Rememberance

The long and stimulating adventure of trial and error, understanding and transition has come to an end; today I leave the Land of Smiles.

Thailand is my Land of Oz, my Wonderland; that special place over the rainbow where life turns from black and white to a frenzy of hypnotic colours, dancing munchkins and never ending tea parties. My life has changed from that of a normal Canadian teenage girl to one most people can only dream of. Though I will be returning back up the rabbit hole to that land of black and white, I will bring my own colour - I have learned to do that much from this magnificent country. I am a different person; I am a person who will forever see the world differently, who will think in a different manner and speak with a different tune. When I left Canada I did not know what I would come upon, what changes I would feel, how different I may become. It was a fear, a nervousness and an excitement that drove me towards the plane. The same emotions rush over me as I contemplate my return to Canada. I return to I country I once knew, a country that will have forever changed, with a mind open and ready to see my country in a different light.

I can not feel anything other than gratitude for everyone that has brought me to such a marvelous place, for what will possibly be the most remembered and treasured year of my life.

Firstly, thank you to all the Rotarians who have helped me through this year, the year before my exchange and for the future help in my return to Canadian culture. It's been a rollercoaster of a ride and I would never have made it here had it not been for you all.
To all my friends back home who patiently put up with my lack of emails when I was either too frusterated, busy or lazy to sit down at the computer. Special love goes out to those friends that even with the technological world's strong pull, kept touch by the most personal way possible - the little red post box.
To my friends in Thailand who have made this exchange not just spectacular, not just amazing, but brilliant. It's been the most refreshing, eye opening and transforming year of my life, and you all have been a huge part of my success.
My loving Thai parents, Mae Daeng, Mae Eiu, Mae Suk, Por Ood, Por Dto, Por , you mean the world to me. Your hospitality and care, compassion and understanding for everything I had to overcome amazed me, I feel so at home with you and love you like no other. Thank you for opening your homes to me, giving to me relentlessly and always looking out for you. เอ็มม่ารักพ่อแม่มากๆนะค่ะ เอ็มม่าจะไม่มีวันลืมขรอบครัวของเรา ขอบคูณมากที่ให้เอ็มม่ามีบ้านที่นอนและขรอบครัวดีๆ
Finally to the people who have put up with me through everything, spent endless hours with me on the phone, going through applications for Rotary and being there for me more than anyone this entire year. I can't thank you, my family, enough for supporting me for so long, for putting your feelings aside for mine and for letting me go on this journey even though it hurt so much for us to part. I love you all so much, and I can't wait to give you all a big hug at the aiport tomorrow. It will be the highlight of my return.

I will never forget what I have learned here.

Love your family
Care for others...
Believe.

"You never really leave a place or person you love, part of them you take with you, leaving a part of yourself behind."

Keep Breathing.

It was Christmas Eve. Snow was falling in thick clumps forming a soft bed on our front lawn. Through the window I could see my family opening presents, drinking apple cider and eating shortbread while they laughed together. I came up the driveway slowly with my bags pulled behind me; I could not remember why I had come home early, but I knew they were unaware I was just outside the door. As I rapped on the door my mom's head snapped up from her coffee and spun towards where I was standing. There was a rushing and as the door creaked open, it was apparent on her face that she was just as surprised about my return to Canada as I was. "What are you doing here?!" I was unable to give her the answer.

Though I was happy to see my family, the pain I felt from leaving Thailand was a tight fist wrapped around my chest; I could barely breathe.

The next day once I was allowed out of the house I began my search for anything that reminded me of home. The first stop was 7 Eleven. Though 7 Eleven in Canada doesn't quite have the same smoothies, mouthwatering ham&cheese sandwiches or every flavour of Pocky you could think of, they had juice. It was at the juice machine that I saw Jared. For some reason, at the sight of him I broke into a fit of sobbing and collapsed on him. He attempted to hold me up but I just could not pull myself together; in the end we sat on the floor while I heaved and shook as tears poured down my face. My heart was broken.

I wake up screaming.

"The trick is not to rid your stomach of butterflies, but to make them fly in formation" -

Exchange Students

There's something different about exchange students. There's just a feel to them that's... right. They talk a certain way, have certain body language and they're just so easy to get along with. I'm not talking about the exchange students in Thailand. I'm talking about the Thai exchange students who have been on exchange.

A normal Thai teenager is shy, conservative and usually unwilling to phone you unless you call them first. They are afraid of rejection, what their parents might think and most of all, they are worried they won't be able to connect with you because of cultural differences. However, Thai exchange students who have been to the Western world are just the opposite.

They wear what they want, say what they feel and love to go out late at night. They drive through red lights (not that anyone really follows red lights in Thailand), leave school if they don't have class (usually a big No No) and are the first ones on the band wagon to call a falang. I don't have to call them, they will call me. They want to practice their English as much as I want to practice my Thai. So we come to a consensus and speak a mixture of both languages, always with complete understanding. It is always a good time with an exchange student, whether we are watching a movie at their house, eating at a restaurant, singing karaoke or just driving around looking for somethign that sparks imagination for our next destination.

The two AFS exchange students who have just come home from America are "Art" and "Kate". The past few days we have spent time together continuously; driving around on their motorbikes, leaving school to rent ghost movies or eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Now that most of my friends have left for University (or in Suzanne's case, another country) they are my new best friends; the people I spend the most time with and the first faces I look for when I get to school in the morning. They are the new Kate and Klao, the new Noo and Sing.

Sometimes I think this entire year has been a test; a test of letting go and moving on. Rotary tests us by putting us with other falangs for 14 days straight until we are not just friends, but family. Then they send us home to our cities and only let us visit each other under extreme circumstances. Then they push us together for a spare weekend before sending us home. The school puts me in M6 and then halfway through the year my friends leave me and I cannot go to University with them. All of these small tests are strengthening us and testing us so that when it comes for the real break, the real departure, where we truly need to let go and move on, we are ready. I can't say that I am ready to go back to Canada, but I'm used to leaving my friends. I've passed the point of crying for hours, moping around the town and steering clear of anything that reminds me of the gradually decreasing time (which, by the way is 18 days). I have adapted, I have made new friends; though I am scared to leave them, the doom is not as impending as it once was.

"Never before has someone been more unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay,
That's why, darling, it's incredible that someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too"
- My twin sister's Facebook page :)

Ban Nong Hoi

I will never leave a plate of rice unfinished again. I will never fail to finish my dinner and throw the remains in the garbage; it is a waste. Parents always say "There are children in Africa that have no food, and here you are throwing yours away" and I feel bad about that, I do. But the truth is, I feel worse that someone slaved over planting, pulling, replanting and harvesting that rice all year, only to have it thrown in the garbage. This past week enhanced that feeling to the utmost.

On Tuesday morning, P'Dtia [P'Kaew's cousin and current housemaid] took me with her to their village to spend a few days planting rice. I stayed with P'Dtoom [I just called her Mae] and her three kids. Nong First is 9 years old and the cutest little boy I have ever met in my life. His older brothers Beer and Art are both 11. Art was adopted when he was only 9 months old. Mae looks after the three boys by herself, their father no longer lives with them. All day Tuesday I watched the boys play video games with the rest of the boys in the village. There was always roughly 20 boys in the living room, all crowded around the television watching each other play WWF, Transformers, Indiana Jones or Ninja 4. A wealthy relative of theirs in Bangkok had sent them the system and games in the mail. I wrote a lot of postcards and read a fair amount of my book. In the afternoon I went with P'Dtia to watch the parade celebrating Buddhist Lent that the boys were marching in with their school band. That evening, Nong First and Nong Art took me on a bike ride along the trail out in the rice paddies. It was one of the most gorgeous landscapes I have ever seen; the clouds in the sky were every colour of blue, as if someone had taken all the blue paintchips in the world and smeared them across the sky. The rice seedlings were a bright contrast of startling green; they reflected the light of the setting sun and shone like a chocolate wrapper in the middle of the street on a sunny day. There were people out in the fields, knee deep in mud and water, planting the seedlings in organised rows. Even more people were pulling the seedlings out of their original paddies and bundling them into neatly packaged groups. Cows and buffalo grazed in the mud filled paddies and the bray of geckos pierced through the silence of the night like a knife. Village life brings a new meaning to silence.

When we returned home - tired from the 4 km bike ride along the dirt path - Nong First and I collapsed on the ground in front of the fan and watched Nong Art, Nong Beer and their friends hit each other with chairs and ladders in the wrestling ring. I never realised how much I loved or missed video games. I helped Mae make dinner [aroi mak mak!!] and we sat on the wooden platform with our plates on our laps and chatted over gayng jeud, pad pak and moong tod. Once the boys had showered and put their pajamas on, we went to vien tien [walk around the temple three times with flowers and candles] and then came home. We sat on their bed on the floor and watched a Thai soap opera for a while until the boys had fallen asleep, and then I went to bed. It was a very restful sleep.

Wednesday morning we were up at 630 to get ready to go rice farming. I dressed in a long sleeve shirt and pants, a hat and a bandana tied to cover the back of my neck. Mae, Nong First and I set out to the rice paddies with a portable radio, a bucket of ice water/cups and my camera. Our job for most of the day was pulling the rice seedlings up out of the ground and bundling them so they could be planted in the mud the next day. We started pulling the seedlings out at the roots, then bashing them against our foot to get the mud and water off of them. Then we piled them on the ground and Mae would come along and bundle them. At first it wasn't that bad, until the sun came out and soon my shirt was soaked through with my sweat [except the back which was face up to the sun] and my hair was dripping from the heat inside my hat. I didn't dare take it off - I would get a nasty sunburn by the end of the day. I switched between bending over while pulling and Thai sitting [squatting with your feet completely on the ground] while pulling; my knees started to shake and my legs started to ache. I thought to myself, "If a nine year old boy can do this all day, I will MAKE myself do this all day". After a couple hours Nong Beer and Nong Art as well as P'Dtia and her three kids had arrived to help. We spent the rest of the morning pulling seedlings out and the kids and I occasionally taking fully clothed swims in pond nearby. I have never had so much fun in my life; it was so refreshing to play with children, to toss them into the water and swim around with them on my back when they couldnt touch the bottom anymore. We made castles out of clay we dug up at the bottom of the pond, lured their german shephard to come in for a swim and ran, screaming and laughing, into the pond. After we took a short break in the pond we were back to work and continued the painful labour until lunch time when we hiked back to the village house and showered and changed for lunch. We let our clothes dry in the sun so we could wear them that afternoon. By the time our rest was over, I couldn't stand on one leg without it crumbling underneath me, and it hurt to walk or sit down. My hands were blistered and I the makings of a rediculous looking long sleeve tan on my forearms. Despite all this, we went back out to the fields and worked 4 more long hours until the paddie was cleared. At one point P'Dtia took me to go plant one of the bundles in a nearby field so I could see what it was like. You have to stand with your legs spread wide so you could rotate in every direction, and you planted the seedlings in knee deep mud that swam with hundreds of worms and little bugs. The rest of the afternoon, the children and I continued our routine of working for an hour or so, then taking a small break in the pond. The seedlings we pulled were home to many little critters - spiders, caterpillars, worms, leeches, ants, bees, beetles - and occasionally I would hear the screams of one of the girls when they saw a caterpillar climbing around in the rice they were pulling. The boys were less fearful and picked up geckos to place them on their shoulders while they worked. At the end of the day we had cleared one paddie, with 12 of us working. I did the math and figured out the following.

1. Each bundle of rice makes roughly 2-3 kilos of rice.
2. 1 kilo of rice is sold for roughly 10 baht [roughly 30 cents]
3. From the one paddie we cleared, we pulled 200 bundles of rice.

Therefore:
1. At the most, each bundle will make 30 baht.
2. 200 bundles at 30 baht is 6000 baht.
3. 6000 baht = roughly 200 dollars.

From one full day of working, the rice paddie would only make 200 dollars. However, the seedlings still needed to be planted and harvested in the month of November before they could sell them. I never realised just how much work it takes to farm rice, and it brings me to tears to think of the pain and effort they go through just to make ends meet. However, the thing that touched me the most is that all of the people who helped farm the rice don't get any money from it, and they know that. They help Mae and her three kids farm their fields just to be together, to help that family make money and to help make the workload a little lighter.

Today my body aches; I have to walk slowly, sit down slowly and it hurts to move my legs. My shoulders ache, I have a sunburn on my chest, neck and forearms and the blisters on my hands prevent me from bending my fingers. But it was worth it. Living in the village for a few days was one of the most stunning and amazing experiences of my entire exchange; it helped me to see more of the culture of a village family in Thailand. It was an experience I'll never forget, and I hope I can go back to visit the boys and Mae sometime before I head back to Canada. The peacefulness and silence in the village was something I thrive from and an aspect I wish I could grasp in everyday life. I will never forget Ban Nong Hoi village.

"What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing within her? Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shows most beautiful." - Henry Thoreau

K-OTIC

On Tuesday a Thai pop/boy band came to play a concert at my school to promote isaan basketball competition that is being held here. Students from 19 different provinces are now sleeping on the 3rd floor of the english building and have taken up the entire math building - K-OTIC came to sing some songs and open the beginning of the competition.
K-OTIC is not my favourite Thai band by far - they have more of a hiphop/r&b style which I'm not the biggest fan of. I'm more of a rock and roll type of girl. Either way, they have some catchy songs - plus it helps that I have a "mad-school-girl-crush" on the Korean singer, Jongbae.
The concert was really awesome, though sickly hot and humid - most of the students from my school as well as hundreds of students from the other schools in Nakhon Phanom were jampacked into our little gym which not only doesn't have air conditiong, but is lacking in the fan department. By the middle of the concert, sweat was dripping down the back of my legs and I had to wipe my face on my purse - quite an attractive look, I think. All of the student soldiers where there to keep the screaming girls back (some even tried to jump over the barriers blocking the fans from the small blocked off stage) and I got pushed so often, and almost too roughly for a crowd of 13 year old Thai girls.
I have met the singers before when I was in Bangkok and I had spoken with them and told them I was an exchange student. They were shocked and excited to hear I could speak Thai and rewarded me with pictures of us together. At this concert, there was no time or space to say hello, but I like to think they recognised me as the looked over, smiled and waved. However, I might just be delusional, which is completely possible.

Koen - This is the band member that I spoke the most too. At the concert on Tuesday, he was not only wearing a leather jacket, but TWO pairs of jeans. Both complete with belts. I still wonder about Thai clothing style sometimes.

Jongbae - I also got to talk to him before, but not for long. He goes to the best school in Thailand which is also an international university in Bangkok. Maybe I will casually bump into him one day if I go to visit Noo and Sing who go to school there.

Poppy - The lead singer of the band - probably because most Thai girls like him.. he's "NARAK JUNG!!!" (so cute!)

K-OTIC - There are 5 guys in the band - ranging in age from 16-20, also ranging in height from "small for a Thai person" to "falang size". The other two boys are "Tomo" and "Kenta". Though a lot of Thai girls like Tomo, I personally think he looks like a girl :) No offense.

H1N1

There's nothing like being locked in an empty white room for four days to make you resent some things about Thailand. For one, being a falang is either the best or the worst thing that ever happened to you. You are treated differently, cautiously and with more stares than a Thai person would get. Another, the fact that everything in Thailand takes 458459406804968 times as long to get done as it would in Canada. Also, because Nakhon Phanom is one of the less wealthy provinces in Thailand, the health care system is less than meteocre. Finally, sometimes [and by sometimes I mean quite frequently] common sense seems to slip the minds of most Thai people. I seem to forget these aspects of Thai culture as life goes on in a normal matter; every once in a while, something happens that is a kick in the ass and a slap in the face, all at the same time.

Two Wednesdays ago [June 17th] I went down to Bangkok with Suzanne to drop her off at the airport and send her home. She left to board early morning on Thursday and for the rest of the day, other than wallowing in self pity, I went shopping in Bangkok with my friend Mason and was on a bus back to Nakhon Phanom by nightfall.
This past Wednesday [June 24th] I started to get a head cold - runny nose, sneezing etc. By Thursday morning my host mother was waking me up to take me to the hospital. She was worried that since I had been to Bangkok recently, that I had come in contact with the "swine flu" that has recently made an invasion in Thailand's capital city. We were asked to come back later in the evening when there were less people at the hospital, and in the meantime I had to wear a mask while at home.

First of all, wearing a mask is not a fun thing to do, and secondly, it's even worse in a country with a climate like Thailand's. It gets hard to breath, the air inside the mask condenses and you're left sweating underneath the blue cloth, trying to breath normally. Not fun, at all.

Thursday evening we returned to the hospital and I was poked and prodded with a distance and look of distaste only a martian or harmful bacteria would get. I only ever came within distance of nurses dressed in suits - complete with: [count them] 1-2-3-4 masks, goggles, a clear face shield, black wellingtons, 2 layers of gloves, hair caps and two layers of green suits over top of their normal scrubs. They stuck things up my nose, in my ears and jammed needles into my arms without the comforting, delicate touch of a Canadian nurse. A man pushed me around roughly and prodded me in front of an X-ray while tears silently rolled down my cheeks. The whole situation was rediculous - I didn't have a temperature, sore throat, sore limbs, headache or a cough. I had been out of Bangkok for more than 6 days before I showed signs of a cold and I felt fine. When the tests and a lot of waiting was finished, I was taken in a wheelchair to the white room. I insisted on walking but they worried I was too tired to walk. I wanted to give my mom the wheelchair and I would push her to my room. She needed to sit down more than I did.

The room was empty, with white tiled walls that were rusty and grimey - the look only a rarely used room would have. There were no comforts of home, only a bed, two trash cans and a metal night side table. The bathroom reminded me of a horror movie - I clearly was not in one of the best rooms. I was left there, with the notion that in an hour the doctor would come see me and then I could go home. My mother was not allowed to stay in the room with me.

An hour passed, a nurse came and went and still I was not allowed to go home. Finally, after frequent and frantic phone calls from all three of my host families, I understood I had to stay there, for 48 hours while they waited for my blood result to come back. I had nothing to do, was not allowed visitors and was left in the room with only a simple fan and a view of the parking lot to keep me company. The 48 hours came and went and I wondered why I wasn't allowed to go home yet - they told me they had to send the bloodwork to another province and it hadn't come back yet. So I sat and waited, finished the book I was reading and tried to entertain myself by sleeping or phoning the few exchange students left in Thailand. I talked to my family in Canada a lot, which helped, but when they were sleeping and it was the middle of the day, I sat in boredom - crying a lot and attempting to sleep as much as I could.

Finally, Saturday night I got ahold of my host sister and asked her to bring me some things from home - another book, postcards to write, my journal and my ipod. They kept me sane the last day.

This morning I was let out, being told I just had a normal cold and it would go away soon. I could have told them that 4 days earlier before they put me in isolation. It was not a good weekend, I wished to go back to Canada if it meant I could leave - the nurses made me afraid and paranoid every time my throat was sore or I started to cough. I never did spike a temperature, but I started to believe I was doomed with a flu that has killed many. I missed Suzanne, I knew if she hadn't gone home yet she would sit outside my window and keep me company, bring me my favourite food and things to do, and talk to me on the phone for hours on end. I miss my friend.

Other than all the bad things, there was some good - my host families brought me snacks everyday, I got phone calls from my host moms every few hours to see if I needed anything, and Tony offered to bring me books if I ran out.

The trucks that drive through the streets blaring news broadcasts have a new piece of information to share "Be Careful... It's Here!"

"There is no remedy for love, but to love more" - Henry Thoreau

Green Means Go

Driving in Thailand is a mission not for the weak at heart. Not only does traffic flow on the left side of the road, but there are literally no (or at least FEW) traffic rules. There is no such thing as cutting a person off - motorcycles swerve in front of big trucks and pull out of alleyways onto main streets so quickly that I personally would not have failed in colliding with them. However, Thais must either be amazing drivers, or have extremely quick reflexes. I personally believe it is the latter.

If you drive in Bangkok with a taxi driver (or tuk tuk if you are a more courageous soul) you will weave in and out of the surrounding vehicles at 130 kmph all the while, holding onto their cellphone in one hand and not managing to dishevel a single hair. Thai drivers are crazy (as my visitors and many other fellow falangs will agree).

Turn signals are not used for turning. They are used if they are pulling over a foot to the side, to indicate someone can pass, to signal a stop or that it is okay they were cut off. Almost never for turning - unless they are taking a round corner, in which case there is no need to signal... but they do anyway.

I spend a lot of time biking in Nakhon Phanom which has left me with not only nice strong legs but a good understanding of Thai driving. I would usually be too afraid to bike on the road with cars flying by, but Thailand has given me a lot of courage; if I can bike around in Thailand, I can bike anywhere. The roads are horribly paved and have big chunks of tar strips across the street that cause me to jiggle and bump as I bike overtop. Dogs chase you down the street, cars pull out in front of you even if you have the "right of way" (not that there is any such thing in Thailand) and you continually find new alleyways to sneak down to save yourself from the song taews of screaming school children.

Driving is a mission in Thailand, but thankfully I am not weak at heart.

"Lets waste time, chasing cars"

Beavertale 3

Growth means change and
change involves risk, stepping
from the known to the unknown.

You can’t possibly be ready; no matter how much you prepare, or however well you have come to terms with the situation, you will never be ready. Almost a year ago I was preparing for what was to be the biggest challenge and most rewarding year of my life. It has definitely surpassed rewarding in all aspects, but the biggest challenge has turned out to be not coming to a foreign country, but the return home. Preparing to go back to Canada and saying good bye to the place you have come to love is extremely difficult to do without going insane in the process. The real adventure, the aspect of exchange that we failed to prepare for, is our journey back in time to the place where time has stood still and no one is ready for our personal change. To a place where no one will understand how we have changed except ourselves; the hustle and bustle of thousands of people rushing off to work and fighting through traffic is something I personally am not prepared for.

Everything I was told about Rotary Youth Exchange turned out to be spot on. After speaking with previous exchange students they came to a consensus that the following aspects of Rotary Youth Exchange reign true in any country.

1. You will accumulate heaps and piles of various new items until you find yourself leaving things behind, giving out old clothes and sending massive crates home in the mail.
2. You will be able to speak the language fluently by the end of your exchange, understand every word that is spoken and be able to fully communicate what you feel and think.
3. Leaving and thinking of leaving will cause you unbelievable pain and discomfort, and lastly,
4. You will grow in ways unimaginable.

I am growing, and have grown since the day I stepped foot on Thai soil; my growth and transformation screams loudly from the clothes I wear, the way that I hold myself and the words that come out of my mouth. I can feel it intensifying in the thoughts that scramble through my head, interrupting each other and overlapping while trying to be more than a flicker of imagination. I feel growth in the tips of my fingers, through my eyes and in the way that I view life - it's an interesting feeling, this change, and not one that I would give up easily. I can’t say myself how I have changed, but I feel it in my heart, deep down inside and I love the new me. This country is more than my host country, more than my home and more than the country I have fallen head over heels in love with - Thailand is my security blanket. Thailand is the solution to all my problems, the answer to all my questions and the rock holding me down and forcing stability in my ever changing life. Rotary prepared us for everything from walking in the airport, to problems with our host parents and dealing with other exchange students. The only thing they left out was how to deal with leaving and now I understand why. It is the biggest challenge I’ve had to face and it’s something I must do completely on my own, no anesthesia.

I have barely had time to sit and relax since my last Beavertale, let alone organize myself for my return to Canada in two months. Time has just been nonstop going, going, going – and soon, it will be gone. My time here is running out and it has become an increasing fear as each of my friends leaves this beloved country for their homeland. The too-soon departure of my fellow exchange student in Nakhon Phanom has us both strained and trying to spend as much time together as possible before she leaves. We spend hours sitting in complete stillness, lying on her bed not talking, not moving, just breathing together and appreciating the time we have left. I’ve never been the type to sit still, to keep patient and just take the time to breathe; in Thailand, that’s all I do. Silence is completely taken for granted; before Thailand the creak of a banana tree or the whisper of beetle’s wings had never been truly treasured. There are sounds here I never would have listened for, sounds that always appeared so miniscule and trivial in the constant movement of a western lifestyle. In Thailand, walks along the cracked sidewalks no longer need an iPod to accompany them – instead I listen to all the movement around me. Children riding their bikes through the street, content without a television or computer to occupy them; a gathering of friends sitting in the driveway of their home sharing a meal under the star filled sky; humming motorbikes cutting in front of an SUV who reciprocates with a polite beep of their horn in acknowledgement; howling dogs; a rooster’s crow; the buzz of swarming mosquitoes and a sudden zap as they are struck with an electric swatter. It is the serene sound of bliss.

As much as it pains me to say, this is my last and final Beavertale. I’ve thought about writing this letter since my first day in Thailand and the thought of it has squeezed me continually tighter. It’s shocking to think of going back to Canada, to a home I have not known for so long, but I will not bid my dear Thailand farewell. A piece of my heart will always be in Thailand and it will stay here for years to come, until one day, I am able to come back to my family and friends, my city and my culture. I will be thinking of Thailand everyday and every moment until I can come home.

Rotary Youth Exchange has surprised and delighted me in so many ways and I could never express how utmost my gratitude is to all the people who have helped me get here. I didn’t bargain for the adventures and challenges I have encountered, but I don’t regret them; they have made my exchange an astounding year and most of all have shaped me into the independent, loving person I am. So thank you again, to both my Rotary districts, to my three loving host families, my exceptionally wonderful family in Canada who has supported me through everything, all of my friends and fellow exchange students and all the people I’ve met and come to love. But most of all, thank you Thailand, for giving relentlessly, opening my eyes and showing me what true happiness is.

ความจริงเป็นของชีวิต คือ การตื่นในความฝันของตัวเอง
Peace and love,
Emma a.k.a กุหลาบ

Mother Nature's Children

There is always some creature annoying you in Nakhon Phanom. Whether it is my cat Bak Mo who wakes me up at 2 in the morning by hanging outside my window by the screen, stray dogs that chase you down the street on your bicycle or frogs that hop over your toes during the rainy season, there is always something moving and always something there with you. You are never truly alone.

Aside from the creatures, there are the critters; hoards of ants carrying dead cockroaches across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night and even larger cockroaches scurrying across the sidewalks when the town quiets down and the sun stops shining. Then there are the flying insects named "maeng mao" that infest around lights at dusk and within hours had died along the street sides causing passing motorbikes to slide along the hundreds of dead bugs.

My house is right in front of a forest, outside the bright lights of the city and very close to a pond. We own a convenient store with our garage door open 14 hours a day, from dawn until dusk. Mosquitoes flood in, following you through the house so they can suck your blood and leave you itching for hours, days and weeks on end. As I sit by my computer I am forced to not only wear insect repellent cream, but long sleeves and pants; as I have come to realise, insects in Thailand are invincible and impossible to repel. I sit with my electric fly swatter "Zap Zap Zap Zap" and the dead bodies fall to the ground until I need to sweep them up with the broom and dustpan. Suzanne now officially hates my house. On days when the insect repellant has run out, I take safe haven in my bedroom, where I have a bedroom door that shuts MOST of the buggers out. But though I have a door to keep out the mosquitoes, I cannot keep out the beetles, ants or geckos that somehow find their way into my room, into my suitcase and then into my pile of clothes. I am no longer surprised to find ants crawling up my arm or on my bed and pillow.

I find it hard to be frusterated with all the creepy crawlers in my bed because as Suzanne once reminded me, "The ants were here before we were."

"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever." - Henry Van Dyke

Island Wilderness

The green snake slithered down the branch of the palm tree as I stared at him from my balcony overlooking the Andaman Sea. Snakes interest me, and I've never had the chance to see a snake move so gracefully across the surface of a tree trunk; the only snake meetings I've had are with garden snakes that dance across your toes in long grass, drugged pythons that reptile shows like to place around your neck and snakes of all sizes in zoos, where they barely move an inch and stay wrapped in a coil the entire time.
The movements of the snake were fascinating - every once in a while he would lift his head from the trunk and swing it in the air, deciding on which way to go and whether or not there was food nearby. As he crept the length of the tree it appeared that he wasn't moving apart from the stripes on his skin flowing gently and his body stretching into loops and curves. I've never seen an animal move so calmly in such a graceful manner. Jeanne and Lynne thought it was gross and a woman walking beneath it shuddered away but I thought it was amusing. You don't see snakes on trees everyday in Canada.

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" - Forrest Gump.

Phang Nga Bay

It broke through the surface of the sea, skidded across the clear ripples - dancing, dipping and skating. It was a ballerina alongside our boat as we headed towards Phang Nga Bay. I had never seen a flying fish before.

Phang Nga Bay is the home of 42 of the 300 islands in all of the Andaman Sea - home to the famous island where Roger Moore filmed "James Bond: The Man With the Golden Gun", to countless eerie lagoons where monkeys screech in the trees and bats hang motionless in the dark caves.
We took canoes through a hundred metre stretch of dark cave where bats flew over our heads enticing screeches from many of the travellers; the cave opened up into a lagoon where fish swam by our canoe and birds whistled in the jungle around us. We had to lean back to keep from hitting our heads on the hanging stalactites that grazed our noses while we shrank to the bottom of our boat.
On our way back to the mainland we played games with the tourguides - trying to put glass Sprite bottles into formations and listening to techno music as a large rain cloud formed to the south. The cloud masked most of the island, loomed overtop of it and yet the other side of the island was a clear, crystal blue sky.

A streak of sunlight lit a line through the sea as we powered through the waves, back to reality.

"Be a fruitloop in a world of cheerios"

Homesickness

For the first time in my exchange I am really homesick. However, I am not homesick for Canada; instead I yearn for and miss my family and friends in Nakhon Phanom. It seems rediculous but being away from all my friends, my family and my city for two weeks has really put a damper on me. Not only am I missing them but I have been immersed in Bangkok and Phuket where you can barely tell you are in Thailand aside from the sweltering heat and cheap prices. The streets are crawling with falangs, food is overpriced and not the way Thai food is supposed to taste and fast food restaurants and shopping malls loom over top of you as you walk down the street. I miss chickens running around my feet, dogs lying on the sidewalks and broken sidewalks that almost break your ankles. I have left the country I have come to love behind and instead have entered a country named Thailand where nothing is the Thailand that I love so much. I miss going to P'Oom's shop for Thai tea and toast with condensed milk; riding my bike through the streets and along the riverside; watching the groups of people working out at aerobics; sitting with Suzanne at Meurang watching and making fun of falangs that enter our habitat. I miss learning the dance moves to Korean pop songs with my host sisters; letting my crazy cat in from outside when she climbs up my window screen and showering with a bucket (who knew I would come to love the bucket so much?). Bangkok is nice, Phuket is nicer, but they aren't Thailand. They aren't filled with culture, amazing sounds and delicious food that screams anything but "falang". I miss my home.

Broken Heart

Kareoke has recently found its niche in my heart. Not only is the karaoke building airconditioned (a wonderful plus on a hot day) but my love for Thai music is overflowing and spilling out as I learn new songs and begin to sing along.

I love going to sing karaoke; if I have nothing to do and everyone else is busy I'll go and pay $1.50 to sit in the brightly coloured box for an hour and listen to my favourite Silly Fools, Potato and Tattoo Colour songs.

On Friday my friends and I went out for lunch and shopping before renting the biggest karaoke room (filled with two black leather couches, disco balls and strobe lights) and putting on a personal concert for the next two hours. It was so much fun to spend time with my friends, to joke around, to not have to speak perfectly formal and to learn more "teenage Thai". We sang lots of songs that I know the words to and others that I don't. I wrote down all the songs that I didn't know and I've made myself another CD to add to my growing collection.

Though I noticed before, it has become much more clear to me that almost 99% of all Thai songs involve some sort of romance, in which someone walks away broken hearted. You cannot hear a song without hearing "sia jai" (broken heart) or "kid teung ter" (i miss you). It is even less common to hear a song without "i love you" weaseled in there in some form of conversation. Thailand is a country of sappy love songs - period. Another thing I noticed is that Thai people (or at least my friends) don't feel compelled to sing in key at all; if they can't sing in the key of the artist, they sing in their own key.. WHILE the artist is singing as well. They have wonderful voices, Kate and Klao having the nicest voices of any Thai person I know - but that doesn't mean so much when it sounds completely off. Sometimes I have to hold back from covering my ears.. not that my singing is anything to be proud of.

"I wanna eat you up" - BoA

Sexuality

Sexuality is a very big part of Thai culture. Especially when it comes to sexual orientation. At first it really shocked and confused me at how many different sexual orientations there are and how forwardly they are expressed, but now it has come very comforting to me and I find it extremely normal. One of my guy friends even came out to being gay once he came to Thailand as he felt so comfortable with being himself here. However, unlike Canada there seems to be many different orientations when it comes to sexuality, and some of different qualities may give a person a completely different orientation. I have tried to explain them to a few people and they just get very confused so I thought I would break it down for those of you that I have yet to mention it to. I'm going to use the terms that Thai people use (mostly because the English terms and Thai terms usually have some differences and sometimes, there may not even be an English word).

1. Straight (there is no word in Thai)- Attracted to the opposite gender.

2. Gay - Boys who are attracted to other boys

3. Lesbian - Girls who are attracted to other girls

4. Bisexual (I don't know the Thai expression) - Someone who is attracted to both genders.

5. Katoei - Katoeis are boys who dress up like girls. In a highschool situation where you must wear a uniform this could just mean putting on makeup or carrying a purse but Katoeis who are out of school usually completely dress up, wear wigs and sometimes take hormones. Katoeis are the coolest Thai people ever in my opinion; they are so flamboyant and cheerful and they are almost always the best dressed.

6. Tootsie - Boys who get a sex change to become a woman

7. Tom - A Tom is a girl who dresses like a boy, cuts their hair like a boy and usually is flat chested. However, they do not take hormone pills or get plastic surgery, so most of the time they just look like very put together and somewhat feminine boys. "Tom" is short for "tomboy" - a girl who likes to look like a boy.

8. Dee - A Dee is a girl who likes Toms. They are different than lesbians because they are not exactly attracted to girls - they are simply attracted to girls who are dressed as boys, girls who LOOK like boys. (This is the hard one to understand)

That's all I can think of for now - I will add more if I learn any new ones.

"Will you stay with me, will you be my love" - Fields of Gold

Songkran

Everything was wet; every stretch of road, vehicle and house in the city was glimmering with the watery reflection of the sun, every person was soaked through and water crashed on top of you from above. You would have thought it was raining.

You were wrong.

Songkran is the celebration of the Thai New Year - celebrated by washing all the Buddha images and temples with scented water and blessing your elders. In other words: an excuse to close down all the shops, cancel summer classes and have a country wide water fight for 3 days to celebrate.

In Nakhon Phanom, the celebrations started early as little children anticipated the excitement. As I biked to Suzanne's house to meet for a haircut I was ambushed several times. Children sprayed me with water guns, ran in front of me to stop me from biking further and dumped buckets of cold water on my head. Teenage boys stood in front of my bike as they rubbed baby powder all over my face and continued to dump cold water down the back of my shirt. By the time I reached Suzanne's house I was dripping, cold and the baby powder had turned into white paste on my forehead.
The first day of Songkran was the official elders' day - my family drove to Ban Paeng to visit our grandparents and wish them well. We stood outside of our grandparents' house and threw buckets of water on passing motorbikes and trucks filled with dancing villagers in the back. When we got tired of standing at the side of the road we took our buckets with us as we walked toward the markets, stopping at the people at the side of the road to douse them in water and exchange baby powder. The market street was filled with people dancing to traditional Thai music, water was tossed into the air, sprinkling over the heads of all the villagers and a looming cloud of baby powder hung in the air. That afternoon our parents and grandparents held their hands over a silver bowl and we all took turns blessing them by pouring scented water over their hands and wishing them beauty, long life and wealth. The next two days were cause for more celebration, more water throwing and more baby powder.

High pitched squeals and shrieks filled the air as I sat in the back of my second host family's truck and threw ice water at the people in the street below. We tossed it in the faces and on the heads of people walking and got into full out WARS with other trucks that dared to have water as cold as ours. The final day all my Thai friends and I crammed into the back of our friends' truck and took the streets from lunchtime until well after dark. We reached the river edge where there were stages set up for bands to play and we stood up in the back of the truck during the traffic jams and jumped up and down singing and dancing to our favourite songs by BigAss, Bodyslam, Silly Fools and other Thai bands. Most of the villagers who had come into the city danced at the river edge, drunk and much more outgoing than Thai people EVER are. They ran up to the trucks, plastering coloured baby powder on the pretty girls' faces and danced around carrying pitchers of beer in their hands. Red water, yellow water and ice water was tossed into the air, staining our shirts and some of the more rambunctious girls danced on top of barrels in bikinis.
By the time it was dark most of the city had gone home, the ice cold water leaving them shaking and in need of a warm shower despite the 40 degree weather. But we still kept driving - filling up our barrels with water from the gas station, filling the water with bags of ice and shrieking when we were sprayed with particularly cold water. We started to recognise the people who had ice water as we passed them for a eight or ninth time through the busiest areas of the town.

Songkran was an excuse to break physical barriers, laugh more than I thought physically possible and have the most fun I've ever had. My friends and I went into hysterics when we stopped suddenly and I fell over and got stuck in the bucket of water; when a few of the boys jumped out of the truck and chased a group of girls down the street with their water guns out; when our driver didn't realise they had gotten out and started moving without them; and as we watched them running down the street after us as we drove away.

If I only have one chance to return to Thailand it will be during Songkran; it is the true essence of Thai culture that I love, all wrapped up in the biggest party of history.

"So get out of your seats and jump around, jump around" - House of Pain

McCruelty

I just watched this video online that made me really upset about the McDonald's corporation. They used inhumane methods of killing their birds when it would cost them NOTHING to switch to methods in which the birds would not feel any pain.

Please, Please, PLEASE visit this website

http://www.mccruelty.com/

Watch the video, and then sign a "ready-made" message to McDonald's to ask them to switch over to more humane methods of killing their birds.

And, better yet - stop eating McDonalds and switch to healthier food.

Thanks so much

Down the Drain

You know that feeling when a bucket of cold water is dumped on you, freezing your inner core and sending a shock through your whole body? That's my shower in a nutshell. I have been living with my new family for 4 days now; of these 4 days, three of them the water has not been working. Therefore the toilets don't flush, the sink doesn't run, and I shower by pouring pails and pails of cold water on myself. Every once in a while the slow trickle of water in the sink downstairs will pour enough water to wash a few dishes. I've given up hope on my own personal bathroom. The water hasn't worked since I've moved in.

Pictures from the Southern Paradise Trip

I haven't put up pictures on this guy for a while. So, here you are!


Phang Nga Bay


James Bond Island (as seen in The Man with the Golden Gun)



Me and my lovely friends at James Bond island. (Our pose is not cliche at all)

Exchangers in Krabi

Krabi

Krabi

Jumping off the boat in Krabi

Krabi

Sea, sand and sky

I have returned from paradise and surprisingly, I am relieved.

All of the Rotary exchange students in district 3340 along with Papa P, P Dog and Smokey (Smokey's wife and son as well as P Dog's son came along for the ride as well) just came back from a two week trip to the South of Thailand. Our Never Never Land for 10 days had the clearest of clear waters - they turquoise reflection of the sky swam beautifully in the water amongst all the fish and sea life you could possibly imagine. I could not have dreamed up a more beautiful habitat. Large green islands sprang up through the water as we drove by in our speed boat, the sun bounced off the ripples in the water and lit up our faces as we stared in awe at the beauty surrounding us. Then there was the sand - a white stretch of silk for us to walk on along the shore of the bustling beach.

There were giant rocks to climb up and jump off of, stalactites hanging eerily in lagoons, natural caves that twisted and turned under water. I was locked in a book of paint chips; I could choose any colour I liked and see it first hand, in the flesh and blood. Choosing a colour for my bedroom back home would never have been easier.

Most of our time was spent snorkelling, roaming the beaches and jumping off the side of our fishing boat into the warm, living water beneath us. We started to jump from the lower deck, and as we took turns our fear of heights rushed away - we jumped from the top deck, off of the railings and finally... the roof. Two days and nights were spent on the Similan Islands - the most remote islands in Thailand, where we spent the days petting sea turtles, swimming with giant eels, playing in a coral playground and jumping into water so deep the only thing you could see was the rich blue of the water surrounding you. The sun drove through the water like daggers, leaving silvery trails of light beaming from above; the sea, appeared bottomless. We found poisonous salt water snakes, fish the width of my thigh and in every colour of the rainbow. Striped, spotted, blotched, big, medium, small, flatfish, round fish - they were all there. And one day... we found Nemo (not to mention all of his friends).

In the evenings we explored the island, climbing over rocks like daggers in our bare feet, clambering between jungle trees and scaring away hundreds of crabs. We found safe havens as the sea pushed up into a small pond where a miniature scale coral reef settled under the setting sun; likewise we found danger as we tried to find our way through all the boulders back to our beach. Some of us spent the nights on the beach, where through the haze of mosquitoes the sound of the waves lapping against the shoreline rocked us to sleep.

Our trip was not only to see the parts of Thailand that are secret, dear and preserved but to celebrate our time together. I became so close with so many people, made such wonderful friends, strengthened my relationships with others and I can't imagine the rest of my life without them. My friends mean everything to me, and I'd like to thank them for helping make my exchange, and our trips as amazing as they have been.

Though paradise is something I'll never forget, I love being home. Nakhon Phanom, though quiet, is the place I love the most in the world - my Never Never Land for the year. It feels lovely to be out of the hustle and bustle, to be free of salt water skin and to relax in the comfort of my bed with the sound of Thai country music playing from across the street. I've missed my family, neighbourhood and my city - and as of a week ago, I only have 4 months with them left.

"The depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity." - Boats and Birds, Gregory and the Hawk

FAMILY VACATION - edited

WEEK ONE - HEATHER SMITH

MONDAY FEBRUARY 23 - After 30 hours of travelling we arrived in Emma's city. Driving on the wrong side of the road was different as well as the heat. I think it was around 37 C which was a nice change from snow, but disgustingly hot. Once we settled in to our hotel, Emma showed us her current house and took us into town for Thai massages. I had never had any sort of massage before, but a Thai massage is very different from the ones at home, very painful but relaxing in the end. We were too hot to stay in the sun any longer so we headed back to our air conditioned hotel For dinner we went to a Korean BBQ with Emma's host mom and sister, which is a bucket of coals in the middle of the table covered by a grill. You go up like a buffet and pick what you want to cook (raw pork, chicken, veggies, noodles etc.) and bring it to the table and cook it yourself. For myelf, my mom, Ashley, Emma and her host family it cost 100 baht par person which is about $3.50 a person - and we ate a lot of food. After dinner we went to a Thai like Walmart (Tesco Lotus) to get stuff for us to have at the hotel, and had a great night's sleep.

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 24 - we slept in and caught up on some sleep, and heat out for lunch to where Emma said had the best pad thai. We ate on the river which boarders Laos and Thailand. It was a beautiful view. When we were done eating we took a Sam Law (Thai taxi) into town to the fresh market. They sold EVERYTHING there, I mean EVERYTHING! We all bought beautiful silk dresses there for CHEAP, and fruit for later. The heat was exhausting us and causing our clothes to stick to us, so we went for a swim at Suzanne's (Emma's exchange friend from the US) school to cool off. It was well needed. We freshened up before heading to Emma's Thai friends' house for dinner. Kate and Klao are twins and so adorable and friendly. We ate a huge meal of rice with soup, pour with peanut sauce, Veggie salad, and my mom's new favourite - sticky rice and mangoes. EEM MAK MAK KA! (Very very full!) We sat around and sang Thai karaoke and recieved very beautiful bracelets from their mom. We were very tired, Thai sun does that to you, so we went back to the hotel and passed out early.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25 - We were up and ready by 9:30 for Tony and Kaew to pick us up. They took us to an old Thai prison and a beautiful library in Nakhon Phanom, as well as temples on the river. On our way out of Emma's city we stopped at a temple that had a HUGE Buddha sitting on the roof. My guess is that it was a coupe hundred feet tall. We went to a chrimp farm for lunch, I think it was teh hottest day so far, so I didn't have much of an appetite, but my family seemed to enjoy it. After lunch we stopped at the hiding spot of Ho Chi Minh's house. For you who don't know he was a leader in Vietnam and he escaped to Thailand when the French invaded. The property was beautifully covered with plants and exotic flowers. We also saw the aquarium (Under Water World_ with lots of fish from the Mekong river. After a long afternoon of sightseeing I knew I needed some "normal" falang food so Kaew invited us for steak and potato salad which was well needed and delicious. A quick visit to Emma's first host family and back to the hotel for bed.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 26 - Tony and Kaew picked us up again (they were so good to us) and took us to the nicest temple so far. Buddha's original chest bone was in the roof which was made of 300 kilos of pure gold. We saw a museum of really ancient artifacts and headed to lunch (which we sat on the floor for). We went to a Thai Catholic church and a really big market, and saw the village that Kaew grew up in. The village made me realise how lucky we are to have the things we do, it was a very poor village, and it's sad to think people have to live like that. We got dropped back off in Emma's city and had noodle soup and crepes, then watched 2 movies at Emma's house before bed (Second Hand Lions and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2).

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 27 - We woke up and got ready and went to see Emma's school. The Thai kids are so kind and friendly. Her first host mom took us out for Vietnamese food, which has been my favourite so far. She also took us to the post office to mail postcards and to the bank. We went to an internet cafe to check our emails / facebook which cost 10 baht for an hour (35 cents). Then we went to a cool night market, where we bought too uch stuff and had a huge dinner at Emma's house. We watched House of Flying Daggers and head home early becuase we were waking up to feed the monks and pack to go to Bangkok the next morning.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28 - At 5 am we woke up to feed the monks. If you give the monks food you will not be hungry in your next life, if you give them money, you will not be poor and if you give them flowers you will be beautiful. Monks cannot eat past noon so they rely on the town people to give them food to eat in the morning. We went home and packed a bit and then went for breakfast at Emma's house. We watched Friends while waiting around until 11 when her 1st host parents were picking us up. We went to the King's park and fed fish while going for a nice walk. Afterwards they took us otu for a nice lunch on the river. We stopped to get locks for our suticases and notebooks to write in, said goodbye to her first host family and headed back to the hotel to finish packing. At 3pm Tony and Kaew (so nice!) picked us up and drove us to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. After safely arriving at the Bangkok airport we took a near death cab ride to the Holiday Inn. This guy was going about 130 km in a shuttle bus, dodging and weaving in and out of traffic. After settling into our hotel room, we hadn't ate dinner yet so we went down to the lobby, looked around and had a very nice buffet in the hotel. By that point we were so tired we went back upstairs and went to bed.

Thailand is such a welcoming country, with very kind people always offering food and gifts to their new friends. They are always smiling, always laughing and the happiest peopel I've met so far. The past 2 weeks have been an experience of a lifetime and hopefully one day I will return :)

WEEK TWO - ASHLEY SMITH

SUNDAY MARCH 1 - On our first day in Bangkok we caught the sky train to the JJ market. The market was as large as 6 football fields and had wonderful things to buy. We shopped around and then went for lunch at one of the resturants in the market. After we continued to shop and then took the sky train to the Siam Paragon mall. This mall had 7 floors , 6 Starbucks, a movie theatre inside and bell men to hold the doors open for you. We didn’t buy anything since it was full of stores which were too expensive to buy from for example Chanel, Giorgio Armani, etc. We went to Starbucks and chatted about what to do for the rest of the day and decided to go see a movie. We saw Confessions of a Shopaholic which was very funny. After the movie we went downstairs and had dinner at a fish and chips joint and then headed home for a swim in the hotel's pool.

MONDAY MARCH 2 - On Monday morning we woke up and packed for our trip to Ko Samed island. We then took a taxi to the dock where we would take a ferry to our resort. Once we had settled into our room we went for lunch and got massages. Emma had a thai massage, Mom had a leg massage and me and heather had oil massages. We all then got pedicures and manicures. After, we roamed around the resort waiting for Emma's Rotary friend Chris to show up. Heather and I then learned to ride motor bikes! It was a lot of fun!! After that we all went to dinner and shared food with each other. We had a furry friend sit near us all night so we named him Jasper. Since it was very hot on the island we took a swim in the pool and sat and talked for the rest of the night.

TUESDAY MARCH 3 - The next morning we woke up and had breakfast at the resort. It was nice to have eggs and sausages for once. In the morning we went to other side of the island (via motor bike) and swam in the water. It was really salty. Then Emma and I went jet skiing while Heather and Chris played pool and Mom tanned and waded in the water. We couldn’t stay long at the beach because we had to catch the ferry back so we could get the bus to Pattaya to see the elephant show. When we arrived in Pattaya Emma and Chris' friend Adrian's host parents drove us to the elephant show. We first watched a dancing show where Thai women danced on stage with fans and the men drummed on drums. It was really neat to see all the things they could do as well as their costumes. We had to leave that early so we could get good seats for the elephant show. It was really fun. We got to watch the elephants ride tricycles, play basketball, bowl, paint pictures and dance. We bought bananas so after each act the elephants came over to the stands so we could feed them. Their trunks were really ticklish! We each took turns being picked up by the elephants and got our pictures taken. We went to a Korean barbecue that night with Adrian's family and had a lot of fun. We then headed home to Bangkok on a taxi instead of a bus since we were all very sore from getting sunburnt.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 4 - Wednesday we went to Auttya the former capital of Thailand and saw a lot of the old temples that were destroyed during the war. It was really nice to see the different culture and hear the stories of each temple. Once we were back in Bangkok we went to Siam Paragon and had dinner at the fish joint again and had ice cream. They had some of the most random types of icecream and it was really hard to pick what to eat. After we went swimming in the lobby pool and hung around the hotel room.

THURSDAY MARCH 5 - Today was our Kachanaburi day tour! We got picked up by a taxi bus and were heading first to the floating market when heather got really sick in the taxi and we had to pull over. It was no fun for her since she wasn’t feeling well the rest of the day. When we went to the floating market we were driven around in a boat and pretty much went shopping. It was really interesting. After the floating market we went to the Bridge over the river Kwai cemetery where we saw all the graves of the people who were killed while building the bridge. It was really heartbreaking to see how many people died. We stopped for lunch at a little place near the tiger temple and watched a video about the tiger temple. At the tiger temple we walked a while until we saw a huge line up of people waiting to pet the tigers. Since we paid extra we got to skip the line and lie down with the tigers and get our pictures taken. It was very scary at first since the tigers aren’t drugged but since they are very tired from the sun most of them were fast asleep. We each got to sit with each of the tigers and have their heads in our laps. After we walked some more and got to the baby tigers! They were so cute! I wanted to take one home! After the tiger temple we went to ride elephants. It was really scary when they went down the hills cause it was steep but the man rididng the elephant let us take turns sitting on the elephants neck while they walked! It was a lot of fun. On the way home we stopped off at the bridge over the river kwai and walked along it. It was so beautiful but it was upsetting to see how many people died to build it. After that we headed home and went to dinner at the restaurant downstairs in the lobby. Mom and I had the steak sandwich, Heather had the turkey sandwhich and Emma had a Panini loaf. It was really good. After we continued to pack our stuff and then went to sleep for a few hours.

FRIDAY MARCH 6 - We woke up and continued packing and once we were done we caught a taxi to the airport where we hung around Starbucks until we had to leave. We said good bye to Emma and headed through the gates home. It was a long flight but since we got our own tv screen we were allowed to watch whatever we wanted so Heather and I watched twilight. Since Heather had an extra seat beside her we each took turns napping over two seats it was a better trip home then it was coming. Once we arrived in Toronto we collected our baggage and went to find Daddy. We didn’t have to wait long cause he had arrived early. It was really nice to see him and even though we had a wonderful trip it was nice to be home.

Weekend Cabana

I spent this past weekend with Suzanne and her American mother down in Bangkok and a small beach town called Cha-am. We spent Thursday to Sunday sleeping in, lazily wandering the town of Cha-am, renting a three person bicycle to ride to the market, lounging on beach chairs in the shade, going for Thai massages, shopping at Siam Paragon and JJ market, making a visit to Khao San Road [highly overrated] and sitting for 12 hours on a rickety, uncomfortable bus back to Nakhon Phanom.

It was a good time, and we even got the chance to drive by the King's house, some beautiful monuments and buildings in Bangkok at nighttime and at one point all the people along an entire intersection were pushed back to the walls, away from bridge ledges and traffic was completely stopped by policemen as the King drove by with his escort of 10 police cars with their sirens blaring.

A little bit different than Canada day when I shook Steven Harper's hand and told him to move over so I could see the Governor General. But that's Canada for you.

"My head is a box filled with nothing, and that's the way I like it" - Ben Lee

Same Same but Different - Written by Canadian Mama Bear

Wow, what an amazing adventure!
I can’t believe it’s over. I feel like we were away a long time.
After 36 hours of travelling we arrived in Emma’s city of Nakhon Phanom. It didn’t look just like I imagined. How could it really? The heat was hotter than I imagined as well!
And so, combining three VERY tired women with high heat and humidity, coming from Canadian winter, in a place not like home, made for some grumpy moments the first day or so. Culture shock, I guess they call it. As the week went on and we met Emma’s friends and families, and saw how happy and relaxed she was there, we got used to the city and the heat.

In Thailand, those who can speak some Englsih know the word “same” and so when they talk about something that is the same they say “same same”. Emma has found herself a Tshirt that says “same same” on the front and “but different” on the back. Thinking about Emma I have decided she is “same same, but different”. She is still our Emma, cute, funny, smart, independent, compassionate, and adventurous. She is “same same”.
She is “but different” because she has gained twenty pounds, her hair is brown (a wash out thing), she wears baggier clothing (helps with the heat), she is more grown up, more confident, more relaxed and she speaks Thai so well that she sounds like all the other Thai people to me ! It was so good to be with her for eleven days. At the airport when we arrived she told me she is proud to be Canadian, she misses Canada, and she is excited to come home, but she doesn’t want to leave Thailand. After spending eleven days with her, I know why.

It amazes me how much we saw and how much we did while we were in Thailand.
We ate Thai and Vietnamese food and I fell in love with sticky rice with mangoes. We shopped at fresh markets in the north and huge modern malls in Bangkok. We visited a small village in the middle of nowhere, and stayed at the ritzy Holiday Inn in Bangkok. We swam in the Gulf of Thailand, stayed at a resort on an island, and watched an elephant show and Thai dancing. We road elephants, petted tigers, and went to a floating market. We went to war memorials and the Bridge over the River Kwai. We spent time with Emma’s families and friends at their homes. We rode in sam laws and on the back of motorcycles. We were family. We laughed and we cried.

I would like to thank Rotary District 7080 in Canada and District 3340 in Thailand for giving Emma the opportunity to do this exchange. I would like to thank Emma for being brave enough to grasp the opportunity with all of her being. If it weren’t for her, we never would have had the opportunity to experience Thailand the way that we did.

The first couple days were a little difficult while adjusting to the culture and the heat, but as time went on we all came to love Thailand and enjoy ourselves.

Thailand is another world, but it is part of the same world we live in.
It is “same same”, “but different”.

Contact stuff

So, my old email [emma--elizabeth@hotmail.com] was hacked and therefore I cannot use it.
I now have a new email:

emma.elizabeth.s@hotmail.com

If you could therefore send any emails you wish to send to my new email that would be GREATLY appreciated, and to anyone who may ahve sent me an email in the past two weeks - I have not recieved it so if you could send it to my new email that would be GREAT!

SO sorry for the inconvenience

On a lighter note, I just want to remind you all that I have videos up on YouTube.

The link is: http://www.youtube.com/user/emma1elizabeth I have a bunch of videos up on there and I'm trying to get more up there every time I use the computer :)

Hope you enjoy!

Expectant Mother

All the rumours about weight gain on exchange are true; I know weigh 10 kg more, roughly the weight of two babies. I have decided to name my food children Khanom Pang Noei Nom [bread with condensed milk, butter and sugar] and Nam Neuang [a Vietnamese dish consisting of sausage rolled in rice paper with bananas, peanut sauce, starfruit and garlic].

"We are all in this together" - Ben Lee

Heart Stop

Sunday February the 22nd brings new falangs to The Land of Smiles: my mom and two sisters. I will be playing tourguide, native Thai and tourist for the next two weeks - experiencing things I never have before and showing my family the ropes on Thai culture and lifestyle. I have been planning what to wear to greet them at the airport for the past week; I haven't decided if I should reel them into the new me or just show up and let them have a mini stroke when the see how much I have changed.

I will not be posting for a couple weeks until they have left when I will post their journal entries from the week so you can see THEIR thoughts about Thailand [You must know how much I admire this country by now]. In the meantime - here is my Beavertale from this month to read. It has not been posted on the internet yet, but if you look up ROTARY BEAVERTALE on Google it should be up there in a few days

BEAVERTALE 2

A Rotary jacket is an exchange student’s canvas; a background for the colours and symbols that will shape our exchange and, in turn, ourselves. I wear my Rotary jacket with pride, excitement and modesty. My canvas has become one of intricate patterns, bold colours and stories of adventure. Every time I look at it I am reminded of the days that have passed and the blank areas probe my mind with inspiration for the future. The weight of my jacket now surprises me; looking at it brings back memories of all my exciting, crazy and wonderful travels. I can’t believe how many adventures I have partaken in, how many people I have met and how vividly every piece on my jacket reminds me of a specific moment in time.

Since my last Beavertale, life has changed from amazing to stellar [that would be the best word to describe it]; life is out of this world! Classes are now finished for the M6 students and instead everyone is up to their ears in study notes to prepare themselves for entrance exams this week. We will be on a summer break for just under three months and afterwards my friends will head off to Universities around the country to further their studies. I am only halfway through my exchange and still have many things to look forward to. I can’t help but tear up when my friends mention their departure from Nakhon Phanom. My classmates have become my best friends; I can rely on them, I have fun with them and I love going to school just to see them. It will be weird not being able to walk the block to my best friends’ shop and play guitar with them while singing our favourite Thai songs. Though their new beginning of education means they are leaving me, I am so terribly proud of them for being so successful; it is truly inspiring. When school restarts in May I will be repeating M6 with a whole new group of friends; it will be different, but I’m excited to meet even more people that I can rely on and have fun with.

In the past three months I have moved into a new family and in a month or so will be moving out. Time is moving by much too fast for my liking. My family now is everything I had ever imagined and more – I really connect with them and I will have a hard time leaving them. They are my family, my home and my friends. My house is much bigger than the last one, with four loving dogs that run to greet me when I unlock our giant gate. I love our golden retriever Sai Yo to no end; she gallops joyfully beside me as I walk up our massive driveway, often holding my shirt or hand in her mouth as we go. We also have a mutt named Khao Pun and two Chihuahuas – Loo Loo and La La. Not only does my family have pets, but I also have a little sister to spend time with unlike my first family. Mean is 14 and she loves to watch TV – I have broken into the habit of watching Thai soap operas with her while she helps me study Thai; in turn I help her check her English homework. My parents are adorable; my mom is a nurse and loves to teach me how to cook [she’s also continuously feeding me which has made it exceptionally difficult to fit in my jeans.] My mom’s little sister also lives with us and speaks very good English. I have the best conversations with her; she is a nurse as well and she loves to ask me all about the health system in Canada, the English words for certain medical terms and my opinion on various subjecsts. It is so refreshing to be able to actually talk with someone about such various topics and it has seriously increased my skill with Thai language.

In December Rotary took us on a trip around the Northeast and Greater North of Thailand. I experienced traditional Thai dining, Thai culture and Thai dance like never before. I went to see an elephant show, pandas in the Chiang Mai Zoo and many National and Historical Parks with breathtaking architecture. One of the highlights of the trip was a trip to the longneck hill tribes in Chiang Rai where children as young as 3 years old link heavy rings around their necks. It was my most compelling experience to date, but it was very unsettling. I felt like a tourist at a zoo while walking past all the women selling hand woven scarves; tears welled in my eyes when I met a toddler and her pregnant mother, both sporting rings around their necks while they posed and smiled for pictures. It was a way of life I could not fathom, and yet it stood before me as clear as day. That day will remain in my mind always, as I hope every day of this experience will. On our travels we stayed in absolutely gorgeous resorts, bargained underneath the bright lights of the Chiang Mai night bazaar and swam underneath waterfalls. Most importantly, I made friends that I will never forget, spent many nights I will remember forever and felt a happiness that filled inside of me, spilling over for days afterwards.

Christmas is not celebrated in Thailand, but the exchange students had the pleasure of spending the holidays together during the trip. Christmas Eve was spent in a clearing; we sent off fireworks and firecrackers, sat on the lawn while singing to guitar tunes and had bike races around the twisting pathways of the resort. Christmas Day was spent on a bus; in the evening we had a Secret Santa exchange, most of the exchange students called home to wish the best to their families and we spent the night singing and chatting in each others’ hotel rooms. As my dad is Chinese-Thai we celebrated Chinese New Year as well as the traditional Western New Year. New Years’ Eve I spent with my friends and the next day I spent lounging around the house. My dad’s entire family came over very early on February 6th and we prayed to his ancestors three times at a table laden with all kinds of food, from fruit to entire chickens; to fish stomach. Afterwards, Mean and I burnt fake Yen in a pot outside and made wishes.

For my birthday I went to the beach in Chanthaburi [a good 16 hour bus ride from Nakhon Phanom] with some exchange student friends and we spent the weekend playing football and soccer on the beach, swinging on ropes hanging from palm trees and jet skiing in the warm water of the Gulf of Thailand. It was my first birthday without snow or my twin sister but it turned out to be just as wonderful and all my friends gave me birthday hugs and well wishes as the clock struck midnight the night before. It was my friend Clayton’s birthday the day before mine so his parents bought us ice cream cake which ended up being shoved up my nose and tossed into my friends’ hair. It was definitely a birthday weekend to remember.

Life now follows a steady and comfortable pattern but it is nothing but dull. Every few days something sudden will happen, we will be visited by someone special or I will have plans to go and do something exciting with my friends. There are new obstacles that test my skill in Thai language and Thai culture everyday. Translating for patients at the hospital, booking plane tickets for my family to come visit next week, helping sell seaweed and fish sticks to children at my friends’ convenient store; the excitement is never ending. Just last week a monk came to our house and showed us pictures from his trek through the jungle in the North of Thailand. He stayed at our house for a few hours, cross legged on our couch while we sat at his feet on the floor. He told me all about Buddhism, taught me how to meditate and gave me a book and CD to help me practice. I now meditate with my aunt every night and I am making plans to be a Buddhist nun for a week in one of the temples in Nakhon Phanom. I have realised just how much I love Buddhism and I really connect with the beliefs of Buddhist people. Waking up early to present food for the monks and going to the temple to make merit is an important part of my life now; I particularly love having the monks and mechees teach me about Buddhism and how to disassociate my body from my mind.

The source of my new comfort zone is a feeling. A feeling of familiarity for all that is around me. I can’t explain it, but it is just IMPOSSIBLE for me to be angry or upset anymore. If anything throws me down, I bounce right back a few moments later and I can’t stop grinning from ear to ear. Living in this country, making new friends and experiencing a new culture that I put all my heart into has made me a truly happy person; an accomplishment I have made for the first time in my life. I feel peaceful and familiar with all my surroundings; I have become Thai.

There is no more for me to say at this moment except that I am having the time of my life; a fact I expected since the beginning of my exchange. I could go on for days and days about my experiences, about ordinary days with extraordinary incidents and all about my friends and family; I will save that for when I return and fail to keep quiet about “Thailand: The Most Stunning Year of my Life.” For now, I express my thanks again to everyone – my Rotary district in Canada, my Rotary district in Thailand, all my friends and family from both homes. I would not be taking on this exhilarating journey if it weren’t for you.

ไม่ว่าจะสูง แค่ไหนก็ไปถึง

ไม่มีคำว่าสูง วัดได้ถ้าใจถึง

จะหนาวเหน็บหนาวเพียงไหนจะฝ่าไป

ร้อนเป็นฟืนเป็นไฟจะฝ่าไป

No matter how high.. however high, I'll make it up there.
“High” means nothing. You can reach it if you're willing.
However cold, however freezing, I'll keep going.
The fire is hot. I'll keep going.

Seriously

The commenting is horrible.

ie. It is non-existent.

Let's fix that, shall we?

"If I were your girl would you be my guy?" - Ingrid Michaelson

The Miracle of Life

Wednesday morning I woke up and was eating an apple for breakfast when my mother started yelling for my sister; our Chihuahua "Loo Loo" had given birth in the night and my mother was watering the plants when she found one of the puppies that had not made it. Mean and I ran around our lot looking for Loo Loo and found her under a bush with two healthy, blind and adorable puppies. I carried the puppies to plastic box that we lined with old clothes and now the puppies and Loo Loo are safe in their box on our kitchen floor. They haven't opened their eyes yet; they wriggle around in the box and Loo Loo continually licks them and whimpers if you pick them up. She is making a wonderful mother.

We still don't know what type of dog the puppies will turn out to be; all of our dogs are female [for the purpose of them not giving birth] but somehow Loo Loo managed to become pregnant and produce two adorable girl puppies. It is a mystery.

I'm so excited to watch the puppies grow up while I am living with this family, and even after I switch families [I don't know where to yet] I will come back and visit them.

"There's nothing I can do that you can't do yourself" - The Bright Eyes

The End

The end of this school year is coming to a close leaving cause for celebration. Yesterday all of the students in M6 and M3 came to school early to make merit to the monks as they get ready to move onto the next journey in their lives. After making merit and a normal role call ceremony the flowers came out. Everyone was pulling out roses and giving them to their friends - it was like Valentine's Day except that it was on steroids and it wasn't the 14th of February. By the end of the day I had a bouquet of flowers, 5 long stemmed roses, three lollipops, a neck chain of fake money and a handful of candy.

All the students except for M6 and M3 left to go study and the rest of us stayed on the blacktop and prayed, chanted and waied some more. Afterwards we all made merit by placing one of our roses at the base of "Phra Piya" [the statue of Piyamaharachalai], wai-ing and then forming a line in our class. I am in M6/6 and when it was our turn we walked towards the big hall we would be having our party in and were greeted by all the students of M5/1. We walked through an archway to an overhang with coloured ribbons hanging from it and the M5/1 students crowded around us chanting our school song and handing us more flowers and candy. My friends started to cry.

We all took our places on the floor in the entrance hall and after many speeches from our teachers, director and a monk from the nearby Wat we started the Bai See ceremony. Everyone crowded on the floor, we layed our hands on the back of the person in front of us and the monk lit incense and candles; he said a prayer, chanted and then we ran around the hall taking pictures and having people bless us with the ceremonious pieces of string. When I saw my friends and blessed them I started to cry - I am not leaving yet, but they are leaving me. This week as well as next will be the last time I will see many of them, as they are all going off to University in April and I may not see them over the school break.

We took a lunch break and took hundreds of pictures outside where M5/1 had created a bunch of backgrounds for us to photograph around. There was a giant congratulations sign, a pink and yellow board made of balloons with superhero speech bubbles that had phrases written on them and two giant tshirts with our school emblem on them. After lunch, more picture taking, rose handouts and crying we returned to the hall where our classmates put on a concert for us with all of the most popular Thai songs. It was amazing. There were 4 boys who took turns singing and we were all jumping around and screaming at the front of the stage while some of them tried to jump off into the crowd; they almost made it.

Coming back to school in May will be different - my friends will have left me, I will make a whole new group of friends, and it will be that much closer to my return home. I look back now and wish I had spent more time at school and with my Thai friends than I did. I love them with everything and all of me; they are the kindest people in the world.

"You'll always be my best friend" - Relient K

[I will update this blog post tonight with a little more writing and pictures]

A Weekend of Sorts

This past weekend was full of many small adventures.

My friend Mason, originally from South Carolina and currently living in Khon Kaen came up to visit me and spent the weekend at my house. We spent the weekend watching movies, eating at my favourite Khanom shops and going to the internet cafe. It was relaxing, and very normal everyday life for myself; he however was quite sick of the quiet of Nakhon Phanom and I'm sure he was happy to go back to the hustle and bustle of Khon Kaen. I don't mind, I love Nakhon Phanom.

On Saturday morning Mason decided to sleep in and Suzanne and I went to a 5 year anniversary of the death of P Kaew's mother. Like all Buddhist ceremonies there was lots of food, lots of people and monks. For this particular ceremony there were 5 monks and each was given breakfast and a present after the ceremony. I wondered how one person could possibly eat that much food to themselves, but they are only allowed to eat before 12 pm so they must be pretty hungry. We spent a while praying and chanting [I have started to recognize some of the chants in the repeating pattern and try my hardest to speak along with everyone else], then the monks took branches dipped in water and sprayed us with them. The whole time while they waied they had a piece of string lined across their hands. I really love ceremonies like this, I feel so fresh afterwards.

Sunday morning Mason and I went with my host family to Phra That Phanom where there was a big fair going on. Usually when you make merit at a temple you have three incense sticks, a candle and a bunch of flowers that you put in different places and you wish on each before you do so. There were so many people at the temple that they had bonfires set up that you placed your entire bundle of items in. Smoke, chatter and laughter filled the air while we made merit and I started to feel quite claustrophic. We didn't even take our shoes off before entering the temple becuase there was no way we could have found them on the way out. After making merit we wandered through the countless stalls while merchants called out to us. I bought a Rubix cube and that was it. We also stopped to play with a bunch of baby bunnies; I asked my mom if I could buy one but she said "Sai Yo will eat it." I wouldn't want our golden retriever to eat my bunny, so I reluctantly left them behind.

Sunday night my host family set up a dinner party in our driveway with straw mats set up on the concrete and Korean BBQs set up. My parents', aunt's and sister's friends were there as well as Mason and Suzanne. We sat on the mats eating until we were so full it hurt and laughing throughout our conversation. It was wonderful - I love Thai dining.

Last night was Buddha's birthday, a day off school and a day for everyone in all of Thailand to go to the temple. Three laps of the temple, three sticks of incense, a bunch of orchids and two little yellow candles - we were anew. It felt wonderful to be a part of such a celebration. Tonight there will be monks coming to visit my aunt and she is going to take me as well to learn about Buddhism and how to meditate. We will also go to give them food in the morning. Buddhism has reached out to me; Thai ceremony has touched me in many ways. I love going to the temple, making merit, giving food to the monks and taking part in special ceremonies. It feels comfortable, it feels fresh, I feel accepted into their celebration.

"It is not how we are the same, but how we are different"