It's Go Time

So poking around youtube, I found a cool little vignette about Carol and her work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhFpqpYED8c

Check it out and once your interest is sufficiently piqued, hit the IHF website!

http://www.ihfonline.org/

A lot of exciting stuff is happening here in Thailand. Caty and Amanda, (co-director and Director of the center, respectively) have been called off to the Kenya center. They leave Monday evening, leaving all us remaining volunteers to take their places. Juan is going to act as Director, and the rumor is that I'm co-director but I'd rather not think of it that way as the responsibility freaks me out a bit. There are many volunteers here, and many more on the way...we'll be fine!

I've extended my trip one week so that I can go to a convention in Bangkok at the end of February, and I'm playing with staying even longer. It depends how this next month goes, I guess.

I'm trying like mad to think of what to say...days have just been mixing together, it's hard to believe I've been up in Chiang Rai over a week. It's amazing how safe it is here; apparently that's a side-effect of the Buddhist influence. I got abysmally lost on bicycle a few nights ago, and not once did I ever feel weird or at risk or anything. No one locks up anything here- houses, bikes, backpacks...it's just a given that no one steals which is quite amazing given the (relatively) low standard of living.

The food is absolutely fantastic, and even our meals at the center are prepared with tons of fresh herbs and spices. Mali and Nabee, the house mummies, have apparently toned down the chilis quite a bit for us falongs (white people), but there's still a fair amount of kick. We go to the market twice a week to buy groceries for the center, and it's been a really fun and interesting experience. They eat pretty much everything here...frogs, crickets, turtles, catfish, chicken legs, snails, jellied pig blood...you name it and I'm sure it's in some Thai dish somewhere. We go to this little neighborhood market almost daily and pick up lunch for around 40 cents, and I'm trying to expand my comfort zone to try new things (but the papaya salad is tried and true and just SO GOOD).

My projects over the next month will probably shift slightly from administrative stuff to more hands-on logistical projects, so I'm trying to plow through the rest of the website editing as well as making a volunteer manual and medical & dental logs for the children. Later this week, we'll bring them all in for medical checkups and vaccinations.

Until next time,
A