mae chaem

okay, here's a brief overview and a bunch of pictures, and i'll fill this in better when i have more time.

monday morning, we left for mae chaem. we took these rather decked out vans, and we drove extremely fast through the mountains.
the village we stayed in is pretty tiny. it's full of roosters. seriously.

we had thai buddies (students from payap who are thai but speak english a bit too, so we could have them help us talk to our families) until wednesday, but then we were on our own. we had thai class for 2 hours every morning at the temple.

tuesday we learned how to make thai desserts.. we had a lot of sticky rice and coconut.
wednesday, we took a trip and saw some other parts of mae chaem--a temple with really fresh, clean water.. a man who was one of the few who still makes hair pins by hand.. people who store soy beans in banana leaves..

thursday, we went to the crematorium.. we helped them build new stuff.. by mixing/pouring concrete (or carrying buckets of sand/water/rocks/cement to help do so)
and friday we went to 2 waterfalls, which were absolutely gorgeous.
friday night, we had a goodbye dinner, and there was a ceremony to keep our spirits with our bodies.. a man said some chant and then we had strings tied to our wrists..
then we went back to the crematorium to see part of the opening ceremony.. there were many monks (all staying 3 days and 3 nights in the FREEZING in little huts).

ketchup.

soooooo
the retreat was pretty great. it probably would've been better if we weren't all tired when we got there.
we spent pretty much all of tuesday evening/wednesday morning meditating. they woke us up at 5 to start again, and i think we'd stopped around 9 the night before.
the temple was quite nice, and the rooms we stayed in were much nicer than anyone expected.

wednesday we didn't have any planned activities.
i did, though. i went to meet my supervisor for my service placement. the site i'm working at is called the healing family foundation. basically, people with developmental disabilities (the "artists") go there and learn a craft (weaving) as well as other skills, like speaking english and cleaning up and such, and they use the weaving to make money rather than standing on the streets looking miserable to get money.

thursday and friday we had classes, and friday night we went out. we went to the friday night market, which was pretty awesome. i got some pictures of food stuff (we got these soy dessert things that basically consisted of.. soy, sugar, and coconut, and we got this banana in a pancake, so i have pictures of that being made, too.)
then we went to a bar.. that was extremely crowded.. with some of the actual international students (the ones here for 4 years..) we saw a baby elephant walking down the road (people were walking it and charging to feed it..), and while we were at the bar, people would come to our table and try to sell us things.. an extremely tiny old woman was selling flower bracelets, kids were selling peanuts, etc..

today we're going to a concert, so i'll hopefully have pictures of that later.

on monday, we're going to a village for our first home stay, so i probably won't be able to update again (after monday) until at least that saturday.

oh and here are a couple more pictures of the dorm/out my window/the dogs at the dorm.

aaand
my extremely awkward picture that i think i talked about in the last entry:

finally!

okay.
i've now been in chiang mai for.. about 3 days? 2 and a half? whatever.
i will go back and fill everything in to the best of my ability.
i have some pictures to help.

we got in around 5ish, and then we were driven to the campus in a red truck.
apparently that is how we go most places.. they have a deal with the college or something.. it's pretty cheap if you have a bunch of people (about 20 baht per person, usually).
this truck..
well it stalled before we left the airport parking lot.
it has a covered back..
without a door or anything.
that's where we sat, on benches that went lengthwise down each side of the truck bed, staring out the back and windows the whole way to campus.
a lot (and when i say a lot, i mean A LOT) of people drive motorscooter things.
they don't go in the lanes, usually. then again, i'm not always sure the cars do either.
driving is insane.
so, we got to campus and went to our rooms. my roommate was here. her name is Tei.. it sounds like "toy". she's an english major, as are most of the students we see, for some reason.. hmm..
the room is amazing.
it's like a hotel room, really. we have our own bathroom.
the weirdest thing, besides the general lack of toilet paper just about everywhere, is that there are no drawers in the rooms.
i have one tiny drawer in my closet. everything else is shelves.

that night, we went to carrefour. it's basically french walmart.. with a bunch of other stores connected to it (in front there were several vendors as well).
we went with this girl named shannon, who got in that day and was a bit jet lagged (she's still claiming to be today, and i told her that the excuse won't last much longer). her roommate drove, and my roommate sat up front.
when my roommate turned around to talk to us, shannon got this amazing look on her face.
amazing in the sense that she looked rather..
scared to death.
she hadn't realized that her roommate was driving (on the right side of the car). it was quite amusing.

on sunday, we met all of the ipsl students.. we all went out to lunch with adam, the program director. he took us to a wonderful restaurant.. decorated with.. parrots.
it was good food, and we found out a lot about the program.. like that our first home stay is next week. aah!

last night, we went to the old part of the city (we being all the thai studies students.. that's who the we will generally be from now on.. all or just ipsl students..) we ate dinner by a buddhist temple, and spent a good portion of the evening walking around the sunday night market.
there were lots of.. street acts.

here are pictures of one act (a puppet show) and a buddhist temple

kids playing instruments, a statue.., old men playing instruments, kids dancing, disabled people performing (a boy hitting a bell together when he managed to coordinate his hands through extremely heavy shaking and a blind girl singing to a radio she carried on her back and set down where she set up to perform..) that part made me feel a bit sick to my stomach.
then we tried some
horribly disgusting drinks. (some juices of things we'd never had..)
i mean, really horrible.
really.
gross.

today was the first day of classes..
we spent the morning doing orientation things.
we all showed up at 8:30 at the president's office.. in uniform.
there, we got packets.. and more parts to our uniforms.. belts and buckles, button covers, and pins for the girls.
ties and belt buckles for the guys..
after that, we went on a campus tour with some thai students, and then we all had lunch at the pentacost building (where most of our classes are), and then we had our first.. dun dun dun!
thai class!
it was good.
it was good for the first hour.
then i think everyone started to get a bit overwhelmed.
to start a semester with 2 hours of learning foods in thai.. i don't know.. it's a bit intense.

theeeen.. we all walked to the bookstore and bought little things we needed, came back and rested a bit, and at 6:30, we went out to dinner to this amazing place.
we sat on the floor, and it was basically like tapis. i don't know if that's what it's called in thailand, but that's the closest thing to what i know that it seemed like. as we ate, people came around, put rose necklaces on us, and took pictures with us.
i managed to take probably the most awkward looking picture ever. it pretty much tied with jess's (another ipsl student), and she was purposely looking awkward.
it's amazing. i'll upload it when i take a picture of it (they sell the pictures to you for 100 baht in a little picture frame).
then, after we ate, there was a show with music and dancing. it was pretty awesome. there was a "fingernail dance" a sword dance, and a dance with candles..

and now, i'm here and ready to collapse.
tomorrow we go to a buddhist meditation retreat overnight, so i will hopefully update again on wednesday.

sentosa

today we went to sentosa island.
we took a train and then rode over in this little sky cab.. it was a pretty interesting ride. we went over a couple gigantic cruise ships--one with mini golf and a huge pool on the roof.
the actual island is.. under construction?
a good portion of it is just concrete and cranes interspersed with bits of trees.
when we got out of the cab thing, we went and bought tickets to the dolphin show.. which also got us into the underwater world.
the dolphins were pretty great.. they're pink and grey, and they know quite a few tricks.. like waving, doing flips, kicking a ball, hula hooping, and.. kissing people.
the underwater world was really interesting. we saw gigantic fish and crabs.. there were some touch tanks, so we got to touch some of the fish, which was a bit creepy. there were also these tiny little snail things that look like angels and glow pink. they're pretty awesome.
outside, we saw a bunch of big turtles.. which i got quite a few pictures of.
there were also 2 places where you could take pictures with snakes.. we held the snakes, but we didn't take pictures with them.
then we went to a bar, and i got my first legal drink =O
it was strawberry slushy stuff with wine and something else. there's a picture or two of that as well.. it was good, but a bit too sweet.
then we went to the big gift shop and walked around a bit before heading back here.
oh! and we got our 2 day passes returned (for $10 each!), so i'm not quite as poor as i could be.

lazy day

yesterday, we spent most of the day hanging around the hostel.
we worked on homework, and we thought we were going to go on this night safari later in the evening.
so, evening rolls around, and we go to look at the information for the night safari, and it was much more expensive than we remembered it being... so we decided instead to to go to what was like the Arab area.
when we got off the train, we went to refund our passes from the past 2 days.. we should be able to get $10 back.
we were told to go see this woman in a white shirt. she seemed to be making up excuses as to why we couldn't refund the cards there.. she kept saying "oh, you can refund them at the airport! oh, you can refund them at orchard road!", and when we said we weren't going to be at the airport at the right time.. and that we weren't going to orchard road, she said, "oh, well.. the machine.. you see.. it's broken."
it seemed eerily like what happened when we tried to get the passes in the first place. a woman in a white shirt told us we couldn't get them in the station. "go to the tourist center. there's a big duck on the building. you can't miss it."
at least we got the passes there. they were a great deal when a 1 way trip is at least $2.20 (though you get a dollar refund..)
our plan for the evening seemed like a great idea, and we figured the community would be lit up and interesting at night.
the mosque was gigantic and beautiful, but i didn't take pictures.. actually i didn't take any pictures the whole night..
the only open stores were dress shops.
lots and lots of dress shops.
they were gorgeous fabrics and dresses, but obviously that wasn't really what we wanted to look at. as we passed one shop, a man asked us, "do you want to spend some money?"
it was rather amusing.
we looked at the open restaurants as well, but then we decided to start walking back towards the train station..
we had passed this gigantic hospital (raffles hospital) on the way to the community, and it had a bunch of restaurants in it.
so, on the way back, we stopped and ate dinner in the hospital.
we had wonton soup... only it was like wonton soup with ramen in it? i think it was called wanton mee or something. it was delicious but very salty.
then we went to starbucks..
i think i have been to starbucks in singapore more times than or equal to the amount of times that i've been there in the us.. which isn't many..
we got cooold drinks (much needed), and then we sat leaned against a planter and watched a fountain and talked.
today we're going to the island.
it seemed interesting and not too terribly expensive.
we seem to pretty regularly say, "when i'm rich, i'll come back and.."
hopefully i'll get some interesting stories and pictures today.
and...
tomorrow we're going to thailand!

some signs.

some.. interesting signs.
i'll add to this when i get more from singapore.
there are..
A LOT.

little india, chinatown, marina bay

today we traveled all over.
we went to little india this morning. it was a good bit cheaper than the places we went to yesterday.
it was also.. dirtier? i mean, there was actually litter on the ground.
it was still a lot cleaner than most places i've seen.
we went in a shop and were looking at post cards, and the man in charge started to talk to us.. about where we were from and our astrological signs.. and then he asked us out to lunch. at first we said yes, but we ended up going back and telling him no. i think it probably would've been extremely awkward, but it might have been interesting.
most of the other shops we went into had an assortment of little figurines.. either made out of jade or made out of something that looked like jade.. carved into buddhas and turtles and elephants. we also found a lot of bangles and other types of jewelry as well as shawls.
there was a pretty large assortment of fresh food--their shops were either huddled together or spread amongst the other little businesses.
we also saw some animals. apparently some sort of festival was going on, so the animals were on display. one of the cows would not stop crying. it was really loud, and at first i thought it was a recording.

once we were pretty worn out from that world, we headed back to the hostel. we ate lunch and hung out for a while.. when we returned, all of our former roommates but one had left.. now the room is completely full again.. with what appears to be another group of all guys? kind of strange.
we took pictures of the hostel inside and out.. i'll put up a slide show here:

after we'd rested a good bit (several hours, actually), we went to chinatown.
they're getting ready for the new year, so everything was pretty crazy.
it might just be crazy in general, though. it was very busy and very colorful. once again, we found a large assortment of jade buddhas.. this time with dragons rather than elephants, though. we found a pretty amazing booth with sculpted stones.. sculpted into rather large ships. of course, there was a lot of red. there was also a ton of food. some nice dead poultry with heads attached.
i got a few pictures of the dead birds.
some booths were demonstrations--woks, hair tools (like a demonstration of how to do someone's hair with this little loopy piece of plastic)... others were just jam packed with things to buy.

it was waaay too overwhelming. there were people everywhere.. bright colors everywhere.. just too much, so we decided to leave.
we then headed to the flyer.. it looks a bit like a gigantic ferris wheel. i'm assuming when it's working it's not too, too different from one. sadly, as we got closer, a woman who was trying to help us told us it was not working, so instead we just went to marina bay.
i shouldn't say just. it was quite an adventure, and we could still see the flyer, but we just didn't get to take a ride on it.
we walked through the marina bay mall place thingy.
sort of.
we walked through maybe 1/4th of one floor of it. it's gigantic and rather confusing.
outside, we could see the fountain we wanted to go see, but we decided to stop for food first since it was already a bit late. we stopped at what looked like a bunch of little food stands, and we got chicken at "flava lava".
then we headed to the fountain. it looked pretty amazing at night.. as did all of the water with tons of different lights on it. we also got a pretty nice view of the flyer, so i got some pictures of that too.

after we took pictures at the fountain, we headed back here to find our room had filled up again, and then we sat down at the table to upload our pictures from the day.
i'll rotate the pictures hopefully tomorrow.. when i have more time..

flying/singapore

aaah
i left home ridiculously early sunday morning, took about a half hour flight up to chicago (from champaign), then i met up with Laura.
together, we flew nearly 13 hours to Japan, stayed there for about an hour and a half, and then took off again for a nearly 8 hour flight to Singapore. the last flight seemed to be the most comfortable.. i don't know if it was because we were terribly tired or because we had 3 seats to the 2 of us, but we could sleep better on that flight than on the flight to japan.

so, we finally got to Singapore this morning around 1:30ish.
then we went to the hostel and basically just collapsed.
we're sharing a queen size bed in a room with 5 other beds (one on top of ours)
the rest of the boarders in the room are guys. i'm not sure how many rooms are actually here.. i know there are more upstairs and at least 3 more down here.
lights out at 10, no computers after 12, breakfast from 6-10 am.
we get breakfast free, and we can get laundry done for $6 a load.. (not something i need to have done..) wifi is free. Singapore is definitely not cheap.

anyway, when we got up today, we decided we were going to go to try to get some passes so we didn't spend a fortune trying to get around.
we took the train (which i can see out the window right now) a couple stops to where we thought we could get passes.

i think that's my favorite thing so far. how the train talks, especially when it tells people to exit.
"please alight"!

we spent part of the day walking around shops (seeing everything from hand-carved jade amulets to ipods to dried squid)
then, after we found a pretty good deal for traveling around via bus and train, we went to the botanical gardens, where we spent a good bit of time taking pictures and getting rained on.

i thought the statues we saw there were really interesting. they were all like snapshots of people in motion.
there were a couple turtles that almost crawled out of the water when we leaned over to take pictures of them, and we saw swans in.. "swan lake"..
we didn't go to the national orchid garden, though i'm sure that would've been amazing as well.
by the time we got back to the entrance, our feet were pretty dead--we'd been walking around since 10 am, and i think it was around 3 pm.

we took the bus another stop to go shopping. all of the mallish areas seem to have food courts/groceries under everything else (like in the basements), and that's where we found the grocery store where we bought food that will hopefully last us the rest of the week.
then we stopped and got coffee before coming back here for the rest of the evening.

i think the most amazing thing about singapore thus far is how clean and organized everything is.
there is no litter anywhere. there are quite a few garbage/recycling bins just about everywhere you go.

all of the grounds pretty much seem well kept--it's like everything is on display or something.
traffic seems almost too orderly. i mean, i feel like in every other city i've been in, if you cross a street, regardless of the crossing signals, cars will try their best to hit you. here, if you cross when you have "the green man" (there's a button that says to press for "the green man"), then there is pretty much no way you will get hit.. unless you cross the wrong way or something..

wednesday is little india, china town, and whatever else we can fit in.

i have pictures from walking around and quite a few from the botanical gardens..
here you go!

=O

i figured i might as well do this.. if not for anyone else at least so i have some memory of it.. i'll attempt to update this pretty regularly.. and it should have pictures =I

if you don't know, i'm spending the semester (tomorrow-june 1st) in thailand. my friend Laura found this program, the international partnership for service-learning and leadership (IPSL), she showed it to me, i fell in love, and now we're both going to thailand.

we'll be taking classes (including a 6 credit course in thai language) and working. the service-learning aspect can be used for the field study we need for our major, so it looks like it'll work out pretty well..

anyway, i leave tomorrow (ridiculously early in the morning) and should get to singapore at some point in time. we will stay there until the 17th, and then we will fly to thailand..

hopefully i'll get to update this as soon as the whole first leg of travel is done.