Okay, so our grade is going to spend this next week in the Mae Hong Son province of Thailand, in northwest Thailand at its border with Burma. About 200 years ago, inhabitants of the Shan tribe of Burma came to this area along the Pai River to grow rice. Many of the Shans left this area after a while but some stayed. This was the beginning of the Mae Hong Son region that we are going to visit.  

'Mae' means river, 'Hong' is the narrow part of a river, and 'Son' means training. Mae Hong Son got this name because the former governor of Chiang Mai used to go to this area of Thailand to capture wild elephants for his army. When he got to this area he came across the village and left the elephants there to be trained.

Half of our grade is going to one village and the other half is going to another. The two villages are the Ja Bor Black Lahu Village and the Mae La Na Shan Village. Ja Bor is located on the mountain and has apparently has a beautiful mountain view of the area and Mae La is cradled in the valley of the mountains. Both villages have different lifestyles and traditions. I'm not quite sure what these differences are yet but will find out next week. I know that Ja Bor has a classic hill tribe feel and Mae La has a northern thai style village feel. 

While we are on the villages we home stay with the locals. I'm rooming with two of my good friends Kazi and Thomas. It should be a humbling and widening experience.

These shrines are seen all around Chiang Mai along with the pictures of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.  They are really fun to see as you walk around. For some reason I really like all these small shrines on the streets. Everyone else in Chiang Mai regards them as regular, but even after being in Chiang Mai for 5 weeks (I know I can't believe it either) I am still fascinated by them. As you can see from the picture, they are randomly placed on the sidewalks kind of like public statues some are more decorated than others.

Later today, after school, I'll write a little about the two specific hill tribe villages we are going to be staying at next week. Lilly already went into detail about the Mae Hong Son province so I won't reiterate what she said, but I will give some information I have about the two villages and maybe talk a little about the province because I also think it's interesting. As if right now, I have to go to school. This was just a quick morning post because I felt that my blog needed a new  picture. To be continued after school. Talk to you then.

Monks are everywhere around Chiang Mai and wonderful to see. They wear bright heavy clothes with their right shoulder revealed. Everything they do in the city is free of charge. They don't pay for anything. When you walk around Chiang Mai there are various gift shops where people can buy gifts for the monks. Monks are treated like loyalty in Thailand. The Royal family and the monks are the two most respected people of the country. Treating the monks with such respect is a great custom that Thai people have. It's wonderful to see the monks be treated so nicely. 

A monk's lifestyle is one of extreme commitment. Here are some facts that I've gathered about a typical Thailand monk's life:

Monks wake up at 4:00 AM and meditate for an hour. Then they get ready for their daily alms rounds, and by 6:10 AM they leave the monastery and are on the streets barefoot making their rounds. They walk around with their alms bowls for about an hour collecting food. As the monks are barefoot, it is a custom for the person offering the monk to take off his or her shoes and kneel down before offering the monk food. While the person offering food stoops before the monk, the monks recite a short prayer in Pali, an ancient language of India that is used in the earliest Buddhist scriptures. Unfortunately I haven't been able to see this happen yet but I hope I will be able to soon. After their alms rounds, they go back to the Temple and chant for a hour and eat a light meal at 11:30 AM. They are not allowed to eat after 12:00 in the afternoon. At 1:00 PM they go to class and learn Buddhist teachings. the rest of the day is dedicated to various chores around the Temple. At 7:30 they do homework right before they go to bed. They are in bed by 8:00. Of course all monks come in different extremities. Some follow their schedules strictly and others are more laid back. It's just like any religion in the sense that there are levels of dedication and stringencies. 

Monks also have various customs. They shave their heads during the induction ceremony and have 227 restrictions that mostly deal with their relationships with women. 

I got most of these facts off of the Internet but it is really interesting to learn about the lifestyle of monks. I hope to learn more about them. There aren't too many monks walking around Dallas so seeing them here is cool and interesting. 

This weekend I checked out of boarding and went to my friend Michael's house with Chris and Lilly. It was a very busy weekend.

Things we did this weekend:

Elephant Show: Elephants are pretty intelligent animals. They played soccer against each other, played harmonicas, painted and hoolah hooped. It was impressive. But it was semi-depressing because the elephants were performing things that were completely out of their nature. These stunts sound really cool on paper but when you see the elephants doing this for tourism its not as enjoyable. It was still pretty cool to see 20 elephants at one time though. And afterwards we got to feed the elephants and watch them bathe in a river. The good thing about the elephant show is that they treat the elephants nicely and the land where they live is in the mountains. So they are in a good habitat. We also saw some Israelis at the show. Israelis are all over the place in Chiang Mai. It's always fun to run into them.

Orchid/Butterfly Garden: This is not somewhere I would have chosen to go but we went anyways. It's basically self explanatory. There were some butterflies and some orchids. I'm making it sound worse than it was. It really wasn't that bad. Afterwards, we went across the street to a dilapidated noodle shop across the street. This is one of those mundane noodle shops that you see everywhere around the city. These are the best restaurants in Chiang Mai. They are under wooden shacks, the menus are all in Thai, the waiters only speak Thai, and the only dish they have available is either chicken, beef, or pork noodles. You sit on tree trunk stools around a larger tree trunk table and enjoy the 20 baht meal (not even a dollar) with your friends in the shack's shade. If you could get this kind of food in Dallas it would have a huge attraction.

Samkampaeng "Hot" Springs: I put parenthesis around hot because the water wasn't just hot it was 105 degrees Celsius which is 5 degrees over boiling. You weren't allowed to enter the spring because it was way too hot. People boiled eggs in the water because it was so hot. there were little wires that held baskets of eggs in the water to cook. The four of us read for about three hours under a tree and unfortunately did not partake in the egg boiling. Reading under a tree sounds pretty cliche but it was really fun and relaxing, and the tree provided great shade from the sun. The cool thing about the hot springs is that it is a local thing. Only the local Thai people hang out there.  There is also a little river shooting off of the hot spring that is cool enough to swim in. 

Tha Pae Gate: This is the main entrance to the old city of Chiang Mai called Lanna. There are three choice, second-hand bookstores around the corner from the Art Cafe which are really good. Backstreet Books is one of them. I put a picture of that one up. That's probably the better of the three. There are a lot of cool places around here. When we went Saturday night there was a concert going on in the square. The concert was pretty cool except that the music was way too loud and didn't sound very good. A lot of good restaurants are in this area. Ta Pea is the hub of Chiang Mai hang out. We ran into some of our other friends when we were there.

Random crematorium near Michael's house: Saturday night after we got back to his house we went out on his motor bikes to explore. We came across a random temple (which happens a lot in Chiang Mai) and decided to hang out there for a while. The next day we told Michael's mom that we were at a temple and explained to her where it was. She informed us that the so called temple had really been a crematorium. I guess that a crematorium can be enjoyable if you mistake it to be a temple. 

Sunday Market: We rode Michael's motorbikes to this market about 15 minutes away from his house. Lilly and I were on one bike and Chris and Michael on another. Michael lives 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai and there is nothing like riding motorbikes around this quaint village. Traveling down a untraveled path off-road, going so fast that your eyes start watering, cruising down a street with the wind blowing in your face and tropical trees on either side of you... and then arriving at a local Sunday market. This market is the most genuine portrayal of what Chiang Mai culture is all about. There is nothing like a local Chiang Mai Sunday market. Every single person was at ease. The shopkeepers were all smiles. There were no harassments or arguments from the shopkeepers. It was peaceful. The market was small, but the food was outstanding. We bought a sticky rice dessert, and an Indian delicacy called Roti. 

Every Super Bowl Sunday I can recall our family has gone to a Super Bowl watching party. Even though no one in my family follows football closely (I only follow basketball), we always ended up at a party. Who knows what it was that drew us to these parties. Maybe the socializing aspect of the celebration, the spirit of camaraderie that is attached with the Super Bowl, or the multimillion dollar commercials that are only broadcasted on that one day. Who knows. 

Well, this Monday when I was checking my emails the main headline read "Pittsburgh Steelers Win Record Sixth Super Bowl." It then dawned on me that the Super Bowl had passed and I had not heard it mentioned once. This, in effect, made me feel like I hadn't missed out on anything. It was as if the Super Bowl had never happened. There had been a football void. This is what happens when you are at an international school. American football has no attraction. Not even the Super Bowl. It was a strange realization.

This last weekend was the best. Lilly and I woke up early and set out to Chiang Mai at 9 in the morning and returned at 10 at night. Basically all day. It was so much fun. We set out with no plan in mind and ended up having a great time. That's how great Chiang Mai is. You don't need any particular plan to enjoy the city. You can just wander around aimlessly and have a fun time. We walked around where we were dropped off for about an hour and found a restaurant to eat at. This restaurant appeared normal and good and ended up being extraordinary and amazing. I ordered curry chicken and Lilly ordered the vegetarian pad thai, both of which were life changing. Easily some of the best food I have ever had. This was definitely a great way to start the day. 

After breakfast, we took a took took (the buses in Chiang Mai are called took tooks) to Wat Buppharam which was at the other end of town. At the temple a random monk called us into his temple to hang out. He spoke almost perfect english. It was awesome. We chilled with him for a while with a couple that was from England who happened to be in the temple when we entered. The temple was beautiful with golden emblems everywhere, incense, nice red carpet, and a variety of Buddha statues. After our random monk encounter, we walked to a flower market and then we came across a second-hand book store called Backstreet Books. We stayed and read at Backstreet Books for a while and then met up with our friend, Michael, who lives in Chiang Mai. We all three went to the night bazaar, which is really gross and touristy, to buy fake DVDs (the best thing the night bazaar has to offer, really high quality and very inexpensive). The night bazaar is basically like the paramount tour group attraction. Everyone there is western besides the shop keepers, and it's really annoying to see the tourists walk around with their cameras, talking really loud and obnoxiously, and showing complete apathy towards Chiang Mai culture. So we stayed in the night bazaar for as short as possible. So after our short night bazaar visit we went to a pizza restaurant and then met up with some other friends at the Airport Plaza mall. Then from the mall a PREM bus picked us up and returned us to school. It was a great day and we will definitely be going into Chiang Mai more often on the weekends.

It's about to be dry season here in Thailand which is apparently just a warm up for the heat season. I don't even want to think about how hot it is going to get here during the summer. Supposedly when you walk outside during summer you are hit by a thick wave of humidity and heat. Right now the weather is perfect but it is going to get a lot hotter.

We never ended up meeting Lin Lao Zhi for brunch. It just didn't work out because he had to take his wife to the airport Saturday morning. But we will hopefully/most likely go some other weekend. 

On Sunday we had a CAS activity on campus. A group of physically and/or mentally challenged adults came to Prem to play sports and swim. So Sunday morning a group of us hung out with them, swam, and played basketball and soccer with them. It was a productive way to spend a Sunday morning instead of sleeping in, and the visitors really had a fun time and appreciated the activities. 

Shout out to everyone at Yavneh, in Israel, in Dallas, and whoever else is reading my blog. I miss all of you a lot.