Slacking
Saturday, March 4th, 2006People. I have been seriously slacking in this whole business of keeping an up to date blog. In January and February, I meant to do a series of catch-up posts, detailing my trip to Laos and my semi-eventful month of January. Clearly I’ve come up a little short. Instead of trying to catch up in detail, I’m going to give you a quick summary, and then hopefully resume with postings describing my present activities. Does this sound good to everyone? Great. Here we go.
Laos: Amazing. Thank you Millers, etc. for a wonderful week of culture, food, and conversation. Thank you speedboat for the lack of hearing in my right ear.
January: The new kids (Peace Corps Thailand Group 118) arrived. Their arrival meant that I’ve been here for a full year (actually close to 14 months now), and it also meant that we got drunk and greeted the new group as they checked out of customs. I’m pretty sure it was a fun-filled event.
I hung out with Andi’s friend, Adrian, and got to see a whole new world in Bangkok other than the backpacker/poor volunteer life I had been experiencing in BKK. Thank you, Adrian.
I hung out in Chiang Khong a couple more times and am slowly starting to fall in love with the quiet bordertown. Nice folk live there.
I’m sure plenty more happened in January, and herein lies the fault of blog procrastination: I cannot remember.
February: The month started with Jess visiting. We went to a wedding in Bangkok for Jess’s friend Yui. The wedding was massive and was strangely reminiscent of Senior Ball, complete with slideshow. The food was great; the wine, not so great.
Jess was here for a week, so we spent some time in BKK, then went to visit the ruins in Sukhothai, one of Thailand’s ancient capitals. From there, we checked out a waterfall in Tak, then headed back to BKK. It was great to have Jess visit, but it all went by so quickly.
The day after Jess left, I spent a day in Chiang Mai with Becky and Lisa who were in town from the U.S. to take a two-week massage course. I returned home for a few days before heading to Bangkok again to see Oasis and Franz Ferdinand play, which was my first concert in over a year. The show was fun and hot. Some guy was crowd-surfing and landed on my head, making it impossible to turn my neck for a couple days.
The day following the concert, I met up with Lindsay (the new volunteer in Chiang Rai), who would return home with me that evening to visit my site and her new site.
Lindsay and I had a good time wandering around my small town. I introduced her to the great food to be found in Thoeng. Later in the week, I met up with Ryan and Chiang Mai, and we headed down to Jordan’s site to do an English Camp. The camp went well, thanks to good organizing on the part of Jordan and her counterparts.
After Jordan’s camp, I went to the training site for the new volunteers to lead a session on what to do once you arrive at site. The session went pretty well, and I am excited for the new group. They seem to be well-balanced, and the trainers are doing a great job.
This past Wednesday, I headed to Chiang Mai from the training site in Utthai Thani. I met up with our country director who was in town for a volunteer HIV/AIDS conference and visiting volunteers in the north. I had a chance to see some of the other volunteers, and we had a delicious Mexican dinner.
The next morning, Dr. John and I got up early for the 4 hour trip back to my site. His visit was cut short because in the afternoon I attended a funeral for the son of a teacher at my school. It was nice to spend some time talking and getting to know the big guy a little bit.
Since Thursday, things have slowed down to a normal at site (whatever that means). Next weekend I’m going to a my supervisor’s son’s wedding, so I’ll be a homebody for at least the next couple of weeks, which is a good thing because i need to save some money for my brother’s visit in April. It looks like he’ll be here for about 10 or 11 days. We’ll start out in the north for Thai New Year’s, then probably find an island to keep us busy.
