End in Sight

For the past couple of weeks, my work load at UHDP has been steadily decreasing as I prepare to go back to the states (not that I had tons of work to begin with), which has been nice because it has given me the opportunity to spend more time working with the staff at UHDP and even go visit my friend Karen in Phnom Penh for a week.

I realize that I haven’t been keeping people updated on the various projects that have been keeping me busy while I’ve been at UHDP, but I guess that’s because I’ve been relating my experience here with the people I’ve come to know and the places that I’ve been. However, I have spent a lot of time experimenting with growing vegetables around the house, trying to raise ladybugs as well as conducting a bird survey.
- Experimenting in the garden around the house was a great learning experience for me since I have never grown vegetables in a climate like Northern Thailand’s, and half of the vegetables that I grew I had never even heard of before. We had a lot of success growing vegetables in the sunken bed in the back of our house even though Ajaan Tui and Apot laughed when they first saw it and said that it wouldn’t work. The raised container gardens that we had in the front of the house worked really well too. To no surprise, we found that the vegetables grown in UHDP’s potting soil mix grew much better than the veggies grown in the soil from the forest and around the house.
- During the time that I spent in the organic gardens at UHDP as well as the garden beds around my house, one of the major pests that kept popping up were aphids. Aphids were seen damaging a variety of plant species, so when I finally saw some ladybird beetles feeding on the aphids, I collected some of the beetles to try and reproduce them in captivity. However, raising the beetles in captivity proved to be extremely difficult, and I didn’t get very far with the project. I tried feeding the ladybird beetles with various types of artificial food, but the artificial food only partially worked. The food was enough to keep the beetles alive, but it wasn’t nutritious enough to cause the beetles to reproduce. Reproduction was the goal since the ladybird larvae have ferocious appetites for aphids (as do the adults), but the larvae don’t have wings to fly away with and are forced to eat the aphids in your garden.
- The bird survey I conducted at UHDP kept me busy on most days, and I was able to gather a lot of information about the different types of birds in the area. In total, I observed 46 different bird species on UHDP’s property, which is pretty impressive seeing as how UHDP only has 14 acres. I was able to compare the diversity of bird species at UHDP with one of the surrounding orange orchards, and I found that the orange orchard only contained 14 different bird species even though the orange orchard must have been at least 4 times the area of UHDP. I could go on, but I realize that not everyone is interested in this stuff as I am. I’ll finish this section by leaving you with the names of my five favorite bird species at UHDP. If you are interested you can copy and paste the name into google images to get an idea of what they look like. My top five: crimson sunbird, indian roller, short billed minvet, black-naped monarch, and the scarlet-backed flowerpecker.

As much fun as my different projects have been at UHDP, I enjoy when other random things pop up at UHDP that take me away from the normal routine, and a few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go visit a friend of mine from Calvin, Karen Genzink, who is currently interning at International Justice Mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. IJM is an amazing organization that works to stop sex trafficking, and it was great to see where Karen works and inspiring to hear about some of the stories of girls being rescued. Karen and her roommate, Roya, were kind enough to let me stay in the extra room that they have at their apartment, and I was able to get a sense of what everyday life is like in the city of Phnom Penh. It was great to be back in Cambodia again and explore Phnom Penh and get reacquainted with the city since all of the places I went to in Cambodia two years ago have gotten all mixed up in my head. The one weekend I was in Cambodia Karen, Roya, and one of their co-workers, Lisa, and I went down to the city of Kep, which is on the coast of Cambodia, and I got to see a whole new side of Cambodia that I had never seen before. Kep is a nice quiet town with a crab market, great little places to eat, islands to boat out to, and great scenic views! Karen, Roya, Lisa and I spent a day hiking around one of the small mountains in Kep, and we ended the hike by running up the mountain to catch a view of the sunset with just a few minutes to spare. We also had a great day on the beach at one of the nearby islands enjoying some of the seafood and getting a little sun burnt. All in all, it was an amazing trip that I’m thankful I was able to take before I left South East Asia, and I’m jealous that Karen and Roya are just starting their internship and have many more months left in Cambodia.

As my time draws to a close at UHDP, I have been spending as much time with the staff as possible. Since I am wrapping up my projects at UHDP and have less and less work to do, I have been spending my extra free time helping out with other random projects going on at UHDP. Most of my wrap up work has kept me inside, so it was nice to get out and work with the UHDP students (Eak, Ong, Waen, and Suphanat) this past week and help out with things like making mud bricks for the adobe house or putting up shingles on the shack for the cows. Recently, the guys have started playing a game called takraw after work, and I have had a fun/embarrassing time learning to play the game with them. Takraw is sort of a mix between hackey sack and volleyball because you use your feet and head to volley a small ball back and forth over a net. I’m pretty bad with my feet, so I have learned to stand at the net and let the ball hit me in the head and drop down on the other side since I’m much taller than the net is. Needles to say, the guys get a good laugh out of my tactics. I’ve had a great time hanging out with the guys and getting to know them a bit, so saying goodbye will be hard, but all I can do right now is enjoy the time I still have left with them.

I can’t believe that as I post this entry I only have a little over a week left at UHDP. I have come to absolutely love the time that I have been fortunate enough to spend at UHDP, and it doesn’t seem right that I will be leaving so soon. I have a going away party to look forward to this week, and other than that I’m preparing myself mentally for the transition back into American culture. It will be difficult to transition back into life at home; however, I am really looking forward to seeing friends and family once again.

Natural Farming

Sorry it has been a while since I have written anything on here, but I hope that you have had the chance to look through all of the pictures that I have been uploading to my blog in the meantime.

Last week, I had the chance to travel down to Chiang Mai with four other staff from UHDP to attend a natural farming seminar hosted by the SEED (something to eat every day) Project. There was a total of about seven or so other NGO’s that attended the seminar, and we all came together to learn more about how we can serve those in need through gardening and other sustainable farming techniques. The first couple of says were spent teaching everyone how to start their own organic garden, which was a lot of old information for UHDP since organic gardens have been a integral part of UHDP for years now. However, UHDP was able to gain a lot of knowledge about how to make various organic liquid fertilizers by using farm wastes and other cheap materials towards the end of the week. It was encouraging to see an organization like SEED that is involved with educating people on how to grow vegetables with whatever land they have and how to do it organically and sustainably. However, while I was talking with one of the presenters from SEED, I found out that they require the communities that they work with to convert to Christianity before SEED will share their information and technology with the community. I was saddened when I heard this since I would think it would be hard to tell what the community’s real reason for converting to Christianity was if the technology is only presented after the conversion of a community. I was able to share a bit about what UHDP does within the hilltribe communities that we work with, and that UHDP would not have gotten very far within the Buddhist-Animist hilltribe communities if UHDP required the villages to convert to Christianity first. I learned a lot while I was at the seminar, and I know that SEED is a great organization that is doing a lot of good things, and that they are working hard to educate people from Nepal all the way to the Philippines.

Spending the week down in Chiang Mai with the four other UHDP staff was a great opportunity for me to spend a lot more time with them, and it allowed me to put my Thai language skills to the test since none of the staff that I went with could speak English. I traveled down to Chiang Mai with Pi Singhkam, Chai, Ek, and Pi Dah. I ended up staying at Pi Singhkam’s little sisters house for the week with the three guys, and Pi Dah stayed at her sister-in-law’s house for the week. I got to spend a lot of time with Ek in the back of the pickup truck as we rode around town each day, and it was also great to just be able to sit around at night and drink tea with the guys as we watched soccer highlights, the news, or crazy Thai shows about witches and vampires. I have to say the acting in Thai TV shows is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I was able to learn a bunch of new Thai words as I rode around with Ek and watched TV with the guys, but I still consider myself lucky if I’m able to pick out two or three words when Pi Singhkam talks to me. When Pi Singhkam talks, he talks so fast that what he is saying just sounds like noise to me still. Talking with Ek is great, though, because he knows that he has to talk like a four year old in order to communicate with me. The students (Ek, Ong, When, and Suphanat) have had to learn the Thai language recently as well, so I find talking with them to be a bit easier since they have a better understanding of the Thai words that I actually know. I really wish I could jump into a conversation at ease by now, but it has been great to learn from and talk with the students even though the level of communication can be quite primitive at times. Even though I am no Thai language pro, I’m glad that I have been able to progress a little with the language, and I’m at the point right now where I am trying to cherish the time that I have left at UHDP.

Out of the Ordinary

Working and living at UHDP can sometimes feel like I’m trapped in a bubble, so I usually look forward to any sort of activity that breaks up the normal pace of work at UHDP. The past two weeks have been anything but normal at UHDP as they have been packed full with a lot of different activities as well as a lot of visitors.

Two weekends ago, Armando (Kim and Ruth’s boss from the states) came to UHDP so that he could see and experience for himself everything that is happening at UHDP. Armando works for Floresta, which is an NGO that UHDP has been working with for the past couple of years, but UHDP and Floresta have only just recently made the partnership official. There were a lot of kinks that needed to be worked out between Floresta, UHDP, and the interns, so having Armando here was a great time for Kim, Ruth, and I to explain our experience living at UHDP so far and give suggestions for how the intern program could be improved. Armando, Kim, Ruth and I were also able to get out and explore Fang a bit more, and it felt great for me to have a guy in the group that I could just talk with about things like sports for a change.

Last week, everyone at UHDP was busy with hosting the two student groups that were visiting. One of the student groups came through the organization Thinking Beyond Borders, and the other student group came on their own. Thinking Beyond Borders accepts high school seniors who have just graduated, and gives the students the opportunity to travel all around the world for a year and learn about the development issues in the area where they are staying. I really enjoyed helping out with the activities at UHDP last week because both of the student groups got really involved and were interested about what happens at UHDP. Now that I’ve been at UHDP for a few months, I was able to help out with the activities a lot more and answer more of the questions that the students would bring up. On one of the days, I was able to help Geut and Ajaan Tui show the students how to make pig feed, compost and neem, and explain how they fit in with everything else on the farm. I learned a lot about how the plants in the agroforest are used by hilltribe people by tagging along on the tours with the students since I was never given a formal tour of the agroforests myself. And in traditional fashion, we killed another pig towards the end of the students stay at UHDP, and I was impressed with the willingness of the students to get involved and learn about how important pigs are in the hilltribe culture. A student even helped Apot stab the pig in the heart this time! Having so many people around who liked getting their hands dirty and who had a genuine interest in UHDP’s work picked my spirits up and made the whole week a lot of fun.

The past week was also better than normal because the cold season festival was being held in Fang all week long. At this point, I feel like I have a better understanding of hilltribe culture than I do of Thai culture so it was great to get out and see what Thai people do at night in and around Fang for a change. The festival reminded me of a city fair back home, but instead of Ferris wheels, cotton candy, and elephant ears there were noodles, dried squid, and a techno club. The main attraction each night was a concert, and there were some big names that came to the festival. The first night that I went Prik Thai was performing, and I was surprised as to how crazy the people in the crowd became. The lead singer of the band was a girl so a lot of the guys in the crowd would find a friend’s shoulder to ride on, take off their shirt, and twirl it around in approval. It was quite funny to watch. The second time I went Golf and Mike were playing, but we didn’t get to see the whole show because we arrived in Fang kind of late. The concert Golf and Mike put on was also a lot of fun, but they were a hip hop band so it took me a little longer to get into the music. They put on a good show, but I thought that the outfits that the band members were wearing were the best part of their act…..

To top it all off, I was able to go to Alop’s wedding last weekend. The wedding was a traditional Palaung wedding, which consisted of Alop and his party walking from his village, Huay Sai Gaow, all the way to the village of Huay Wai, which is the village that his bride, Ngun, was from. I headed to Huay Wai with other UHDP staff and met up with everyone at Ngun’s house. Everyone gathered at the Ngun’s house for a ceremony where friends offered Alop and his wife money and tied their hands together with string. Once the ceremony at Ngun’s house was over, everyone headed back to Huay Sai Gaow for the actual wedding. The wedding was held in Alop’s house and was mainly a communal acknowledgement that Alop and Ngun were husband and wife. I couldn’t understand anything that was being said because it most mostly in the Palaung language, but I was still glad I could be at Huay Sai Gaow with everyone to celebrate Alop’s wedding.

It’s back to normal old UHDP again, and it feels good to have it a bit quieter around here again. However, I do have a barbeque at Rick Burnet’s (founder of UHDP) house this weekend to look forward to down in Chiang Mai, so my normal routine at UHDP will soon be interrupted again.

Tropical Christmas

The Holiday celebrations started a bit earlier for me this year than normal. The Christmas party with the staff at UHDP was held on the 18th of December, and the day consisted of another pig killing in the morning with songs and a white elephant gift exchange at night. Most of the day was spent preparing the food and decorations for the party at night. And I must say that it was very different to have palm branches as Christmas decorations. The gift exchange was a lot of fun, and everyone started getting into it when people started stealing the good gifts that were already available. There were a few gifts that kept getting taken from people, but everyone was a really good sport about it. I ended up stealing a cup and a plate for our house from Alop, and I was fortunate enough to keep it until the end. It was great to have a party with everyone at UHDP, but it was also kind of sad because that was Katy’s last day at UHDP.

Once it actually reached Christmas time, things got a bit more relaxing. Christmas Eve was the day that the other interns and I got to be bums and act like we were on vacation. We made our Christmas breakfast that morning and treated ourselves to some french toast with bacon and eggs. For the rest of the day, we watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy and snacked on the food that we got as gifts from one another. On Christmas Day, the other interns and I were invited over to Ajaan Tui, Pi Dah, and Lek Lek’s house for dinner. I ended up making nachos on Christmas for the first time since I’ve been here, and Ruth made a Canadian dish called punteene, which is just french fries with gravy and melted cheese on top. Ajaan Tui is not a big fan of American food so there were also a few stir-fried Thai dishes for dinner as well. It wasn’t the typical Christmas meal that I’m used to, but the meal was still very good and we all ended up getting extremely full. After dinner, Pi Dah took Kim, Ruth and I to her church in her Lahu village where we got to experience the Christmas celebrations going on there. It was a great day overall, and it was good to be able to spend Christmas with the other interns and Ajaan Tui’s family since they have kind of become my family here at UHDP.

New Years was a whole new experience as well. Ruth, Kim, and I were able to spend the New Years with Wah at her Karen village, which is located up in the mountains about 5 hours west of Chiang Mai. It was quite a trek to get there, and I ended up riding in the back of a pickup truck the whole way there. We eventually got to Wah’s older sisters house where we stayed for a few nights, which was in a village only a few miles away from the village where Wah grew up. While staying with Wah’s sister, we visited the school that Wah went to when she was a little girl, and her school gave me the chills because it reminded me of the schools in Cambodia that I saw that had been converted into execution and torture facilities during the Khmer Rouge era a few decades back. On New Years Eve, we left Wah’s sisters place and headed to the village where Wah grew up and where most of her family still lived. We got to meet her Father (who had remarried after Wah’s mom died giving birth) older sister, younger brother, and an older brother. I learned that Wah is one of nine children and that she had been a compassion child growing up, which allowed her to continue school and look for opportunities outside of her village. It turns out that Wah is the most educated out of all of her siblings, and her younger brother is the only one who has also gone on to study outside of the village where they grew up. When the village got together for the New Years Eve celebration, I could tell that some of the younger people had come back to the village from the city, and Wah told me that more and more people are looking for opportunities outside of the village. The New Years Eve celebrations that night started fairly early in the evening and went until an hour or so past midnight. Everyone gathered together around little fires at the church up on the hill where people sang songs and handed out prizes until midnight. Kim, Ruth, and I were even called up to sing a few songs for everyone. The entire celebration that night was all in the Karen language, so I couldn’t understand a word of what was being said, but it was nice to spend the night around a fire, and ring in the New Year by watching the second hand tick on a clock. When it finally reached midnight, one of the village leaders got up in front and asked a blessing for the New Year while others kept on with the usual singing, and then people gradually started heading back to their homes to call it a night.

I knew to expect that the holidays this year were going to be very different from what I’m used to, but I had no idea how different they were going to be. For the past couple of years, the Holidays have been a time for me to recover from the school semester plus exams, eat a lot of good food, and spend much needed time with my family. But this year was spent with people I have only recently met, and at places I have never been to. I’m used to spending Christmas in very familiar places, and I did get homesick at times, but I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with the staff at UHDP for the Holidays. I felt very welcomed everywhere I went, and it was nice to be able to celebrate the Holidays in a different way than normal and just be a part of the celebrations in the hilltribe communities in Northern Thailand.

Sports Weekend

A few weekends ago I had the chance to travel down to Chiang Dao(a city half way between Fang and Chiang Mai) with everyone from UHDP for the annual sports weekend event organized through the Palaung Village Network. It’s a pretty big event because Palaung villages from all over Northern Thailand come to Chiang Dao for this event, and there were even two Katchin villages that came for the first time this year. There were fourteen different villages represented at the event with a total of around 500 villagers all together. The sports weekend is a really big deal for the Palaung villages because it provides an opportunity for the villages to all come together as one big community, embrace their culture, compete against one another, and cheer for their village’s football team.

The football games were the highlight of the event, and were taken very seriously by most of the villages (hilltribes aren’t allowed to sign up for Thai football leagues, so this village gathering is one of the times that they can get together to compete against other teams). The guys at UHDP had been practicing quite a bit leading up to the games, and they would play football every day after work. I made the mistake of playing with them after work because they were able to gather that I was pretty bad at football, and I didn’t make the cut for sports weekend. I had a lot of fun playing with them, and I think I got a little better from playing with them, but that still doesn’t mean much. It would have been fun to play with the guys because the games often got very intense with players having to be carried off of the field, but I still had fun watching and cheering on UHDP’s team.

I wasn’t left out of the games completely because I had the chance to compete in some of the relay races that they held. There were races on stilts, races where you had to balance things on your head or carry chunks of banana trees in baskets, and also a race where you had to role a tire with a stick, which is the race that I was a part of. I was on a relay team with Ruth, and neither one of us had ever been apart of a relay race where you had to role a tire across a field, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. We definitely didn’t win the race, but it was just a lot of fun to be a part of all the games that were going on.

I uploaded some of the pictures I took throughout the weekend for everyone to check out. It’s little events like this that have been one of the best parts about living in Thailand at UHDP, and that weekend is something I will never forget.

Giving Thanks

It is thanksgiving and thanksgiving always means a lot of food even in Thailand. Normally, Thai people don’t celebrate thanksgiving at all, but since there are four foreigners at UHDP right now, we made sure to have some sort of thanksgiving together. We had a mixture of American and Thai food at our meal such as sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, and pad thai. We weren’t sure if the staff would like some of the American dishes that we prepared, but they all said that they liked it and all the food was eaten. It was a much different Thanksgiving than I’m used to since I wasn’t with any family members at all and there was no football game afterwards, but it was still a great feeling to see everyone enjoy food that is very rarely eaten here.

I love the times when we all get together to eat food at UHDP, and when we get together, we eat a lot. Every now and then UHDP hosts groups that come to learn about the work that UHDP is involved with on site and in the surrounding communities, which means that we end up having to feed the groups of people as well. The food is a lot less spicy when student groups come, but the food is still very tasty. So far, we have had two student groups from ISDSI and one group from Payap University come and study at UHDP. The students come and learn how to gather food from the forest, make feed for the animals, make compost, and kill and prepare a pig for dinner. By coming to UHDP, the students get an idea what it’s like for the hilltribes to live and survive in Thailand.

The hilltribes of Thailand are a very marginalized people, and entire villages are often given just enough land to grow the amount of rice needed to make ends meet. Occasionally, the hilltribes are told that they will only be able to live on a certain piece of land for a little while and that they must move when the Thai government tells them to. The Thai government can do this because the hilltribes lack citizenship rights, and the lack of ownership of the land that the hilltribes live on often leads to significant ecological damage of the land, which is one of the reasons UHDP works so hard to provide citizenship rights to the hilltribes in Thailand.

The hilltribes in Thailand do not have the luxury of going to the store to buy a packaged piece of meat nicely cut up for them. The hilltribes have to raise their own food, kill it, and cut it up themselves, so that is one of the things the students get to partake in. A pig for the hilltribes is one of the few sources of protein available to them, and it is also a great source of income for the hilltribes if they choose to sell the pig in the market. The pigs that we have killed at UHDP have all been from the village of Huay Sai Gaow so far, which is where Apot, Geut, and Nong Pon are from. The entire activity of killing the pig, cutting it up, and cooking it only takes a few hours.

It’s really unsettling to eat the meat that I saw scream in pain as it was being killed only a few hours ago. There is no getting around the fact that I’m eating the meat of a pig. I eat pork all the time, but after watching the pig get killed, I know I’m eating pig and, and I don’t think of the meat as just being pork. I’m sure the same would be true if we killed cows here too. I wouldn’t think of the meat as beef. I would think of it as cow meat. It takes a minute or two for the pigs to be killed, as they are first clubbed in the head to knock them out and then stabbed in the heart with a knife. It’s not the most humane process in the world, but it’s the only and most efficient way of killing a pig the hilltribes have. I’m definitely more appreciative of the meat that is on my plate at the end of they day now, and so in this thanksgiving season, I have a much different idea of what it means to be thankful for my food.

Hard at Work

It has been a whole three weeks now since I’ve been back ay UHDP after studying in Chiang Mai, but it seems like I just got back. It is really nice being back and knowing that I’ll be staying at UHDP for the rest of my stay here and that I won’t have to get up and move again. The past three weeks have been spent trying to figure out how the work I will be doing will fit in with the grand scheme of things at UHDP, as well as trying to improve my Thai after having studied the language for a month.

Learning the Thai language has been a slow process so far, but I have enjoyed the challenge. It hasn’t been easy to improve my language skills at UHDP because I haven’t been forced to speak Thai like I thought since I've been back. There are now a total of four interns working at UHDP so UHDP has a much different and busier feel to it than it did before I left. I have enjoyed being able to talk with the other interns in English, but it has definitely come at the cost of improving my Thai. Two of the interns, Ruth and Katy, are much more accustomed to Thai culture and are able to converse quite well in Thai, while Kim and I still struggle a bit since we have only recently been exposed to the language. I have found that the staff at UHDP will often seek out Ruth or Katy to tell them what is going on since it would probably fall on deaf ears if they came to me or Kim. However, I can tell that my Thai has improved since I’ve been back, and I have to keep reminding myself not to be too hard on myself. I am now able to pick up the topic of conversations during meals, and every now and then add a little something to the conversation – that is if the conversation hasn’t moved on to the next topic before I’ve figured out how to say what I want to say in my mind. I have also been able to improve my reading skills by translating the lyrics of some of the Thai music cd’s that I bought in Chiang Mai. I’ve translated the song titles for each of the three cd’s and an entire track on one of the cd’s, and I think it has helped because I was able to follow along when we got together to sing songs for our Wednesday morning devotionals this past week. It has definitely been nice to talk about cultural struggles with the other interns, and they have been supportive because they know exactly what I’m experiencing. It’s encouraging when Ruth or Katy tells me that it took them forever to get comfortable with the language and that it will come with time. Even though learning the language has been frustrating at times, I’m staying positive about it all, and I know that I have to be patient and accept the fact I probably won’t be comfortable with the language even by the time I have to leave.

The big project that I have been working on since I got back from Chiang Mai up until now has been to dig out garden beds around the house Kim, Ruth, and I are living in so that we can start growing vegetables during the cold season. The cold season lasts from November until the end of January where the temperature will still be around 70°F during the day and get down into the 40’s at night. I’ve never started working on putting in a garden at the end of October before, but I kind of like it. However, I do really miss the fall colors back in the states. My summer just isn’t ending this year….So far, I’ve dug and planted everything that we are going to grow in the front yard, and the beds in the back are ready to be planted. In the front yard, we have a bed of long beans, tomatoes, pak-bong (not sure what it is in English), radish, celery, cilantro, basil, and luffa. I also put in a raised bed on top of the section in the front yard that was covered with cement, and we are going to try growing pak-bong and Chinese kale in the three different soil types we have. The three different soil types that we are experimenting with are soil from the forest, the nursery potting soil mix, and the hard clay from around the house. In the back, a sunken bed has been prepared so that we can compare it with a raised bed, and we also have a bed that has been amended with a banana tree stalk as a fertilizer. These beds haven’t been planted yet, but we will probably plant things like lettuce and green onions in the beds in the back. The only things that have been planted in the back are a few squash and eggplants. The garden has been a fun project to play around with and make into whatever we want it to be, and I’m very interested to see what works and what doesn’t. We had very little room to work with around the house, and the space that was available consisted of extremely hard clay. Our goal was to try and simulate what a garden would look like in a village without much space, and I think we did a pretty good job of reaching our goal and using the space that’s available.

I have also been busy the past couple of weeks figuring out what kind of work I will be doing for the next five months at UHDP. Last week I wrote up a proposal for Ajaan Tui (my boss) about the different projects that I will be working on so that I could see everything organized for myself and receive feedback from him. I didn’t receive much feedback, but he told me it looked good. So it turns out that in addition to the garden project around the house, I will be conducting a bird survey for UHDP in order to gain some knowledge about the biodiversity that is supported by the agroforests at UHDP. I’ve really enjoyed this project so far because it is something that I’ve done a few times before in the states, so I feel like I’m in my element with this project. The bird survey has been a great way to explore the grounds at UHDP even more, but I do have to make sure that I douse myself in mosquito repellent before I head out into the forest each morning. I don’t know any of the bird calls in Thailand so I’m relying solely on the bird book I have to identify the birds by sight. I’m finding it to be quite difficult to get a good look at the birds as they fly from one bamboo stand to the next, but I have seen some really cool birds so far, and I’ve started to become familiar with some of the more common species. I’m also working on pest management research in the organic gardens at UHDP and will be putting an insect database together of both the harmful and beneficial insects that I find in the gardens. Right now I have a few caterpillars and eggs that I’m rearing in order to figure out what they turn into, and later on, as more beds are planted, I will probably be doing some research with crop row covers that help protect the plants from insects.

I’m still in a period of adjustment, and I figure that I will be continuing to adjust to things as they come up for the rest of my time here. I still have so much to learn here, but I’m really glad that I have some projects to work on and keep me busy. The pace of life here and my lack of knowledge of how things work can make me feel extremely unproductive at times, but, hopefully, I can become more productive as time goes on and I continue to adjust. But for now, I’m content with where I am.

Chiang Mai

Today was my last day of taking Thai lessons at ISDSI and I’m heading back to UHDP tomorrow. I could spend the next couple of months studying the Thai language and still have a lot more to learn, but now I have a good base to work off of and I can work on improving my language skills as needed at UHDP. I still need a lot of practice listening to people talk because I still find it very hard to separate individual words that are said in a sentence. I’m looking forward to improving my Thai with the staff at UHDP as well as starting up some projects there and getting more involved with the daily work. Some of the ISDSI students are at UHDP right now, so when I go back, I will be able to help out with some of the activities that they have planned for the students.

The past couple of weeks have just been a lot more of the same except my class has been in the morning instead of the afternoon. I was nice to have the lesson done in the morning so I could have more of the afternoon to explore the city. I talked all about different parts of Chiang Mai in my last post, but I figured I would give you more of a visual with this post.

CHIANG MAI ZOO

A few weekends ago I was able to make it to the Chiang Mai Zoo.

INSECT MUSEUM

There is this really cool insect museum just behind my apartment, so of course I had to make a visit. The guy who runs the museum has worked with mosquitoes and the various diseases that they spread for the last fifty years of his life, and has discovered 26 or so new species of mosquito throughout his career. I wanted to talk to him about his experience with insects, but when I talked with him, he was more interested in telling me about his philosophy on life and that I should take trips to mars when trouble arises in my life. I really enjoyed his museum, but I was a little disappointed that he didn’t want to talk about insects like I had hoped.

DOI SUTHEP

Last weekend I made it up to Doi Suthep, which is the Buddhist temple up on the mountain 15 kilometers outside of Chiang Mai. The spot for the temple was chosen by letting an elephant strapped with Buddhist relics wander up the mountain until it died. It died about halfway up the mountain, conveniently, in a spot with a great view of Chiang Mai. I took the trip alone, but I got to talking with one of the Thai’s riding in the sawng tauw with me, and when we were climbing the steps up to Doi Suthep, I was able to gather that he wanted to jump off the edge of the lookout point because his girlfriend broke his heart. He didn’t speak any English so I wasn’t sure if I understood him correctly, but he started scaring me when he threw his atm card and credit card down the ledge, and he also showed me the goodbye letter that he wrote to his family. Needless to say, he didn’t end up jumping and he rode the sawng tauw back in to Chaing Mai with me that night so I hope he is doing alright. I wasn’t able to enjoy learning about the temple like I was planning on doing, but I was still able to take a few pictures.

CITY LIFE

Here are some pictures of where I spend a lot of my time during the week: ISDSI and the various markets in Chiang Mai.

Rean Paasaa Thai

My pictures are finally back up and running. I had fun time trying to navigate through picassaweb in order to upload my pictures. Uploading the pictured proved to be quite difficult because the entire picassaweb website comes up in Thai characters. Pookie, at ISDSI, was able to navigate through picassaweb, and she helped me upload the pictures even after I accidentally deleted the whole album while I was trying to add captions the first time. I think I know which tabs I have to click on now in picassaweb, so pictures should be easier to upload from now on – hopefully…

For the past two weeks, I have been living in Chiang Mai learning the Thai language. I’ve been staying in this great little apartment with a really nice view of the city, and it’s only a 20 minute walk from my place to ISDSI, which is where I’m taking my Thai class. My class doesn’t start until 1:00 pm, so I spend most of my mornings studying my notes from the previous day of class while I enjoy a nice breakfast. I head over to ISDSI around 11:30 so that I can eat lunch with people at ISDSI and practice speaking some Thai before my class starts. I have really been enjoying learning the language thus far, and one of the reasons that I have been enjoying learning the language is because my teacher at ISDSI, Ajaan Wilasinee, keeps the class simple and entertaining enough so that my three hours with her every day doesn’t seem like forever, but that doesn’t mean learning the language hasn’t been a challenge. I spend a large part of the lesson just learning new vocabulary words which she makes me sound out by reading the word that she wrote in Thai letters. Once I have learned a decent amount of words for the day, she shows me how the words can be used in a sentence, and we spend some time talking back in forth using the words that I just learned. It’s similar to any other language course I guess, but I really enjoy the one on one time that I have with Ajaan Wilasinee because she forces me to talk in Thai with her. The only other language I have learned is Spanish, but I never got good at it because I would only use it once a week for a half hour during what Calvin called conversation groups. I still find the structure of the Thai language to be confusing and Ajaan Wilasinee is constantly correcting my grammar as well as my pronunciation. In the Thai language, words have different meanings depending on the tone in which they are spoken, which can make things quite difficult. Even when I manage to come up with the right word for a sentence, I often pronounce it wrong or a little bit funny. The one nice thing about the language is that there are no verb conjugations like there are in Spanish and English, which allows me to focus on getting the pronunciation of the words correct. Lately, I have been spending the first half hour or so of my lesson just talking with Ajaan Wilasinee in Thai about random things and what I did the day before. I often don’t know how to say what I want to say, but Ajaan Wilasinee helps me along and is really patient with me, and I have really been enjoying that part of the lesson. I still have a long ways to go with the language, but it is cool to think that two weeks ago I only knew a few Thai phrases, and now, I can carry on a broken conversation in Thai.

When I am not in class at ISDSI, I am often out wandering around the city of Chiang Mai. The city itself is not that big so I am able to cover a lot of distance in the city just by walking around. When I need to go somewhere that is a little further away, I just flag down a sawng tauw and tell the driver where I need to go. Sawng tauw’s are the public transportation in Chiang Mai and they are everywhere. It only costs 20 baht (75 cents) to go anywhere in the city, but the drivers often try and get more money out of me because they can see that I’m a foreigner. There area in which I’m staying does not have a lot of foreigners living in the area which is kind of nice, but there are still a lot of great places to eat nearby as well as a mall where I can get some basic groceries. I often go to eat at a small noodle shop each day where they serve amazing dishes like khau soy or phad thai for only a few dollars, and even when I go to a nicer restaurant, I only end up spending 5 to 8 dollars on a full coarse meal. One of my most favorite dishes so far has been a deep-fried morning glory dish with cashews and a spicy shrimp sauce on top. I have found that restaurants are a great place to study my Thai notes because it is perfectly fine to sit around in a restaurant for hours without buying anything. Towards the more touristy area of Chiang Mai, there are a lot of markets to walk around in, which have been fun to explore. There are the typical souvenir shops, artistic shops, clothing shops, as well as a lot of food stalls. I have been careful with what I buy at the food stalls because it is hard to tell how sanitary some of them are, but I have enjoyed trying things like deep-fried bananas and insects that they have for sale. I really like going to the fruit stalls (even more than I did before) because now I know a lot of the Thai words for the different kinds of fruit available. Going to the market is a good way for me to practice my Thai outside of class even though I often get funny looks because my Thai is not very good yet. Even if I do manage to say the right thing, my accent alone is enough to make someone laugh at me.

As great as Chiang Mai has been the last couple of weeks, I am looking forward to going back to UHDP. I’m looking forward to practicing my Thai with the staff at UHDP, but it’s definitely a good thing that I have a few weeks left in Chiang Mai to improve my Thai. I am nowhere near close to understanding conversations that Thai people have with one another because what they are saying just sounds like one big word to me. I really miss being around the people at UHDP and the daily life that comes with living up there, but right now I’m enjoying what comes with living in the city because I know I will have plenty of time to be up at UHDP.

Diving In

Nothing much happens on the weekends at UHDP. My first weekend here was a chance for me to orient myself, and, man, did I need it. I was able to wander around on the property at UHDP to get a feel for where everything is and did a bit more unpacking. I didn’t have any food so Ruth and I went into town for some groceries. I was looking forward to stocking up for the week, but getting groceries turned out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. Back home I have certain meals that I like to make, and it was hard to find all the ingredients that I needed for those meals. I gave up trying to find things for my “American” meals, and since I didn’t know any Thai meals, I wound up just getting a few things to snack on. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to find any chips and salsa, but I’m finding that I’m getting by just fine without my favorite snack.

On Sundays, Ruth and I have been going to a church in a Palaung village with Gurt and her two kids. Ruth has been going to that Church for a while so she knows a lot of the people there, and I am just starting to learn a few of their names. So far, I have had the chance to chat (with Ruth’s help) with a couple of older men who were enjoying a cup of tea and a smoke, and I have also spent some time with a few of the women of the village who shared a Thai melon with Ruth and I. The church service at the village lasts an hour and a half, and everyone sits on the floor with the men on one side and the women and children on the other. I recognized a few of the songs they sang, but I couldn’t understand anything else throughout the service. The guy who preaches at the church is actually from a Karen village who has been working in the Palaung village as a missionary. The preacher, Pi Yoong, and his wife, Pi Da, invited Ruth and I to have lunch with them after church so I have gotten to know them a bit. Pi Da speaks a little English but Pi Yoong doesn’t know any English. I was able to gather that Pi Yoong likes to talk a lot, and I have a feeling that going to their house will be good practice for me when I am able to understand the Thai language.

The work week was a good opportunity for me to get a feel for the pace of work at UHDP, as well as how all of the different projects are coming along. The pace of work is very laid back, which is a nice change from the American pace of life. There is a general outline of things that need to be worked on, but there’s no rush to get specific projects done by specific deadlines. Work starts at 8:00 in the morning, and we work until break time at 10:00. Work starts again at 10:30 and goes until lunch at 12:00. For lunch, everyone goes back to their house to make a dish and relax a bit, and then everyone slowly makes it back to what they were doing around 1:00. There is another break from 3:00 to 3:30, and people finish up work sometime between 4:30 and 5:00. This kind of a work pace is a lot different then what I’m used to because I’m used to working at a much faster pace. At UHDP, the staff tries to make work as fun a possible, and they don’t care about productivity and efficiency as much people care about it in the states. The long breaks allow the field workers a break from the sun and humidity, and it gives everyone a chance to chat with their co-workers. Lunch time is also a time to enjoy each others company while eating a meal because often times people will gather at someone’s house to eat lunch together. As different as the work pace feels, I think it has a lot to do with the sense of community here, and I am enjoying the cultural difference. I have had the chance to work with a few different staff members on their project so far. I have worked with Apot and Suphana in the nursery where all the agroforestry plants are propagated. Suphana, who is studying under Apot, is one of the 5 students at UHDP who has a staff person teaching them how to manage the different projects at UHDP. I have tagged along with Suphana and spent a day mixing soil together with some of the Palaung villagers from the church that I went to. Propagating plants is a big job in the nursery, and I have transplanted some of the seedlings in the nursery such as fish tail palm and rattan. I have also spent some time out in the organic gardens with Gurt and her student When. In the garden, we have done a lot of weeding because the gardens get overgrown during the wet season, and we have also been preparing the soil so that we can sow seeds when the dry season starts. Ruth and I have been helping Chai, the research director at UHDP, with his new stove project. Chai is making different molds for clay stoves so that he can figure out what the most fuel efficient stove design is. It has been interesting watching him use sheet metal and plastic buckets for the mold, and the stoves, themselves, are just made out of mud, burnt rice hulls, and a little bit of cement. The goal of the research projects at UHDP are to make them practical for the surrounding hilltribe villages, so Chai is trying to make the stoves with materials that are cheap and readily available for the local people.

After work I usually head back to the house to take a shower, and get something ready for dinner. I haven’t been doing much cooking myself yet, but I have been watching how Ruth makes meals, and I am slowly learning from her. Most nights we go over to Wha’s house and eat with Chai and Ajarn Dah, and when that doesn’t work out, we try to eat with other staff members like Gurt and Apot or Meh Nong Ket and Pi Singham. The meals that I’ve had at dinner have all been amazing, but I am still getting used to the spiciness of the food. I have learned to bring tissues with me when I go have a meal with someone so that I can wipe the sweat off my face and blow my nose. The dinners are always spicy and served with rice and nom prik, which is one of the few things I can make myself. Nom prik is a spicy paste made with roasted garlic, shallots, and chilies crushed together in a mortar and pestle along with cilantro, green onions, lemon grass, salt, and your choice of fried chicken skin, pork skin or fish from a can. Nom prik is eaten with things like boiled morning glory, bamboo, cucumbers, other cooked vegetables, and plain rice. The soups that are made are always good and spicy, and the stir fried dishes that are eaten with the rice are usually a mixture of meat and veggies with a bunch of spice and fish sauce added to it to top it off. The stir fried meals are much different than the meals that I had when I was in Bangkok and Cambodia with the Calvin group. There is no such thing as sweet and sour chicken at UHDP.

Eating meals together has been a good way to get to know the staff members at UHDP. I still can’t communicate much with them, but I enjoy spending time with them, and Ruth is able to translate for me if what I am trying to say is to complex for them to understand. It is fun to eat with Wah and Gurt because Wah knows English fairly well, and I can have very simple conversations with Gurt because she knows a few English words. Gurt’s son, Nong Pon, likes to play Uno and watch cartoons so I often do that with him after we eat, and I have also spent a lot of time catching insects with him because Ruth just recently found and insect net when she was in Chiang Mai. Once we got the net, Nong Pon has wanted to catch insects every chance he gets, which is great because I love to do it to. Before we got the net, Nong Pon would bash the insects with a stick, but now we can catch them without destroying them. Sometimes I feel like I have my own kids because Nong Pon and his friend Nong Ket are always coming to get me so that we can go out and play. It gets overbearing at times, but I enjoy spending time with them for the most part. I’m just glad that they aren’t really my kids, and that I can send them home to their moms if they get too obnoxious.

I have one more week at UHDP before I head down to Chiang Mai to start learning the Thai language at ISDSI. This past weekend I went down to Chiang Mai to pick up another intern, and I found myself a place to stay for the month while I’m studying at ISDSI. I was able to find a nice place in an area where local Thai people live so that I won’t be surrounded by all of the tourists that come to Chiang Mai. I know learning the language is going to be tough, but at this point, I’m really looking forward to it.

Time to Fly

Things got very interesting right from the get go. Last Tuesday I left Kalamazoo with my parents early in the morning and had a nice drive up to the airport in Grand Rapids. We got to the airport and checked in my luggage, but I was surprized when I found out that I would have to travel to a different airport when I reached Bangkok in order to catch my next flight to Chiang Mai. I was hoping to be able to check my bags all the way through to Chiang Mai, but that wasn’t going to be possible since I had to switch airports. This just goes to show you how much of a rookie I am when it comes to flying because this switch in airports was right there in my itinerary, but I failed to see it before the morning of my flight. I was mad at myself for being so stupid, but I was thankful that I found out about having to switch airports before I left, and that it wouldn’t be a surprise to me when I arrived in Bangkok. After I got that all figured out, I checked my flight (which was on time), said goodbye to my parents, got through security, and headed to my gate. I got to my gate about an hour before my flight was scheduled to leave, and everything was going fine until I saw that my flight was going to be delayed for 45 minutes. This concerned me because I only had a half hour layover in Chicago and this delay was going to make me miss my next flight. Thankfully, there was another flight flying out of Chicago to Tokyo so I was just switched over to that flight. My flight from Grand Rapids was delayed an additional 30 minutes, which only gave me a 20 minute layover in Chicago for me to catch my new flight. When I arrived in Chicago, I was only one terminal away from where my next flight was taking off from, so I was able to run to my next flight with 10 minutes to spare. Once I got on my flight from Chicago to Tokyo, I was able to relax. That flight lasted 11 and a half hours, but it seemed short. The section of plane that I was in had less than 10 people, and I had a lot of room around me to stretch out and get comfortable. I was able to watch a movie, do some reading, and get some sleep. I didn’t want to get off of that plane, and I wished it could have taken me all the way to Chiang Mai. My flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was much more cramped than my previous flight, and I realized that my flight being delayed in Grand Rapids was a blessing in disguise because I don’t think I could have lasted 11 and a half hours on a cramped flight. I slept on and off on the flight to Bangkok, and even though that flight was 7 hours, it seemed much longer. I eventually arrived in Bangkok, got through customs, and went off to find my bags, which were nowhere in sight. I was sent in circles trying to find someone who could help me locate my bags. After 45 minutes to an hour, I found someone who said that he could help me, and he told me that my bags were still in Chicago. I wasn’t that surprised when he told me because I barely made it myself to the plane in Chicago, and there was no way they were going to be able to transfer my luggage to that flight in 20 minutes. I thanked the guy for helping me, and I headed off to get a taxi to Don Muang airport. I arrived at the airport with only my carry on bag at 1 am Thailand time. The airport was closed so I had to wait until 4:30am for the airport to open and get to my gate. The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was a short 50 minute flight, and I arrived in Chiang Mai extremely exhausted and grateful that I didn’t have any more flights. Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but it made traveling to Chiang Mai a lot more exciting and everything worked out in the end.

When I arrived in Chiang Mai, I met up with both Pookie and Ruth, who I had been in contact with before I left. Pookie is a teacher at ISDSI, which is where I will be taking my Thai lessons, and Ruth is another intern who has been working at UHDP for the past 4 months. I was so thankful that they were kind enough to meet up with me in Chiang Mai. We went out for breakfast, and then I headed back with Ruth to one of her friends apartments where I crashed on the couch. I had called United to find out where my luggage was, and they told me that my luggage would most likely arrive the following morning at the airport in Chiang Mai. They told me that I had to come pick up the luggage so Ruth and I stayed in Chiang Mai for an extra day, which worked out great because I got to catch up more on my sleep. I ended up sleeping through most of the day as well as all night. The following morning Ruth and I picked up my luggage at the Chiang Mai airport and got a ride back to UHDP with Ajan Sumit and Ajan Dah, who happened to be in Chiang Mai for a meeting that day. It was a 2 hour ride from Chiang Mai up to UHDP, and I enjoyed being able to spend some time with people from UHDP even though Ajan Sumit and Ajan Dah know very little English.

The four of us arrived at UHDP in the early afternoon where I met more of the staff and settled into my room. I was really thankful that I was able to catch up on my sleep because that night they were having a big meal as a going away party for Aseng. Aseng recently got married and is moving down to Chiang Mai to live in the city after working at UHDP for 8 years. I helped the women in the kitchen prepare the meal by chopping up tilapia and vegetables. It was while I was helping prepare the meal when my first dose of culture shock started kicking in because I could not speak with the women in order to figure out what I was supposed to do to prepare the food. I had to watch what they were doing and try to communicate through hand motions. The women preparing the meal were concerned that I was not going to be able to handle the spiciness of the food, but I told them not to worry because I really like spicy food. The meal itself consisted of sticky rice, a spicy tilapia stir-fry, and a spicy soup. We all ate together outside on picnic tables, and I must say that it was very spicy. By the end of the meal my eyes were watering and my nose was running profusely, which has become a common occurrence for me at lot of the meals here. After diner, the staff at UHDP all met together in a house to say their goodbyes to Aseng. By this point I was getting used to everyone talking Thai around me and not being able to understand anything. I sat in the room and listened to people talk and Ruth was able to tell me a little bit about what everyone was saying. Even though I couldn’t understand what everyone was saying, I could tell that everyone was very sincere and that they were truly going to miss having Aseng at UHDP. I liked that they all went around and just talked about all the good times that they had with Aseng and how they wished him a good life in the city. Once they were done saying goodbye, Ajan Tui introduced me to the staff at UHDP as the new intern, and then we called it a night. I felt really bad that I couldn’t start talking with them and learn more about them, but none of them knew English well enough to have a conversation with except Ajan Tui. Everyone was very welcoming, but I still felt out of place because I couldn’t talk with them in Thai, and I had no way of knowing how much of my English they understood. I knew that communicating was going to be hard, and my frustration with communicating has made me want to learn the Thai language even more. After meeting everyone I could tell that I was going to like it at UHDP, and that in time it would begin to feel more and more like home.

Wow, I have been writing for a while now and I have only gotten through my first day. maybe I'm going into too much detail :P I will try and write another post sometime soon to let you know how this past work week went for me. I'm doing very well, and I thank you all for your prayers.