Playing catch-up

Oh the resistance! I've been avoiding writing because I know I'll have to stretch my memory over the past 6+ weeks of fabulosity (what a quality problem). I've heard through the grapevine that my posts have been missed however...Thanks for the ego boost Aunt Phyllis!

So the last time I wrote I was in KL. Hmmm. My return to the orphanage in Chiang Rai was uneventful save the drama-fest I found when I arrived. I won't go in to details, but I'll just say that we had some "interesting" volunteers who thankfully were asked to leave within the first week I came back. I also came back to a fairly empty house because school was out and most of the kids went back to their villages to visit for the holiday. Only those who had no safe relative to stay with remained at the center (about 13).

We tried to make their vacation as fun as we could, planning morning and afternoon activities for them. One of the highlights was elephant polo. Yes that's right, polo played with pachyderms. It was a tournament held at a really ritzy resort up in the Golden Triangle region of Thailand. The players were all ex-pats, and the entire culture was pretty "high-society". However, it was still Thai mahouts that actually drove the elephants...the white guys just concentrated on trying to hit the ball with their mallet. I have a video of it but I'm not sure how to post it. There's tons of pictures though. The kids had fun for awhile, but I think the highlight was seeing the elephant blessing ceremony before everything started and then feeding them fruit. My own personal favorite part of the day was seeing the super deluxe portapotties. That term doesn't even do these things justice. It was like, a portable luxury suite that had bathroom facilities. I had to take a few pictures. It was that cool.

I also came back at peak smoke season in Northern Thailand, when farmers burn off the land and crops from last year's season before planting again. The air quality was absolutelyABYSMAL. I have never seen such pollution first-hand. Coming from the pristine island oases in Malaysia to the smoggy humid city of Chiang Rai was a bit of a let-down. Along with the increasing temperature, things got pretty uncomfortable. Strangely enough, the monsoons started in March. Local buzz was that the pollution was so bad that it had actually affected the weather. Thankfully, the storms cleared out the air for the most part. The storms themselves were fantastic...like Arizona monsoons but more, well... authentic! Thunder, crazy lightening, high winds, the whole bit. TORRENTIAL downpours. Then, in about an hour, it just clears up and goes away. Of course, along with the rain came the mosquitoes. Thankfully, Northern Thailand is not an area where malaria is endemic, but the little suckers are still really annoying. Thankfully, homes are infested with barking geckos to keep the population of bugs down. Probably for that reason, house geckos are considered very lucky, and you can even divine your fortune from the number and timing of the barks! Every night before I went to sleep, I had a nighttime ritual of picking all the ants off me and clearing out the mosquito net as I listened to the reptilian symphony of lizards and frogs. LOUD frogs and lizards (I was very thankful for my earplugs) I sort of do NOT miss this part of my experience.

Along with the fun stuff for the kids every day, we also got cracking on a few big projects around the center. Thanks to the encouragement of a few awesome volunteers with experience in the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, we were able to get organized and get motivated. I helped dig holes and put fence posts in for a fence around the garden. There are pictures. It was an intense and satisfying experience for all of us. We felt like badasses. We also began preparations for a straw mushroom patch which will allow the center to grow and harvest it's own mushrooms. Since bamboo is the building material of choice, we used that to make the posts and poles needed for the frame. It sounds easier than it was. Using machetes and hacksaws, we were trying to cut standard lengths and split the trunks down the middle. It was so hard, and we looked so pathetic doing it that the kids came over to help us out. They schooled us. Big time. Nok, who is 10 years old, was literally doing laps around me. She got in there with the saw, put some elbow grease into it, and made me feel like a total pansy. The boys were in a league of their own...they have been using tools and making things out of bamboo since they were toddlers, so they were naturals.

I had 3 church experiences in Thailand. Once I went to the oldest Christian church in Chiang Rai by myself, but The service was all in Thai but they were very friendly and put a lady next to me who attempted to translate the sermon. Next, we took Nabee our house mummy to her church, an evangelical Calvary Chapel born-again variety. Kate grabbed me halfway through that service to let me know that Nok and Somchai had gone feral (Australian for apeshit) in the street. It all ended well a day later with apology notes and such but for about 20 minutes I hated children more than the IRS. Finally, the best experience was on Palm Sunday when Angela #2 found a Catholic church for me, Nabee, and her to attend. It happened to be my last day in Thailand, so that made it special as well. We didn't understand what was going on (mass was in Thai), but we got to take home these cool palm-frond things which was neat. There were people there that had obviously come in from the villages, piling out of the back of pickup trucks. One lady was all decked out in her traditional Akha dress. That was cool.

Oh I wanted to mention baby-politeness! A wei is the little bow with your hands clasped under your chin that Thai's do to eachother to show respect. The rules and status arrangements are quite complex, and all the cultural sensitivity stuff I read said to not even go there if you don't know what you're doing. You can really look stupid or totally offend people if you just go around bowing indiscriminately. Anyways, this must be one of the absolute first things parents teach their children, because I saw 2 separate babies (before speaking age) do it as they were getting their bottles or toys or whatever. It was adorable.

I left Thailand having made more wonderful friends and with a suitcase and brain packed to the brim of incredible sights, sounds, and tastes. However, it was definitely time to come home. I had an 8 hour layover in Seoul and tried to make a day of it, but the airport is quite far away from the city. It took me almost 2 hours to get in to a touristy shopping district, where I cruised for knicknacks, ate sticky icecream, and watched these guys make this stuff called "Dragon's Beard". They were great salesmen, they had their whole pitch down and it was quite a show to watch them make 64,000 strand confections on the street. I had to buy a box of the stuff (honey and cornstarch threads wrapped around candy nuts). They don't taste as interesting as I had hoped, but the memory is worth it. Seoul was fairly standard from what I saw, other than there were just TONS of MEN everywhere, hardly any women (maybe I was in a business district or something?). They just stood around smoking all over the place.

So I'm back, and enjoying Southern California weather, my civic duty as a juror, and getting back into my meeting schedule. If I can think of other stuff I'll add it...I know I'm leaving out tons but there's just a limit to how much information my brain is capable of holding on to. The older I get the more painfully aware of this I am...
Love to you all,
Angie