm second in line to dish some up, getting ready to pour myself a big bowl when the girl in front of me and I notice that what we thought were meatballs look rather strange. After close inspection we realize that they are not sausage at all, they're little chicken heads! I kid you not. I looked up at the Thai woman behind the serving table and pointed to the soup, then my head. She nodded and laughed, probably at our horrified faces. I managed to only take broth and move on, and the soup was fabulous. It's just too bad it was FULL OF CHICKEN HEADS. (TIA) I was going to take a picture of one but I didn't want to be too disrespectful to the cooks... It was bad enough that none of us ate any, so there was a bowl full of heads left after dinner.

After dinner Ava had arranged for a truck to take us down into Mae Sai for the market. I really wanted fisherman's pants. But once we got there weren't any vendors out, so instead we checked out the Burmese border. Mae Sai is the northern most point of Thailand and there is a bridge to Burma at the end of town--a major factor to the high trafficking rates here. A lot of the DEPDC kids are from Burma and cross that bridge every day to get the bus to school. We are definitely going to go back there in the daylight.

Because the market was a bust we stopped by a supermarket instead to pick up odds and ends. We found fisherman's pants, and little did we know they were the same ginormous pants we had to put on for Thai massage. I didn't want them after that, I'll wait to see what I find in the Chiang Mai markets instead. There we discovered that you can get a bottle of beer for 30 Baht ($1), so I'm sure you all can guess what we bought... saving it for after a really difficult day. Which may end up being tomorrow, Claudia and I will be teaching for the first time during the first hour. We still have no idea what to do with them, and since they're kindergarteners I'm sure we're going to have to play a new game every 5 minutes. All without being able to explain ANYTHING, just hand signals. Could be great, could go terribly. We'll see, wish us luck.

"You really DO need a stick": The monkey attack

Today was our first free day, only one of two during our time in Mae Sai. We did a little bit of everything so this is going to be a long one... Our Thai project leader Ava was good enough to completely arrange the day for us and take us on a little tour of the area. I think she sensed how uncomfortable we felt not being able to communicate in any way here, not even read signs. So she got us a van for the day and took us to a few spots the locals recommended. It ended up quite the eventful day.

We left bright and early at 8am for a famous local temple. Most Thai temples are amazingly ornate and colorful, topped off with gold leaf everywhere. This temple was different, it is by a contemporary artist and it was all white and mirrored. It was stunning. Then we found this equally ornate all gold building, and in the process of taking pictures of it we realize it's the bathroom.... prettiest toilet ever.

We spent an hour or so there sneaking pictures in the "no photos" temple and taking jumping group shots out front. Finally there were these Christmas tree looking structures made of metal leafs. I asked about it and apparently you can buy a little ornament and write your name on it and hang it up, ensuring you will go to heaven. We bought a leaf for the group and wrote everyones' names on it, then Ava wrote them all in Thai on the other side just in case Thai heaven can't read English. And since they were only 30 Baht (less than $1. I love this place) I bought one for myself as a gift and asked Ava to write on it for me--the rest of the group thought this was a brilliant idea and proceeded to follow suit. She ended up with a line of us waiting for her to write in Thai for us. I was rather proud of creative self.

Following the temple we went to a local mall for easy Thai lunch. It turned into finding a food court that served phad thai and topping it off with Dairy Queen. First Thai phad thai was ok, a little salty. But phad thai is not even really Thai, which is no surprise because at the rate things are going I probably wouldn't like it if it was authentic Thai. Afterwards we stopped by a local open air market where the poorer locals shop. It was pretty gross, raw meat sitting out in the open and flies everywhere. It reminded me a lot of a market in Mozambique, same sounds and smells.

First phad thai (only 11am and already so sweaty)

After the markets we drove down the road a ways to yet another temple, a major contrast to the earlier one. This one was done by another local artist and was a black temple to all things dark. There were longhorn skulls and bones everywhere, and he had made sort of a park of black temples and dark art installations. To our surprise as soon as you walk in the entrance to the main temple there is a long table, and stretched across it is a giant boa constrictor just chilling. He apparently doesn't do much all day because as far as I could tell he was pretty fat.

Ok, here's where it gets good! From the temple we went to something Ava referred to as a "monkey cave," basically a place for tourists to go ruin the local monkey population. She said there would be crocodiles and monkeys to see there. Then she explained that we would get sticks to beat the monkeys away if they got too aggressive, and food to give them. Sounded really contrary to me. This stuff would never fly in the states.

When we got there is was basically a parking lot at the base of a jungle covered mountain. There were a few monkeys sitting on buildings and in a tree while people gawked and photographed them from below, waving peanuts at them. I meandered over to the crocodile area which ended up being a fenced pen with a dirty wading pool in the middle. 3 or 4 anemic looking crocodiles were sitting motionless around it; it was pretty pathetic. Then we discovered stairs going up the mountain and decided to climb them to the supposed cave we'd been told about. I suggested we get the sticks that we were promised before climbing them since we could see monkeys swinging in the trees around the stairs. But half the group hiked on while my half fell a little bit behind, nervous about potentially aggressive monkeys. This is when a family of monkeys got in between us and separated us on the stairs. We started to get a little nervous because 3 adolescent monkeys were being rambunctious in the trees next to our group and the family blocked us up ahead. The group on the other side of the divide then attracted a few curious ones that decided to grab Molly. Harry half-heartedly tried to shoe them away with a broken vine but they were difficult to intimidate.

At this point myself and a few others decided it might be time to leave, and right as we are turning to trek down a huge  chaos erupted behind us. Monkeys were screaming, we were screaming, and my group is literally stumbling as fast as possible down the stairs. I just keep thinking "rabies, run, rabies, run!" We thought they were chasing us so none of us turned back to see, just ran, but we heard the other group yelling too. Then when far enough away we finally look back to see them hustling down the stairs too. Apparently some outsider monkeys had come into their space on the stairs and the monkey family was not having it and attacked them. And here we were thinking they were coming for us. We were terrified. Got some great photos and video of us running down the mountain screaming though.

After our ordeal we opted to go get Thai massages. One hour massage for 200Bt, or about $6. Everything here is cheap, everything. You can get full meals for under a dollar, services for 3 or 5 dollars, etc. Anyway, we didn't know what to expect or do for our Thai massages, turns out they give you a cotton shirt and (huge) cotton drawstring pants and the masseuse climbs on the table with you and does her work. It wasn't rhythmic or continuous like American massages, it was more applied pressure at every point of your body. It was like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVpOeRrZBFo). I burst out laughing when every one of my toes cracked as she massaged them.

To wrap up we all went from massages to a place for Thai bbq for dinner. It was just like Korean bbq where you pick out all sorts of raw meats and grill them. However this one was a buffet so I tried a little bit of everything. I don't think I'd do it again, too much work, but it was worth trying. While we were grilling a stray dog found his way to our table and camped out next to me hoping for scraps. I knew if I fed him he'd never leave so I resisted, but I really wanted to. To keep things interesting Ava suggested we have a little competition at the end of dinner to see who could make the best dish. Iron chef Thailand if you will. The grilled pineapple won. Right as this was happening the rains came, and the sound of the downpour on the corrugated tin roof was deafening.

It was quite the day, we were exhausted by the end. And the jetlag didn't help, we were in bed by 9 and will probably be awake by 6 again. Tomorrow we start at the school, I didn't sign up to teach the first day so I'll be working on the wall all day. I'm not doing well with this heat/humidity, I have never been so sweaty and disgusting in my life. Words really cannot describe the feeling. I can only imagine how I'll feel after working outside tomorrow.

TIA

After quite possibly the longest travel day(s) I have ever had we have finally arrived and settled in to Mae Sai. We will spend the next two weeks here working at DEPDC (www.depdc.org), more to come on that. But for now the journey:

I had no idea how long it would take to fly to Thailand, I figured we would cut over the Pacific and be here nonstop in somewhere between 12-15 hours. Boy was I wrong. It was broken up into a 12 hour flight to Seoul then another 6 hours from there to Bangkok. To get there we followed the west coast all the way up from LA, over OR, WA, BC and AK then across the Bering Straight and down past Russia/China. An interesting route to have the window seat for, at one point I looked down and saw Mt. Hood in OR, then probably the Sea to Sky highway in BC, then fell asleep until some place in Siberia. But being a little homesick and lonely already I was a little sad knowing I was flying over Seattle and Vancouver.

This was only made worse by the mere fact that I hate flying. And I get airsick, so normally a few dramamines and I am out like a light. Not this time however. Instead I had to resort to watching a handful of movies, but nothing too great. I did start an old one called the Big Night simply because the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld was in it. That was pretty funny, and I only mention it here as a reminder that I need to finish it when i get home.

When we finally arrived in Bangkok it was almost 2am Thai time (noon the previous day PST) and the airport was buzzing with activity. That was my first little taste of Asia, people and lights everywhere. We met our project leader and all together took a bus 5min down the road to our hotel for the night. I say night liberally, because it really was staying there from 2am-5:30am, at which time we needed to head back to the airport for our next flight north. I took a [cold] shower, checked some email and went to sleep for about 3 hours, a cat nap really. All this midday PST so my body clock is all over the place. We had a few discussions about what day it was, both here and in the states, no one was really sure.

Also let me just quickly say that the beds here (all 2 that I've felt so far) are rocks. No joke, I did not know they even made beds this firm. No give whatsoever. It's going to be a long 4 weeks...

Thankfully our next and final flight up north to Chiang Rai was only an hour. I am so done flying, you have no idea. I got through the whole Head and the Heart album on my ipod just in time for it to die and us to land. It is beautiful up here, so incredibly lush. Immediately it reminded me of Kauai. It rains like it too, a strong downpour out of nowhere for 10 or so minutes, then sun again. Later on it got so hot and humid (90+degrees and 60% humidity) that we were thankful for the rain.

We arrived at our hotel in the hills of Mae Sai, which is just a 10 min walk from our volunteering at DEPDC. This place is incredible, it completely surprised me. A handful of buildings and bungalows are set in this lush tropical jungle. There are bright butterflies and geckos everywhere. And our view, though it may not photograph well, is amazing; simply a valley of brightly colored Thai roofs. I may not leave.

The view from our balcony

The view from our door, jungle-esque right?

Following a lunch of pretty simple Thai food (still waiting on phad thai, which you can get here for 75 cents) we walked over to DEPDC for an orientation. Our project leader pointed out points of interest like an internet cafe (but THANK GOD our hotel has free wifi  after all) and corner store, as well as warned us about wild animals and bugs. According to Molly and some survival show she watched about Asia, "never pet anything furry" here. Duly noted.

DEPDC explained that we'll be teaching English to kindergarten classes and building a wall for their play yard. As soon as we got back to the hotel we all sat around the lunch table and started brainstorming games and English words we could teach them. What makes this incredibly difficult is that we speak no Thai, they speak no English, and there will be no one to translate. So explaining anything, even instructions, will be difficult/impossible. Everything will have to be demonstration. And they're kindergarteners...... It brings me right back to teaching 1st grade in Italy. Hopefully this ends up more fun.

To wrap up the night we had another Thai meal of unidentifiable meat. One particularly bony dish we finally asked about and were dismayed to hear that they were chicken joints... We worked around those. Our plan was to walk down to the Saturday market to buy fisherman's pants for pj's, but then the rain started. And I mean real, thunderous, torrential rain. You literally could not see through it past the balcony. It was great to watch while we ate under the covered veranda, but would be unpleasant or downright painful to walk through.
And so began the new TIA: This is Asia.